OK then, maybe not that fluently but I tried!

…however, you state your position much more fluently than I do! Thanks for the input. Enjoying reBang, BTW.

I recognize a need to protect the rights of artists in general. When I call out the protections of tangibility, I’m really pointing to a disconnect between people like Doctorow and the music industry. He and the print industry can currently count on the “inherent rights management” that comes with an inability to physically and practically reproduce their content to ensure they get paid for their efforts. The music industry doesn’t have that buffer. So while I can call out the heavy-handed/underhanded activities of the music industry, I can also call out my personal experiences watching well-paid white collar workers eating up company bandwidth to download literally hundreds of songs and burn them to disk in place of buying the work (they didn’t even pay for the blank CD’s).

It’s not the technology; it the behavior. And it’s not one side imo, it’s both sides. Let’s not forget what happened when Stephen King trusted the masses – they turned on him. Let’s not forget small independent game studios who find more people playing their game online than they’ve actually sold. There is very much an atmosphere of an armored car crash – everyone wants a piece. And that’s a shame.

I’ve never supported the corporations in this. And I’ve never really worried about the artists for their sake (I agree that we have a few who could stand to come down a peg – along with athletes, actors, aso). My position is selfish: I want a functional market that rewards creativity so that I can enjoy an abundance of future creations. I’m worried that future may be threatened by both sides in this war.

On my site I once said I expect a short creative burst; and I believe we’ll see that. We’ll also see a market that which includes relatively new access to a back catalog of work, so it’ll seem as if everything is going just fine. But longer term I’m afraid that the current behavior of the massives – together with the entitlement attitude I see in the world – will take its toll and we may look back on these as the Golden Years. That would be a shame, considering that these should be just the beginning of a 21st Century Renaissance.