Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol

[Bill Frantz <frantz@netcom.com>]

A couple of real-world examples to go with your (good) ideas:

* Richard Stallman gives away the software, but sells the support.  This
technique has the perverse incentive for the author to make the software
require support.

* The Grateful Dead permitted taping at their concerts and did not object
to the non-commercial exchange of the tapes.  It is hard to tell whether
they made most of their money from performances or from sales of
recordings.  In general musicians can make money from live performance.
(Song writers have a different problem, more like that of poets.)

BTW - Marc Steigler tells me he has had a story accepted at Analog (but not
yet published) called something like, "The future of (eat more cheetos)
Copyright."

Cheers - Bill


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