...and the one who made the bike is happy because he/she will never get paid again.

Personally, I hope she gets aids.

I'm more or less in agreement with you...I have no problem whatsoever with Nina giving anyone and everyone permission to copy -her- work. I have a huge problem with anyone who tries to give anyone permission to copy -my- work.

Copying isn't theft, I'll agree...it's closer to appropriating the fruits of someone's labor without their consent. Anyone who cannot own the results of their labor is a slave, working solely for the benefit of parasites. I'll John Galt before I accept that you (the general you) have the right to benefit from my labor without my consent. And I outgrew Objectivism over twenty years ago.

With the spread of the internet, we have seen a massive rise in copying or "piracy". I remember in the late 90s when Napster was toted as the death of the music industry. A few years ago it was The Pirate Bay, only this time it was killing the film industry. Lately the cry has been against the video game pirates, with programmers forcing draconian DRM software into their games. Software that only hurts the people that actually buy the games because it forces them to jump through hoops and does nothing to actually prevent piracy of the game.

After all this, after this decade or more of copying and piracy of all forms of media, we still have that media. The music industry is still alive and kicking. Movie studios are pumping out bigger budget movies every year, and video games are still produced, with a noticeable addition of many more independent developers getting their games to light. Games like Braid didn't come to the mass market 5-10 years ago. Now it is a name most every gamer knows.

If the sky has really been falling the past 10+ years, shouldn't we have been hit with something by now?

The sky started falling back when vocal artists complained that the first phonograph records (which would allow reproduction of their voices) would make concerts a thing of the past. So yeah, are concerts extinct now?

I agree, a person should benefit from their work. I think a person can benefit from their work quite adequately even with copying/piracy. One of the more notable was Trent Reznor/NIN with their Ghosts albums, but plenty of bands have used the net, viral advertising or releasing their content for free to interest people to attend concerts and buy merchandise, to great advantage.

I also tend to think that middlemen have been involved far too long and are far more concerned with preserving their money making ability rather than exploring new models which might cut their profits even if allows the muscisian or artist to reach a wider audience. If muscians and artists can connect to their audience directly by doing the extra work themselves, they can cut out the recording industry entirely and take those profits they would have otherwise paid their agents for their own.

Piracy is here and it's here to stay. Copying has not killed the movie, music, cartoon, PC or console computer game industries and it's not likely to anytime soon. Adapt or die.

*politics *commercial

I totally agree: adapt or die. They are stupid, and they will die. Let's hope they'll die as soon as possible.

>> ^Asmo:

Adapt or die.

Adding video to channels (Commercial, Politics) - requested by looris.