Yesterday I read a thread on ambient artist Biosphere‘s Facebook page that made me reflect on the ongoing economic revolution centered on replication and automation. Biosphere posts that he is weary of his music being pirated and feels resentful (a natural and understandable sentiment) and is met with a flurry of comments.
Most of his fans are supportive, but many roll out the same tired arguments attempting to justify their own stealing or somehow blame the artist, including:
These days you can sell the stuff.
Imagine that you are an entrepreneur in New York City in the early 1900’s. Your company offers a single service — cleaning up horse poop.
Business is gangbusters. There is no shortage of horse poop. Every buggy needs a horse (or multiple horses) to drag it, and every horse poops multiple times a day. You can’t hire horse poop shovelers fast enough to keep up with demand. In fact, despite your best efforts, the entire city is covered in horse poop. New York City’s 100,000 horses are producing 2.5 million pounds of poop every day.
One day, you notice a weird-looking contraption in the street. It’s buggy, but it has no horse. It’s a horseless-f*cking-carriage!
It’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. It will never catch on. You go back to counting your poop-shoveling money.
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