No, I did not express myself well. I don´t see a general diffeence between producing code and art. Coding can be art as well, of course. To me there is a clear difference between creating new solutions and producing results based on existing solutions - or differently: you can write a protocol or use a protocol. I understand these terms very broadly. From my point of view you can be an artist by creating software, a song or a theory. What matters is innovation vs. convention.
This is, of course, an ideal distinction, since in a complex society we draw back on protocols of others all of the time, but still there are some people who strive to invent something that hasn´t been there before. There is a qualitative difference between the person who has the idea to build a machine and is capable to create a working prototype on one side and the person who buys a machine to produce certain goods (which can also be a skillful, yet repetitive task).
Point is, that products do not incorporate the intellectual work, but only the process of assemblage - that´s why reverse engineering usually pays out: you don´t have to cover the cost for the invention. It´s the intellectual work that often goes unpaid. Sometimes art can lead to no product at all. It often happens in research: you have a theory, try to prove it and in the end you fail. That´s still an intellectual product, but many people don´t see the need to pay for it. If you do the same thing 10times and only succeed the 10th time, then anyone will be interested in case 1-9. Negative results or failed experiments are usually not even published. People don´t value them, even though they are not only a natural part of the process, but also necessary for progress. Once you succeed and have results, they are easily taken and used by others. This is not necessarily a problem - as long as someone pays for the artist.
My personal experience is that this is often not the case. I grew up in a family and environment that was heavily influenced by art. A friend of my parents worked as an artisan and created wooden furniture. He had a lot of cool ideas, several were adopted by large furniture stores. They came (wothout stating who they are and what they intent to do), bought one of his pieces, reverse engineered them and then found ways to produce it with machinery at a budget price. By doing so they dump the market and leave him as well as other creatives in the sector with a very small market edge. Now people come and tell him: don´t complain but comply. Produce better products and offer them cheaper! However, that´s impossible since he has to cover the cost of innovation and has less ressources to compete.
Copy protection is flawed in many senses, because it would have been too expensive for this guy to register a patent, but there is no doubt that a proper copy protection would have protected him from being ripped off by big players who have the economical ressources to sell an idea that they didn´t have to pay for. I can see the same thing happening in large clothes store who buy from small artists all over the world and copy their work without crediting them. Every larger store like H&M or Zara works like that. It´s skimming the surplus of people who have a precarious life anyway. Copyright here IS certainly flawed, but that doesn´t mean that a protectionist policy is bad in general. Imho it just means that currently it serves the wrong people.
In digital environments copy+pasting has a much lower barrier. Many people who are involved in open source projects, such as writing Wikipedia articles, coding for Linux or writing RFC comments donate their work - that´s awesome. However, those who need and want to make a living rely on the ability to monetize the process of innovation or at least to recover them from selling a product.
In the end it´s not that I don´t see the alternatives. Crowd funding or crowd selling is certainly a good model to provide uncopyrighted content and still get funding. There are good examples such as the crowdfunding of Amanda Palmer’s last album, however I don´t see how this gets a feasible model for the 99% artist who do not have the fame of Amanda. Those often remain dependent on self-exploitation and handing out their hard work for free. We can see that in music business, but it´s also visible in other innovative sectors such as research. Currently I tend to believe that an optional fee request when accessing a file would lead to best results for both: artist and consumer.
This, just to add some thoughts…
