Comment 32236

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted July 01, 2009 at 17:07:22

"The problem is there there is a huge amount of money invested in doing things the way they've been done and the last thing huge and highly profitable corporlations want to acknowledge is that they are rapidly being made redundant. Conceptually, it's the same principle as people being put out of work by improved automation, but we feel a lot less sympathy for them. The key difference is that they've got the political clout to resist."

The difference with automation is that it is still owned by the corporation, whereas internet filesharing is owned by consumers. Automation generally caused workers to lose out because it's legal status (owned by the corporation) put it into conflict with them rather than allowing them to use it to their own advantage. This then screwed consumers by driving down the quality of goods by out-producing traditional workers and artisans. The internet allows us to replace many of the corporations themselves entirely, while still giving space to consumers and producers.

I have very little sympathy for the recording industry, given how they've behaved over the last half-century. It wasn't good for musicians and it wasn't good for consumers. Any massive monopolistic bureaucracy of that sort which can be so readily trumped by MySpace deserves to be put out of its misery.

As for the Think|Haus, it's unbelivable. I'd talked about this kind of thing with people, but fully expected it to take the better part of a decade to get together. Great going.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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