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

[Chuckk Hubbard]

On 8/2/07, Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:
>
> 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.


Well, what he said has nothing to do with that, but why he said it...  Well
if it was someone who wasn't senile I would suspect they had ulterior
motives, but with him who knows.


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.


I think there is music that gets produced and sold now that could never have
made profit in the 80's.  One other result of increased communication,
including the internet, is that people with similar non-mainstream interests
can find each other.  Now certain musicians can have an audience that never
could have found their audience without the help of large corporations
before, and large corporations had no reason to help them.  I think of Beck
as being this way.  I'm not sure how much role the internet had per se in
his obtaining contracts, but the general increase in communication
technology definitely helped.  Primus comes to mind as well: they could only
turn a profit by appealing to 1 out of 10 people in a million groups.

Also, in some ways, creativity works better with individuals.  Once you
start collaborating on your vision, it can get diluted.  It always amazes me
when people can pull off some huge project involving dozens of people that
retains some really quirky creativity.  "Being John Malkovich" comes to
mind, and Southpark.  How do some visionaries keep the producers from
reigning them in?  I don't think that art produced by isolated individuals
is generally worse than that made by people who are "out there".  The
isolated individuals are just more likely to snap and gun down everyone in
their workplace or school.  But maybe in some ways we all benefit from that
too.

Apparently Elton's comments didn't just disappear as I predicted.  Jimmy
Kimmel made a joke about it last night.  I hate, though, how someone can say
something like "I'd like it if they shut down the internet just for 5
years," and others then say "Elton John wants to eliminate the internet."
lol people

-Chuckk


-- 
http://www.badmuthahubbard.com
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