Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

>> Software companies have the reputation of making humongous scads of 
>> money and getting very very rich, whereas the picture of struggling 
>> artists just barely getting by remains a popular conception of the 
>> music industry.  More to the point, a legislator can pretend to 
>> subscribe to these opinions while crafting legislation.
> 
> You should compare software companies to record companies, and artists 
> to programmers. Who keeps the big bucks?

One factor in the artist's favor, vs. the programmer, is that the artist 
is generally on his own time when engaged in the creative effort, and 
therefore owns his work.  Programmers working for a software company do 
their creative work on company time, and therefore do not own one line 
of the software they write.

Consequently the artist, at a certain point, becomes indispensable in a 
way that the programmer does not.  The record company cannot simply 
replace Bono, the Edge, and the other two guys in U2 with cheaper 
replacements and expect the customer to keep buying the music.[1]

The result is that sometimes the artists get big bucks.

Another factor involved is that is that many artists are famous to the 
general public, but programmers are not.  Since political figures focus 
on appearances, what the artists want gets heard by politicians, and 
what programmers want gets ignored by politicians.

Which leads to the present situation:  Legislation is written to benefit 
musicians at the expense of everyone else, while people doing work that 
is just as creatively demanding in other industries have no such laws 
operating in their favor.

Regards,
John

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