[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Jmenschenfresser:
I think it is glaringly obvious that the readers, hearers, viewers, etc own the content. Not the artists. Society owns the content. Because such things define us...we use them to communicate and relate. The only wrench is the money, and god, if that isn't a massive wrench.

That is all well and good for high minded philisophical discussions such as this. We are all in effect "authors" on this fourm with Shrapnel as our "publisher". The free exchange of beliefs and ideas is another of our founding principles. Technology makes this exchange easier, great. But when your livelehood depends on selling this content you produce, it changes your perspective.

It's fine for a professor of literature, who has a job teaching at the university to pay the bills, to publish a sholarly work and say it "belongs" to the reader. Or for someone like Jefferson who didn't have to work to put food on the table because he had labor of human slaves to do it for him to decry the ownership of "intellectual property". But when you can't exercise your talent at writing because you aren't getting paid for it and you have to work at a diner, you don't have the luxury of such lofty principles. For those people their right of ownership to the work they produce is just as obvious.

Geoschmo