Information

is free, always should be free, and always will be free. This is how computers will bring about communism.

From the industrial revolution onward art has enjoyed a kind of capitalist bender. The advent of new methods of distributing artistic works (most notably literature and music) has allowed these industries to transform into obscenely lucrative financial mechanisms in their own right, on par with heavy manufacturing and science in terms of the sheer amount of cash they produce. This is made possible by the transformation of these industries into capitalist machinery: musicians make music as a product, which is sold; novels are a product, movies are a product. Art itself is a product, and the more product you sell, the more money you make.

Todays musicians and actors are far richer than their historical counterparts could ever hope to be. Before the industrial revolution the mechanism whereby an artist supported him or herself was patronage: lovers of art gave money so that artists would be free to produce more art. Shakespeare, though receiving support from the queen and the lord chamberlain, was no Harvey Weinstein. Bach could not afford to eat diamonds or have a roller coaster installed on his property. These people made their way through the economy of reputation: people liked Bach's music, so they kept him around. There was not the formulaic relationship between worker and wage, producer and product that we have been conditioned into accepting as part of capitalist machinery.

When reputation is turned into this worker/wage relationship, it quickly gets out of control. People like art, a LOT of people like art, for a LONG time. If someone like Geoffrey of Monmouth were to turn this "reputation" into hard cash he could buy and sell pretty much every one of us (and if his estate had sued for copyright on King Arthur...well just think about it). Copyright and intellectual property law are NOT how art is supposed to work. Art is not a product, and it is not supposed to generate revenue like one.

The industrial revolution, then, was a transition period between the old reputation model and the new one. For a time, certain capitalist opportunists were able to set up models whereby art is tied in with product. This is akin to putting heroin in candy. People NEED art, and will always pay for it. Art behaves like an idea, which is to say that it lasts a long time, is required and desired by a larger number of people than a specific commodity ever should be, and can be controlled by a conscious effort of the producer. It's a capitalist wet dream.

So muscians, actors, and some writers got obscenely rich. I mean actually obscene, like it's inappropriate. A side effect of this is that art no longer develops under the selecting influence of artistic enrichment, simply rude market forces. Poetry is dying because the masses simply do no clamor for it: the demand is too low. Poetry still has all the staying power of the novel (in fact more so for its brevity) but it is difficult to package and sell, and to find people willing to buy (beyond those who are akin to those artistically minded patrons of historical rep-economy) . Art becomes about what sells, not about what is good or interesting to those who love it.

What we are seeing with the emergence of the information age is the dismantling of these capitalist mechanisms. There is now a way for all information to be transmitted through a single medium, a medium which does not follow the model of a commodity. People pay for ACCESS to information, not for each piece of information which becomes theirs. People are realizing that copyright law and DRM are bullshit, and that they shouldn't have to pay for something that their ancestors never had to. This is the essence of communism: the separation of money from product. It is not about moving property, or transfer of ownership. It is about GIVING people resources. Artists can still make money, simply not the obscene amounts they were capable of under the old system. The musicians who whine fearfully about file sharing "Stealing music" are simply greedy capitalists, nothing more. You're not stealing music from them, because music is information and information cannot be owned or controlled, not in a civilized society leastaways.

Do not buy art! Give artists money, fine, but remember ART IS NOT A PRODUCT AND YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY IT LIKE ONE.