I can only beg to differ on one, albeit major, point: Publishers own the copyright for what they publish, not the authors. Pick up any of our books (I work for a major publisher) and it says Copyright Us, not Copyright Them. It's only when we put a book OUT OF PRINT that we return copyright to the author. In fact, an author has to have our permission (duh, we always grant it) to use material from one edition in writing a new edition of the same book. Record companies ought to do the same - if they are no longer going to produce the record, the (c) should go back to the artists. But when you hire a publisher to print your book, or a record company to press your record (or whatever they do with them nowadays), copyright privileges are granted to the industry. We are who gets paid every time someone wants to copy a portion of a book, not the author. Authors who choose not to like that are free to publish their own books as soon as they can afford to run a printing press, pay editors, pay artists for the cover design and so on and so on. There is a lot of work that goes into making a book, I am sure that just as much goes into making a record; more, probably, with today's technology. The record copmanies are paying through the nose for all that technology. And yes, the industry isn't there for generosity, but profit, and yes they make more than the artists, but they also spend a lot more than an artist can afford to, and copyright privileges are one thing that costs. Just setting the record straight...