Art and Remuneration and Common Sense (Score 1)

To my mind, the promise of the digital age is universal access to ideas. In a perfect world, there would be no expensive middlemen between the artist/creator/discoverer and his audience. And it is just these middlemen who champion the status quo in the face of technological changes. Lord knows, even if the art is our personal property, changes in the means of transfer and method of rendering has in the past forced us to repurchase (e.g.: Jaron Lanier's observation about MP3's, "You mean I'll have to buy the Beatles' "White Album" all over again?") Dan Bricklin has documented now-defunct word processing files ... few files prior to 1990 will even open on today's personal computers. But wouldn't an obvious goal be to have more versus fewer artists make a living at their art? The Internet should make that "long tail" possible. Two views of that scenario are here: one from Bricklin http://www.bricklin.com/artistspaid.htm and one from Kevin Kelly http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php ... but for that to happen, editing and marketing, two crucial activities of the "middlemen," will have to be recognized and performed. How else would we know when said artwork is "ready-for-prime-time"?