The author, his fans and publisher are the third extra

Starting this topic, I want to apologize in advance to the hawkers.
The topic has already been tortured to the point, and comments on posts on the Copyright blog are being developed according to a rehearsed script. I will try not to live up to your worst expectations.

1. The reasons why I took up the keyboard

It so happened that I love the work of one not very well-known musical group. And some time ago, musicians playing in this group published an open letter to their fans. It strongly hooked me, and from the moment of reading it this text, which I am writing now, has been brewing for me.

2. My attitude to the problem of copyright

The situation in which the publishers found themselves is quite natural, and has been discussed more than once here. Guys, your time for selling media and welding on “mediation” between authors and their fans has expired. Forget about super-profits, stop lobbying for illegitimate laws, and give up financial efforts to try to slow down technological progress. Will not work. We will move to anonymous encrypted networks, we will exchange files - unless the Internet itself is destroyed.

From a human point of view, it makes no difference to buy a book and give it to your son, friend, or unfamiliar person, or your whole family, all your friends or a thousand strangers on a torrent tracker. Declaring the latter illegal, it is necessary to recognize the illegality of the first paragraphs. This is the illegitimacy of existing copyright laws. Our right to share the information we have with our relatives, friends, relatives or strangers is, like the right to breathe, universal. Yes, authors are financially affected because the digital era has rejected preexisting reward schemes. But this fact does not at all justify attempts to deprive people of their other right - to the free exchange of information.

Do I have the right to read a book to read it to a friend? And the second? And what is the difference from the LEGAL point of view, how well do I know a person with whom I want to share? And where is the border between “gave a couple of friends” and “shared”? You either have the right to give the book to any number of other people, or you do not have the right to give it to anyone . Following the established logic, transferring the purchased book to a friend / relative is pure piracy.

3. Returning to the topic of the article

But let’s leave alone publishers and all kinds of “copyright advocates” who somehow feed on someone’s creativity. I did not want to talk about them, but about the very authors who are the creators of the new content. Here and now I want to mention a group that I really like, and which relatively recently posted a manifesto on its website. The essence of the manifest was as follows:

Dear fans. You download our music from trackers, and we have nothing to feed the children and pay for the apartment, because the disc sales almost stopped

I found it appropriate to re-post their open letter in google docs, so as not to flood their site with a habraeffect. Who cares - an open letter here . The letter hooked me very much, and after reading it, I tried to somehow get in touch with the performers, wrote letters ... about this - a little lower.

I do not set out to advertise someone here. We are talking about quite niche music, and about a group of low "weight category" - not a couple of the same Radiohead, allowing themselves to upload a new album on the site for free download. It is precisely these small groups that hit the very “copyright crisis” - if earlier they had something from selling CDs, now almost nothing.

But it is the music of such groups that has value as something creative, as some kind of cultural product - and therefore, we must look for an opportunityin the new conditions, to seek common ground, to seek the possibility of remuneration of such people - so that, figuratively speaking, they have where to live and what to eat.

4. Why the laws pushed by copyrights are illegitimate

When tape recorders appeared, people got the opportunity to copy tapes. The state was not able to prohibit this, because any way to monitor the implementation of such a law would violate the human right to privacy. Thus, I had to look at home copying through my fingers. Now the situation has repeated, but in a different capacity - a person anywhere in the world is able to receive or transmit information to any other point in the world using encrypted channels. It is also impossible to control without interfering in privacy, without intercepting traffic and establishing surveillance! But the fattened copyright holders can not agree with this in any way, outlawing that it is impossible to control.

5. Finally, the specifics, or why I wrote all this

I decided to design the further text in the style of “fan appeal to the performing artists” as a response to the open letter mentioned above. So...

My dears.

To begin with, I’m a very old fan of yours. At the Grushinsky festival I did not miss a single concert of yours, I jumped at your concerts, knocking my palms from applause to numbness, I shouted “Thank you!” And “We love you!”. You could see my happy face in the crowd around the stage more than once - in camouflage pants and a T-shirt, despite the downpour (it was like that) - I was there and did not go anywhere.
I read your open letter more than once. I tried to contact you, wrote letters that I didn’t get an answer to, tried to transfer money from my bank card, ran into some wild difficulties in converting money and the inability to buy web money, with your silence and indifference when I wrote to you in the letter “ I can’t transfer money to you in any way - please help. ” In your open letter, you said how bad it is to upload your music on trackers, and that’s why the disks stopped selling.

