p2pnet - rss feed: BPI leader Mike Batt and a Loaf of Bread
p2pnet news view Music | P2P:- As an example of the scintillating intelligence which keeps Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG locked into its dark and dank 1990s time vault, “If you could download a loaf of bread free you would,” said Big 4 British Phonographic Industry (BPI) deputy chairman Mike Batt (right), going on:
“But you can’t, thank God, because otherwise bakers would cease to exist and there would be no bread to download. Then we’d all be dead, and good riddance to us …”
And no less a publication than the Times Online saw fit to run this.
Admittedly, it was an editorial, but still …..
“I am so sick of the ’stealing’ analogies these corporate parasites keep coming up with,” says Reasonable Person in p2pnet comment post, going on »»»
If I was able to duplicate a car (or a loaf of bread in this case) and give it away to anyone that wanted one, which is the true equivalent of uploading a file, I happily would. Sound like science fiction to you? Only for the time being. Time changes everything, and while the recording industry may heartily wish this wasn’t so, it has proven especially true for technology. God bless science.
All great inventions started out as nothing more than a simple idea, often times a crazy sounding impossible idea. History shows us that with time and the right discoveries, all ideas have the potential to become reality. If Einstein and his ilk were correct, and there has never been any evidence showing they weren’t, human mastery of both energy and matter may not be all that far off.
Imagine being able to create pretty much anything, seemingly out of thin air. When that day comes a whole lot of people are going to be out of a job.
Is that bad?
Not when poverty becomes a thing of the past because of it. Despite our inherent laziness, humans will eventually be forced to focus on the betterment of themselves and society.
And guess what? Even when that day inevitably comes, artists will still be needed!
Culture will become just one of several of the most important cornerstones of human civilization. Artists will weave their craft out of a true passion for it, as well as for the betterment of the human race, not the almighty dollar. So you see, artists will continue to have the same importance to society just as they’ve always had. It is the middlemen whom there was never any need for and it is they, the true parasites that have been feeding off the hard work of others, who will die the quickest.
The ability to record something to a medium and distribute that medium for money has only been around for a very short time and it’s day is clearly coming to a close.
All good things must come to an end as the saying goes, and when future historians look back they will likely see the corporate recording industry exactly as it has been during the whole of the 20th century; completely and utterly insignificant, having contributed nothing of interest nor value to society, a minor historical footnote at best.
Hopefully it will be the artists and their creations that will be remembered and celebrated, exactly as they rightly should be, much as we do so now with the likes of Shakespeare, Mozart, Socrates and so many others.
Oh Yeh —- Batt also reckons we’re all “Greedy, thieving, conniving bastards”.
.
.Stumble It!
scintillating intelligence - ‘Greedy, thieving, conniving bastards’, August 1, 2008
Times Online - The true cost of free music downloading, August 1, 2008
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August 2nd, 2008 at 10:17 am
Bread analogy is comical as people have bread makers at home but bakers have not been put out of a job.
Thank god i do not have to pay a blanc media fee on flour!
Simple awncer is that music used to be a high profit industry it is now changing to a low to medium profit industry due to changes in technology. sooner this is accepted by investors the better.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:12 pm
The day is coming when no currency will be used. Everyone will live off the land and share it freely. Any material desire will be attained. These are not the ideals of govt or the majority however.
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Who am I?
TWO….FOUR….SIX……OOOOOO……OOOOONNNNNNEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!
*goes to make bread; thus depriving bakers of their income*
August 4th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Thank you for the Star Trek solution to the world’s problems.
August 5th, 2008 at 2:39 am
I know it sounds a bit far fetched to some. Yes, replicators from Star Trek were (partly) my inspiration, but only after all the reading I’ve done on particle physics this past month. I watched a fascinating Nova special on Einstein some weeks ago and it made me realize I had a huge gap in my scientific knowledge. Chemistry and physics were actually my best subjects in high school, so reading up on everything from relativity and E=MC² to nuclear and quantum physics were actually pretty easy to understand, as well as very fascinating. I highly recommended it if you have even a passing interest in the subject matter, or have always wondered if any of that techno babble you hear on TV and in movies actually means anything.
I really do believe that given enough time, mastery of both energy and matter is our destiny. There are also a number of other things that may sound like science fiction to most folks, especially those whom haven’t taken the time to do some reading for themselves, which I believe will come to pass as well. The theories are sound, the initial groundwork is there in most cases, it is all just waiting for us to take them to their ultimate conclusion. Just look at everything around you. Seriously, look right now. Every scientific discovery and the technologies which arose from them all started as nothing more than an theory. Dreaming up ideas and turning the seemingly impossible into reality is truly a gift we humans are lucky to have, provided we can muster the wisdom to survive the novelty of our new inventions that is.
My belief is that there are a limitless number of great discoveries just waiting to be made, some being milestones that are true tests of whether a race of intelligent beings will be allowed continued existence. The splitting of the atom was one such test for example, and there will inevitably be others. Fusion might be one. Artificial intelligence will certainly be another. Complete mastery of matter and energy will be the ultimate milestone of course, as well as mastery of genetics. In all likelihood there will be some milestones we may not even be able to dream of at present because the human race and it’s level of knowledge simply hasn’t progressed far enough yet, discoveries that require completely new ways of thinking.
In all honesty, I don’t think it is at all unreasonable to assume that the human race won’t do away with poverty some day. A great many organizations and ideals will be rendered obsolete practically overnight, and this too will be a test for us. Idle hands really are the devils playground after all, and given that our scientific knowledge always seems to progress faster than society can keep up with it isn’t hard to imagine that an end to poverty might actually result in something of a dark age for mankind. At least until experience and the wisdom which flows from that allows us to adapt and change our way of thinking. Like I said before, when those days come art/culture will still be important, possibly more important than ever if I’m right.
So scoff if you want. History is full of great thinkers that were laughed at, or worse were prosecuted as heretics for their sometimes radical (often correct) ideas. But as an intelligent, free thinking and hopefully rational being, I know one truth above all else without any shadow of a doubt; as a race we can let ourselves fall backwards and relive all the mistakes of our ancestors, sit completely still and stagnate, or move forward and evolve. The choice is ours. Which would you all prefer?
September 24th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Reasonable Person clearly has a high opinion of itself (neuter) - [the assumption that others are not reasonable being implied] but what does he or she do for a living? If that “living” could be substituted in my “bread” analogy, would he, she or it be happy? I share it’s ideal that poverty could and should be wiped out. Of course he/she/it would upload a Volkswagen to everyone if it/they could but what if their own son worked at the Volkswagen plant and would therefore be penniless? I share John Lennon’s ideal that “All you Need Is Love” but he didn’t only have love, did he? He had all the money he wanted and all the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll you could handle. What did he do? He sat in a bag with his lover in a posh hotel and talked about tolerance while people fought, died and starved.
The world, - poverty, war, religious fascism, are all realities.
My points are valid points made in the course of a particular time of change in the art/culture/commerciality rules. Does Damien Hurst count as an artist or an industrialist? Was Reasonable Person knocking at my door with a loaf of bread when I was -on three occasions - down and nearly out, selling my only amplifier to buy groceries? (Not so long ago). Until I know what Reasonable Person does for a living I will consider he/she/it to be “idle hands” (with time to read! - oh the luxury of that!) - and therefore in it’s own words, “the devil’s playground” (forgiving the quoted analogy of “hands” as a “playground”). I’m bored now, so I’ll stop.
Love to anyone who wants it.
Mike Batt