The Butt Ugly Weblog

Concerned people are called fake

Dear representatives of the music industry. I assure that I am a real, voting citizen and not a spam bot. It's laughable to even suggest that the entire email flood to our legally elected members of parliament would be something else than real people, or orchestrated by a couple of web sites.

I mean... You're either malicious, or just stupid. Probably both. You're about to make a million Finns criminals, and you say that a few hundred emails must be nothing, and therefore it must be an organized campaign? I have some news for you: This is how the internet works: it is a network of loosely connected pieces, and when they spontaneously self-organize, they become a force to reckon with.

Dear readers: this is how lobbying works. You try to discredit the opponent, try to hint that they might be lying, and attempt to gain as much press as possible. The media loves simplifications, like saying that "the email campaign must have been 'machinated' by someone." Try to make the opponent a faceless and an anonymous threat. Or try to make things simple: on the other side, a starving artist; and on the other, a rich and evil computer company that is trying to just get the content free. In the other case, you talk about the lone consumer and the evil media corporation that is strangling the artists. Same shit, different names.

Laugh at them. They are a part of the old world order. In a few measly years, you will be in control. You, people who have grown with MP3 players and the freedom of internet. You understand. You know how things should be done. They will lose, and in doing so the artists will gain more than what they can imagine. Over hundred years ago people claimed that recordings will kill the music industry, because nobody would anymore order a musician to their house. The cassette player was also said to kill the music industry, because people were able to make copies. The VHS video cassette was to be the end of all movie industry, because it allowed unparalleled breaches of copyright.

Guess what? None of these things happened, and the industry (though not the artists) makes more money on recordings than they could ever hope to make from live performances. This is because things like CDs allow the artist to reach more people than they ever could before. The internet offers a similar change in technology: you just need to know how to embrace it. It's not going to go away, no matter how much you want it to. Those, who adapt to it the fastest, will be the biggest winners, and the rest will be dragged kicking and screaming to the modern age. It's not because technology companies want to get content free, but because they see a shared profit opportunity in helping more people get more entertainment.

Just remember, that in twenty years, you will be in places of power in the media companies and in the electronics industry, and I hope - I really, really hope - that you would remember these discussions then.

Because in twenty years, there will be another disruption, and you will be the people who want to stop the change, and protect the artists.