The Cultural Right Argument: A Rant.

I like Stephen Fry. He's a homosexual. He's a podcaster. They say he's a legend now. That makes sense, Jeeves should be a legend. His podcast is actually a bona fide killer. I was listening to the one he did at the Itunes Live Festival and he just shat on the music industry. It was surprising, delicious, free and informative as hell. It got me thinking and I think he's right. Copyright is there to protect the artist from diddling licentious types abusing and profiting off something he made. It's not there to keep us from culture, and call me dinky and new age and naive, but I think, and to a certain extent I think Fry thinks, culture is a right in this day and age. The internet has made that possible, and therefore, if it can't be stopped, then more power to us. That is what I, and assuredly you, use it for: culture. That and porn.

But here comes His Master’s Voice, saying that we've got a problem. Here comes the 80s billboards on an anti-cassette brain-melter of a crusade, big bold ugly slogans like 'Taping is Killing Live Music'. And now, post-Napster in the post-Google era, the inception of the torrent era, copyrights are raining cats and dogs and The Man (it's a little retro, but it's an appropriate moniker) has us believing we are ruining everything, that we are Sodom and Gomorrah and that yes, that crack in the sky is the DRM Armageddon, not global warming. The Man comes and let's us know that even Pacifist Swedish Pirates Get What's Coming to Them. It's sad really. And futile, to a certain extent. The internet, which Fry tells us is partly an English brainchild, is unstoppable. And I like to believe that's true. I don't know if it is, but nothing is pointing to the opposite. Mininova went legit and The Pirate Bay went on trial, so did Oink. Do you remember Oink? How could you NOT remember Oink? That's rhetorical. Oink was awesome. And you know what? If you were on the ins and proactive you replaced Oink with one of many worthwhile alternatives that popped up in its place. And those two others? They got replaced with Kickasstorrents.com and the likes. Things were, are, OK for us bittorrenters, even after some people got taken down. And things will continue to be OK. That crack in the sky is not because of you. We both know that new Flaming Lips album has got your name on it. We both know you can't afford it. And we both know you already got it, cause you can.

The question is, of course, are some people up top making less scratch because of your right? Yes. People who were making billions of dollars are now making fewer billions of dollars. This is in great part because of the people pirating and reselling--i.e. people who the word 'pirate' actually fits, aka the diddlers--but also partly, to a smaller extent, because of you and me. But the fact is, and the Wikipedia has told me so, your mentioned right has also evened the playing field. Let me give you an example of examples we can all relate to. Think of Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Beirut, Antony and the Jonsons, M. Ward, Black Mountain, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, Iron and Wine, TV on the Radio, The Black Keys, Black Kids, Broken Social Scenes and 90% of the bands reviewed by Pitckfork Media: how many of those bands would you have attended a show of if you hadn't been able to illegally download their album first? How many of those bands can now, actually, live off of their music? Both numbers are surprisingly high. Now how many of those artists could live off their music before torrent days? They've profited from our new found right, because our right, as billions-chopping as it may be, has encouraged awareness and the dessemination of prosperity of smaller artist's and their work. And sure, the people we hear on the radio, aren't making as much dough. They are driving E-Class Mercedeses instead of S-Class ones and that pisses them off. But what are we supposed to do? Are we suppose to buy into those UK TV adds that say "You wouldn't steal a handbag, would you?" Are we suppose to buy shit cause someone tells us it's chicken? I, personally, know shit when I hear, smell or see it, and I can barely afford chicken, let alone shit. And I agree with the legend, Fry, when he says the handbag argument is fucking stupid. I also agree with him when he says that people in his industry, the Arts & Entertainment industry, make much more money than they should. I know what I'm doing is not entirely on the level, but I'm fine with that. I also know I'm not a hardened criminal cause I don't buy every record I own. I'm just poor.

The internet and torrent technology have made poverty nowadays, in the western broadband world, not that bad. I can be poor and, with a truly affordable high-speed high capacity internet connection, have access to an unprecedented amount of artistic culture. I can live on less than 300$ a week and have a completer musical culture than the queen of England. And to a certain extent, I think that the people who control the culture that's been engineered to be sold, period, are kind of freaking out cause now we've got access to all these smaller ports of authority, instead of just the big smelly one, and we don't need to buy our hot dogs at their crap-stand anymore. And when the people don't need to afford cultural enlightenment, when the people are no longer ignoring the different, smaller and often better artists, then they don't need to be bankers and middle-management, and they may, in our generation, stay at home and write, like me, all whilst downloading the lastest Atlas Shound EP. Most probably they won't, stay at home (money buys many things), but they will download. And then who's gonna be able to afford the new Coldplay album? They know I won't. A lot of those other people won't either. You won't. And this puts the music and movie industry into an eventual shit-storm. It puts them in a place where they may have to start making good stuff, instead of trying to turn shit into money. And if that's my doing, our doing, then I'm OK with that.

Fry might of gotten a lot of shit for the things he said in that podcast. But then again times are slightly changing. They have been for a while now. It was reported by The Los Angeles Times that by 2009 half the recording studios in the city had failed, shutdown, in great part due to the fact that people are recording high quality music in their bedrooms at home and no longer need them, i.e. were choosing NOT to go into the studio. And with people like fry, we've got literate people taking down The Man, dowloadable directly from the Itunes Store. Apple has announced the decision to remove the DRM software from their Itunes store downloads. They know that if Fry, a very popular podcaster, wants to shit on the industry, then there's nothing they can do that would not fuck with their business. It's what the consumer wants, and the industry has to understand, and may, in fact, be starting to, that with the internet, for once, the consumer is king. The consumer is not dead, as some would have us believe: he still goes to shows, to clubs, to the record store, on occasion. The consumer still needs to get laid, still makes less money then they do. The consumer is just, for once, king. There's a reason they call it a 'revolution'. It's a learning curb, but a good one. Now enjoy the kitten with the frog hat. It's your right.