The outlook is bleak and this debate worries me to no end. While it is, in the context of things, not such a radical breakdown in freedom as some make it out to be, this proposal to effectively illegalize independent analog-to-digital conversion is such an enormous encroachment into our daily lives that it seems almost parodic.
But it’s sadly very real.
Now, I admit that piracy is real. I think a lot of misguided people with good intentions have tried to make piracy seem like a boogeyman. It’s not a boogeyman. It is real and it is doing damage to the content-sales industry. So arguing about this is just silly and pointless.
The real point, which as far as I can see no one has made so far, is that there is no such as a right to be able to sell things. The list of basic human rights does not include (and we should be thankful for this) a right to make money on anything you do by changing laws to insure profit is possible. There is no inalienable right to profit.
And people call this capitalism — those same people who talk about the beauty of laissez faire economies. Let’s be clear: laissez faire capitalism doesn’t exist, can’t exist and probably shouldn’t exist. What we have is not that at all: what we have is a blatantly non-equilibrium form of capitalism in which the big players get bigger, the smaller players go out of business and the consumer gets shafted.
Now in the process of getting shafted, the overall wealth of the world may be going up. And that makes this a complicated issue. People, even in the lowest ranks, may be given more money and more capital.
What they are not necessarily getting, though, is more satisfying lives. They may have more money, but their ability to spend it may be more restricted. The bare minimum of capital found in an American house is higher than that in a house in southern Europe, which is in turn higher than that in Asia, which is in turn higher than that in Africa and South America. But having more laundry machines, televisions and telephones is not necessarily improving our lives. And even those utterly fascinated with technology, regardless of its contextual value, cannot argue that increasingly monopoly-like conditions in private industry will do anything to improve the quality or range of products in the world. Monopolies build ugly things badly.
It’s ironic: the essential complaints about the Soviet system of communism seem to be coming to fruition in America now — there is less individual liberty, a lower range of products one can choose from and increasingly a reign of fear is policing the people — who have spoken unanimously. They don’t consider piracy immoral. People don’t. They commit piracy without regret and without pause. Perhaps the idea that piracy is a problem is what should really be questioned.
Now, losing the big companies will be destructive for the film industry. I actually think it won’t be nearly that destructive for the music industry, though the industry will suddenly have to rethink itself and the general public will have to start rediscovering that lost art that only the underground seems to have maintained — the concert.
Being a musician, the fact is that you make your money touring. Selling CD’s, when signed to a major label, does not go well for you relative to the label. The label gets rich and you get little. You deal with that, though, because the label has the money and the clout to push your music.