Joshua Cohen on PBS Newshour tonight, What the Internet’s free culture has cost us in art:
Now, I say credit, and not money, because the chief evil of piracy or intellectual property theft or whatever you choose to call it is not that it deprives me and other artists of a living, but that it deprives the audience and even the art itself of a life.
It’s my belief that culture has to be paid for, if not with money or even praise, then with time and attention. There are more things to hear and see and read than ever before, but the cheaper it is to get your hands on them, the cheaper your appreciation of them will be.
The cost of a thing is the care you give it. Fact is, you could rip off a million books, but they’re not truly yours if you’re not going to read them. Songs aren’t songs if they’re never heard. Films aren’t films if they’re never watched. Canons can’t survive, they can’t evolve if the memory they animate is your computers, and not your own.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 