Comment by ScottytheMenace (not verified), posted March 17, 2007 - 11:14pm
This article is mish-mash of half theories and prosthelitizing masquerading as serious commentary. To suggest that the current information revolution is analogous to the industrial revolution is just silly on its face. Other silliness in this article:
1) Theodore Roosevelt was not a conservative. He was a founding member of the modern progressive movement.
2) Karl MARX was, in fact, a MARXist, unless of course he didn't believe a word he wrote which is doubtful.
3) If 200 million people are committing felonies, then, yes, 200 million Americans can and are felons.
There is little to compare the industrial and information revolutions. On their face, they are both world and society changing movements, but that is where the similarities end.
The industrial revolution cost money. Lots and lots of money. The average person could not become an industrialist and create a railroad or start an automobile factory. Both required large amounts of capital for land, labor, and machinery which naturally led to monopolistic enterprises: the greater the cost of entry into an industry the fewer the players. Naturally.
Additionally, the products were physical and thus local. Creating things (a car for example) cost lots of money and when you created it it was a single physical entity residing in a single physical place. Actually getting that product to another place cost a lot more money in distribution. The barrier to entry into an industrial enterprise were and still are enormous. As such, we created laws to protect the masses from the excesses of the few who had the means to create the industries that society came to depend on. The means of production in an industrial society, therefore, are not accessible to everyone because the cost of entry was so high.
But what is the cost of information and its distribution? Monetarily speaking the product (the information) is cost-free. It simply requires the creativity to imagine it. Further, the advent of cheap digital recording systems (a $500 laptop and shareware to record and mix an mp3 of reasonable quality) and free distribution (YouTube and MySpace) puts the means of production and distribution at the disposal of everyone but the poorest few. This radically decentralized and inexpensive means of production and distribution of information makes analogies between the industrial revolution and the information revolution (and comparisons of record company executives to robber barons) absurd on their face.
In the information revolution, being an informationalist (as opposed to an industrialist) does not require the accumulation of massive amounts of capital. The rober barons no longer own the means of production; they simply own their own products, which they can create and distribute freely or expensively at their own discretion, and which you can choose to purchase or not at your discretion. You can bitch all you want about how BMG will not let you download a free copy of the latest Kenny Chesney or Alicia Keys song, but why should they? You have no inalienable right to those specific pieces of music. Nothing that people value is free nor will it ever be.
Copyright laws are nothing more than an extension of private property to a non-tangible product. To suggest that we need to overturn them because "200 million Americans can't be felons" is just ludicrous. You don't make theft legal simply because people are stealing.
A free economy has a way of evolving with new realities. The music industry has already changed. The future is written. Digital creation and distribution are here to stay. That the record companies have not bought into this reality does not make it less so, and we do not need to revolutionalize our legal structure to force them to play along. Either they will or they won't. We did not change our laws to force the horse and buggy industry to conform to the new automobile reality. The industry just went away. If the record labels don't conform themselves to the new realities, they too will go away. We do not need to radically change our legal copyright structure to do that.
This article is mish-mash of half theories and prosthelitizing masquerading as serious commentary. To suggest that the current information revolution is analogous to the industrial revolution is just silly on its face. Other silliness in this article:
1) Theodore Roosevelt was not a conservative. He was a founding member of the modern progressive movement.
2) Karl MARX was, in fact, a MARXist, unless of course he didn't believe a word he wrote which is doubtful.
3) If 200 million people are committing felonies, then, yes, 200 million Americans can and are felons.
There is little to compare the industrial and information revolutions. On their face, they are both world and society changing movements, but that is where the similarities end.
The industrial revolution cost money. Lots and lots of money. The average person could not become an industrialist and create a railroad or start an automobile factory. Both required large amounts of capital for land, labor, and machinery which naturally led to monopolistic enterprises: the greater the cost of entry into an industry the fewer the players. Naturally.
Additionally, the products were physical and thus local. Creating things (a car for example) cost lots of money and when you created it it was a single physical entity residing in a single physical place. Actually getting that product to another place cost a lot more money in distribution. The barrier to entry into an industrial enterprise were and still are enormous. As such, we created laws to protect the masses from the excesses of the few who had the means to create the industries that society came to depend on. The means of production in an industrial society, therefore, are not accessible to everyone because the cost of entry was so high.
But what is the cost of information and its distribution? Monetarily speaking the product (the information) is cost-free. It simply requires the creativity to imagine it. Further, the advent of cheap digital recording systems (a $500 laptop and shareware to record and mix an mp3 of reasonable quality) and free distribution (YouTube and MySpace) puts the means of production and distribution at the disposal of everyone but the poorest few. This radically decentralized and inexpensive means of production and distribution of information makes analogies between the industrial revolution and the information revolution (and comparisons of record company executives to robber barons) absurd on their face.
In the information revolution, being an informationalist (as opposed to an industrialist) does not require the accumulation of massive amounts of capital. The rober barons no longer own the means of production; they simply own their own products, which they can create and distribute freely or expensively at their own discretion, and which you can choose to purchase or not at your discretion. You can bitch all you want about how BMG will not let you download a free copy of the latest Kenny Chesney or Alicia Keys song, but why should they? You have no inalienable right to those specific pieces of music. Nothing that people value is free nor will it ever be.
Copyright laws are nothing more than an extension of private property to a non-tangible product. To suggest that we need to overturn them because "200 million Americans can't be felons" is just ludicrous. You don't make theft legal simply because people are stealing.
A free economy has a way of evolving with new realities. The music industry has already changed. The future is written. Digital creation and distribution are here to stay. That the record companies have not bought into this reality does not make it less so, and we do not need to revolutionalize our legal structure to force them to play along. Either they will or they won't. We did not change our laws to force the horse and buggy industry to conform to the new automobile reality. The industry just went away. If the record labels don't conform themselves to the new realities, they too will go away. We do not need to radically change our legal copyright structure to do that.