Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com writes:
On Mon, 2008-02-11 at 08:18 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com writes:
I think artists should be free to earn money for their work pretty much however they please; I don't think it should be limited to patronage/begging.
I agree. The means they use should not, however, restrict the freedom of a legitimate recipient of a cultural work to do whatever they like with it.
Out of interest, why?
I can quite happily accept that some consumers will only accept such works, but I have never seen a good exposition of the moral imperative for such a position.
It follows from the idea that freedom for an individual should be limited only by the harm done to the freedoms of others.
The freedom of the author is not harmed when recipient A redistributes a work to recipient B. Therefore the freedoms of recipients A and B to engage in such a transaction should not be impinged by the author.
Conversely, if the powers of the author extend such that she can artificially restrict a transaction between A and B, that's an unacceptable limitation on their freedom.
This meshes with the idea of the "doctrine of first sale". Once recipient A and the author have engaged in a transaction to transfer a copy of the work to recipient A, that is the end of the author's negotiation for that copy.
If she wants to bind recipient A to restrict further transactions with third parties, that's a matter for contract negotiation before the first sale; and such negotiations should only bind willing parties to the contract. Recipient A could breach the contract and redistribute to recipient B outside the terms, and the author only has freedom to seek redress from recipient A. Since recipient B was not party to the contract with the author, they are not bound at all in their freedom with the work they now possess.
This makes obsolete many current business models that are propped up by artificial monopoly power. But it doesn't do anything but preserve the freedom of individuals in their own domain. Business models that can't exist without preserving that *deserve* to become obsolete.