No Suit Required

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Jeff Howe[Edit][Delete]: No Suit Required, Wired News [Edit][Delete]Wired news [Edit][Delete] August 28, 2006

One of the reasons I have supported open source and open content is that it favours small producers. When content, copyrights and intellectual property in general are owned, this favour large producers. Nowhere is this clearer than in the music industry, where (somehow!) people king William Hung and Paris Hilton are made 'stars' via marketing hype. If you're not part of the program, you can forget it. Now I happen to be a fan of artists like the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLaughlin. And I have seen these quality acts get little, if any, promotion through traditional means. So I am not surprised to see them working with Nettwerk Music Group - a company that doesn't want to 'own' them, it just wants to sell CDs with their music. More...