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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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