The artists were getting screwed by the middlemen just as badly before there was such a thing as "MP3". Screwing the middlemen out of their $.9895 (out of $.99) per track affects the artist not a whit.

> Screwing the middlemen out of their $.9895 (out of $.99) per track affects the artist not a whit.

I'm all for it (screwing the middle men, in case that wasn't clear).

So how exactly are you compensating those artists whose MP3's you've copied in such a way that the middle-men get nothing and the artists get it all?

For more than a decade now, I've bought almost no major-label music. Instead, I buy from the artist's website if that's an option, or their CDs at the table in the back after the show (implicitly, going to the show), or the like. Or I go without. (I did have an eMusic subscription for a couple years, and got a lot of stuff from that, but IIRC, there was very little RIAA-member label music on that service at the time.)

Were I hypothetically to have illegally downloaded an album by a major label artist, my calculus would have been, "Well, the artist isn't actually going to see any royalties from this anyway, so the only party getting screwed by my torrenting it is the label," and felt no qualms about it.

Anyone going into the music biz as an artist since Courtney Love's Salon article (which has been on the HN front page at least three or four times since I've been here, but linked here [1] anyway) has had ample opportunity to realize the screwing they're signing up for when they John Hancock the label's contract. I can't muster up much pity for their getting shafted by the smooth-talking record exec they should've known was just going to shaft them anyway.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

I well aware of Courtney Love's article, I personally prefer the one by Janis Ian which was both earlier and more articulate.

The record execs are as dirty as can be. But for now it looks like any money flowing to the 'signed' artists will flow through them (and the various 'rights' organizations, BUMA, GEMA, RIAA etc).

1) Go to a concert. (The traditional way musicians make money and pay-off their CD distribution costs.) 2) Purchase a la Louis CK model. 3) Share your enjoyment of the music with others. (Build the artist's fanbase.) 4) Watch the artist's YouTube videos and click on an advert.

Or 5) Just give them money, like I do with my local college radio station every year.

Those artists dont have to be artists. If they realize that their audience is not voluntarily paying them for their art, they can change jobs and do something where customers voluntarily pay for the work done.

This is not a legitimate counterargument. Of course if the economics are not working, we can just decide "oh well, I guess nobody should create music anymore." But obviously the goal should be how to structure the economy so we can enjoy music and musicians can live comfortably.

> But obviously the goal should be how to structure the economy so we can enjoy music and musicians can live comfortably.

No, thats ugly socialism. We dont want to structure laws and economy so a certain kind of jobs becomes profitable which otherwise wouldnt. If they are necessary and wanted, they will be supported by their customers, if they are not wanted, who cares then. Let the free market decide.

This is ridiculous hyperbole and takes my point too literally. Copyright law is there because we want creative work to be possible to sell on the free market. Patents are there because we want inventors to be able to have incentives to invent. As flawed as they are, they are not "socialism."

As a society we get to decide, as pg says, what property is. This is a roundabout way of saying we get to decide what endeavors can be profitable, by attributing property-dust to their creations and protecting them by force of law. I think most people would agree it's in everyone's interest if we can structure the economy and laws so people who create things such as music have the opportunity to make a profit.

> Copyright law is there because we want creative work to be possible to sell on the free market.

Er, what? Where do you get this claim from?

I imagine things like going to concerts or buying merchandise would work.

It's impractical to completely bypass the middle-men because they hold a monopoly on that artist's output, but there are plenty of ways compensate an artist without buying his MP3s.