The BoingBoing Effect
I wrote a post for Idolator this week about "the BoingBoing effect." It attracted some attention and caused a bit of a kerfuffle[1], but the post didn't really get across the theory so well, so let me take to this wonderful place of no word limits and indulgent readers to try and hash it out a little better.First off, I like BoingBoing. It's a great place to kill time, because they're very good at what they (mainly) do, which is finding "wonderful things."[2] But I've seen this happen to people. They already have tastes and opinions that are somewhat similar to BB's. (So do I, for that matter.) They start reading BB, and because it aligns so strongly with their tastes--and because it's updated so frequently--it becomes one of their primary internet sources. Once your primary filter of information becomes a group of people who mainly agree on things, you start to pick up on what they think. Now, again, these people (and, again, me for that matter) already have somewhat similar opinions to those of BB's writers, particularly the main writers, Cory Doctorow[3] and Xeni Jardin, so it's not like the site is magically inculcating a worldview in people who have no exposure to it otherwise. But when you mainly get the world through people who share your filter, it strengthens and hardens. Heavy BB readers become much more sure of their anti-copyright opinions and think they are much more important. And they become much less tolerant of opposing opinions, because so is BB.
(I want to make clear here that I'm not exempting myself from this phenomenon. I have most certainly had my nascent opinions confirmed, strengthened, and made shrill by my reading habits in the past, whether it be my opinions about music, or politics, or...I dunno, TV? This just hasn't happened with me and BB, for reasons that will be clear shortly.)
This is a somewhat different phenomenon than we've become familiar with on the internet in general. People like Cass Sunstein talk about the problem the internet being so filtered that you can go just to the sites that agree with you for news. This is something slightly different. People don't go to BB to have their opinions about copyright confirmed. Most likely, they go because someone's sent them a link about a robot made of Legos that eats cheese or something. People aren't going to BB, or sites like it, for a filtered set of opinions, but a filtered set of tastes. And that kind of filtering is absolutely crucial to the internet. But when a taste-filtering site gains enough authority and cohesion for its overall message to seem convincing to its readers, it can become the other kind of site. I'd argue this happened with a lot of the liberal politics blogs. I used to be able to read Daily Kos, for instance, because it was a good source of news that I might not find otherwise, especially during the first term of the current administration. And their takes on these stories seemed somewhat reasonable and obvious. But over time, as they gathered together a certain argument about politics, everything they posted tended to be interpreted through that particular filter. And this itself acted as a sorting device: it drove out people like me, who had different opinions, but it drew in more extreme people, who liked (as Sunstein has warned of) seeing their opinion confirmed. And by banding these people together, and giving them comment boxes and diaries to write to each other in, it made them feel not only that their opinions were right, but that their opinions were important.
And that's really the problem with all this. You will get absolutely no argument from me that the DMCA is a horrible piece of policy and bad law, and I've studied it enough (I actually read the damn thing) to tell you why and how. I absolutely think it should be overturned. But you know what? I also think there are way more pressing problems, and when copyfighters like BB couch their arguments in the apocalyptic terms that a self-selected ideologically focused userbase breeds, it makes them seem ridiculous, and it makes the whole argument less effective. The DMCA and associated rulings and laws are bad because a) they contradict existing copyright law, b) they have no relation to the realities of technology as they currently exist, and c) they stop people from doing stuff that there's no reason for them not to be doing. Those are three fantastic reasons to overturn a law. But BB--like a lot of monomaniacal (holla!) sites--have taken their legitimate arguments and turned it into an all-encompassing worldview. Somehow this is all tied up with "corporate culture" and people making art and all like that. None of which most people care about. People barely care about copyright issues in the first place; bringing up street artists and fucking Burning Man only makes the issue seem less relevant. Nerds (again, which includes me) have a real problem with thinking that they, and people who think like them, are right about everything, and everyone else is wrong. The reality of BB is that nerds are an interest group like any other interest group, and their interests are probably less important to the health of our democracy right now than a long list of other policy issues. That may seem unjust somehow, but it's simply a reality that you have to accept. That's not to say that they shouldn't keep working to overturn the DMCA or bringing to light the many negative consequences of the law. But you have to stop painting this as somehow a failure of American society and culture. It's not. It's just that no one cares, and rightfully so. We're going to work on the economy and health care first, if that's all right with you guys. Talk to us in six years.
