Lots of movies –especially movies made for kids– do extremely well with the merchandise of movie memorabilia such as toys, poster sales, “director” versions, etc.

As with any form of art, the artists generally want their art to be widely viewed and shared as much as possible. Income can rightly be earned by artists (including musicians, movie directors, authors, etc) who sell products and services that support their art.

As Nina says, copying is fun!

(itakeoffthemask.com)

But I only got down 2 or 3 items in the FAQ and got totally repulsed at how lame the arguments are.  I’m sorry, but someone should be able to do better than this.

#1.  Was copyright created for the benefit of artists?

I often hear that it is for the benefit of artists today.  So people would like to see a counter example here.  But the way the question is worded: was it created for the benefit of artist only as a vehicle to point out the first copyright law is (nearly 500 years old) was meant as censorship — just to throw that word in there that everyone hates.   For all I know copyright laws in America, about a 100 years old, *were* invented for the benefit of artists, or maybe they weren’t.  It doesn’t even address that.   But I’ll say this.  The point isn’t if it had a dubious origin, but whether it is a benefit to artists today.   If it isn’t, the first FAQ item does not address that in any way.

#2.  Do musicians, writers, and artists depend on copyright to earn a living?

Well, that’s a qood question to get an answer to.  But look at the response, it’s talking about the fact that lawsuits from copyright violations don’t help the artists.   That’s not what the question asked.  It asked do copyrights benefit an artist in earning a living.   What if, the fact that there’s a law is such an effective deterent that law abiding people and organizations do not infringe upon it and because of that more sales of the material for the author.  What if it was the case that if there were no copyrights, a site like amazon books would simply let you download the book for free, and in doing so limit the author’s revenue.   If that were the case, then anything in FAQ #2’s answer addresses that.  It only talks about the fact that in the case of infringement lawsuits don’t help the author.. nothing about the deterence resulting from having the law.   That’s like sayng murder shouldn’t be a crime because putting murderers in jail does not bring the victim back.

I stopped reading after that.  Clearly this whole thing is written by someone who’s not very bright.

I’m astounded at the ignorance demonstrated on this website. Let me make it simple for you. Let’s say that all works are suddenly available to be received at no cost, and this action is not illegal. Then people interested in a song, movie, software, or any work would have essentially zero motivation to pay the creator. Regardless of whether you consider the author or distributor of the work, piracy reduces the revenue from the consumption of the work.

Being an artist is a hobby, not a full-time job. You don’t make money doing whatever the hell you want (be it writing your thoughts out, transcribing them to notes, painting them, or whatever else). Besides, hypothetically speaking, if two people accidently wrote the same thing, who would have the rights on it? Yeah, it is that simple.

This does not apply very well to other forms of art (such as movies). However bands do not make their money by selling the primary product they produce (music), but rather by selling merchandise, and concert tickets. And thus sharing their work freely lowers their income from selling their music, to greatly increase their overall income.

Your explanation doesn’t make sense to me. Explain to me how the artist produces art at no cost? Surely the artist’s time and effort should have some worth and value that others are willing to pay for?

You said “So to the consumers:  please, please, please help out your musicians, software developers, authors, movie makers, and do what you can and more, but don’t ever feel that you are doing something wrong that you somehow infringed on someone’s liberty because just because you COPIED a work of art that you never would have paid for anyways.”

How would you like it if your were a software developer that works hard at creating software and someone does not pay for it by means of copying? You’re losing potential sales by people copying and distributing your software. Is your time and effort as a developer not worth anything? Unless of course you willing intend for the software to be distributed freely (copyleft, GNU etc..)

Customer A buys my awesome music CD and then decides to rip it to MP3 and make my CD available for free download on a popular torrent site. OK, there are *some* benefits that my CD will be distributed to people by making people aware of what my CD sounds like etc.. BUT I will also be deprived of X amount of potential sales by X amount of downloaders. This is what I’m finding hard to understand, that certain types of copying is not theft since you still have your copy but it’s the issue of less money from potential buyers who got my product FREE. You could argue that the salary I would have earned would have been negotiated in a contract but what about sales, surely sales would determine the success of the CD (or record) going Gold, Platinum etc.. would copying not affect that?

Of course, if we all lived in a society that wasn’t built on the monetary system this wouldn’t be an issue.

– You have not found out the wisdom of how to cover the cost of the art piece.

– You are willing to let artist starve and have no benefit of their work (like Mozart and VanGogh)

– You mock people who get money from their art.

– You insist that copying a real bike has something to do with copying a file on a computer, yet you have not copied a bike but continue to copy files.

– You insist that nothing bad becomes out of piratism, yet pirates take bread from the artists’ table.

– You are (pirates are) making art to be a hobby of the rich, who have the opportunity to waste money in making art. And rich people don’t waste their money. They make investments. At the moment art is a worthy investment, what good is it, when it’s free. -> as a result, nobody spends money on art.

The result of this conversation is that as a producer of films:

– I must consider that Everything I print on a disk/file/net is lost as an investment.

– Everything uploaded, must be considered as a commercial of my work.

– If I ever want any money from making movies, I’ll have to center on theathre shows only.

– I should never upload a full film and make shure that nobody records the film in the theater. (like music artists do: They get their money out of gigs.)

– Release the film later (10-15 years later) into the net, when the theather are not showing it anymore.

-sami