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"One of the central ideas of the Copy Left is that the Internet has been a catalyst for re-engaging with the culture -- for interacting with the things we read and watch and listen to, as opposed to just sitting back and absorbing them. This vision of how culture works stands in contrast to what the Copy Left calls the ''broadcast model'' -- the arrangement in which a small group of content producers disseminate their creations (television, movies, music) through controlled routes (cable, theaters, radio-TV stations) to passive consumers. Yochai Benkler, the law professor at Yale, argues that people want to be more engaged in their culture, despite the broadcast technology, like television, that he says has narcotized us. ''People are users,'' he says. ''They are producers, storytellers, consumers, interactors -- complex, varied beings, not just people who go to the store, buy a packaged good off the shelf and consume.''
What makes his argument more than wishful thinking, he said, is that he has some economic evidence for his view. ''Let's compare a few numbers,'' he said. ''How much do people pay the recording industry to listen to music versus how much people pay the telephone industry to talk to their friends and family? The recording industry is a $12 billion a year business, compared with the telephone business, which is a more than $250 billion a year business. That is what economists call a 'revealed willingness to pay,' a clear preference for a technology that allows you to participate in work, socializing and interaction in general, over a technology that allows you to be a passive consumer of a packaged good. Is that a study of human nature? No. Is it an economic measure that would suggest there is a lot of demand out there for speaking and listening to others? Yes.''
(nytimes magazine)
i like it when you are first taking a class and you start to grasp the issue and the ideas you learned from it and you start seeing it relate to everything.
What makes his argument more than wishful thinking, he said, is that he has some economic evidence for his view. ''Let's compare a few numbers,'' he said. ''How much do people pay the recording industry to listen to music versus how much people pay the telephone industry to talk to their friends and family? The recording industry is a $12 billion a year business, compared with the telephone business, which is a more than $250 billion a year business. That is what economists call a 'revealed willingness to pay,' a clear preference for a technology that allows you to participate in work, socializing and interaction in general, over a technology that allows you to be a passive consumer of a packaged good. Is that a study of human nature? No. Is it an economic measure that would suggest there is a lot of demand out there for speaking and listening to others? Yes.''
(nytimes magazine)
i like it when you are first taking a class and you start to grasp the issue and the ideas you learned from it and you start seeing it relate to everything.