Musicians spend money on instruments, studio time, and production. Writers spend money on research to create more realistic stories. Visual Artists spend money on their materials.

Some artists have business licenses and that costs money as well. Artists also file income taxes.

If someone enjoys art and wants people to continue making art, there should be no question or argument over whether artists should be paid for their work. Just pay.

When you take for free a work of art that costs someone else hundreds or even thousands of dollars to make, that is not “file-sharing”.

That is theft.

P.S.

I have had the experience of giving my work away for free or for very little money. The people who took my work always said, “I will send more customers your way”. Several years later, I am still waiting. I charge for my work because based on my own real-world experience people don’t pay unless there is a price tag.

Real life experience and studies have shown that large part of people are willing to pay for content, when paying is voluntary. Perhaps surprisingly, you indicate many times in your comments that you are not aware of this.

My reason to sell art is to make money so that I can have a meaningful quality of life. Some of my art I give away for free. Ultimately, it is my choice whether to sell my art or give it away.

The current model may not pay the artist 100% of the profit but a small percentage for an artist is still better than 0% from file-sharing.

Book publishers may take 90% of the profit, art galleries 70% and the recording industry may be equally high. That said, as a working artist, I prefer receiving some payment to no payment. That is the deal the artist makes with the publisher.

I agree with Stallman that artists are often exploited by publishers. Self-publication is the way to go long-term but the cost of distribution and advertising is still quite high. The sticking point for me, is the idea that artists are not entitled to payment for their work. If I set a price for my work and have told you I am selling this, you are not helping me by sharing it for free.

The question how we can provide every person with a quality of life is not necessarily related to the question if artists are entitled to payment for use of their work. It could be, this is the current model. The point is exactly that the current model doesn’t work very well. It doesn’t pay the artists, and it incurs a high cost on society.

I wasn’t suggesting that Stallman said “Donations are theoretical payment but a price tag is guaranteed payment (provided people are honest and don’t steal)”. That is actually my take on things. I will never begrudge an artist the right to make money from his work because I have lived that struggle.

As someone who has sold visual art and made some attempt to make a living off of it, I have a strong opinion about artists receiving payment for their work. It is a wonderful thing for artists to share their work with the world. Unfortunately, we live in a materialistic society where access to cash determines our ability to access essential items like food and shelter. In the case of visual artists, cash also determines our access to the materials we use to make our visual art. My bias is that artists whether they are musicians, writers, painters, or web designers should get paid for their work unless they choose not to ask for payment. To say otherwise is to doom artists to work at some dead-end job unrelated to their true passion (I’ve been there and I’ve done that).

An artist selling his work through a third party generally has to outlay smaller sums of cash than an artist who is self-published. For example, printing a book could cost a writer hundreds of thousands of dollars versus having the publisher take that risk. The same could be true of musicians who self-publish CDs.

Regardless of whether the artist takes the risk or a third party takes the risk, there is never a guarantee that the art will sell. What I am trying to say is that an artist who establishes a price for her work is more likely to receive payment than an artist who says “pay me if you feel like it.” In my own experiences as an artist, I have seen how raising the price actually increases sales! In a materialistic society, people equate quality with price. Of course there are limits; if the price is too high that can lower sales. Finding the ideal price is part of the trick of selling anything. It is not always true that the highest priced item is the best but the perception is there.

While Stallman uses the example of Monty Python when speaking about sharing art, this is not quite correct. Monty Python isn’t giving away DVDs for free on YouTube, just individual skits. It would take someone a long time to collect all that material together as a collection of DVDs. YouTube is being used to give people a taste of what they would get by purchasing the collection. In visual arts this would be equivalent to displaying work in a gallery so that people will have enough interest to commission works from the artist.

Also, with self-publication, RMS understands that different situations exist for different kinds of art. He has spoken about this and directed people to read Courtney Love’s article from Salon.com.

Musicians, for example, are often lead to believe that if they sign with an RIAA label they’ll be far more likely to become famous and wealthy than if they don’t sign. So many musicians believe the choice before them is whether to sign or not. I’d say that that is not the choice at all. Most artists (signed or unsigned) never become famous or wealthy. Most signed artists go on to carry a huge debt they must repay to their RIAA label and lose creative control to executives at their label.

So the real choice for a musician concerns how much freedom they want to share with their audience by licensing their work. If a musician retains their copyrights (to their songs and recorded performances) instead of signing with a label (which includes turning copyrights over to the label), and then licenses those recordings to everyone under terms that allow at least non-commercial & verbatim sharing, the musician stands to gain the most benefit. Fame and riches are (as always) unlikely. But the musician can avoid label debt, maximize control over their artistic development, and license to a non-exclusive distributor like Magnatune.org. Magnatune pays the artist half of the sale price for every track sold (a far better deal than most artists get with any RIAA label).