Money corrupts everything.

Even though I don’t consider myself an idealist, it’s not often you’ll hear me bitch about corporate greed and corrupt politics. In the past few months, however, my faith in the governing institutions has taken a toll. In a previous post, I mentioned how my country’s institutions were pissed away; I realize my point might not have been very clear for the people outside of France. Here is some explaining about that bill that passed on May 12, 2009.

Hadopi is a french three strike copyright law bill that will make ISP responsible for spying on their clients to pick out downloaders of copyrighted media. After 2 warnings, their internet connection will be discontinued. Similar bills have been abandoned (at least in the near future) in New Zealand, Germany and the UK . Even in the US, homeland of the all-powerful and vindictive RIAA and MPAA, it seems no-one dares to promote such an idea.

Opposition parties across the world have done their job, pointing out the absurdity of such an overkill law. Detractors will be quick to highlight consequences such as the violation of privacy, the violation of the presumption of innocence (interestingly coupled with the enormous probability of false positives) and finally the privilege of being penalized twice (your Internet access is discontinued AND you keep on paying your subscription); packing so much anti-constitutional elements in a single law certainly commands respect. But  the how is not as striking as the why.

The why is the shrinking of the middlemen’s territories in the media industry. Retailers and music majors used to be necessary middlemen: one was the only production and marketing channel artists had, the other their only distribution channel. Times were good. They liked it. But the feathers of their business models got ruffled by the advent of the Internet. Indeed, when a product can be duplicated ad infinitum at no cost, it doesn’t sit well with the usual Scarcity Law of Economics. Same with the fact that anybody (individuals) can put up websites,  blogs,  videos and whatnot. The only people to refuse to acknowledge this change (because I can’t bring myself to think they’re not seeing it) are of course the people who get wealthier by maintaining the status quo: if things change, they’ll have to adapt. Adaptation costs money and efforts, and large corporations don’t like spending either.

Let’s just have a look at the defenders of the current state of affair:

• retailers and majors who designed the system to be their Cornucopia,
• artists that don’t want to look for alternate ways of making profit,
• politicians that don’t understand what they have on their hands, but want control anyway.

These people are standing in the way of evolution in the name of greed, fear and lust for control. The only thing I wish for is for them to get crushed by it.

I hate to use such black-and-white phrasing, but are these motives pure and good? Are governments supposed to get us down this road? And who’s going to prevail in the long run? I ‘m not worried, I know who will, but what makes me nauseous is to see an entire government hell bent on working against its own people, and collaborating on a masquerade that turns artists against their own fans.

Even worse, this bill has disastrous consequences outside the entertainment business. By criminalizing an entire segment of the population, the government is pushing everyone toward systematic anonymisation and encryption of their data, which benefits regular criminals all around.

Money impairs judgment.