Free-culture.org

A response to free-culture.org

After reading this chapter from free culture, I still feel the same way I've always felt about copyright. It's there for a reason. In some cases, the copyright rules aren't that great. Take the example given about the music played on the radio. Only the person who composed the song gets a cut of the pay. I do agree that this could be solved if people actually wrote their own songs. However this is not the case. There are people out there who still deserve some part of the money. I think a composer and the person singing it (or playing it) both deserve a cut of the pay because without the other person, they wouldn't be played on the radio to start with. Now I do feel that the composer deserves more of the cut. Anybody can sing the song with a little know how and engineering.

One question I have is what happens once the composer has died? Does the money go to the descendants of that person? Or do they stop paying?

I just found both the lecture and the text to state the obvious a bit. Maybe that's because I have a knowledge of the FCC already from radio. Maybe not. Either way I understand both sides of the story (FCC and artists and radio/tv/etc). If people want things to be free, they'll do it. (Radiohead, In Rainbows) But we've all got to get by somehow.

-Emelie