It's interesting that the MPAA feels threatened enough to need to resort to scare tactics like this. Before media content was available on the net, the human interaction that created the impetus for the network was still there... and would continue to be there long after the media was gone.
Videos, music and other forms of entertainment are on the network because the media CREATORS (not necessarily the "owners") want it there. Removing it won't kill the infrastructure.
What COULD create problems is that some of the media companies are the same as those that provide access to the net to millions of consumers (ie: Time Warner and other cable companies that are part of media conglomerates). If these organizations decided to cut off access, that would effectively "kill" part of the net for a little while.
On the other hand, traditional telecommunications companies that don't have 50%+ interests in media companies would swoop in to fill the gap (AT&T, Verizon, etc). So from a purely business perspective, it wouldn't make sense for the TW's of the world to stop providing access.
At the end of the day, there is going to have to be some sort of balance in the copyright world. What always strikes me as funny is that with every new transmission media, the content creators ALWAYS try to fight it first rather than figuring out how to benefit from the greater reach the new media creates.
Seems silly to me. If they'd have invested even a fraction of the effort into figuring out how to create a more pervasive form of iTunes and Hulu a decade ago when all of this was really taking off, they'd be making money, people would be paying fractional-use amounts to consume and everyone would be happy.
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It's interesting that the MPAA feels threatened enough to need to resort to scare tactics like this. Before media content was available on the net, the human interaction that created the impetus for the network was still there... and would continue to be there long after the media was gone.
Videos, music and other forms of entertainment are on the network because the media CREATORS (not necessarily the "owners") want it there. Removing it won't kill the infrastructure.
What COULD create problems is that some of the media companies are the same as those that provide access to the net to millions of consumers (ie: Time Warner and other cable companies that are part of media conglomerates). If these organizations decided to cut off access, that would effectively "kill" part of the net for a little while.
On the other hand, traditional telecommunications companies that don't have 50%+ interests in media companies would swoop in to fill the gap (AT&T, Verizon, etc). So from a purely business perspective, it wouldn't make sense for the TW's of the world to stop providing access.
At the end of the day, there is going to have to be some sort of balance in the copyright world. What always strikes me as funny is that with every new transmission media, the content creators ALWAYS try to fight it first rather than figuring out how to benefit from the greater reach the new media creates.
Seems silly to me. If they'd have invested even a fraction of the effort into figuring out how to create a more pervasive form of iTunes and Hulu a decade ago when all of this was really taking off, they'd be making money, people would be paying fractional-use amounts to consume and everyone would be happy.