I don’t need your disks, I don’t even have anywhere to insert them - I have a netbook without a CD-DVD as the main computer. I generally do not need drives. And yet, despite my respect for you, I am terribly pressured to pay some left-wing parasites who have nothing to do with the creation of your music. How many rubles do you get from one disc sold? I am ready to pay the whole amount if it goes into your hands. But to pay 80% of the amount to some left-wing freaks, who will then promote their anti-human laws in the government with the money received from me - thank you.

Think about this. Your work is not the lowest cost. Your fans are not the most immoral and unprincipled people on the planet. But by requiring us not to share your music with others, you violate ourhuman law. It's right to tell your friend, “Boy, listen! You should like it ”- and give him a flash drive with your albums, and this is tantamount to your right, after reading the book you bought, to let your son or daughter read it .

I sincerely want to believe that you are doing this not from evil, but because you simply don’t know what you are doing

you write. No, we do this not from evil, but about “do not know what you are doing” - we consciously exercise our right to share information, joy with others. And it doesn’t matter if it is a relative, a friend or even a complete stranger. And it is impossible to ban, because the development of technology has made it impossible to control it. We are aware that due to the established food chain “consumer -> publisher -> author” you also lose your livelihood.

The latter personally upsets me very much, and I even tried to change something - to contact you, transfer money in an amount guaranteed to exceed the amount you would receive if I bought ALL of your disks. Only now, despite all the flaw of the old scheme in the new realities, you continue to sing along to copywriters about the fact that “copying = theft”, not wanting to seriously take your fans and their desire to help you. Those lovers of your work whom I know are very mature, conscious, thinking people. I speak for myself now - regularly, when I listen to your albums again, I have a thought: recently there was a salary, I could transfer rubles to 200 authors ... But without intermediaries! If only there was a mechanism ...

And now - offers in essence!Instead of expressing dissatisfaction and contempt for the people who post your music, write another open letter. Those people who upload your albums are your fans. And they are only “for” if you continue to live and write new songs. Therefore, turn to them, to these people. Ask each hand on trackers to attach a file with a description of how to thank you for your creativity with minimal blood and without intermediaries. Moreover, the file itself should not contain specific account numbers, referring instead to a special page on your site - to reduce the likelihood of fraud. And the site should have the most clear and simple algorithms in execution - how to pay.Do not experience illusions - now the site has wallet numbers and more, but I personally could not transfer money with an alpha-bank card. It is necessary to give as many payment methods as possible - someone has Yandex money, someone has WM, someone has bank cards, and all without exception have cell phones. You need to have ways that allow anyone who has a spontaneous desire to thank you - immediately this desire to fulfill. In this case, several factors should coincide:

• the presence of desire
• availability of funds
• technical ability to transfer funds
• feedback

The last two points are up to you!

I was busy for an hour and a half with attempts to deal with payment systems unfamiliar to me, I got angry and spat on everything. Your timely reaction, your help - would solve the issue. Yes, even an SMS gateway with a slight overpayment in favor of the operator (if this is possible at all) would solve it.

People who transfer funds to you can take into account somewhere who and how many have transferred. You must also give people the right to listen to your music so that this does not threaten them with criminal liability. If, for example, I transferred to you an amount of more than 1000 rubles or more, then mention on a special page of the site that if I have your music on any of the carriers, I listen to it legally. A little utopian, but the thought is worth pondering and refinement.

Again, I’m not trying to breed utopia here - the above measures will not give any super-profits ... But personally, I am ready regularly, when listening to your songs there is an appropriate mood, to transfer not very large amounts to your account. Small, about 100-200 rubles - and then, if this is done it will not be difficult, and you will not have to feed someone else. The key word here is regularly . And if there are many such fans? And if you add people here who want to make a one-time payment? Yes, even let it be a pathetic 50r - if this person bought the disc, you would receive a smaller amount from this sale! Like it or not, it's a piece of bread.

I hope that my appeal will somehow reach the group, the name of which the curious can learn from their "open letter" at the link above.

And now - I turn to habrachitateli, surviving to this point.
If some small group takes up a lot of space in your playlist, it’s not clear how to stay afloat - do not remain indifferent. Make contact with artists and authors, ask them to give feedback to fans and ways to thank them - and post requests to do this on forums and torrent trackers. If you can, write to the creators of the distributions, suggest that they add a file to the distribution with an appeal and a link to the group’s website, which describes ways to pay for their work.

Let us establish contact between authors and admirers of their work, without allowing third parties to this dialogue. We now have the Internet - and intermediaries are no longer needed, but the authors themselves are not aware of this. Let us explain and prove it to them.