Originally Posted by
wens
I've seen articles citing studies that indicate that there aren't lost earnings for artists from pirated music. I haven't read these studies, and I'm not sure how valid they are, but they exist. If the artist doesn't lose money (or earns more money from increased exposure, as I've also seen claimed) then it's an entirely different paradigm than a stolen car. I think we can agree stealing cars will never result in equal/increased profits.
Fair enough that the artist him/herself does not lose any profit in
most cases, but
someone out there has purchased the rights to sell the copyrighted material and is therefore losing money on every pirated copy. So in the end, there are still in fact lost profits. You're just forgetting the pee-on working for a lot less than the artist. In the same light, the car manufacturer does not lose the profits for the stolen car. The dealership does.
Originally Posted by
wens
For the sake of argument, what about things like Mickey Mouse, where the copyright would have expired a long time ago, but every time it gets close to expiring new laws are made that extend the protection. Copyright law exists to allow artists to profit from their intellectual property, but does that extend to their great...(insert number of greats here) grandchildren? In other words should one successful work of art insure comfortable living for generations?
It's true that laws keep changing, giving copyright holders (and their heirs) more and more time to profit, but disagreeing with a new law does not give you the right to ignore it. If you don't like it, your only correct recourse is to boycott the product, just as Gladiator should before the statute is extended.