Changelings and Agents of Change

As we face constant changes in the print industry, the music industry and a dozen or so more, the underlying public debate is who is going to pay for the changes and who is going to be paid. The amount of free content on the web is leading to an attitude that music, movies, photographs etc are becoming public domain and the creators of the content should be thankful enough that someone would graciously steal their hard work and put it to better use. The fairies would then come along, turn the children in to little Oliver Twist's and lo and behold you would be paid for your work. There are models out there that work, mainly through advertising, but then you have control issues with the corporations dictating the content like they did through the death of the TV empires. I mean how many more reality shows can you make? Virgin are having a big push right now to try to figure out the music business, but I think the problem lies in the control of content. When record companies owned the vinyl or CD at least there was a little quality control on the content, the struggle for recognition made you better I think, but the behavior of those companies, makes you livid, so how could you trust them to police the industry and come up with a fair solution? It would be a bit like the banks pushing for stricter regulations on themselves, knowing before hand they are just going to ignore the law and pay the fine. I think what it comes down to, is that people have to pay the creators of the content, respect whatever form of art they are providing, and be happy the content is available. You can be an agent of change, otherwise we will have to send the changelings after you, who knows what will happen then.