And then, of course, there is their stance on the music business.
As happens a lot with my writing, when I criticize something, this tends to get taken as an endorsement of what the people I'm criticizing see as the opposite side. (Criticize liberal bloggers, for instance, and it's assumed you're either a Republican or a Clintonian shill.) So when I ragged on copyfighters, this was seen by certain commenters as an endorsement of the major labels and the RIAA and so forth and so on. This has happened a few times now, and well, I'm kinda sick of it. I do have a take on the whole end-of-the-music-biz issue, but it's too complex to fit in most posts. Here, though, I can go nuts. So if you'll indulge me.
The bottom line of all this is that everyone is going to have to accept that things are going to get a little worse. Everyone--the music biz, music listeners, and musicians. The music biz is going to have to accept, just as the copyfighters say, that their practices are driving away consumers. They are also going to have to accept--and this may be the real problem--that the glamorous good times of the music biz are at an end, maybe forever. No more parties in sex clubs. No more expensing cocaine. No more being a "cool" marketing executive. The industry is going to have to become a lot more financially efficient. This is, of course, already the case for the workers in the trenches, who are doubling up on duties and getting laid off and receiving no raises for years on end. The people that are going to have to accept this, unfortunately, are the executives. And they have no real reason to except the survival of their business. Compared to free cocaine, keeping your company profitable seems less important.
Bands have probably made the adjustment already. Sure, they get rockstar perks if they can, but the fact that there are so many songs about acting like a rockstar means that most people aren't living like rockstars anymore. Bands know what's up, and while they don't like it, they've largely learned to live with it. They've cut costs, become more efficient, and downgraded their expectations. They've had to in order to survive.
Listeners, though, need to make an adjustment too. They have to--have to--accept that they can't not pay for music and expect it to still be around, at least not in the same form. We have to remember that the current situation has only arisen in the last few years. That means that there's still funding out there, that bands are still hoping things will blow over. But if the music biz continues to be unprofitable, then companies simply won't be able to get funding or credit anymore, which means they won't be able to pay for the things necessary to distribute even free music, like mastering, server space, bandwidth, and so forth. And while bands never expect to make a living making music, if it becomes clear that making music is becoming a hobby--something you put lots of your own money into without any hope of return--then a lot fewer people are going to be able to make music at all. Just like with the music biz, it's not in the self-interest of individual listeners to accept this. Indeed, it's a fantastic example of the tragedy of the commons. Which means, duh, that government's going to have to step in and do something about it. The DMCA isn't working because it's unreasonable. So someone will have to convince them and help them to craft a common-sense solution that fucks over everyone a little so the whole thing can keep rolling. And the shrill BB ideologues aren't helping with that.[4]
The people in this debate need to recognize that the people in the middle, ultimately, are the bands. People in bands want to make money from music, but they also want to get music for free, because they like music and are broke. Musicians are the ones actively navigating this landscape every day. The other two sides are pulling from opposite sides of the spectrum, and that makes them extremists. Yes, record companies use over-the-top language, unfairly recruit the government for their side, and are clinging desperately to something that's slipping away from their grasp. But copyfighters are also using over-the-top language, recruit the masses of self-interested listeners for their side, and are clinging desperately to something that I think they know, in their heart of hearts, fundamentally isn't sustainable.
BoingBoing's music coverage consists almost entirely of articles about how musicians that are giving their music away for free are still successful. What they don't cover are the many musicians who give their music away for free that aren't successful, or how much less money musicians that give their music away for free are making than they would have otherwise, which seems a little unfair given that they were the ones who put in the labor to make the product in the first place, not to get all Marxist or anything. The idea is constantly brought up that you don't need money to make music anymore, that it's not costing anyone anything, and so why shouldn't it be free? To which I say: bullshit.
