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A comment on The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013). Parent comment

Re:The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations... by wpietri on Thursday May 15, 2014 @08:49PM (#7753177)
> It's not about artists; it's about distribution (which eventually makes it back to artists, but that's another story entirely).

Does it make it back to artists? Stronger control of distribution channels would increase power of the distributors. Which I think would make it easier for them to minimize artist payouts. The monopsony equivalent of an oligopoly, whatever that's called.

An example that springs to mind is music. In 1994, Steve Albini wrote a legendary breakdown of how much it sucked for artists [1]. He recently said that the Internet's open distribution has greatly reduced their power. [2]

[1] http://www.thebaffler.com/past/problem_with_music

[2] http://qz.com/202194/steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-has...

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Re:The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations... by b1daly on Thursday May 15, 2014 @11:26PM (#7753572)
Do you get that without a distribution channel there is no hope of an artist getting paid. Running a distribution channel business is really hard, only the true fanatic would consider doing the grunt work for love and glory.
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