Hi Dwayne-
Ran across this and thought you might be interested:
<http://culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/view/346/359>
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Nice. Thanks for posting this.
While Andersson does get a little tangled up in post/mod phrasings from time to time (just a little though), his main ideas are solid.
I'm especially impressed by two of his arguments 1.) that piracy isn't, as the standard view has it, digital outlaw behavior but SOP, the unacknowledged norm (like pr0n viewing and bad dancing). And 2.) the majors brewed their own cup of discomfort by digitizing media while totally failing to understand what that meant (a failure complicated by their expectation that pre-digital era distribution and pricing techniques would infinitely persist).
This takes us past arguments over whether or not "information wants to be free" and similarly shouty topics to a realistic examination of the behaviors which emerged from the tools people suddenly held in their hands.
The RIAA's scorched earth litigation campaign is an effort to undo (or counter program) via terror the behavioral modification they made possible by liberating audio/visual entertainment from petrol based media.
.d.