Livin the dream.
122 karma · joined April 3, 2014
First of all lets acknowledge the fact that if these tracks are on Youtube, they are publicly available for free, and unless they are registering 100k+ views per song, these artists are not making any money off these tracks.
Second, musicians taking wedding gigs and whatnot to supplement their creative careers is not a result of piracy; musicians, filmmakers and photographers have been doing that since always and probably always will.
Third, if these musicians are resorting to private functions like weddings to finance their creative career, its likely that they don't have a wide enough fan base and revenue stream for a product like this to significantly affect them.
In my opinion.
Despite the fact that it is now possible for a more direct democracy to exist thanks to communications tech, I don't think we are likely to head that direction for the simple reason that putting someone in charge of voting for them allows most people to refocus their time and energy on other things.
It's kind of the same reason I'm skeptical of Democracy.com. I'm just not convinced most people are that interested in connecting with politics and politicians to that extant. They may be passionate about a few issues, and maybe they even vote in local elections (though not likely), but to connect day to day in the way Democracy.com thinks they will, or to be able to commit the time necessary to understand and vote on every bill that goes before Congress, I think, is unrealistic.
That said, I would still rather keep my Internet than gain a car. Safeway delivers for free, I no longer need to go to Blockbuster to get new content, and I can (if I chose) work completely remotely.
Living without a car sucks, especially in California where public transportation is a joke, but its still better than living without internet.