Re: Copyright commerce and the street musician protocol

[Chris Wedgwood <chris@cyphercom.com>]

Steve Schear <steve@lvdi.net> writes:

[...]

    In the second part, Eric predicted that because of the Net's economics
    and anonymous mailing and publication potential copyrights were on their
    way out.  He acknowledged that some workable method of artist
    compensation was still needed and proposed the movie industry as a
    possible model.  In this scenario a multi-level money collection and
    product distribution scheme would be supported by artist reputation and
    completion bonds.

This is just an observation, I have no idea how true this is and if it is to
what extent, but...

I have several friends who work in the `movie business' and all of these
people claim that the "multi-level money collection" system is in fact a
very poor system.

There is considerable fraud and abuse at all levels (from cinema to
production) which means that the end result is that the artists are no paid
all they are `owed' and that the consumer pays a premium for what they
receive.

Without going into details, I can think of many ways that abuse could indeed
occur and wouldn't necessarily encourage this type of model for 'net
commerce.

Perhaps a similar situation exists with books?



-Chris