Posted by Elohim on 04/24/06 19:17

Steele Wrote: "My proposal to change copyright law is to require that
writers be
compensated directly for every public performance, in proportion to the

gate. This would allow a return to the old business model -- before
recording was invented -- where musicians played and people paid them."



However then who would own the right to copy and distribute and make
money from your performance in front of the bus station in OK city?
Here you are, a starving artist, you write a song. People are throwing
dollars into your guitar case. That's all you get, a percentage of your
gate. Meanwhile some guy records it, plays it on a radio station, he
makes mega bucks on your recording while you starve...see, that's what
copyrights are about. YOU alone have the right to copy any recording of
your song and sell it first. Or you can sell those rights. Like the
Beatles did. They made a small fortune. Later, their buyer, a pedophile
named Jackson, made a HUGE fortune. And the songs keep on playing so
someone is always making money, so they are never going to be in public
domain.

I propose that the artist bears in perpetuity his or her rights to
record, rerecord and sell his personal property any time.That such
rights are "God Given" and cannot be sold or given away, only put on
loan to people, like Disney or Apple or Whomever, who always will owe
the originating artist (not a corporation or non-producer of the
original work) some recompense. When the artist dies. BOOM. that's all
she wrote! No giving it over to the family. No rights given to Disney
(alone) forever or anyone else. It becomes a part of the Public
Treasury. And we need to make our artists, writers, comics, musicians,
etc. National Treasures as well. So that other nations cannot rip them
off with impunity. In other words this whole copyright thing has to
come back down to an individual's right to pursue happiness and to make
a profit from his or her own inventions and creations.

Saint

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