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Copyright law gives ownership rights to a work's creator. What (s)he does with those rights (keep it, license it, sell it, or trade it) is his/her choice. Jus
by Sam_Odio 17y ago
Copyright law gives ownership rights to a work's creator. What (s)he does with those rights (keep it, license it, sell it, or trade it) is his/her choice. Just because they have made the choice to sell or bequeath the copyright doesn't mean they didn't benefit from its existence.
Your point akin to saying that startup founders aren't rewarded for innovating because a public company's stock is rarely owned by the company's original founders.
- asdflkj 17y agoOne major difference: it takes a lot of work and resources to turn a startup into a public company, but it takes little to turn an artistic work into a product. One might argue that record labels provide most of their value by finding good music, and saving customers the time it would take to do that on their own. (IMO this view is far too charitable to the labels.) Even then, internet is already doing this job better than the labels, and is still rapidly improving. The law should keep up. Saying that artists benefited from their arrangement with the labels is akin to saying that indentured servants benefited from theirs. That is, true in a narrow sense--the indentured servants did get food and shelter, didn't they?