I think The General is an MPAA covert agent
.
Seriously, though, this is a sensitive issue, and it permeates a huge portion of the consumer market, not only movies and music (think computer software, for instance).
I am a supporter of the GPL, copyleft and all that, but to be honest there is a fundamental problem with these things: the world is run by money, and so programmers, musicians, actors etc need to get paid something, if only it is to allow them to pay the bills and support their families. And let's be honest: we also need to pay people in charge of producing and distributing, because they are a necessary part of the process.
The real problem is not whether we should pay for a music CD or a computer game DVD. It's
how much. This leads to asking: of every dollar spent on the latest movie DVD, how much of it really goes to the people who deserve it? And who are the persons that really deserve it, in the first place?
The truth is that in our world the price of such commodities is really dictated by the greed of large corporations, not by how much work was needed to design, make and sell the product. It is a byproduct of the principal flaw of the capitalist system: it allows some individuals to get unreasonably wealthy. A movie actor getting paid $20 million for a few month's work is not reasonable, at least not in my opinion. Again, salaries like these are the consequence of greed, not of fair distribution of wealth.
All I'm saying is that we (as a society) need to find a middle point between 100% free products (which are not compatible with the world as it is) and the greed-based pricing policies of the current entertainment industry.
Laws regarding copyright should be impulsed by a desire to protect intellectual production,
not the profit of multi-millionaire corporations. Pricing policies should be set according to a fair distribution of salaries among those responsible for the final product. In the end, salaries should be determined according the level of expertise and the thereby required level of education of a particular position. In my opinion, the programmer (in the case of software) should get paid more than the sales rep, even if both are required for the ultimate release of the product.
Anyway, I'm rambling. The fact that Blue-Ray copy protection has been broken should be a warning to the entertainment industry: there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the market is manipulated.
