Free sharing of creatives is a zero sum game that only benefits Google and other lords of the internet cloud

The Internet and digital transmission of movies, music and writing – the creative works – has spawned the scenario where it is easier for artists to distribute their works and harder to get compensation.

The companies who control the net – ISPs and Google – are becoming the wealthy new “lords of the cloud.”

The extreme socialist views of the Web 2.0 credo have not resulted in better lives for artists but turned them into sellers of t-shirts and memorabilia.

Prior to the modern recording industry artists needed patrons – kings and queens, lords and ladies. Rich patrons sponsored the arts. An artist could also busk and some played to audiences in booked halls. It wasn’t considered a career. Being able to mass produce music on records created a whole new revenue source for artists. Many people paid a small amount of money, relative to the cost of recording, producing and distributing the music.

There were economies of scale – large sales resulted in tremendous profits while most recordings didn’t sell enough to cover their costs. Successful record companies became rich and their top selling artists became wealthy along with them.

The greed of humans knows no limits and record companies routinely ripped off the artists by over-charging for costs and ignoring royalties. Big name artists tended to get more of what was coming to them, but even they got ripped off. Bruce Springsteen is one of the artists suing the labels in Canada for up to $6 billion in unpaid royalties. Record labels in Canada face $6 billion in penalties.

The Web 2.0 ethos was built on the knowledge that the recording companies were routinely stealing from the artists and enriching themselves. Music would be free when it was liberated on the Internet.

The music was liberated but the musician and writers were not. They were working under unfair conditions for the record companies. Now they are working without compensation for Web 2.0.

I’ve read arguments pro and con. Such and such an artist is making $100,000 or $1,000,000 by distributing his music over the web. Amanda Palmer likes the internet and says she is making money. how an indie musician can make $19,000 in 10 hours using twitter by Amanda Palmer

The cases cited are exceptions. If a system is inherently about the free distribution of artistic works, the amount of money donated back to the artist will be peanuts.

It appears to me the only people making money are artists who tour incessantly and flog themselves to the public for a fee. If that’s what people want, they we will end up with touring artists sleeping on the coaches of their hosts, super groups like Lady GaGa who get all the backing and push of the big labels, and the rest will be under-compensated artists looking for wealthy patrons to subsidize their creative output.

It’s not as if there isn’t money changing hands on the so-called free Internet.

The Lords of the Internet Cloud are raking in the money like Exxon and the oil companies profited in the years after the discovery of oil. For instance, Google made $6.5 billion last year. It is now digitizing the books of the world for free distribution without paying the writers any royalties. The newspapers are constantly up in arms because Google makes money off their stories without compensation.

The ISP’s make money by feeding the bits and bytes to our computers. Most of them are extremely wealthy. They don’t compensate the artists who create the content.

I live and work in this environment everyday. It amazes me that people create content for free. I’m not sure what the outcome will be but something like a micro-royalty for artists has to arise or there will be fewer and poorer people creating the content everyone wants.

A system to compensate the creative content is easily within the realm of possibility since we have the technology. They are tracking our every purchase, tweet and facebook post: why not track the creative content we view and compensate the artists.

I thought this for almost two decades as I watched downloading of music and then movies become a growth industry. Reading You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by internet visionary Jaron Lanier convinced me something has to change to replace the doctrinaire “free is beautiful” credo.