I suspect that the people promoting this idea are mainly writers, since writers are one of the few groups who can make art without any up-front money.[5] But almost every other artistic genre requires money to do, from a little to a lot. Visual art is fundamentally impossible without money, since you have to buy materials. Movies are impossible without money, at least if you want to make a good movie and have lighting and sets and like that. Classical music and opera are certainly impossible without money, at least if you want to actually perform them. And dancers need costumes!
The key caveat here is "if you want to make a good" whatever. It is possible to make music totally for free (assuming you are middle-class and have a computer already). But it's very limiting in terms of what you're going to do. Maybe one of the key problems with music no longer coming to listeners as a physical object is that they tend to think the production of the music involved no physical objects either. But most music does, at least if it's going to be good, and physical objects, regrettably, cost a lot. Sure, Girl Talk's music can be made with nothing but a laptop. But do we really want all our music to sound like Girl Talk?
Look, as I hope I've made clear here, record companies are odious, odious things, and I've worked for them; I've had enough friends summarily fired by major labels to not have a particularly bright view of them, either. But one of the harsh realities of art is that bad people and things can create great art as well as good people and things. This applies to major labels as surely as it does to alcoholics. Major labels, for all their flaws, are very good at giving artists money to make art (even if they're bad at giving artists money they are owed after they make the art). The vast majority of great pop music was made under the auspices of major labels, and that's not an accident. Money is necessary for music to sound good. Artistic visions should not have to be cheap to be realized. We would be much poorer off as a culture if that were the case.
So what are we going to do about all this? Nothing, I suspect. Everything will implode in a few years, and everyone will freak out and finally come to a solution. It would be better for everyone if that didn't happen, because it's going to make pop music a much different beast than it is now. But hey, what can you do? In the meantime, there are always pictures of inflatable yetis.
[1] Ending, as these things always do, with me telling someone they look like a douchebag.
[2] I don't get the whole pro-Disney obsession, especially given their stance on corporate culture otherwise--it seems really contradictory, but whatever.
[3] If your first exposure to the site is through this post, this might seem slightly off, since Doctorow no longer contributes too much content. But he was, and is, a guiding force. Check out the archives for 2006 and before if you're curious.
[4] I mean, for fuck's sake, this is industry regulation at this point. It's like mining policy. Who cares if you're not a miner?
[5] Aside from the money it takes to feed and house them while they're writing, but that doesn't count, I guess.
Labels: boingboing, pop, the biz
posted by Mike B. @ 8:47 PM
13 Comments:
Great piece, Mike. I'd like to point out another important aspect of the like-minded/echo-chamber/feedback-loop communities that the internet fosters, with regard to music... With such an excess of (mostly free) music available at almost any time, any place, users no longer EVER have to listen to anything that isn't immediately pleasurable. They never again have let something "grow" on them, or to be "challenged" by a piece of music. If it's not something they like on their first listen, it gets skipped and never returned to. Why bother? You didn't have to pay for it, and something else, something "easier" to like, will come along in a second.
Used to be, if you dropped 10 or 15 bucks on an album, even if you didn't like it at first, you were compelled to at least TRY. When I think about how many albums in my life I HATED on the first few listens, but eventually came to be some of my favorites of all time, this breaks my heart. Because what does this all mean? It means music/listeners are now ever gravitating toward some bland, uninspired 'middle-ground'-- a place where only the easiest, safest qualities get amplified, and all the interesting, challenging, and 'different' qualities get buried. It's like with obsessive dog breeders, interbreeding for generations and generations for specific qualities, until ultimately, you end up with genetically obscene creatures who can't close their jaws, or who can't see because their eyes are covered by "cute" skin folds....
I posit that we're actually well on our way to reaching this unfortunate bland music future , if bands like _______ , _________ , and ______ are any indication.
