Behind the music: What if the culture industry shut down for a day?

I'll say here, what I said to a friend who sent me this:

I say music industry folks should get together and do it.

Let me tell you why. On our in end and for our part us in the tech industry we're like its just the MPAA, the RIAA, and the militant people who are crazy rich already and just want the government to protect their outdated business models.

To us piracy is a service problem. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...

http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi...

The old way of distributing this stuff is over. And only the people who are versed in the newer ways (i.e. blowing up on Youtube and then doing shows) are going to make it. And the record labels can't control that and that is what scares them. Becoming obsolete

If regular people in the music industry were to strike to bring attention to the issue, we would take it more seriously. It would go from "a bunch of greedy people just want more money" to "this is actually hurting regular people" and our conversations would change to how to combat that without risking becoming China.

Look up the Great Firewall. That is effectively what laws like SOPA and PIPA would have and still could create right here at home. No conspiracy bullshit, for real. And the way it started was the politicians there said it was for "combating piracy and pornography." But the Chinese don't care about pirates so they don't even pay attention to that. They just head straight for the dissenters because they have the power to.

So what I'm saying is a boycott of regular people would make it realer to us and we would take the issue more seriously. And also we have to be extremely careful with laws like these because they can easily lead to abuse no one wants.