Music is Not a Loaf of Bread

Quoth Jeff Tweedy, the lead singer of Wilco, in his interview with Xeni Jardin today over at Wired News.

When common sense is heresy, and nonsense ("Our business is tanking - let's sue our customers or throw them in jail!") orthodoxy, I think you can safely state that a revolution is under way. That ground there, beneath our feet? It's shifting.

At the movie theater last night Erica and I paid $21.50 (including parking) for the joy and privilege of watching The Incredibles - a great, great movie - and for our law-abiding trouble were subjected to a three-minute guitar-riffing screed - cut with the sort of fast, jerky camera work that makes Erica nauseous - on the subject "Downloading free movies is stealing. Buying pirated movies is stealing. Illegal downloading: Inappropriate for all ages." One more reason to download that next theatrical release over BitTorrent.

The television companies can't make a decent HDTV for less than $3,000, it seems, and I can't get HDTV content over my local cable - if I want HDTV I need to hook up an actual antenna. If I also fork over $1,000 for an HDTV-compatible TiVO, I might actually get the chance to watch some shows. But over here in the office, HDTV versions of every current TV show are available for the asking, via BT and a $1500 computer (here's a cute way to get your PC to impersonate an HDTV TiVO). On our LCD flatscreen the shows looks fantastic. Oh - and did I mention? No commercials.

So Erica and I sit in our office, with our G4 and our flatscreen and our broadband connection, and we dim the lights, and from our futon we watch as Hollywood burns.