More naked emperors

Many of us have been saying for a long time that Hollywood and the music industry aren't so much barking up the wrong tree about piracy, as barking at a lamp-post under the myopic delusion that it's a tree.  Baen Books found years ago that when you give people freebies to pique their interest, you sell more books.  Now the UK Daily mail reports on a study by British think-tank Demos, which finds that people who admit to downloading music via file-sharing services spend 75% more per year buying music CDs than those who claim they don't.

The survey also revealed nearly two thirds of file sharers said new and cheaper music services would encourage them to stop accessing illegal services.  It found that by lowering the price of music available online to 45p per track - compared to between 59p and 99p on iTunes - providers could expect to double interest in legal sales.

Eight-three [sic] per cent of people downloading music illegally said they buy more music as a result, while 42 per cent said they did so to 'try before you buy'.

Naturally, the UK government doesn't get it.  Neither does the music industry, yet.  But reports elsewhere (sorry, I don't have the links right now) suggest that the Hollywood movie industry is starting to figure out that the market has changed, and they need to embrace that change and adapt to it instead of trying to resist it and deny that anything has changed, the way the music business is doing.  Like it or not, though, the music business cannot put the genie back in the bottle.  Small bands everywhere have learned that they don't need the record companies, and many of them have learned that the record companies will cheat them any way they can.  But the record companies haven't learned yet that if they continue to view both music makers and music buyers as captive resources with nowhere else to go, who can therefore be exploited indefinitely, they're doomed.

"Governed by Callous Children"

The WSJ has a new opinion column by Peggy Noonan, and it's worth reading.

The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter.  We should be dancing in the streets.  No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers.  Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment.  The tide will recede.  The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing, and will settle.  No one believes the bad time is over.  No one thinks we're entering a new age of abundance.  No one thinks it will ever be the same as before 2008.  Economists, statisticians, forecasters and market specialists will argue about what the new numbers mean, but no one believes them, either.  Among the things swept away in 2008 was public confidence in the experts.  The experts missed the crash.  They'll miss the meaning of this moment, too.

Noonan talks about two main issues in this column.  The first is that more and more people are tired of being told the same old "Jam tomorrow" promises, and just don't believe them any more.  In increasing numbers, the American people are realizing that there's no reason why what failed yesterday and the day before should work if tried again, unchanged, tomorrow.  People don't believe that Congress or the White House will fix the problem. They don't believe that the government knows how.  And they're right, because the government is too mired in business-as-usual to think outside the box.  No matter what promises are made in their campaigns, once they get ensconced inside the Beltway, it's the same old same old.

Noonan's other issue is another thing that an increasing number of Americans have caught on to, and that Congress hasn't.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative.  They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on.  They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened.  They don't even notice.

And that's the real problem.  Capitol Hill is totally out of touch with America; and, as a general rule, Capitol Hill neither knows, nor cares.