catching up, and media consumption part 2
Feb. 1st, 2011 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhTook an unannounced internet break for ten days or so (not that anyone noticed, so I'm glad I didn't announce it or now I'd look like quite the egotist!) I'm catching up on a few things, so don't be surprised to get some comments on older entries.
A few weeks ago I made the post on being the bestest little media consumer ever which is a topic I've raised in the past. And as usual, there are much better arguments against the entire trend of cultural creators haranguing consumers about their behavior, posted in mid-January in response to the same post I read, which talk about intellectual property as an arm of cultural imperialism, an argument that doesn't get nearly enough traction in all the self-conscious railing against downloading.troisroyaumes has a linkspam as does starlady, but I would point out particularly colorblue's this is not a post about yoga! which is beyond excellent. Go, read!
While the cultural imperialism arguments hit the moral side of IP that I'm most comfortable with, this quote fromvito_excalibur's post on the subject is closest to the practical objections I'm trying to express:
I don't always make plain the subtext of those posts, but what I was really trying to say was that I don't think making the shakiness of the media industry the fault of consumers, and reacting by either shouting at consumers (that's Bad Consumer Relations 101) or by trying to control which of the many entirely legal methods of consumption of media "count" are useful or even fair ways for the industry or its participants to react. I've been in marketing long enough to know that a company or an industry that can't adapt to consumer behavior is in a lot of trouble, and I'm not even talking about theft, but about the migration of music purchases from albums to single songs (yet the music industry still uses album sales as its metric) or from books to ereaders or from live viewing to DVR/online streaming/itunes downloads or from going to the movies to watching DVDs on the couch on your widescreen TV. If the industry can't figure out how to monetize these revenue streams, and calibrate their expectations of a given cultural product accordingly, that's their problem, not ours.
What shocks me is how many people make these kinds of arguments against downloading and for a very narrow sort of consumption who are generally somewhat leftist in their politics and have in other contexts expressed some discomfort with capitalism itself. Like so many others I point tocoffeeandink's comment that people identify up in hierarchies, so good little fans identify with creators, creators with the industrial structures that allow them to create, and so forth. None of us are perfectly able to notice when we're acting out of privilege and when we're being complicit in structures that deny others, but don't get it twisted: the culture industry is an industry like any other, and these days one of the largest exports that the United States has; concerns about copyright end up much higher on the list of items during talks with China than human rights issues, especially when we have a Democratic president, because the culture industry gives so much money to the Democratic party. We like to identify with the culture industry not only because hey, we like what it gives us, but also because we see them as our allies on the cultural left. But these are giant corporations, these movie studios and music labels and television networks and production companies and publishing houses, frequently all under the same umbrella (hello, Bertelsmann and Sony and Comcast-NBCU). They're nervous, which makes the creators nervous, but blaming the consumer is never the answer.
Heck, if that worked, then Detroit could have guilted us all into buying really shitty Chevys to keep the American auto industry, which had many more ties into many more parts of the American economy, going, instead of buying that cheaper and more reliable Honda. But we didn't do that, so I'm thinking we're not going to be guilted into buying our cultural products in specific ways, either (certainly not given the responses I received to my post).
A few weeks ago I made the post on being the bestest little media consumer ever which is a topic I've raised in the past. And as usual, there are much better arguments against the entire trend of cultural creators haranguing consumers about their behavior, posted in mid-January in response to the same post I read, which talk about intellectual property as an arm of cultural imperialism, an argument that doesn't get nearly enough traction in all the self-conscious railing against downloading.
troisroyaumes has a linkspam as does starlady, but I would point out particularly colorblue's this is not a post about yoga! which is beyond excellent. Go, read!While the cultural imperialism arguments hit the moral side of IP that I'm most comfortable with, this quote from
vito_excalibur's post on the subject is closest to the practical objections I'm trying to express:I think the market for infinitely reproducible media has changed irrevocably, and asking everyone to just please pretend it hasn't, because it would be rude to acknowledge the changed reality, is not going to stem the tide.
I don't always make plain the subtext of those posts, but what I was really trying to say was that I don't think making the shakiness of the media industry the fault of consumers, and reacting by either shouting at consumers (that's Bad Consumer Relations 101) or by trying to control which of the many entirely legal methods of consumption of media "count" are useful or even fair ways for the industry or its participants to react. I've been in marketing long enough to know that a company or an industry that can't adapt to consumer behavior is in a lot of trouble, and I'm not even talking about theft, but about the migration of music purchases from albums to single songs (yet the music industry still uses album sales as its metric) or from books to ereaders or from live viewing to DVR/online streaming/itunes downloads or from going to the movies to watching DVDs on the couch on your widescreen TV. If the industry can't figure out how to monetize these revenue streams, and calibrate their expectations of a given cultural product accordingly, that's their problem, not ours.
What shocks me is how many people make these kinds of arguments against downloading and for a very narrow sort of consumption who are generally somewhat leftist in their politics and have in other contexts expressed some discomfort with capitalism itself. Like so many others I point to
coffeeandink's comment that people identify up in hierarchies, so good little fans identify with creators, creators with the industrial structures that allow them to create, and so forth. None of us are perfectly able to notice when we're acting out of privilege and when we're being complicit in structures that deny others, but don't get it twisted: the culture industry is an industry like any other, and these days one of the largest exports that the United States has; concerns about copyright end up much higher on the list of items during talks with China than human rights issues, especially when we have a Democratic president, because the culture industry gives so much money to the Democratic party. We like to identify with the culture industry not only because hey, we like what it gives us, but also because we see them as our allies on the cultural left. But these are giant corporations, these movie studios and music labels and television networks and production companies and publishing houses, frequently all under the same umbrella (hello, Bertelsmann and Sony and Comcast-NBCU). They're nervous, which makes the creators nervous, but blaming the consumer is never the answer.Heck, if that worked, then Detroit could have guilted us all into buying really shitty Chevys to keep the American auto industry, which had many more ties into many more parts of the American economy, going, instead of buying that cheaper and more reliable Honda. But we didn't do that, so I'm thinking we're not going to be guilted into buying our cultural products in specific ways, either (certainly not given the responses I received to my post).
no subject
Date: 2011-02-02 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-05 01:16 am (UTC)