[LAU] <OT> 'Sir' Elton John (a.k.a. Pennyhouse with rolls) wants to shut down the web <off topic>

[Paul Davis]

On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 09:24 -1000, david wrote:
> Vince Werber wrote:
> 
> > On a lark I surfed over to Matt Drudge's web site (www.drudgereport.com) to 
> > see if there was anything new on the ASCAP lawsuits and lo and behold... 
> > There is a story about Sir Elton wanting to shut down the web because he 
> > thinks the web music people are in some way causing a problem with music...
> 
> Sir Elton is just mouthing the fundamental RIAA issue with the web. 

good grief, did you even read/listen to what he had to say? it has
absolutely nothing to do with the net as a distribution/retail/exchange
medium.

his comments were primarily about the impact that music technology and
the internet have on the social aspects of art production and
consumption. he really didn't say much at all about money, power or
control.

and i think that he is right, at least in part. however, scapegoating
technology for magnifying an existing feature of human life doesn't make
much sense to me. it was always the case that social, gregarious people
got together with other such people in person, and less social people
did not and hungered for other ways to interact with people. the
internet makes various kinds of social interaction and collaboration
that were unthinkable 30 years ago, and for the most part, this seems
like its probably a good thing, even though more people are making music
alone.

--p