How are artists, musicians and writers supposed to support themselves when everything they do can be distributed and downloaded for free? No-one’s figured it out yet, but Amanda Palmer has some passionate words on the subject: Why I’m Not Afraid To Take Your Money.

Scottish author Hal Duncan is trying a brave experiment, distributing copies of one of his short stories directly to fans via his website in return for donations: Scruffians Stamp.*

It seems to me that the music, art, photography, journalism, and fiction industries are all (to a greater or lesser extent) facing the same crisis — a crisis the game industry will probably also run up against in a couple of years. Our dominant means of reaching audiences (teh intartube) favours free distribution, yet artists  have a right to be paid for their efforts.

I have a feeling that the next five or ten years are going to prove very interesting…

*Thanks to Futurismic for the link