it's like some kind of cyber hangover

[seperis]

When I opened iTunes this morning, I was a little surprised to find myself flinching when I started going to the Store to stare hopefully at The Fray. I mean, I get precisely why this is bothering me, and where it's coming from, but it just hit me all at once that SOPA was partially funded by every song I legally buy, every movie I legally buy, every show I legally buy. It's one thing to in general know that this happens with all purchases, but it's also the fact that if I want this show/song/program legally, my only options is to pay people to hold me in contempt for my purchase and then use it to bribe politicians to take away my rights to use the product (and um, the entire internet).

I mean, yes, it's self-evident, don't get me wrong, but--there really isn't an alternative to the entertainment industry monopoly, is there? I can't buy anything that won't be paying for the giant legal stick to beat me with later. And when worse comes, terrifyingly, I will have funded it.

And my answer still stands.

If I had to choose between music and Wikipedia, music and the internet, music and the infinite breadth of human imagination and innovation that is pretty much what the internet is all about; that's not even a choice. That's what I would call breathing.

Okay, obviously, I have not had my recommended dose of watching things blow up. It may be a Die Hard night again.

Comments

[scrollgirl]

I wish we could burn your reaction, and the stories of every other consumer who feels this way, into the brains of everyone in the entertainment industry who thinks holding the consumer hostage is a GOOD business practice. Because, really, what every business wants is costumers that loathe them bitterly in the depths of their souls.

[seperis]

You've got to wonder what they're thinking on that. What weirds me out is the entire iTunes thing should be a case in point on the viability of cheap, easy access (and not having to buy an entire CD; I spend far more now on music than I ever did or would have dreamed than when it was exclusively on CD because I don't have to buy what I don't want). Heck, Netflix is a case in point, Amazon Prime is a case in point.

Working positive-to-customers for sale works; negative-to-customers simply doesn't.

[fyrdrakken]

I think it's one of those things where the lesson learned isn't the customer's POV -- it's something along the lines of, "Now musicians can sell directly to the customer, and we're not getting a cut of that." Probably with a side dose of, "But that's not FA-A-I-R, that they can buy digital music and have it on every computer or player they own and burn it to disk and share it with their friends and we can't charge them separately for all of those things!" Again, thinking that if they can roll back the clock and make digital music not exist (or at least not be so widely shared) that their profits will go back up because they want to assume that every download is a lost purchase. ETA: The comparison that keeps getting made is to the producers of TV and movies freaking out over VCRs because they thought people would just tape everything off the TV and not pay to see movies, and they didn't predict the rise of home video sales and DVDs. And that business with the writers' strike where the production companies were trying to keep from having to share the profits on DVDs and downloads. Slow to adapt to the new models of distribution and trying to keep as much of the money for themselves as they can. I made a comment in Friday's post about how I'm actually not surprised that it takes a sci-fi label like Baen Books to really figure out the benefits of e-books and be making such a point of doing things like offering up free titles to hook new readers and selling e-books for cheaper than paperback prices and not selling some of these titles as e-books on Amazon even though they're offered up in Kindle format as well as several others -- which is to say, they're used to thinking about the future and they're on top of the curve here.