Creative industries tend to be like clubs. You can get into the club in many ways, but all of them are equally difficult. You've put the time in, done the training, had the lucky breaks, struggled and finally made it. Once you are actually in the club then life is easier. You have a name, you are a part of a network and you work with a lot of the same people year in year out. Members rarely fall out of the club entirely...

We are pros. We are "in". And we are aware that there are so many more people who are not "in" that would like to be.

Perhaps they have an overly-romantic notion of what it's like but that's just how it is. All creative fields, from modern art through to advertising have that lustre because people like the idea of making things for a living.

[P]art of being "in" is the sense that the club can't get too big, and for many the internet is actually pushing to make the club smaller. Book publishers, for example, no longer offer much in the way of advances. Long-tail services like Netflix and Spotify have such huge libraries that every new artist is competing not just with their peers, but their antecedents also. Distribution may rise but prices fall.

They feel squeezed by piracy. Though they dislike it, many who are "in" quietly believe that they have to keep many more people "out" in order to hold on to what remains. I don't mean executives etc. I mean established writers, musicians, game makers and so on. We live in a curious age where the freest of thinkers (artists of various stripes) are the ones that want to curtail freedom the most.

Those who are "in" also feel squeezed by something else: Democratisation of tools. It's bad enough that they have to deal with a loss of revenue, but a reduction of difficulty in getting into the club threatens to increase its size many times over. The future is a world awash with low-rent ebooks, GarageBand music and GameMaker-developed games. Quality will collapse, and there will be no future for the professional any more.

In the startup world, the reduction of barriers is a great boon. You can, for example, assemble a small team and go create a tool that will change the world. As an individual you can create a blog that causes conversations and change. You can develop a game, make music, start a design agency, and all you need is a laptop.

It's not amateur in the sense of a lack of diligence, nor is it professional in the sense of those who are "in". The forces of technology distribution and cheap or free tools creates a space for talent to do what talent wants to do. It creates a class of pro-amateur makers.

A pro-amateur perhaps works on a project as a side-line to her day-job but she treats it seriously. Like any struggling writer, there is the work and the need to pay the rent. The difference is that the pro-amateur then takes her work and distributes it directly. She creates a book, an album, a TV series and just puts it out there. It only really costs her time to do it, and if it works it works. If not, she does something else.

The magic of the internet is therefore this: It substitutes time spent getting into the club with time spent finding fans. Expertise with experience. Legitimacy with audience. Jargon with generosity. And for those with the talent to do it well come the rewards because niche audiences that blossom into tribes exist for almost anything you can think of.

Broadcast Music, Inc., the music licensing group, is suing the Lady Godiva's nightclub and its owner, Mark London, claiming the club has violated copyrights. BMI filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, alleging the club played songs by artists Rivers Cuomo ("Say It Ain't So"), R. Kelly ("Ignition") and Amy Winehouse ("You Know I'm No Good") without paying the proper music license fees. The suit claims the songs were played at the club -- without BMI permission -- on September 27, 2010.

The specific acts of copyright infringement alleged, as well as the Defendant's entire course of conduct, have caused and are causing Plaintiffs great and incalculable damage.

Unless this Court restrains Defendants from committing further acts of copyright infringement, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury for which they have no adequate remedy at law.

London tells WZZM 13 News that BMI is seeking to have him sign a licensing agreement registering his club as an adult entertainment business, which he says it is not. He says that while his club does feature women dancing it is not a topless venue, as a 2006 Grand Rapids city ordinance no longer allows nudity.

London says he is in good standing with ASCAP and other licensing agencies. But when he sent checks to BMI to pay for music rights, London says the group voided the payments.