Ars Technica has a blog post up about the prevalence of the file sharing software client Limewire. A report suggests that an estimated one third of all computer users have Limewire installed. The article itself isn’t that interesting. In the comments however, is this:
This whole thing reminds me of this house party I was at once. (This was back in the Morpheus/Kazaa days) This guy was using his laptop to “DJ” the party. He pulled me aside to show me his “collection.” He had downloaded/ripped enough to almost completely fill two 250 GB hard drives. He was practically beaming with pride about this. I was like: “Great, so do you have anything GOOD?”
Maybe this should be the focus on media companies? Instead of an industry organised around trying to maximise the profit extracted from idiots by using some other idiots as an image-based popular culture surplus value extracting device (aka ‘musicians’), perhaps talent should be rewarded? I am happy to pay for talent…
Idiocy is easier to sell to the masses