Okay, let's get one thing straight here. Some country in the world, let's call it "X", wants a law within the country that stops illegal downloading and file sharing. So far so good. Now, what's also a part of this law is the right to stop this downloading even if it takes part in country "Y". This is something that I don't really understand. X and Y aren't the best of friends so I can't really see why Y should be okay with X just walking all over it's new fancy garden and taking a crap among the plants. I sure as hell wouldn't be okay with that. Would you? No, of course you wouldn't. You'd take out the big hose and water the plants!
It's a bit silly really. I mean, yes, the big companies do lose money when people prefer to download an album instead of paying copious amounts of money for a plastic cover with a paper cutout. The artist however, does not. Not marginally anyway. The marketing recieved via file sharing widely goes above any profits for record sales. Let me give you an example.
A struggling artist (struggling as in working really hard to move from the couch to the garage where the recording equipment is) need something really special to be signed by a record company. Whether it's looks, voice, sound or something else. If the music is special enough but the artist isn't that can always be fixed. Make-overs. Do-overs. Miracles. The record company owns the songs and the artist brand. The artist owns... his brain?
Now, let's talk file sharing.
Our hard working artist decided to just skip the whole record company deal. He likes to keep the way he looks and he's pretty fond of his, at least in his own opinion, special sound. Instead he decides to put his song up on his tiny profile on myspace and goes to make some food. When he's finished dinner he returns to the tiny profile and noticed that ten people from various parts of the world really enjoyed the strings/synths/wail/composion/lyrics. The artist humbly thanks them and goes to bed. Tomorrow he will have 30 new posts admiring his music. In two weeks 400 people have listened to the songs. One of these people is dating a guy whose cousin's best friend works in marketing. Our artist recieves a mail with a request for a meeting to discuss possible business deals for a tv-show. The tv-show gets massive ratings and the music is even more widely spread. Companies want the face of the artist for this or that product and soon it's time for the first live performance. It becomes sold out and is a huge success and the artist, who doesn't have to share his profit or time with a record company, makes a lot of money. Oh, the albums? They're all released for free online.
To stop file sharing is to stop the basics of the Internet and the World Wide Web. It's created to share information between people.
It's a bit silly really. I mean, yes, the big companies do lose money when people prefer to download an album instead of paying copious amounts of money for a plastic cover with a paper cutout. The artist however, does not. Not marginally anyway. The marketing recieved via file sharing widely goes above any profits for record sales. Let me give you an example.
A struggling artist (struggling as in working really hard to move from the couch to the garage where the recording equipment is) need something really special to be signed by a record company. Whether it's looks, voice, sound or something else. If the music is special enough but the artist isn't that can always be fixed. Make-overs. Do-overs. Miracles. The record company owns the songs and the artist brand. The artist owns... his brain?
Now, let's talk file sharing.
Our hard working artist decided to just skip the whole record company deal. He likes to keep the way he looks and he's pretty fond of his, at least in his own opinion, special sound. Instead he decides to put his song up on his tiny profile on myspace and goes to make some food. When he's finished dinner he returns to the tiny profile and noticed that ten people from various parts of the world really enjoyed the strings/synths/wail/composion/lyrics. The artist humbly thanks them and goes to bed. Tomorrow he will have 30 new posts admiring his music. In two weeks 400 people have listened to the songs. One of these people is dating a guy whose cousin's best friend works in marketing. Our artist recieves a mail with a request for a meeting to discuss possible business deals for a tv-show. The tv-show gets massive ratings and the music is even more widely spread. Companies want the face of the artist for this or that product and soon it's time for the first live performance. It becomes sold out and is a huge success and the artist, who doesn't have to share his profit or time with a record company, makes a lot of money. Oh, the albums? They're all released for free online.
To stop file sharing is to stop the basics of the Internet and the World Wide Web. It's created to share information between people.
"A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [which provided] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions."
—J.C.R. Licklider
The quote is from a man who had a vision and he mentions how the connected computers work as libraries - allowing you to search information. Imagine of that was taken away from you. Imagine turning on your computer without it connecting to anything but you. Imagine going into a library without books.
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