andrel wrote:
> The artists suffer directly from that 
> attitude, I know. I have been wondering if there is a more direct way to 
> support artist without paying a multiple of it to the record companies.

The only reason the record companies are there in the first place is 
because the distribution of the IP formerly involved copying into a 
physical format (hand-copied texts, piano rolls, vinyl, CDs).  They 
provided a service that was inherently necessary for the artist's goals 
to be realized, and charged a cut of the money for it.  Ditto for the 
store from which these physical copies were vended.

Distribution of IP now involves considerably less work than before.  A 
few mouse clicks and key presses, and it's done.  The record companies 
are less necessary than before, in a free market they must find another 
service to provide in order to survive.

A continuing theme throughout the lecture is how vested interests, when 
faced with a situation in which their current contribution was no longer 
wanted by the free market, sought to make the market less free.  Where 
they did not petition the legislatures to outlaw the new technology 
outright, they lobbied to require that a new service be packaged with 
the new technology, with the lobbyist's patron being granted a legal 
monopoly on providing that service.

He didn't make the point as directly as I would have liked, but it is 
pretty clear throughout that a free market, in spite of all the flaws 
that some claim to see in it, is the best means to reduce the costs and 
increase the availability and quality of consumer goods and services for 
the people in general.  Every economic system has, in comparison to 
others, winners and losers; but the free market, in the full scope of 
thing has the most winners and the fewest losers.

Regards,
John

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