(I realize this is a tangent, but your opening paragraphs just really reminded me about this particular tirade, which I oft bellyache about to my friends.)
True, though I have to say, there are a decent number of albums where I've downloaded them because they sounded vaguely interesting, didn't like them at first, but left them on my hard drive because I'm lazy. Then a few months later or whatever, it came up on shuffle and I realized I really liked it. I guess this is ultimately the same principle though--it's not like I actually listened to it a bunch of times, it just happened to hit me the right way when it came up on shuffle.
fantastic post! Thought provoking. I'd never heard of BoingBoing until your post on Idolator the other day.
As a musician who is about to lose his major label job, I find this very exciting and interesting. Working at a major label, I am increasingly frustrated in seeing the reluctance to accept that free music is reality, for years, and even after accepting it, the reluctance to really work with it. Also, literally thousands of dollars worth of resources being thrown out by the dumpsterload on a weekly basis, for years. Records being pushed for which there is no demand. Surely there is a better way.
Lots of people are losing their jobs. I'm one of them. It's not the greatest thing, but I look forward to it. An opportunity to change! My life and work, struggling, finding a new place, all will inform not only my music, but the ways I present it to the world.
I hope to see more artists, established and otherwise, trying new things out. I believe there is something there in the NIN "The Slip" model. Creating a demand and then supplying for it. As opposed to assuming a demand and then having a bunch of garbage no one wants. Combine this with the Skeletal Lamping "give the peopels something besides a CD in a jewel case" model and I think you'd be on to somethign (for the record I won't be buying either of those albums, I downloaded them and they didnt appeal to me.) These things cost money, of course. But could be done on a small scale, if thats what the demand is.
I know I am an idealist. I feel like we all need to take a step or two back and examine why music is made in the first place, and realize that as an art, if it's worthwhile, it's going to get made regardless of copyright/money concerns. I have spent thousands of dollars on my art and will continue to do so, regardless if anyone ever hears what I do. I enjoy expressing myself that way. Thats why I make music, and I hope most of my favorite artists think similarly. It seems fairly simple to me. You want to make music, you find a way. If you want people to hear it, you have to accept that most people are just taking it for free these days.
As a listener/lover of all music, it's up to me to seek new music out, and to give everything I hear a fair shot. My personal method is to download everything I can, and listen to as much as I can, as often as I can. When/if something grabs me, I will go see the artist live, and spring for vinyl, not becasue I'm some purist, but because I love records. If I'm going to pay for something, it's the experience of seeing an artist I love, or an object that I am forced to USE. unlike a CD that will collect dust after I rip it, if that, since I already copped the mp3's months ago.
For better or worse, this all just means that music is changing. I wonder why it seems to scare so many people. There's plenty of music out there that doesnt sound like Girl Talk. It's almost all pretty easy to download for free. Thats a great thing to me. I can sort out what I really want to buy before I buy it.
Sorry to go on, just offering my thoughts.. I'm well aware that most people feel differently. Thanks again for the thoughtful post.
Good analysis as always, but one reason I've been getting lukewarmer toward my own big thinkpieces these days is that I get more and more dissatisfied with shooting fish in a barrel. Certainly the mindset/worldview you're describing is extremely prevalent -- but I have a hard time taking in this argument and reacting with anything other than, well, some people are pretty stupid, aren't they.
I think I've done some good work in actually understanding a small (and really bizarre and worth studying) niche space of the music biz (Disney) in ways that *does* reveal "ways out" that don't sound very appealing to most anti-corporate music nerds, myself included. But their business model, at the non-Hannah/Jonas level, honestly allows for something like the competition you see in the airline industry -- you've passed such a huge hurdle for entry (marketing) that the possibility for variation actually *increases*, a direct refutation of homogenization arguments. That so much Disney product effing sucks admittedly does not help my cause here, but the exceptions *are* the rule. Aside from maybe the Christian pop bubble and maybe a few indie label models, I know of no other major label-esque space (in the US, anyway; Scandinavia proves me wrong on a pretty regular basis) that can produce so much strange, rewarding music.
