Re: trading samples

[Richard Zvonar <zvonar@zvonar.com>]

At 12:07 PM +0000 3/28/01, Robert Eberwein wrote:
>I'd like to suggest that, righteous indignation aside, all copy 
>write laws will be coming into question soon.

Actually, that's "copyright," in other words "the right to copy."

I sympathize with your feelings about lawyers and galleries, though I 
would take the argument in a different direction. I think that since 
unique art works can be such profitable commodities, it seems only 
fair that the artist should participate in the profits from resale. 
Why should a painter who originally bartered a work to pay off his 
bar tab not receive a cut when that same painting sells at auction 
for $500,000 a few years down the line?

>The idea that the *artist* has only allowed 235 to be made- and shut 
>the negative away, is about as bogus a notion as has been conceived.

If you believe that the idea of tying value to scarcity is bogus, 
then I think you'd have to agree that capitalism is equally bogus. 
Destroying the lithograph stone is equivalent to OPEC's limiting oil 
production to drive prices up.


>nothing in my code of ethics tells me that I can not give my 
>cakewalk discs to my drummer. Hearing people call that *theft* gets 
>my goat... Once I buy Cakewalk it's mine.

When you buy a software license you are under legal contract NOT to 
give away or sell the software. If you violate that contract you are 
either a liar for agreeing to something you never intended to honor, 
or you are a thief.  Of course, you've declared that you live by your 
own code of ethics that places you above the copyright law, so none 
of that should matter to you.

A software program such as Cakewalk is a professional tool that took 
many programmer-years and considerable financial investment to 
develop. It's not some bit of aesthetic inspiration floating freely 
on the breezes of collective creativity. Companies need to sell these 
programs to stay in business, and since the market is of limited size 
and increasing competitiveness it really does hurt when sales are 
diminished by software theft. I didn't really care about these things 
until I started to work with software companies, but when I saw the 
real impact on real people I  woke up. For example:

A few years ago the leading program for sound editing on the 
Macintosh was Alchemy by Blank Software. The company was tiny; when I 
knew them there were only four people. Like most music software 
Alchemy was copy-protected, though the number of key disk 
installations was generous compared to some. Also, like most 
copy-protected software, a cracked version began to make the rounds. 
The program was very popular, but sales continued to decline. I 
remember talking to their marketing director at a trade show and 
being told that in that month they had sold NO copies of Alchemy! A 
few months later the main programmer quit, and shortly after that the 
program was sold to a larger company, Passport Designs. Passport took 
the copy protection off, but rather than generating good will and 
greater sales the product tanked. It was discontinued soon thereafter.
-- 

______________________________________________________________
Richard Zvonar, PhD                     zvonar@zvonar.com
(818) 788-2202 voice                    zvonar@LCSaudio.com
(818) 788-2203 fax                      zvonar@well.com

                 http://www.zvonar.com

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