Re: Kazaa and hybrid soybeans

["Eli Stephens" <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Louis  posted this from Counterpunch:

> Family farmers aren't the only thing vanishing from the landscape. There
> are 1300 fewer independent record stores this year than there were last
> year. This has nothing to do with copyright infringement anymore than farms
> failing because they don't pay royalties to some conglomerate that has a
> monopoly on a hybrid seed. In fact, it is corporate control of intellectual
> property that is the cause of all this misery.

This is a dubious proposition at best. First of all, it is hardly just
independent record stores which are going out of business. Independent BOOK
stores are also going out of business at a record rate. The reasons have to
do with big business crowding out small (the usual economies of scale), PLUS
increased ordering over the Internet (e.g., Amazon). Neither of those things
has anything to do with "corporate control of intellectual property." In the
record business, it's not just independent record stores going out of
business; major chains (e.g., Warehouse) are suffering too, for the same
reasons. Record stores have the ADDED problem of illegal downloading
lowering overall sales of the entire record business. Is it likely that if
the record corporations released control of the intellectual property, and
gave people free permission to download and swap all the music that they
wanted, that there would be MORE record store clerks employed, MORE bands
making a living from their music?

There is a big difference between paying a corporation a price to purchase a
CD to increase your enjoyment of life, and LICENSING (on a yearly basis!)
seeds with which one is making one's living.

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