Ok, so, first of all let's make it clear that, as I've mentioned in the past within some context in the site, I'm all for copyrights, and I think that they should be respected. The thing is, there is a limit to everything, and to me it lies more or less on the point after which someone tries to start telling people what they can and cannot do on their free time, as in, that they could not visit certain sites on the internet and so on.
I know that some artists etc. do not agree with any sort of free access to what they make, because it means they will earn less, since people do not buy the CD's or mp3 or whatnot. If you think about it, though, there's so many artists, for example, that are really not worth much, but who gather huge amounts of money it's ridiculous. That much money is already pointless, only used to buy stuff you won't even use because you already have everything and a little more. So, to complain about not receiving that bit of income... Well... Maybe I'll just leave it at that.
Another possible reason, I assume, might be that they, for some reason, do not feel that their work is fully appreciated, when it's downloaded off the internet in a rather random way and not paid for. I think we should notice here that, especially now, people simply don't have money to go and buy all the new expensive albums and things, which may just well lead to them not knowing the best songs of a new band, and therefore not buying any album they ever decide to put out, or go to concerts and so on. The same sort of goes with movies. If a movie seems okay, but not quite good enough to go watch in the cinema, or to buy the DVD or other, people might not become aware or a new interesting actor or director... Although I would say that movies, for me, are so different from music, at least in this case, that I think they should be respected in a different level as well.
Anyways, after having said all this, I would like to share a thought that came to me within a discussion with my boyfriend about the subject;
Imagine I write a book. Me or anyone else.
The very simple definition of a book itself is more or less a stack of papers of a certain length, with a cover page, etc. But what also counts, as far as I remember, is that it has to be available in a library. Now, the idea of a library is, of course, to offer books for people to read for free, or then for a very small price, paid only once (when first getting the card). If we use the same logic, though, as we do with music and movies and the internet, what they should be able to give to the people visiting these facilities would be a one paragraph, or one chapter, excerpt from the book. I mean, in the internet - if you wanted to be completely pirate-free - you only have the first 10 seconds of songs, and a minute or two worth of a movie trailer. And then you go off to the library and read a whole bunch of books for free.
Going back to the original idea. Imagine I write a book. What if I said that I would not tolerate anyone reading my book without buying it? They could read a paragraph or a chapter somewhere, and if they liked it, they would then buy it and read the whole thing. Just like if you hear a song on the radio or Youtube or whatever, you go off and buy the whole of the CD, or just that one particular song on iTunes...
The point here is this: why should music, especially some that is only made for profit, be regarded as something more important than books? Why should the efforts of these people be respected more than an individual writer's? Why should something I take so long to write, a whole book, a creation of my wild imagination, be cast off in a library for everyone to see, or be seen as something less than 3 minutes of noise basically anyone could reproduce with a simple computer program?
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