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Free is Not a Good Price



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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