[Leaplist] Cory Doctorow, to Microsoft, on "Why DRM is bad"

[patrick]

Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thursday 01 November 2007 21:12, Damien McKenna wrote:
> 
> [clip]
> 
>>  Why is paying tuppence any less moral
>> than twenty dollars?  
> 
> If the author wanted twenty dollars, the moral things to do are:
> 
> 1) Give the author twenty dollars and get the Ebook or
> 2) Laugh in the author's face and say you don't need his ebook or
> 3) Bargain with the author til a price is agreed upon
> 
> What's not moral is to pay him a tuppance and take the book when the author 
> wanted twenty dollars. This isn't moral even if the government decreed the 
> author should get only a tuppance. It might be legal, but it's not moral.
> 

One question.  Do you pay taxes?

That is the ultimate situation of a government using lethal force to
enforce it's will.

The "tuppence" refers to the situation that Cory gave in his speech of
the Government regulating that for each copy of a piano roll, (a
'digital' copy of sheet music, for which no fees were ever paid to the
writer or the publisher), two pennies would go to the publisher.

Very similar to the ASCAP fees that bars, restaurants, and stores pay
for music played on juke boxes, over intercoms.

ASCAP enforcers can walk into your business, and, if you are playing the
radio and it is playing music, they can enforce, with the backing of US
Marshalls, your mandatory annual license fee.

the artists never get anything as all the collected money supports the
enforcers, the lawyers, the executives of the organized crime err,
syndicate.  RIAA and MPAA do likewise.

There is a new business model coming into vogue, due to new technology,
and driven by consumer revolt.  March or die.