I've worked on quite a few so indeed I know how it works. I've seen how in Hollywood especially the temp tracks are almost gospel, and sometimes the expectation is to pretty much plagiarize it. If the studios could just plaster Gladiator all over their new films for free today, you can be sure they would.

But I don't think even that matters. Trying to define what is best for art is almost as impossible an endeavor as is defining art. Again, most of new stuff is really derivative anyway, so it'd just be one step further into that pit. Many people do prefer originality, so not everything would be the same. But the point is, no one knows the extent of this change.

So I worry about what happens to the people who make a living on creating content, if you radically change the system suddenly. There's an immense amount of conjecture here about an industry most don't really know enough about. It reminds me of when I see people suggesting how bands should make money instead of selling records. You know, sell T-shirts and all that. Not realistic. It's the typical cognitive dissonance from applying an ideology to the extreme.

The fact is, no one really knows what would happen. That's why you should do incremental, not radical changes. Maybe it would be fine for mostly everyone. We don't know. People who aren't intimately familiar with the workings of an industry definitely don't. I think those in the technology world of all people should know how frustrating it is when people (e.g. politicians) that have at best a cursory understanding of an issue try to tell others how it should work.

Just as an example, CRCulver's reply above is completely nonsensical with its art music tangent that applies to a tiny niche of composers, and furthermore offensive with its ad hominem about low brow cinema (take a look at my list; Nanking for example was on the documentary Oscar shortlist, and I've been nominated for the Finnish Film Award for The Home of Dark Butterflies). Yet it's at 5, Insightful, because it fits the ideological narrative that has become popular in tech circles.

Guys, if you want to be of the opinion that copyright has to be abolished even if it hurts a lot of people, that's fine. I'm totally ok with that, if you sincerely think that. But please don't make up stuff to try to support that case.

I would rather everyone try to work together on this issue and get copyright amended in a sensible way that protects those that rely on this to make a living, but is adapted to the way modern technology works and doesn't end up in consumers getting sued. I'm all for that. But if you go to too much extremes, you're going to lose all of us to the other side. And frankly there's already a too short a supply of people who are willing to build a bridge in the middle of this.

You must've missed the part where I explicitly said I've been pro file sharing and consumer freedom.

The public funding remark is simply incorrect. Most of the films I have scored have had state funding.

Considering the completely recycled nature of most of today's music, I really hope it doesn't become even more derivative. However, for wider use interesting mashups, sure. But that seems like a niche benefit compared to the immense harm I see in screwing over people like this. Note though that even the existing legislation is too weak to protect the original artist here, because the big business interests are so powerful.

The incentive would be for companies to not commission new music, but instead use the free ones from a vastly bigger pool. I'm barely making ends meet as it is, but I do it because I love this work. However if production companies were offered the amazing windfall profit of free contemporary music, I'd have to get another job. That's the cold hard math. The rich composers would just make a little less. But they don't really have to care. I do.

I have to say I feel really sad reading stuff like this. I feel a big kinship with the geek culture in general, having grown up loving my VIC-20, C-64, Amiga, tinkering with open OSs, and in general just being strongly anti-DRM and pro open source. My music background is strongly influenced by my demoscene work, freely distributed of course, like a lot of my other music. But I feel completely alienated by the pro big business turn the discourse has taken. I've been a strong advocate for file sharing and consumer freedom in general, but I've started to feel I've perhaps made a mistake. Because it seems the only groups caring about my right to tell a company not to put my music in a shitty TV ad that they profit off immensely are the same ones suing people for file sharing.

It's almost like there's no one who cares about the little guy anymore. It's just big technology interests like Google and Netflix that would love free content and keep all the money to themselves, versus the big media interests that also would love to keep all the money to themselves. I'm clearly in neither camp. I hope my impression is wrong and the silent majority in the open source movement still believes in protecting the little guy even if he happens to only create content for a living.

Are you saying that I as a professional composer should let companies use my older music for free in commercial contexts, to benefit society? How could that possibly benefit anyone except the companies that already are completely nickel-and-diming freelancers like myself?

Actually what makes iPhone a very nice device for ssh is the excellent MobileTerminal availabile for it. They make great use of gestures on the screen and I find myself using terminal apps faster on it than I did on, for example, the Nokia E70. My only complaint is the obvious lack of tactile feedback with the keyboard, but that for me has been outweighed by the positives of what the gesture-based approach with MT offers.