Addicted to the Taste of Freedom

It’s too late for Hollywood and the record industry. Our generation has grown up with peer-to-peer (p2p) sharing. Also note that it’s called peer-to-peer sharing, and not peer-to-peer stealing. Whoever labeled this technology obviously was chalk full of good intentions; it’s like a neighbor being able to ask for a cup of sugar from anyone around the world. And artists who feel threatened or cheated by file sharing shouldn’t worry. If we like you, we’ll support you. It’s a great way of discerning actually talent from the artists who are force-fed to us by corporations.

Why download a song for 99 cents off of iTunes, when an esoteric artist on their MySpace page is offering their music for free? To some extent, when I buy songs off of iTunes I’m simply feeding into and paying for the ideology of that artist created by the record company. In other words, I’m really spending my buck so that I can share in popularity of the artist, or the semiotic messages constructed for him or her. It’s a confusing paradox that can simply be avoided by downloading from unsponsored musicians. And if you like their work, then wire them a twenty through Paypal, altogether skipping the corrupt middleman (the record industry).
Another reason people generally like the Internet is because the services it offers are usually free. Not only that, but production cost is also exceedingly low; for example, the emergence of sitcoms on YouTube. (For example, We Need Girlfriends) Nowadays, anyone can create their own “TV” show and subsequent fan base. Individuals are (on a small scale) able to challenge the massive media conglomerates of the twentieth century. The Internet has already proven itself as a potentially great equalizer.

So, while polices about how “free” the Internet should be are being debated in Congress, people are already becoming addicted to freedom. And it’ll be a lot harder to enforce restrictive policies on individuals who have become accustomed to life as is on the Internet.