That way out is, in a word, a sort of niche patron system, in which the parent company's main job isn't music. Music *is* cheap, when you already have a media monopoly, or aren't primarily interested in it (e.g. those Nike-commissioned mixes). It's not cheap if you're trying to do everything yourself. And music marketing (like film marketing) is as or (more commonly) more expensive than music production; the people who think they're not being reached by (even minor-scale) marketing and PR efforts are delusional, and the more people you want to reach, the more you have to shell out to reach out.
Dave, I've had these ideas floating around in my head for a while, and yeah, I figured it was a fish-in-a-barrel situation too. Writing for Idolator again and get exposed to the sheer volume and, well, volume of these arguments online sorta demands a response. I think these people aren't stupid--they're rationally following their self-interest, in all honesty, and the only non-governmental way to combat tragedy of the commons problems is to convince people about the collective ills that will result from everyone acting in their rational self-interest. I also think it poses a real problem for music and discussions about music, because outside music-crit circles, this sorta thing is what passes for discussing music these days.
Anyway, focusing on a narrow subject is probably also a consequence of being in grad school, no?
This is an interesting argument and I really appreciate this discussion, but I really think it would be bolstered with some examples of the "shrill" ideological language used on the site. My impression of Boing Boing has always been that they champion creative solutions to problems (and/or fun non problems), and cringe at government intrusion. There are many political posts on the website everyday that are hardly hidden behind the "cool stuff." Doctorow and the site have been a champion of CC licenses (which again are a partial solution to overly restrictive copyright laws, a workaround that doesn't require the use of legislation or the courts). They also post on these unusual music-selling schemes primarily as a creative approach to an increasing problem or on how young people would prefer to buy music, if in the proper format.1
Maybe I’m missing something but where is the over-the-top language? Is posting about a pay-what you wish album really claiming this is the answer to all our problems or more equivalent to the vintage tube potato gun (as per your original post)? As I see it, the "over-the-top language" in one case is firmly entrenched law that is enforced through the courts, the other is little more than blog postings acknowledging problems and seeking any way past these annoyances that can hamper creativity, and which create an environment where the common activities of young tech-savvy kids are treated as criminal. That has major ramifications, and I hardly see the equivalencies here.
I completely agree that the Internet is a fantastic beast representing a large swath of interests. If people want to write up legal documents expressly detailing the terms their creative works--whatever their merits--can be shared, reused and remixed, how is that a worthy topic of scorn (which was very prevalent in the original Idolater post and still lingers here)? By bringing those ideas into law, promoting such licenses and encouraging their adoption, and encouraging political change through all avenues (legislative, judicial, and diy) you instill in these young, tech-savvy people a respect for law--and a law that respects its citizens. That is a real and important change that America needs.
Thanks for expounding on your original post so quickly.
1 See specifically this post: http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/17/survey-1424-year-old.html, which says explicitly “Any aggregate lack of morality in not paying at all [for digital albums] is made up of many microscopic decisions based upon convenience and thriftiness over ethics. In other words, asked to make one choice about whether you are willing to do the right thing and pay $10 a month to get all the DRM-free music you can swallow while rewarding the artists for their work, most people will say yes, even if they do a lot of torrenting. Those who won't could never be convinced to pay at any price.
And that last group of people are the ones the record industry really should be prosecuting, as opposed to the incidental pirates who are subject of most of the RIAA's lawsuits... the guys who love the music and are willing to pay for it but reject the way it is being delivered. A DRM-free, unlimited subscription service at a reasonable price would separate the wheat from the chaff. It would end the persecution of technologically savvy music-lovers who have simply evolved faster than the industry itself... and reveal the real villains. Reason enough, from a consumer perspective, to at least give it a go."
