

The Pirate Bay Verdict Won't Affect File Sharing - ALee
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345431,00.asp

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quoderat
No matter what the studios or the RIAA (et al.) like, file sharing is the
future. They will be forced to monetize it at some point, but it just ain't
gonna go away.

People have been more resistant to having their computers controlled by large
corporations than anyone suspected, I think. And thank the FSM for that.

------
jacoblyles
>"Regardless of the Pirate Bay verdict, the lesson here is clear: Don't try to
fight technological revolutions with clumsy, antiquated legal actions.
Harassing customers, threatening Web sites, and standing in the way of
progress are doomed to fail."

The author's argument comes down to "it won't work, because it won't work".

Like it or not, fining people and throwing them in jail does create some
incentives. I am not so confident _a priori_ that enforcement mechanisms are
doomed to fail. Then again, maybe I just need to replenish my kool-aid stock.

One thing is certain: if I were a passionate file-sharing advocate, I would
_check my premises_ about what events can and cannot happen.

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fireteller
The job of a distributer is by definition obsolete in the face of the
internet. Most intelligent people I've met agree that fighting the ability to
copy content has no future. Distributors may not be dead yet, but they are in
the ER hooked up to monitors, with lawyers running around trying to
defibrillate them with lawsuits.

For the most part they can't change either, because they are often under
contract to provide content to certain channels and certain times. They can't
just start offering a pay or advertising based torrent service. If they ever
had that chance I think the window has closed.

In terms of producing movies, music or other kinds of content, the only real
value that remains in the studio model is financing. That is, someone pays to
make your movie based on how excited you can make them in 10 minutes. With
distribution being replaced, there may yet be a business model in production
financing. Maybe "get enough people on facebook to like your script, and we'll
give you 60 million dollars to make it...." or "hey everyone vote up our spec
album"

Well I can dream can't I?

~~~
unalone
_In terms of producing movies, music or other kinds of content, the only real
value that remains in the studio model is financing. That is, someone pays to
make your movie based on how excited you can make them in 10 minutes. With
distribution being replaced, there may yet be a business model in production
financing. Maybe "get enough people on facebook to like your script, and we'll
give you 60 million dollars to make it...." or "hey everyone vote up our spec
album"_

That sounds more like a nightmare to me.

I've got a lot of friends who lack the ability to distribute themselves well.
Actually, it's almost all my friends. Most musicians I know aren't good at
publicity. In a scenario without effective distribution, the viral scene
favors not the best work, but the most easily digestible work. That means a
trend away towards complexity, which is _not_ necessarily a trend I'd want to
see.

Trent Reznor seems to be the flagship of this attitude of "a musician ought to
do everything himself and publicize himself to death." That's great for him to
say, but what about the people who can't do that as well as he can? I mean,
NiN isn't particularly a brilliant band; it's good, but there's a lot better
out there. Reznor is iconic not because he's the best but because he's the
most savvy. Again: not certain that's a good thing. Not every talented person
is good at promotion; we'd lose a lot of meaning for the sake of a lot of
fluff. Distributors aren't a perfect solution, but they at least act as a sort
of safegate. They do the work other people can't.

If I saw the opening 10 minutes of 2001 I wouldn't be excited. Ditto Blue
Velvet and every Lynch film, ditto most Coen brothers films, ditto pretty much
every movie I love that isn't made by Edgar Wright. You're asking people to
judge a book by its cover, and that's not exactly fair.

The crowd sucks. The crowd is stupid. Look at Shirky's recent article about
#amazonfail. Individuals become stupid when they become part of a mass. That's
why the best producers and distributors tend to work alone or in small groups:
because crowdsourcing doesn't work when it comes to finding good things. I
don't trust even my handpicked Facebook friends to like good things, so I
don't know why I'd trust the rest of the users on Facebook any more.

~~~
kragen
_In a scenario without effective distribution, the viral scene favors not the
best work, but the most easily digestible work._

Maybe. Do you suppose that's why there's so much more good music available now
than there was 20 years ago, before we built the internet, as the most
effective distribution mechanism in history?

The thing that I fear favors the most easily digestible work is the hair-
trigger social voting sites like Hacker News, Reddit, Digg, etc. But I think
those _depend on_ effective distribution, rather than being undercut by it.

 _Not every talented person is good at promotion;_

Yeah, and that's a big part of why so many of them get ripped off by music-
industry slime who _are_ good at promotion. I for one am happy to be in an
environment where fans can do the promotion these days.

