Give and Ye Shall Receive
I realized that I hadn't included the byline/slogan from Bram Cohen's Bittorrent site yet that I spoke about earlier. Well its here now (title of this entry). This is really what provoked my thoughts earlier today. Seem like a double meaning there there, give freely and generously your donation and programs shall keep coming. On the other hand when using the Bittorrent client, ensure you give back to your fellow Bittorrent users. Its actually hard not to because its kinda built into the program. As soon as you've downloaded a bit, Bittorrent ensure that gets offered back into the network, to other peers. That way its kinda hard not to share. You could change the upload speed to a very small value (like 1Kb) but that's not very 'social' ofcourse.
In other words give back to the network and you can continue to receive the files you desire.
It kind of makes you wonder because in the case of copyrighted content you're giving something that is not yours to give in the first place. Fact is that this is whats happening. The horse has bolted and there is no way that we can lock it up again. Perhaps this reality should drive us to find alternative means of ensuring that content creators get compensated for the works they create. Another thought I had was that how much compensation is actually sufficient (if there is such a thing) and is one work of art more valuable then another? This is something that can change over time as well, as the public's tastes change.
Should there be some sort of model where the artist gets compensated for the work they create through an auction perhaps, where many bidders/buyers can collectively make up for a compensation, such that the artist gets sufficiently compensated for the work created and after that the work can even become public domain??? Its then up to the buyer (who then get the first hand experience of the work of art in return for the money spent) whether or not (s)he publishes this to the wider public and thus spreads the work of art without breaking copyright/licensing laws and the artist would still have been paid. In other words the ownership of the work is relinquished by the artist as soon as the work 'leaves his/her hands'. This would effectively cut out the whole middleman business of publishers.
Not sure if this would really work but some variations to the theme might be possible and feasible. Anyway just some randon rambling thoughts.....
