petro wrote:
On Thu, 15 Feb 2001, Ken Brown wrote:
You guys just need to get back to the big city :-)
not true. in fact, i would argue that the difficulty of finding good music is widespread throughout the states. i attribute this to the clueless, braindead fools who are governed by the radio...and we all know the stupidity of the people who control the radio stations.
So what you are complaining about is market forces?
Actually I think that was Alan who wrote that, not me. But I imagine he is complaining against the copyright system acting against market forces (like Napster). Personally, I rather like copyright laws for the most part. Far less pernicious than patents (which were OK when they were for inventions, went downhill when they started patenting algorithms & now that drug companies are trying to patent chance discoveries it's turned into a total mess) and trade secrets (which shouldn't be the business of the law at all. A secret is a secret until it's out, then it isn't. If one of your employees lets your secrets out, well you should have paid them enough to make them want to keep them.) Something odd seems to have happened to copyright in the music business though. Copyright law usually acts to protect the originator of a work (at least it does over here), for example authors license print publishers to distribute or sell what they write, but they don't usually permanently lose rights over their own work. For reasons I cannot claim to fully understand, music publishers tend to buy the whole copyright of a work, the originators signing away their entire future interest in it. I suspect it has something to do with the relative weight of lawyers on each side. Or maybe authors are just more savvy than musicians as far as small print is concerned. Ken Brown (5000 Kms downwind of Bermuda)