I've been thinking about the MPAA, the RIAA and all these filesharing prosecutions that are going on, and I got to wondering something...
You know all these charity shops, market stalls and car boot sales (not the bootleggers or con artists, but the kids flogging their old Transformers videos) where you can pick up anything by Mantovani or Brother Beyond, or Jane Fonda's Workout video for 50p? Do they pay royalties to the artist? I'm assuming the answer is "no".
And as they don't pay royalties, isn't buying from these people tantamount to taking money out of the artists' mouths? Apart from handing over your money, isn't it very much the same as downloading music or movies from the web? The artists never see the money, the studios never see the money. Isn't there something in the copyright laws about not being able to give away or resell the item without the artist's consent?
Now I wonder how long it'll be before they start prosecuting Oxfam...
