There is a future that is terrifying to the culture industry. When described at all, it is called the "dark net scenario." The dark net is one of many possible outcomes of our generation's intellectual-property wars over digital information, an outcome in which information has been liberated -- if you've got cash. Corporate giants who own copyrights and patents will compete with info-pirates and mercenary hackers to sell digital goods. All proprietary information, from movies to expressed gene sequences, will be available for a price. Buyers will be able to go the legit route and purchase from rights holders or get what they want from the dark net, the black e-market.

To nip this possible future in the bud, U.S. entertainment companies have pushed for laws that severely punish copyright infringers and narrow the definition of fair use. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, and upcoming anti-peer-to-peer legislation are all the brainchildren of entertainment execs and the politicians like Sens. Fritz Hollings and Dianne Feinstein whom they've paid to protect their interests. The idea is that if we can make digital piracy as risky and dangerous as possible, nobody will have any incentive to create the dark net. You know -- just the same way the war on drugs kept people from selling crack in the ghettos.

The media have portrayed high-tech companies (and products) as the biggest enemies of media copyright holders in the battle to secure the future of the net. But in reality the situation is not nearly so clear-cut. Case in point: Microsoft's new multipurpose product known as Palladium. Built under the rubric of the Trusted Computing Platform Architecture -- a technology that, in part, creates special zones on microchips where "trusted" information can be stored unmolested -- Palladium is Microsoft's attempt to make nice with copyright holders. The secure area on a Palladium-enabled microchip will be hardwired to contain codes and keys that uniquely identify the user. Using Palladium, entertainment companies can identify who has purchased the rights to a DVD, for instance, and give those people permission to play (or copy) the DVD on their computer.

The beauty part, at least for those who want the all-white net, is that it's virtually impossible to hack the codes. Each is unique, each is written into the hardware. You'd literally need an electron-tunneling microscope to tamper with the Palladium infrastructure.

More at:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13828

The only medium I have much interest in is music. And the corporate class is no friend of the composer or performer.

Out of the eighteen dollars you pay for a CD, or thirteen if Costco happens to carry it, the artist gets about two bucks. IF the same person wrote and performed every song. Sure it costs a little to produce the song, even the guy who delivers the doughnuts to the engineers deserves to be paid. And a pittance even goes to support struggling new bands who don't yet sell enough CDs to support themselves. But most of that money just gets sucked into the system to pay off bureaucrats and lawyers and advertising vermin.

I'm not terribly supportive of any efforts to keep this system going.

i heard that after a bands 10000th sale, the 4 members had received less than $200 each. a quarter million dollars were made, and only 800 actually went to the band.
based on that, if you support the band then you should NOT buy their cds, instead, drive the record company broke through a lack of sales, since the artists themselves have to get a job to support themselves anyway, a few hundred bucks is a small price to pay to see those leeches die off.

I agree with vslayer. Illegally download tracks, then send the artists the money you would have paid for the cd. Cut out the publishers.

Did you know that in China the record companies are lowering the cost of the CD"s there to 2.00 US? That's because they have to compete with the pirated copies of those CD's on the street. By lowering the cost they are actually making a profit still and are actually selling those CD"s cheaper that the illegal ones sold in the street.