Once upon a time, artists had an easy life. When dancers and singers performed, only people in the immediate vicinity could enjoy the show, and they could be asked to pay up. Then over the centuries came technology-storage, reproduction and transmission-and along with it, the artist's ever-growing reliance on technological intermediaries, who in turn have relied on government protections. Printing presses meant that books could be reprinted by others and revenues lost (hence Queen Anne's Copyright Act of 1709). Broadcast meant works could be copied by consumers (hence the European levy on VCRs and blank cassettes).

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