Sebastien Blondeel <blondeel@clipper.ens.fr> writes
2/ very few people live with their music
How many French people make their living with the income they get from the mere sales of their records? books? (and derived products) out of 60 million people? I would say just a few hundreds, maybe thousands. A little more if you kick in people living with concerts but then this looks more like a "real job". Most books are written by people who have a "normal" job on the side. Most music bands people have a job on the side.
Whilst it may be true that most books are written by part-time writers, it is also true that hardly anyone reads most books. I expect that most books read are written by full-time writers, or writers who could be full-time if they chose to be. e.g. books by Terry Pratchett make up about 1% of UK fiction sales, the impact on the supply of good fiction if he still had to have a day-job would be significant, as he would not be able to write nearly as many books.
So less copyright "protection" would not mean less creation. And this "support the artist" idea is bogus: 1/ most artists don't benefit from it
Most artists don't benefit from it because most of them just aren't much good, so few people read their books.
2/ don't deprive millions for the sake a a few tens
Don't deprive millions of readers for the sake of a relatively small number who want to read poor quality older books. The really good stuff, the stuff people are actually interested in reading, tends to stay in print.
3/ creation would go on any way.
You would get less of the good stuff, the stuff people actually consider worth paying for, if the small minority of really good writers needed a day-job and couldn't write full-time. -- Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm Brett Paul Dunbar To email me, use reply-to address