Comment by otakucode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by otakucode | Hacker News Reader

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I've always found it interesting that part of the issue gets ignored. Those people who are running around online downloading and uploading? They're beating the copyright holders at their job. The primary purpose for existence of publishers for centuries was to master the problem of distribution. Now, any clever 12 year old can run circles around these huge organizations in their spare time for fun. It's like if tomorrow kids became able to slap together Lambourghinis in their backyard. Except if 90% of our economy was based on producing Lambourghinis. Because distribution was the problem that drove the global economy. It was the reason why factories won out over village craftsmen. It's the reason we live in cities. It's the reason we educate our kids the way we do, why we structure companies the way we do, etc. Solving the problem of distribution was basically what our economy existed for for a century. And now... it's literally child's play.

This is quite a bit larger than copyright, but obviously media is the first place where it became very obvious that distribution is no longer a worthwhile problem to solve as it has been commoditized by computers and the Internet.

So how do we bring back money to production of media then, ensuring that the people who spend time producing it can afford a decent standard of living?

Prior to YouTubes efforts to destroy it, the model they were using is a great one (although there are substantial problems with its implementation). Patreon is emerging as a great way to support creators. People are more than willing to pay for the creation of media and that has not changed. What has changed is that there is no reason to enrich the people who distribute the media. Distribution was a Big Deal. It was the primary driver of the entire global economy for a century. Every big company fundamentally solved the problem of distribution. Sometimes they did other things, but it was all ancillary to distribution. Now, distribution is a solved problem. It's a commodity. Anyone can do it, and because newcomers don't have the burden of overhead and infrastructure and entrenched contractual entanglements that the old guard have hanging around their necks like a noose, newcomers can run circles around those giant companies. And if they had the integrity to stick to their claimed love of the market they held for so long, their companies would shrink dramatically.

The Internet makes it possible for creators to have a decent standard of living. A tremendous number of them can have that decent standard of living. As opposed to a handful of owners of distribution companies living in opulence. An entirely capitalist redistribution of wealth on a large scale. That is viscerally disgusting to many who see those very large companies as the pillars holding our society aloft. To them it looks like rats chewing through the pillars.

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