Comment on the Belmont Club: "The Dogs Versus the Internet"

First OT out of the gate I have found a BC issue in today's pop culture kerfuffle. More bad news for Harvard, Spitzer as Governor, Obama as POTUS, Conan O'Brien @ Tonight Show, 3 public failures with exploding egos. The market is rejecting authority by fiat.

Now on to the topic.
Lanier's position reminds me of Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists. The position is conservative and in keeping with Judeo-christian morality. "The worker is worthy of their hire." Individual humans matter, therefore their work matters and their opinions matter. The capitalist publisher or producer served a purpose because he had an interest in developing talent. Now that the web has freed musicians from the evil distributors there is no way to make a living being an artist, unless you are sponsored by some enormous institution. In New York the downtown music scene is a pale shadow of what it was 10 years ago and art is either sponsored or withering. As the economy shrinks there will be fewer voices heard. This is a regression in the arts and literature back to the precapitalist system of Patrons.

On the question of dogs everyone knows where I stand.

Teresita, thank you for the twitter feed.

rhhardin,
(whose .sig was "On the internet no one knows if you are a jerk")
On the Internet they know if you are a jerk, they just may not know how to find you. Then again, given enough motivation as wretchard points out, they may.