Tremendous post by Eddie A. Tejeda over at The Institute for the Future of the Book on the end of media industries.
The gist:
We will soon be in the midst of a culture whose tastes will not be dictated by media corporations. The giants are all shrinking. Their purse strings have been clipped by the new technologies that have put the power of production and distribution in almost every home.
From Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time Warner, via Siva Vaidhyanathan’s book “The Anarchist in the Library”, comes this corporate slur:
This is a very profound moment historically. This isn’t just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It’s an assault on everything that constitutes cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve out intellectual property system, the culture will atrophy. And the corporations wont be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: the country will end up in a sort of Cultural Dark Age.
Basically if we don’t keep the corporate grip of copyright on our artists our culture will wither away and creativity will disappear. You cannot eliminate art from culture. It is impossible, even in the worst of the times history is sprinkled with creativity.
I’m thinking this might be more like a Corporate Dark Age not a Cultural one.
The recent Gather.com, Border’s and Touchstone dance is a good example of the severity of the problem. When a Gather.com, a relatively new start-up social networking website for middle age people, can lead a Borders and a Simon & Schuster into these new ventures that have very little to do with their strengths you can bet there is trouble in river city.
It seems the major media players in each genre – publishing, music and broadcasting- have all lost their grip.
You can bet the crash will not be pretty but you can also be sure there will be lots of light at the end of this Dark Age.