File Sharing
A Recent Artist’s Depiction of the Internet (above)
In the glory days of Athens, at least some people honestly thought that the city would go down in history for it’s domination over the Aegean Sea.
Of course, nowadays, average people at the very least know something about Greek Sculpture, Greek Architecture, Greek Pottery, and the like. I doubt that many people living in Athens at it’s height imagined that everyone would know the name of that loudmouthed asshole Socrates. But does your average person know very much about the complex political dealings happening between the two great Greek wars of that era? Hell no, but that’s what every single upper-class Athenian was thinking about all the time.
I find it kind of funny when newscasters used to call 9-11 and the Iraq war "historical moments", implying that those two events would be meaningful to everyone for centuries to come. Hahaha. Even if 9-11 leads to World War Three, most people will understand how about as well as they understand how the Russo-Ottoman war of the 1870s lead to World War I and II.
When people look back on today, probably only a few specialist historians will know about Iraq and WMDs. The average person, looking back on our era, is going to be thinking about technology, movies, and music.
This is what pisses me off about the file-sharing debate: Say I’m running a clothing factory, right now, in 2006. But instead of using modern technology, I’m using a Spinning Jenny, because I’m an idiot. Now, I’m probably losing a lot of money. While other factory owners are using modern technology, I’m using a slow, and labour-intensive fossil to try to mass produce. Do you think I should have the right to go to the government and get the more modern factories shut down, because they’re infringing on my profits? Fucking hell, I need to get rid of those Spinning Jennies and join the modern world.
I don’t blame the music industry for trying to stop the massive change we’re experiencing right now: Music just isn’t going to make very much money anymore. Concerts and tours are going to actually have to start turning a profit on their own, instead of being promo for an album that barely pays for itself. It’ll take time for the economy readjust, but the music and publishing industry, as we know it today, is already dead.
What were we paying for before, when we bought a CD? We were paying for a service which was very expensive to provide. Making a good quality recording, and distributing it around the country used to cost a fuckload of money. Finding an artist, promoting them, pressing CDs and distributing their music was a very expensive investment that payed off. Basic capitalism. That’s just not the case anymore. The service they provide is no longer expensive. I wouldn’t take me much money to get what I need to get a song I recorded on the Internet. If I have the hardware, it’s literally a matter of minutes. Nothing needs to be pressed, no plastic or other materials need to be wasted.
In a few generations from now, people will laugh at the fact that things which can freely be distributed on the Internet used to cost money. People just wont understand the concept of having to buy a song or a book anymore. It’s cute that the government and the industry is trying to hold that back, but it’s already been done. The music industry has already lost.
