Re: <nettime> copyright wanking

[Benjamin Spatz <bspatz@mail.wesleyan.edu>]

What if all the songs were available for free through an agent like
Napster, and that agent provided its dowload statistics to some government
agency, which paid the artists according to how popular their music was?
Obviously this is completely inconceivable at the moment, but I'm
wondering if there are any theoretical reasons why it wouldn't work. Of
course, it doesn't leave any room for artists who are doing important work
that nobody likes, but capitalism isn't supposed to leave any room for
that kind of work anyway.

I realized that this essentially replaces the music companies with
nonprofit organizations. I think this might be a good idea. In fact,
the more abstract version of the question, I guess, is simply: Why aren't
all corporations nonprofit? The leaders of nonprofit organizations still
get paid lots of money, but never anything close to what Bill Gates type
people make, I think. Why do we need for-profit corporations?

-ben_


Benjamin Spatz					bspatz@wesleyan.edu
Box 5178					bspatz@bronze.lcs.mit.edu
222 Church st.					
Middletown, CT   06459				Cambridge, MA
(860) 685-????					(617) 354-4330
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