Your request for examples is a totally valid one that I have no time to fulfill right now. (I probably should've been more clear that a lot of that language comes from commenters and people who have picked up the argument rather than BB itself.) As for your other objections, I'm not sure I said anything in either this post or the Idolator post about CC licenses, which I think are fine if an inadequate solution. The Idolator post concerned profits at EMI so I don't think it really came in there, and if I seemed to be implying as such here, I apologize.
I think the bit you quote there in the footnote is a pretty good example of at least slightly hysterical language--"persecuted" and "villains" are two fairly non-rational words. And in terms of economics, the only way to separate the people who would pay some money for music from the people who would never pay for music is...to charge money for music. There's no way to make that determination if no one's paying anything. I'm not sure a $10 unlimited pass really reaches any sort of cut-off point. I pay $18 a month for access to three DVDs at a time through Netflix; $10 for unlimited music is less than you'd pay at a lot of all-you-can-eat buffets. That's quibbling, I guess, but it's a good example of how crazy their "reasonable" demands actually are.
Haha "crazy" is unfair, so let's go with "unreasonable." A better rhetorical construction anyway!
"I think these people aren't stupid--they're rationally following their self-interest, in all honesty, and the only non-governmental way to combat tragedy of the commons problems is to convince people about the collective ills that will result from everyone acting in their rational self-interest."
True. I suppose I mean my own brain kind of stops at "stupid," which is admittedly my problem. And by stupid I really mean something more like misguided, since most of my own interests in copyright have very little to do with consumption and everything to do with access; and even in that sphere I've shied away from more problematic areas (like documentary film, which is kind of where I "live") and toward more clear-cut ones (like educational fair use). The reason is a pragmatic one -- you have to start somewhere, and that somewhere can't be the top. But focusing on fair use in educational settings may help to create a general pedagogical shift away from total copyright paranoia, that will have lasting effects on students, who tend to disregard copyright anyway, but will at least be learning about productive ways to disregard copyright instead of learning it by osmosis by rationalizing something they do (for the most part) because it's EASIER.
To that end, the BoingBoing argument reminds me a bit of "creation science," which takes an argument of convenience ("evolution is messy and complicated, whereas God creating everything is elegant and simple") and conflates it with a sort of ad hoc pseudo-science, ignoring the fundamental reason it exists in the first place: it's much easier to casually but firmly believe in X than to tentatively believe but actively probe and question Y. You'd think that once you add the "actively question" part into X, you kind of ruin the point of it, but the Creation Museum proves me wrong on one count, I guess. (Ironically, I'm all for sneaking into the Creation Museum without paying for it.)
See, I'm not convinced these are demands (nor do I see Patty Hearst). I interpret their posts as trying to find a fair and workable solution. Is $10 a month all that crazy or is it somewhat in the ballpark of the market? The netflix example is a good one, as your $18 a month gives you access not only to three DVDs at a time, but also unlimited access to a limited, though increasing, library of streaming films accessible through your tv with your Xbox, TiVo, or cheap Roku box or watchable over your laptop. $15 on eMusic gets me 65 downloads a month, which again while it isn't perfect for everyone happens to work great for me, whose interests align with eMusic’s catalog of indie rock, jazz, and Stones Throw style hip hop—coincidentally or not, some of the people who need the money the most. It’s a model that can be worked off of, and there have been some rumors of iTunes adopting a subscription option. The kids who consume most of the music want to pay for it, and the market, while initially slow to react, is starting to catch up. Also, in that footnoted example "villains" is being used to describe those who will always download all of their music for free (interchangeable with “dicks”), not a hyperbolic slander of the corporate pigs whose hunger and greed are never satiated and will go so far as to bite into the teat they suckle on, ravenously gnawing through the stomach, feasting on the entrails and eventually entirely consuming their own mother simply to fatten themselves further.
I appreciate the discussion on the implications for the industry, and it’s clear that the great sorting out is underway. The only obvious winner I see in all of this is Trent Reznor, who, as I was writing this comment, sent me an email alerting me to the existence of a NIN iPhone rhythm game with tracks from the freely available album The Slip and Ghosts. Similarly, it’ll be interesting to see how Skeletal Lamping does with their innovative packaging. It’s likely bands are simply going to become brands. Music itself will never die, it’ll just be packaged differently.
