I believe the term is "civilization". For example, I have no children but have ungrudgingly paid decades of property tax, the largest portion of which funded schools. There are hundreds of such situations, and they are part of the contract which makes up a culture.

I've been a publisher since 1969. Our scores were always produced and distributed at low cost in expectation of performance royalties. We work for the long term, not the short one.

Royalties have never, historically or presently, been supplementary.

I'm always of two minds about this issue. I oppose long copyright terms, draconian prosecutions, DRM and most of the lot of the law since the DMCA.. I also oppose work-for-hire exceptions as permitted under U.S. copyright law (mostly with respect to the transformation of the work into other media, its excerpting and repurposing without compensation).

As a senior composer (yikes!), I made a societal deal five decades ago that my work would be granted a reasonable time to recoup the effort that went into its creation.

The definition of 'reasonable' can be surprising to those whose work is immediate (pop, software, etc.). In my genres (what I call 'nonpop') that time can be very long indeed. Many pieces composed in the 1970s (I'd guess before most Slashdotters were born) are just getting their first performances now as the younger performers discover them. This is a long time -- and I have a lot of trouble believing that such work should drop into the commons even before its first performance. So I appreciate the extension of copyright that recognizes both the longer life of artists now and the longer time to market on certain kinds of art and music.

Not sure how much you know about ASCAP. Its stupidities (such as the Girl Scout fiasco) give them a bad name. They've been my licensing agency since 1988. They pass through 90% of the amount collected to me, and I have absolutely no paperwork except an annual tax statement. That 10% they keep is really worth it.

Because of the genre of music I write, almost 100% of my royalties come from live peformances, not airplay. In the U.S., airplay royalties are by random checks of logs. That radio issue is not their doing. ASCAP and BMI are still operating under a 70-year-old court order allowing them to represent composers and authors and their publishers collectively. Every change has to go back to the court for approval. In other countries, every airplay generates royalties (such as these $.90 and $1.50 amounts I get from Sweden and Finland every three months). Although my music has been heard thousands of times on the air (and on cable -- the Discovery Channel's "Deadly Women" series includes a clip of my music), I've never been caught in a log check. Unlucky me.

There's no moral high ground for SABAM. I know Slashdot's readers don't much like ASCAP, but they're my licensing agency and part of my small income as a composer comes from those royalties. Problem is, SABAM has yet to pay (via ASCAP) a cent of the royalties owed me for performances in Belgium for the past eight years. (Same goes for SPA in Portugal, which has never forwarded any royalties due.) Until they actually turn over the royalties they collect in composers' names, they have no excuse to collect them in the first place.

Before you engage in the screw-you comments, please know that I provide all my sheet music for free download and only expect the performance royalties in return. The performers and venues pay those royalties, but Belgium and Portugal just pocket the money.

Why? Because in Vermont we know how to demo these things. I've had broadband since 1999 because a small local company with 300 customers showed how entrepreneurship works and installed it. With its tough weather and geography, Vermont has been a test bed for a lot of advanced projects. We'll discover how it's done most effectively, then you can apply it to the urban infrastructure.

There is a loss of live events of this type but there is a great deal online. Many of the major orchestras make their concerts available through sites like Instant Encore and especially YouTube. This is good video and audio in many cases -- if you have broadband, it's the way to go for any interesting nonpop (classical) music.

At this time in history, there is no reason to be deprived, or have any children deprived, of a rich concert experience -- and with far better visuals than from a seat in the house.

Please make your thoughts about new compositions known to them. And to the wealthy patrons, and newspaper (what's that?), and radio station... etc. Quietly wishing for new material is a death wish.

This is the old school of thinking. Symphonies no longer have the status they once had -- because younger audiences (and that includes the younger rich audiences) no longer see them that way. In the U.S. they've been educated out of equating the symphony with something important.

Live tweeting is already happening at a lot of nonpop concerts ... chamber music, especially, and even at symphony concerts -- by the performers. I follow a harpist who tweets and posts photos during long periods of rests.

The whole discussion is really deep desperation on the part of orchestras, and not just in the U.S. Orchestras are shutting down across Europe as well. As likely one of the few actual composers on Slashdot (this is me), I'm not awfully sorry about it. I've written a few dozen orchestral compositions, with half of them played. Audiences of all ages -- I recall one SRO with listeners ages 15-20 paying for tickets with whatever cash they had just to hear my new piece -- want to hear new music, and not just game or movie music rewritten for orchestras. But the orchestras depend on those conservative and wealthy patrons for whom the boxes at a symphony concert are a status trinket.

I'm neutral about live tweeting ... just so long as the sound is off and the screen is dim, because there are other folks who really do focus on the performance and not broadcasting their reactions to it. There's room for everyone from my point of view. But just get in there when there's new music on the program ... let the powers-that-be know that you'll come back for more new music. Otherwise it's more Beethoven for you.

Funny as it is, it's 40+ years old about a piece 200 years old.

I agree with some posters that this lacks a sense of history and an appreciation of geography.

It also deeply lacks a sense of culture. There are combined areas with no common culture and indeed cultural opposition across geography. This re-Balkanization, so to speak, might as well offer the opportunity to dismantle the United States -- which is, in all ways except language, as culturally distinct as most of Europe.

Exactly! But it's rough size. Finish size is different. It's convention. As is any measurement, no?

It's a British saying.

Of course if you're familiar with a system, it doesn't matter what the numbers are. I'm only talking about perceptions by the body, not the eyes. My body temperature is important to that feel, that's all. Where I live, knowing that the water is freezing isn't as important as knowing if it feels cold (because it gets cold .... as low as -40F/-40C). Similarly, I don't care when the water boils; who measures it? It's "up there" somewhere. But I do care to know if the weather is hot. With 0 as the dividing point between, say, cold and freakin nasty, I know. With 100 as the dividing point between hot and unbearable, I know. For that matter, of course, I don't need the actual temperature at all, do I? Descriptions will do.