Re: About social balances

[Michal Suchanek]

On 11/7/05, Marcus Brinkmann <address@hidden> wrote:

> To put this up front: It is no question if the author should be
> compensated for his work or not.  The author should be able to live a
> decent life from his contribution to society.  Of course, this does
> not differentiate the british pop star from the african grain farmer.
> The question of how authors are compensated is orthogonal to the other
> questions discussed: There are alternative models that may solve this
> question adequately, from micropayment to national funds.  It is a
> challenge to make those alternative models of compensation work.  But
> it is not a principle impossibility.  In fact, in Germany, we have the
> "Verwertungsgesellschaft GEMA" which is a national fund which
> compensates authors of musical works for public performances of them.
> So, we know for a fact that such things can work.

Hehe, in many cases the authors of these works are complaining about
such systems.
It boils down to:
1/ if you are an author of some obscure work you get no money because
your contribution is statistically negligible (which is, of course,
true for most authors)
2/ you are often required to pay for performing your own work
Both of these problems result basically from lack of proper records
about works performed. Collecting these records (if even possible) may
still result in such costs that the author would not see any money.
It may be that in some places it works. But in some it definitely does not.

Anyway, this is unrelated to the Hurd.

Thanks

Michal

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