But does Boing Boing lead people into accepting these free culture ideas by luring them in with innocuous posts or are these readers more inclined to be persuaded by them? The Daily KOS example is pretty spot on, I myself had a near identical experience, and admittedly it would be very difficult to pinpoint exactly where or what bugs me. The Gawker blogs have a similar tendency, especially amongst the more popular ones, for commenters to develop a self perpetuating style that reinforces and reflects a lot of the tone of the posts, but always a few degrees further out exhausting the casual reader but rallying the base. You’re hitting on something but your primary example seems to be tied up in a very specific and separate argument.
Dave - Are you saying fair use is disregarding copyright? Isn’t it a specific and integral part of the law? That’s exactly what bugs me about this. Students are the ones who should be shown how to respect the law, not rationalizing their breaking of it.
Few things here. First, no one is seriously proposing that Netflix become the sole retail revenue source for the movie industry. That would clearly be pretty disasterous. Second, if there really were masses of people out there desperate to pay a little bit to get regular access to music, then eMusic would be a LOT more popular than it is. It's doing fine--but it's far from the most popular source for music. If that was really the model that the biz will naturally gravitate toward, well, it exists already, and it's not ubiquitous. And again, the extremism thing comes up with the demand (in your previous post) for this service to offer "DRM-free" music. That's not what Netflix is giving people. It's streaming movies that you can't download or keep, and that service seems to be doing fine. I think the streaming model is a good one as evidenced by the success of Pandora, and I wholeheartedly agree that the horrendous netradio legislation is killing legitimate revenue streams (even though I think it's kinda ridiculous that companies like Muxtape would start with setups they already know are illegal). But painting that legislation as a vast injustice (as I think it's fair to say BB and others did) rather than misguided industry legislation makes the argument seem absurd.
My point in the post is not that BB leads people to accept these ideas, but that--as Sunstein argued about political sites--that it makes their views more extreme and makes their opinions about copyright issues seem more important. The analogy with Kos, I guess, would be the way they made the war seem like the only important political issue, and the extremism they fostered made it seem OK to engage in ethically dubious rhetoric and practices (albeit ones also used by the right) to further their goals. This extremism, while odious, is at least effective in the political realm because everyone can agree that the war is an important issue. But again, copyfight stuff--not so much.
Sorry, I shouldn't have used "disregard." The educational fair use efforts are to elucidate existing law to defuse the (widespread) paranoia about how totalizing the power of copyright holders actually is. What I mean to say is that they find productive ways to disregard not copyright itself, but the bogeyman copyright that's commonly (mis)understood. Important point being that there's a big difference, as you're suggesting by pointing out my own misstatement, of disregarding the paranoia around copyright and disregarding copyright altogether.
(When I say something like "disregarding copyright," in part it's unconscious, because by and large the copyright holders don't recognize the legal legitimacy of fair use, and think the law is on their side, which it isn't.)
Excellent essay on an important topic. For the record, I _do_ think there's a workably decent legislative solution to the free-music problem, one that will also work for the free-movie problem -- and if Obama becomes president, I actually do think it could be a decently high priority, if a critical mass of people ever mentioned it, since movies and music are actually pretty important.
The solution (I don't remember whose suggestion I'm stealing) goes like this: allow people to download stuff for free, but have every music and movie download "watermarked" so that numbers of downloads can be trace. Every internet connection would be taxed each month -- call it a licensing fee, since the word "tax" of course another word for "All-Destroying Evil" -- and the tax money would be doled out, proportionately, to those artists whose work is downloaded. Set the tax/fee high enough that the amount of money circulating would be ... well, no lower than it is now.
Maintaining the problem at its current size might keep the fees low enough to make them politically plausible. I doubt it, to be honest. But I can't think of anything else a tenth as good -- "patronage" and the NIN model are both limited to the few -- so I'd love to see some support develop for the notion.
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