Doctorow Says Google & Amazon Stifle Progress

An anonymous reader writes "Google and Amazon are 'a danger to everyone involved in the creative industries' because they act as the intermediary between creators and audiences, says Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow. He warns that the corporate giants will 'only fear competition from other established giants ... companies whose character as gatekeepers of video distribution and discovery won't be substantially different.' The solution, he says, is to use copyrights to lower the cost of entering the market. 'For so long as copyright holders think like short-timers, seeking a quick buck instead of a healthy competitive marketplace, they're doomed to work for their gatekeepers,' he says."

Comments

Oh please

[ta bu shi da yu]

Saying that Amazon and Google stifle innovation because they sit as an intermediary between creators and audiences is a bit like saying the Roman Catholic church stifles religion because a priest sits between the Creator and his followers.

Re:Oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that Amazon and Google stifle innovation because they sit as an intermediary between creators and audiences is a bit like saying the Roman Catholic church stifles religion because a priest sits between the Creator and his followers.

It's more like the Roman Catholic church sits between the Faith and its followers. And they did stifle any changes from the doctrine, by torturing or murdering people who had different opinions. See the original Martin Luther, or Kepler.

Re:Oh please

[jollyreaper]

Saying that Amazon and Google stifle innovation because they sit as an intermediary between creators and audiences is a bit like saying the Roman Catholic church stifles religion because a priest sits between the Creator and his followers.

It's more like the Roman Catholic church sits between the Faith and its followers. And they did stifle any changes from the doctrine, by torturing or murdering people who had different opinions. See the original Martin Luther, or Kepler.

The OP had to have been speaking ironically there or else he is dense as neutronium. The whole big argument with Martin Luther and the Church was about giving people access to their faith. When he nailed his Theses to the church door, the Bible was not written in the vulgate. The masses were conducted in Latin and Catholicism remained a giant mystery religion. The reforms he proposed were threatening to the Church because if people did not need priests to intercede for them with God, there would be no need to continue supporting the massive ecclesiarchy.

Sorry Cory...

[russotto]

But intermediaries are never going to go away. A model where millions of creators market directly to hundreds of millions of customers just isn't going to work; the good stuff will be buried in the dreck (even worse than it is in the current system).

Re:Sorry Cory...

[GreatBunzinni]

The pathetic thing about mr Doctorow's comment is that the media services provided by Amazon made it possible for the very first time in the history of the music business that a nobody could market it's modest album throughout the entire world without the intervention of the established music industry. Yes, amazon and the like are still middle men but this time the middle men only acts as the communications channel, without imposing any barriers to entry or even draconian distribution contracts thatm, for example, somehow automatically put the artists millions of dollars in debt, not to mention the Hollywood accountancy. Let's see anyone do that with a geocities web site.

Re:What

[schon]

So artists should spend 60 hours a week pressing disks and mailing boxes to cut out the middleman?

You're right! It's sad that in this day and age, the only way to transmit music is by pressing it to a disc and packaging it to send to someone! If only there was some easy way for music, text, and video to be sent easily and painlessly from one person to another! I'm envisioning something like a "web" that connects people together. And if it was electronic, that would be even better! Maybe it could even involve computers in some way!

*sigh* but here I am, dreaming of something that will never be.

Culture PRE-DATES market, Cory!

[Klistvud]

The original article is just an oh-so-typical piece of American thinking, wherein money and market are the ultimate movers of everything.

Of course, if your concept of culture stops at Coke, Pop Music and Hollywood, this may hold true. If it extends to encompass Homer, Beethoven, Boole, Sartre, or Australian aboriginal art, however, you'll have to admit there is no direct correspondence between cultural "value" and market "price". The CULTURAL value of Picasso is NOT the price of his painting as sold at the latest auction.

Culture will go on existing even after all the Googles, Amazons, Wall Streets and Doctorows have perished.

Re:Culture PRE-DATES market, Cory!

[iluvcapra]

Also, culture does not last. Look at fall of the great civilizations in history - the Babolonians, the Persians, the Romans, etc.

Wealth is even more transient. Do Crassus's children "buy power" in our modern world with the money their ancestor made? Wealth dissipates.

I think when you misunderstand the word "culture" to mean "a civilization" or "an empire" or "a continuous polity." The Romans are gone, but you are reading this post in their alphabet, and I know who Crassus was. The cultural artifacts of Rome and Persia are with us just as much as they were when they were created. The only thing that's changed is the particular identities of the rich people who patronize them. Culture, to an extent, stands apart from politics and economy.

In the modern world, Money buys Power. More Money = more Power, more Power = more Control.

There are a few very, very wealthy Burmese and Iranian people that would disagree. The belief that material wealth confers political power or legitimacy is a particularly American notion. Religion, and cultural institutions like monarchies carry just as much sway.

Google and Amazon has helped the little guys...

[jfbilodeau]

I have to disagree with TFA. Google and Amazon make it easier for the little guys to get noticed. It's true they act as intermediary, but they lower the entry cost that is normally associated with traditional publishing/marketing. ...and if you don't want to get noticed via Google or Amazon, go ahead and set up your site/service/product from scratch and hope that it get's noticed. It has worked for some!

On a personal note, my sister published her first book, and has played Amazon and Google asa well as traditional marketing, and is now her publisher's #1 seller. Her success is a combination of hard-work, traditional marketing (out of her own pocket) and playing the web.

J-F