outbreak of common sense

the title for this post refers to one of my favourite tags on slashdot.

it happens from time to time - the sudden inspiration that rather than jumping through the intellectual hoops presented to one by folks who's intentions tend to be dubious, one should call things as they appear to be and go with that.

my favourite programming language, ruby does that via what's called 'duck typing' it makes a best case deduction and let's the programmer call the shots.

kid rock did that the other day when he was asked by Atlantic Records to make a presentation against file sharing:

Rock's tirade was apparently precipitated by a request from his record label, Warner Music Group's Atlantic Records, that he publicly denounce file sharing. His response: "Wait a second, you've been stealing from the artists for years. Now you want me to stand up for you?"


more musicians are taking that approach. while prince is trying to sue all of the intertubes (which is a suprisingly stupid move for an artist who just five years ago had embraced the freedom from the corporatocracy by selling his music to the web) artists like kid rock, nin, public enemy, and even courtney love have embraced the flattening of the playing field.

back in 2000 courtney love did the math and i present to you her most valuable insight:

Since I've basically been giving my music away for free under the old system, I'm not afraid of wireless, MP3 files or any of the other threats to my copyrights. Anything that makes my music more available to more people is great. MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don't care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do.

Record companies are terrified of anything that challenges their control of distribution. This is the business that insisted that CDs be sold in incredibly wasteful 6-by-12 inch long boxes just because no one thought you could change the bins in a record store.

Let's not call the major labels "labels." Let's call them by their real names: They are the distributors. They're the only distributors and they exist because of scarcity. Artists pay 95 percent of whatever we make to gatekeepers because we used to need gatekeepers to get our music heard. Because they have a system, and when they decide to spend enough money -- all of it recoupable, all of it owed by me -- they can occasionally shove things through this system, depending on a lot of arbitrary factors.

the internet has totally flattened the profit margins of any product that can be digitised. distribution of physical things has perhaps a twenty year margin before companies like fed ex and dhl go the way of all things just like the record labels did, and the movie studios are right now.

think i'm crazy? i have two words for you: 3-d printers.