The problem as I see it is threefold:

1. Media pricing: I’ve long maintained (ever since I copied my buddy’s dad’s MSWord floppies on my Mac Plus, copied everybodys LPs to casettes and photocopied my uni textbooks back in the late 80s) that the high prices media producers put on their products is self-defeating. Lowered price tags would be set off by increased legit sales. That’s very simple.

2. New technology makes the record companies as intermediaries superfluous and publishing houses will soon go the same way, except that a bound book is comfortable — anyway it will be print-on-demand. I’m sure people will be willing to pay a reasonable sum directly to the artists in order to support and get more from the artists, but they will not be willing to support the obsolecized owners of the cd-presses.

   Imagine what would have happened if they had outlawed the printed book back in the 16th century for fear that scribes would go out of work! Sure they tried to denigrate the printed books in all ways possible: its poor aesthetic quality, the horrible fact that book production (and consumption) was no longer the preserve of a small élite etc. You will inevitably see the record companies play out the quality card now too, but the fact remains that any musician can get himself a computer and some free Open Source software and produce and distribute his own music flawlessly without intermediaries.

   Another lesson to be learnt from back then is that in spite of the fact that copyright wasn’t invented conscientious people bought the authorized editions exactly because they wanted to support the authors and their work. Not everybody could afford it always, but it was understood that those who (eventually) could afford the authorized editions would buy them as a matter of courtesy to the author. This of course is charity in its original sense and something capitalists will never understand, but they do think it’s OK for US healthcare to work on a ‘charity’ basis.

   The modern equivalent will doubtless be that whenever I download an mp3 file one US dollar will automatically pop over from my account to the musician’s account — ideally charged to me with my ISP as intermediary. Even if the ISP takes half the dollar the musician will still be insanely rich after 1 billion downloads — but there will be no need for a ‘record company’ to take part of the dollar. The cost to each consumer will be negligible, but the vast number of consumers will ensure that the producer — the actual producer/musician, not some intermediary technician — will get a handsome revenue regardless. They may have to cut down on drugs and rehab rounds and expensive hotels, but that will likely be all the better for the art!

   Film will probably go the same way soon enough. Look at Star Wars VI or the Lord of the Rings movies: almost entirely CGI in the animated sense! Soon any troop of actors will be able to buy themselves a a camera, a bluescreen and a Linux box, the rest being a matter of acquiring skill at CGI. The real beneficiary from this will be the theater, and all those actors who never make it to [HB]ollywood, since all the CGI will generate a craving for the real thing! Compare what happened to painting when photography came around: at first painters tried to be more realist than photography, but at least with the advent of color photography painting was eventually freed from the demand on realistic depiction and could develop into all the fascinating variety of imagination we soo now. CGI will eventually do tho same thing to acting: movies will have sets which could never be built in real life anyway, and live audience acting with interaction between actors and audience will take on a new significance — which is yet to be seen.

3. Legalizing that comercial interests do police work, their private sniffing becoming valid court evidence. At least to a Swede that is outrageous. Unfortunately most people haven’t realized yet that that is what it’s all about. The next step is of course that everything will get wiretapped, with the capitalist version of an Orwellian dystopia as a result. Of course people will counter that with encryption, then encryption will be outlawed and punished unless you pay a huge fee for the right to use it and personal integrity will be a thing of the past. Forgive me if I don’t think that’s democracy! Do you think that record companies’, publishing companies’ and movie companies’ ‘right’ to overpricing is worth sacrificing personal freedom?

And don’t get me started on the scenario where someone sues Google because pedophiles use it to find their filthy stuff… I would support if the police wiretapped Google (or rather Google wiretapped themselves and passed the information on to the police) to get those bastards (closing down Google would of course not achieve the desired result), but there are no commercial interests supporting such a motion. Rather the opposite I’m afraid!

So, I save my pity for the children. The capitalists will get none.

/BP — proud left libertarian :-)

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