Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid

Chokepoints in the economy have had a devastating impact on various creating occupations. The internet has caused changes in the chokepoints, but have often just moved the money from one rich corporation to another, with little real benefit to the actual creators.

Music is a key case study. Major labels have had a control on getting artists notists. However, they often require them to sign difficult contracts that leave little to the artist. The industry has further consolidated with companies owning venues and ticketing, and others owning publishing and distribution. There is little competition, and the companies are notoriously bad at their accounting. Digital music lead to additional chokepoints. Apple was able to dominate in digital downloads in part due to the lock in with digital rights. (The DMCIA law did not allow anybody to strip copy protection.) By the time Apple opened DRM-free downloads, the world was moving towards streaming. In streaming, the streamers need the major labels, and thus negotiate deals, which often do not provide much benefit to artists. (Artists still get old, low royalties, even though distribution costs are now much lower. Labels also user accounting tricks to limit those royalties.)

Book publishing repeated the same problem by letting Amazon dominate the book market with DRM books. Amazon also has audiobooks with DRM. Publishers thought that the protections of DRM would help them prevent copying of books. But all it has really done is allow the big vendors to control the market. At least the big publishers negotiate from a position of relative strength. The small publishers are even more worse off.

In both cases, there was unintended consequences of laws to protect content producers. Copyright is another case where the law provides extremely long terms and protection, with the result being more power to big companies and less cultural benefit.

The authors propose some solutions, such as a cultural guardian that seeks royalties and payments for orphaned works. This seems a little too dreamy. There will be some way for big companies to milk it also. Perhaps we just need to limit the copyright terms altogether. Perhaps we should just have things drift into the public domain if they are no longer publicly available. Alas, with digital distribution, a company could just put it out for a day and say it is in "limited release". It makes things difficult. Copyright as it exists is much too long to provide society benefit, and servers more to enrich big companies. Getting the proper incentives to help the "little guy" is a huge challenge, with risks of continuing to empower bigger companies. The more we depend on big business to provide revenue and "benefits" for us, the more we risk being held hostage.