By Charles Cooper
It's hard to say which side in the baseball labor dispute nearly did the better job of mucking it up for the rest of us--when it comes to pigheadedness and unvarnished greed, the owners and the players gave each other a pretty good run for the money.
Watching professional baseball's periodic impulse toward self-destruction, I can't help but note parallels to another quarrel over money and power: the endless tempest over the digital downloading of music.
The record industry's legal efforts will only reinforce the impression that the music business is run by a clique of clueless prima donnas out of touch with the new reality that is the Internet.
This other front-page controversy inexplicably remains no closer to resolution than it was two-and-a-half years ago. Now it threatens to drag down a music business too hidebound to give a little to get a little.
Had there been a modicum of good will and creative thinking, you'd think the protagonists (as in baseball) would have smoked the peace pipe long ago.
Think again, folks.
Starting with the assault on Napster and continuing to the present day, the people running the big studios have treated this dispute as the moral equivalent of war. All the while, they have refused to budge from the party line that digital file swapping is theft. It is a position that, by definition, puts compromise beyond the pale. (After all, how can you treat with common criminals?)
But treating this as a zero-sum game, where there is one winner and one loser, hasn't brought the music industry any closer to final victory. Illegal digital downloading is more rampant than ever. So how does the industry respond? It sics the lawyers on individual users accused of facilitating the sharing of digital music.
Oh yeah, as if that's going to help.
http://news.com.com/2010-1071-955995.html
- js.