Mike Masnick at TechDirt
discusses a new study of his, The Sky is Rising, that
looks at the positive signs of growth in the entertainment
industry, for both consumers and producers, in an age when
we are told we need to empower the government to shut down the
Internet because of digital piracy of (largely) entertainment
goods.
Some details:
the overall entertainment ecosystem is in a real renaissance
period. The sky truly is rising, not falling: the industry is
growing both in terms of revenue and content. We split the report
up into video & film, books, music and video games -- and all
four segments are showing significant growth (not shrinking) over
the last decade. All of them are showing tremendous opportunity.
The amount of content that they're all producing
is growing at an astounding rate (which
again, is the most important thing). But revenue, too, is growing.
Equally important is that rather than consumers just wanting to get
stuff for free, they have continually spent a greater portion of
their income on entertainment -- with the percentage increasing by
15% from 2000 to 2008.This all points to the fact that what is happening within the
industry is not a challenge of a business
getting smaller -- quite the opposite. It's about the challenge of
an industry getting larger, but doing so in ways that route around
the existing structures....Some of the key points:
- Entertainment spending as a function of income went up by 15%
from 2000 to 2008- Employment in the entertainment sector grew by 20% -- with
indie artists seeing 43% growth.- The overall entertainment industry grew 66% from 1998 to
2010.- The amount of content being produced in music, movies, books
and video games is growing at an incredible pace
Read the whole study, which is contained within
the story itself.
As Nick Gillespie noted in Reason
back in the last century with history-making scope and
precision, the age of cultural abundance is still here, still
clear, still great, and not destroying people's ability to sell as
well as get for free cultural product.
Mike Riggs on "Who
Needs SOPA?," noting the continuing dangers of government
attempts to crack down on the piracy supposedly but not really
killing the culture industries.