Bill tackles So-Called New Piracy Frontier |
May 17th, 2006 |
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I can’t begin to imagine how these things land on the agenda of Senators. Recently Australia passed some incredibly bizarre laws that make it legal to copy in a limited sense, but essentially say that you can record a TV program to tape freely, but once you watch it you must delete the copy. Your brain is now a storage device.
I’d like to think I could store it on a device with slightly less redundancy than my brain, but who am I to argue?
It is incredibly difficult for podcasters to get permission to play music as there is a ‘conspiracy’ (ok ok, its called a business arrangement, much like how bribery is now called lobbying) between the major record companies, and the major radio station(s). Imagine how you would feel if you invested huge amounts of time and money on creating an ‘artist’, photoshots, media releases, cover design, sponsoring/manufacturing subcultures only to find your artist makes 46 on the charts and was beaten out by the “Arctic Monkeys”. Fuck that! Thats why you’d get Mcdonalds to buy a truck load of albums thus enabling you to DEBUT at number 1. They always talk about how artists debut at number one - they are so upfront about their corruption, yet people continue to lap it up.
The difficulties podcasters face is an attempt to turn podcasting into “another stupid DIY phase”, but it is fortunately having the opposite result. It is exposing the underground, unsigned and independent artists & ignoring the mass marketted photoshopped trite. It is obliterating the means to which the few cyphen all of the funds from the many.
The smarter folk will work out how to make money out of the emerging infrastructure rather than attempting to ignore & obliterate it. You don’t need to be a Professor of History to see things fall between the fingers of those who attempt to gain a tighter grip on things.
There was a small period of time in humankind’s history when we were ignorant of the diversity of music and all pointed our eyes and ears towards the messiahs of the time, like the beatles and their ilk, but that tunnel vision is gone, and people can all share their music and ideas. It should be possible to live off your music, but it shouldn’t be supporting an industry of middlemen… There are two groups required for this transaction: The artists & the listeners. Often on the internet there’s no distinction between the two.
If mass market media can’t find a way to be profitable on the new infrastructure, by the people for the people, the mass market media can die a slow & well overdue death.
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