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

[fyrdrakken]

First off, happy birthday!

Second, the music industry has already gone through the initial stage of the process that publishing is entering now with the rise of the e-book: Thanks to social networking getting the word out and the ease and inexpense of sharing digital media and the way recording an album's worth of MP3s is now within the reach of a musician working outside the studio system, you get people who are making a working career out of being indie musicians. They're not filling entire stadiums on tour or making the megabucks -- but they're making enough money to make a living doing what they want to be doing, and we can buy their stuff and know the bulk of what we buy is going to them directly instead of them getting a few cents on every CD while the bulk goes to some soulless corporation. Self-published e-books are making the same thing available to authors now, and indie movie producers have been around for a while (though it's just so damned hard to come up with the funding to produce a film, which is why Kickstarter has been so fabulous along the lines of helping people fund weird exciting projects).

I agree with the other commenters regarding going to sites that help promote non-label musicians and seeing what you can turn up -- and for that matter, browsing around on Kickstarter looking for something you'd like to help fund. (I haven't actually done anything on Kickstarter, but I gather the structure is the project has a set amount of time to raise the total amount and the donors only actually get tapped for the money if enough people pledge to cover the full amount. And yes, you get something for being a donor.) Or, yeah, I've been doing a lot of browsing around on Amazon looking at crappy self-published genre fic because I've been having some guilty-pleasure urges that I couldn't find in fanfic and I'm comfortable with dropping a couple of bucks on something that's at about the same literary quality but is going to be hitting the buttons I feel like hitting this week. (I should do some more buying from the people self-publishing who I know from fanfic are actually good writers.)

[seperis]

Thanks!

I forgot about Kickstart! Thank you!

Or, yeah, I've been doing a lot of browsing around on Amazon looking at crappy self-published genre fic because I've been having some guilty-pleasure urges that I couldn't find in fanfic and I'm comfortable with dropping a couple of bucks on something that's at about the same literary quality but is going to be hitting the buttons I feel like hitting this week. (I should do some more buying from the people self-publishing who I know from fanfic are actually good writers.)

If you run across ones you like, rec them in your journal! I'd be interested to see what you found.

[fyrdrakken]

Heroine Addiction I think I've probably recced in my journal before -- that being apocalypsos (formerly Trollprincess in case you ran across anything of hers under that name).

And I've read one of Moira Rogers' books, and have several more wishlisted for the next time I'm in the mood for werewolf porn. (Which, you know, speaking of genres I sometimes get in the mood for and have a hard time finding in fanfic, since I'm not in the right fandoms. Though I'm delighted at how many Sherlock/John werewolf stories are actually out there.)