Revealing story in the Globe & Mail this morning: a Canadian art dealer compares paying artists for their work to succumbing to a Nigerian internet scam.

The story is about the efforts of SODRAC, on behalf of authors, composers, and publishers, to secure payment of reproduction rights fees when galleries, museums, and others publish their work.

What’s striking is the anger directed by arts professionals, people who make their livings on the work of Canadian artists, at the very idea that artists have a right to be paid for their work. John McAvity, ED of the Canadian Museums Association, warns darkly about killing the art market. Patricia Feheley, president of the Art Dealers Association, says galleries and dealers cannot afford to pay artists. Other dealers and auctioneers admit paying artists for their rights is routine in the United States and Europe. But Kevin King of Calgary’s Hodgins Art Auctions says the whole concept simply made him angry. He’d rather pay lawyers than artists.

Long way to go, artists. If these guys think of artists’ rights this way, it’s no wonder educators and librarians and professors have that sense of unlimited entitlement to creators’ work