The Sick Dating Game
In the latest iteration of The Dating Game From Hell, we now have the cute couple of Dan Glickman and Bram Cohen. The spurned lovers are now as cozy as the Shawn Fanning/ Wayne Rosso /Andy Lack love triangle. Every day we are treated to another news story touting the industry’s new storebought poster child. The message is the same one that they spewed out from the Grokster battle in the High Court, “See, filesharing is dead, there’s no business model there and your boys are easy to buy.”
And, in a way it’s true. The twenty-something hackers are happy to be courted. It’s better than the alternative; prolonged persecution. Most of the journalists who write up these stories, and they are appearing on all the entertainment and tech vehicles constantly now, are like the old Vietnam War journalists, they just write up the industry quotes, they almost all read the same.
I’ll tell you what they won’t. Filesharing is not going anywhere. The operation of the BitTorrent site is unaffected by their little disclaimer. In the five years they have been claiming the death of these P2P networks, they have only grown, and they will continue to grow.
The entertainment conglomerate was a monarchy. There was a coup. Now there is a system of checks and balances. When the industry wants to pull its little tricks, like bait and switch Yahoo, offering up the $5. price point as, apparently, some kind of sick joke, or Disney pulling its successful DVDs off the shelves to drive up sales of their lesser titles, like Sony buying every copyright in sight so they can jack up prices ad infinitum, like the music labels tying to push their already exorbitant price points up on iTunes…etc., there is now a consequence for them. People will turn to networks of consumers who provide alternatives.
Without those checks in the system, we would be at the mercy of an incredibly consolidated industry that is determined to use artistic content as investment. What we should be investing in is the creative impetus of humans everywhere who are sick of being treated like drones that will just buy whatever art is promoted to them at whatever price the industry decides to charge. We have been empowered by these P2P networks. They give us choice. We need to approach these stories critically and assess our choices as consumers and participants in the creative currency of our culture.
And, in a way it’s true. The twenty-something hackers are happy to be courted. It’s better than the alternative; prolonged persecution. Most of the journalists who write up these stories, and they are appearing on all the entertainment and tech vehicles constantly now, are like the old Vietnam War journalists, they just write up the industry quotes, they almost all read the same.
I’ll tell you what they won’t. Filesharing is not going anywhere. The operation of the BitTorrent site is unaffected by their little disclaimer. In the five years they have been claiming the death of these P2P networks, they have only grown, and they will continue to grow.
The entertainment conglomerate was a monarchy. There was a coup. Now there is a system of checks and balances. When the industry wants to pull its little tricks, like bait and switch Yahoo, offering up the $5. price point as, apparently, some kind of sick joke, or Disney pulling its successful DVDs off the shelves to drive up sales of their lesser titles, like Sony buying every copyright in sight so they can jack up prices ad infinitum, like the music labels tying to push their already exorbitant price points up on iTunes…etc., there is now a consequence for them. People will turn to networks of consumers who provide alternatives.
Without those checks in the system, we would be at the mercy of an incredibly consolidated industry that is determined to use artistic content as investment. What we should be investing in is the creative impetus of humans everywhere who are sick of being treated like drones that will just buy whatever art is promoted to them at whatever price the industry decides to charge. We have been empowered by these P2P networks. They give us choice. We need to approach these stories critically and assess our choices as consumers and participants in the creative currency of our culture.
posted by Intervision at 8:28 AM
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