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Your Broken Business Model Is Not My Problem

Bounty Markets for Open-Access eBooks. Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (2010-10-25):

From "go to hellman" Bounty Markets for Open-Access eBooks In January 1773, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart placed advertisements asking patrons to "subscribe" to the three piano concertos he was writing. If he received enough support, the concertos would be finished by April, and subscribers would receive beautifully copied manuscripts. More importantly,…

Q: Without intellectual protectionism to sustain a massive system of corporate marketing, record companies, and advances for artists, how will creators ever be able to support their work? In a freed market with freed copying and freed exchange, how would we ever marshal the resources we need to sustain a flourishing musical culture?

A: Let’s ask a minor musician of the past few centuries — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — how he did it.

A broken, top-heavy, capital-intensive business model in music has nothing to do with the needs of a flourishing free culture. It has everything to do with grants of monopoly privilege, by the state, to entrenched incumbent firms, and the systematic distortion and deformation of the whole network of musical commerce around the gravity-well of those coerced monopoly profits. The monopolists’ broken business model is not our problem, and should not be forced on the rest of us. Music will do fine without it — just ask Mozart.

Shameless Self-promotion Sunday

It’s Sunday Sunday Sunday. Let’s get Shameless Shameless Shameless.

It’s my blog, so I guess I’ll have to go first. This weekend, the November 2010 issue of The Freeman was released; among the articles in this month’s issue are:

And — the reason for mentioning it to-day, specifically — there’s also:

Secondly, preparations continue for my appearance to present Women and the Invisible Fist, and to represent the Molinari Institute at the the Radical Philosophy Association conference on Violence: Systemic, Symbolic, and Foundational in Eugene, Oregon. I’ve been working over the paper for its final form before the presentation[3]. If you’re interested in seeing a copy when it’s ready, just drop me a line and I’ll make sure you get one. In the meantime, I’d like to send out a big thank you to the folks who have generously contributed $40 to Molinari to help cover the costs of getting me to Oregon.[4] The point is–thanks, y’all are awesome. If you, too, would like to help me reach the Willamette Valley and support libertarian contributions to radical scholarship, check out the announcement post, or toss a few coins into the hat right here:

Donate to the Molinari Institute to support left-libertarian scholarship.

Anyway, so that’s me. How about you? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

  1. [1]I’m not familiar with Payne’s previous work, but this article is a really nice reminder about government’s direct role in ecologically toxic mass insecticide spraying — often without the consent, or without even informing, property owners whose land was being poisoned from the air.
  2. [2]Previously mentioned in these pages when it appeared as an online feature: GT 2010-08-23: The only Good Government is No Government.
  3. [3]Mostly footnote work right now, but if you’ve read one of my papers before, you know that the way I write, damn, the footnotes are a lot of work; once I finish that, next up is a couple timed readings to make sure that I won’t run over.
  4. [4]That should cover at least the distance from Independence, Missouri to the Kansas River. If the hunting’s good, and we don’t lose anything crossing the river, and nobody dies of dysentery, it may even last us to Fort Kearny.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vs. Striking Workers

Molly'sBlog 2010-10-21 16:54:00. Anarchoblogs in English (2010-10-22):

INTERNATIONAL LABOUR VIETNAM:SUPPORT VIETNAMESE WORKER ACTIVISTS:It’s just another day in another workers’ paradise, and three workers are due to go on trial for organizing a strike. The “proletarian justice” they may face can mean up to 15 years in prison. Here’s the story and appeal from the online labour solidarity…

In the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, three young labor leaders — Doan Huy Chuong, Nguyen Hoang Quoc Hung, and Do Thi Minh Hanh — have been jailed for 8 months, and are now facing as much as 15 years in prison face as much as 15 years in prison. The reason for this government prosecution and state violence against them is that they worked in an organised manner, distributed leaflets expressing discontent about working conditions and about the authorities, and helped organize a strike at the My Phong shoe factory.

Solidarity for the My Phong 3. Free all political prisoners!

Friday Lazy Linking

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