How Do Artists Make Money in a World of "Free"

Obviously we must balance our desire for free stuff with a concern for work. but the open-source software tradition, our final authority on all social questions these days, has little to say about labor, oppression, compensation or collective bargaining. The supposed liberation heralded by those who promote free culture is winner-takes-all; exploit or be exploited, as long as you share your code. Anderson concedes this point, acknowledging that we "measure success in terms of creation of vast sums of wealth spread among more than a few people. Free can't yet compare to Paid." Unless artists and their allies organize themselves, it never will. Until then, those who have dreamed up a way to cheat an entire category of workers and call it democracy will get to pose as political radicals, happily cashing their paychecks while telling others to work for nothing.

Notes:

It's easy for Google, buzzword-techno-Utopians, and progressives to estole the virtues of free media online, where copyrights are being broken down and everyone is producing free content because they love to do so, but artists still need to make a living. Media corporations are still getting rich, and software pirates are promoting their goods while trading them for free online. While google makes billions on indexing content, while those producing the content make nothing. What is the solution to this?

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Serfing the Net

Periodicals>Journal Article: Taylor, Astra (2010), Serfing the Net, The Baffler Literary Magazine, Vol 2, No. 01, Chicago, IL, Retrieved on -0001-11-30