In 19th-century France, when a railroad was being built through Bordeaux, politicians in the city suggested that it should have a gap in the city. Unloading cargo at one station, carying it through the city, and reloading it at another station would create jobs, bringing prosperity to Bordeaux, and therefore to France as a whole.
Now Bastiat was an apologist for capitalism, but he understood enough to suggest that a series of gaps, all the way to Paris, with no useable railroad, would do more than one gap…
Jobs in Bordeaux, or profits in the profiteering industry, do not necessarily mean prosperity for France, or prosperity for Canada. It depends on whether they come from, you know, getting people what they need, or from getting in the way of getting people what they need…
I kind of shrug when I hear such nonsense, given who it’s from. It’s like tobacco spokespeople claiming there’s no cancer link - they know what they’re saying isn’t true, and we know that they know what they’re saying isn’t true, but what else are they going to say?
The whole idea of “big content” seems to be nonsensical. What supposedly makes some content “big”? (wondering if people should try using more descriptive adjectives). I usually hear the term used in reference to stuff made by a commercial minority, so the sense if scale (ie “bigness”) people are using seems rather off.
Campaign contributions, usually.
There could be no greater tragedy than “losing” a song to the publid domain.
Woody said it best: “This song is copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.” "
FYI the link to story is not clickable.
Without agreeing, I can understand the opposite point. A song - for example - that’s in the public domain will have nobody promoting it, and no advertising budget. Music corporations only promote recordings that will make them money. For that reason, a song in the public domain would have to be Beethoven playing Coltrane to get as much attention as the latest boy band. So from the viewpoint of FM radio (remember that?) the song will be “lost.”
This overlooks the power of the internet as a distributed, democratic content provider - the very thing they’re fighting against so hard. (And losing.)
The missing story link should be http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/04/canadian-recording-industry-works-entering-the-public-domain-are-not-in-the-public-interest/ in case you didn’t already find it.
Word. Though to Graham Henderson, Woody doesn’t count, because he didn’t have investors.
“With each passing day, Canadian treasures like Universal Soldier by Buffy Sainte-Marie are lost to the public domain. This is not in the public interest. It does not benefit the creator or their investors and it will have an adverse impact on the Canadian economy.”
That is some Grade-A, premium Objectivist rationalization, right there.
More likely it is some grade-A, premium bullshitting. In public relations, sometimes the conclusion comes first and the arguments are just a means to publicly justify it. Such lame arguments like the one above are a testament to the absence of any better ones.
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