neil-gaiman:

I’ve been streaming the new Leonard Cohen album free from the Guardian site and loving it for days now. It just occurred to me to a) buy it, and b) point the link out to everyone else.

Reblogging again to point out a glaring fact about this.

This is how to deal with the internet and copyright.

You put something up which can be accessed for free, but not downloaded. People listen to it, are reminded that Leonard Cohen has a new album out soon, decide that they like it (I love it, incidentally, definitely a return to form Dear Heather wasn’t that good), and not only buy it - because they have confirmed that they want it and it’s worth putting money into - but link other people to it, who may not have heard Leonard Cohen before, and alert them to the album’s existence and that it is awesome and should be bought.

There may be piracy, recording the tracks etc. and not buying the album, but it’s peripheral to the larger effect, which is to advertise, increase sales, and increase knowledge of the album. I’ve forwarded this link to about six people now, and although one of them (my dad) will probably rip my copy of the CD when I get it and not buy his own, those are six more people who already know how they feel about the album and, if they like it, are significantly more likely to go out and buy it when it comes out.

That, multiplied by however many people saw and followed the link and passed it on to their family and friends, increases your market, which increases your sales, which increases your profits. All without draconian legislation or censorship. It’s an honour system of a sort, and it works because, on the whole, people want to reward artists for their work.

tl;dr - Copyrighted works and the internet; doin it rite.