The End of Art
One of my favorite disinformation nuggets spit forth from the record industry (and the lawmakers who love their money) is that if we don't put an end to the menace that is peer to peer music file trading, we're facing the end of art as we know it.
I've seen this point reconstituted several times over the past decade. Here's the latest, from Lord Triesman, the UK parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills:
"We have some simple choices to make. If creative artists can't earn a living as a result of the work they produce, then we will kill off creative artists and that would be a tragedy."Mr. Alfred Brimwold Perrywinkle or whomever the fuck, wants ISPs to filter all pirated material on their network -- a largely impossible task that makes ISPs content gatekeepers and fundamentally causes all kinds of problems down the road. There's a similar push here in the States. NBC wants ISPs to do the same -- but they've gone a step further to insist that piracy filters be embedded in home routers.
But Mister Perrywinkle doesn't care about the artists, Mr. Perrywinkle cares about the stagnant business model built up to take advantage of artists. So not only is he being a jackass, he's also insulting your intelligence. In reality, the artists can always make a living, as the majority of their income (no thanks to labels) comes from touring and merchandising (or music sales, if they find innovative ways of distribution).
Our worse case scenario is that yes, the music industry as we know it collapses, and artists and musicians act as their own labels, in turn spawning new distribution partners who treat them fairly. Yeah, that would be just horrible. God, the horror of art being art first and a commodity second. Can you imagine a world where artists just create what they like, instead of forging generic schlock tailored to appeal to the lowest common denominator? The horror. The horror.
It takes some gigantic brass balls (or a seriously warped perspective) to think that anything could kill art and music.