We live in
an age when everyone thinks art should be free. I guess there is a
philosophical point to be made that it should be free . . . along with
education, health care, food, and pretty much everything. But in the real world
art has a cost to the artist. Whether it is writing, music, painting, dance,
sculpture, the artist has to put in time and energy, not to mention training
and/or schooling. Part-time artist give up what little free time they have.
Full-time artists expect to make a living doing what they do.
But people
like to listen to music for free on YouTube or other free sites, or download
pirated files. It is better than it was during the Napster era when everyone
could download whatever they wanted for free. The record companies did not
offer a way for people to download music and their response to all this
pirating was to sue their audience. Saner heads eventually prevailed and a way
for people to pay for downloads was created, ending the controversy.
Of course
people can still illegally download movies and TV shows and even some music. We
have all seen the warning at the beginnings of movies that state that piracy is
not a victimless crime. And the cynics, like me, will say that’s just the
studios trying to keep their iron grip on the profits. While that is true, it
is not the whole truth. Think through the logical conclusion if all art and
entertainment were not paid for. Artist need to be paid for their art. If
everyone can get anything for free then there will be no more full-time
professional artists. Not that artists are making art solely for money, but
they have to be able to do things like eat and pay rent. One might imagine even
some of the part-time artists might lose interest.
On a related note, look what
has happened to newspapers in America. Free news on TV and radio (we say free,
but of course it is paid for with advertising and profits from the non-news shows)
have always eaten into the profits of newspapers, but newspapers could always
go more in-depth that the broadcast variety. Newspapers served as the watchdog
for our democracy. It was newspapers that broke the stories about the Pentagon
Papers, and Watergate. But with the advent of the internet and other “free”
news sources, newspapers have been in serious decline. Newspapers used to be
owned by individuals or families, but most of those that now survive have been
bought up by a few big conglomerates. Who is going to report on the
conglomerates? And margins are so tight that they cannot afford much in the way
of investigative journalism any more. So what has happened to our watchdog?
I don’t know
what the solution is. There is no way to put the internet genie back in the
bottle, but if you want a functioning free society, there are some things you
should be willing to pay for.
(My novel Starliner,
is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or Amazon.com.
For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in
October).
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