[pp.int.general] cultural flatrate: PP position?

[Reinier Bakels]

> If I make you pay a levy for your line, you can save a lot of time by not 
> having to copy illegal.
>
> Freedom is always a set of balances and maybe I am not a good pirate, if I 
> want people to pay for the things the like to use, but I can live with 
> that. Because I respect the work, others do.
>
> If you are willing to pay 70€ for a concert ticket, would be one additinal 
> euro a month not a good price for having legal access to every material 
> available? Let it be five euro. I'd pay this tax gladly, if I hadn't to 
> waste my time in politics anymore. (But I had to... To ensure that my 
> money is paied to the right people...)
>
> Christian

The problem is more complicated. There are the following factors:
1. cost
2. numbers
3. value

This is (was) an argument about cost. Typically, the cost is an y = ax + b 
line (x = numbers). For information products, the : "a" constant is (nearly 
zero).

More interesting is that a strict economic "commodification" model  assumes 
that numbers correspond to value. For culture, this is outright wrong. Under 
such a model, two-chord music is the best there is (for non-inmsiders: that 
is simple music, there is even one or zero chord music).

Yes, record companies have $$$$$$$ signs in their eyes. They treat art like 
a commodity. And for people trained in economics, it is tempting to share 
their view. But culture is different. Porfessor Dolfsma of Groningen 
University has shown that the standard neoclassical model of economics does 
not apply in art.

No, this is not an exception that proves the rule. Pop music also depends 
from artists who dare to experiment, not putting business first.

The flatrate payers pay dircetly do the shareholders of the five remaining 
record company conglomerates. Who have spread their risks very much. But 
they face the general risk of becoming redundant. Not just because of file 
sharers, but also because artists need them less and less: producing a 
record has become much cheaper over time due to the advance of technology, 
and distribution has become utterly simple in the P2P era. So they are 
likely to concentrate on baord-room originated "plastic" music, made by 
electronics. That's where the "flatrate" levies go. for shareholders, the 
best music is artist-free music. And one day, Hollywood will need no actors 
either.

reinier