RE: [xml-dev] Principles for an Ethical and Sustainable Internet -XML

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

On Tue, 2012-08-28 at 10:13 -0500, Len Bullard wrote:
> Bogus.
> 
> People steal because there are no consequences.

Stealing is the act of taking something away from someone else.

If I copy music I do not take away the original: it is not the music
that is stolen but the distributor's opportunity to charge me for it.
But in fact if it's made possible there's no reason to suppose I won't
pay for it in some other way.

Len, your arguments were made when radio came along, that it would end
concerts and music and there would be no more musicians, and it was as
short-sighted then as it is now.

Where this becomes relevant to XML is that we need to provide ways of
enabling people to pay, ways to embed suitable metadata and to make it
easy, ways for people to know "there's a concert in your town next month
where The Dog Turds will be playing, and you listen to them so much that
the integrated circuits in your iPod have started to smell bad"

I don't think I believe the vague intimations of conspiracy. There are
more people making music now than ever before - just fewer sales through
the large distributors.

The real enemies as I see it _are_ the distributors, tightening their
stranglehold on distribution to try and prevent people from being
exposed to music that they don't control. Taking down independent
musicians from youtube. Striking deals with mobile ISPs to promote their
music and make it hard or impossible to get to other outlets. Just as
the mainstream media in the US no longer shows the Occupy movement.

Another question for the Web and XML crowd - what happens when facebook,
google plus, blog sites, are the only way to enter content unless you
work at a large company with a Web Broadcast Licence? Don't laugh - it
happened to radio, it happened to television, and it'll happen to the
Web.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml