12 October 2009
The Entertainment Industry’s 100 Years of Fear of Technology
Posted by Connor under: Technology .
I suppose everyone of a certain age is aware of Napster and the music industry’s crusade to crush it. Every few months over the last decade or so the entertainment industry will explode in a flurry of press releases and talking head appearances regarding the evils of copyright infringement, illegal copying and piracy.
But what almost everyone doesn’t know is that this is nothing new. The entertainment industry has decried every technical innovation since the player piano and the Edison victrola as the looming death of their industry. Nate Aderson, over at Ars Technica has a great roundup of historical documents from the entertainment industry, 100 Year of Big Content Fearing Technology, In Its Own Words
In 1906, famous composer John Philip Sousa took to Appleton’s Magazine to pen an essay decrying the latest piratical threat to his livelihood, to the entire body politic, and to “musical taste” itself. His concern? The player piano and the gramophone, which stripped the life from real, human, soulful live performances.
“Under such conditions,” Sousa believed, “the tide of amateurism cannot but recede until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant. Singing will no longer be a fine accomplishment; vocal exercises so important a factor in the curriculum of physical culture will be out of vogue. Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the national chest? Will it not shrink?”
It is a truism of human nature that if you have a good thing going, you want to keep it going. Nobody likes to fiddle with their business model. But hey. life is rough, wear a helmet.
One of my favorite quotes about business and technology is from Robert A. Heinlein’s first short story, “Life-Line.” In the story a scientist invents a machine capable of predicting the exact time of a person’s death. He is sued by the insurance industry whom he is threatening with extinction. The matter goes to court and the judge finds for the scientist writing:
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
That quote should be engraved in marble letters five inches high in every boardroom and statehouse in the nation.