The Day Music Died (side b)

Andrew Keen’s “The Day Music Died (side b)” was on point when talking about how the internet is threatening our values, economy, and creativity. The “Web 2.0” creation is starting to affect people all over, especially those in the movie business. I completely agree with him on the point that the movie industry is in trouble, and the Internet is definitely to blame. Movie theater prices have skyrocketed over that last decade, going from $5 for a movie and $2.50 for candy, to $11.50 (at some theaters) and $3.50 for a box of candy. This inflation was due to the decline in movie goers (which was about an 8.7% decline in 2005, and it is still declining), and they needed to make the money off of the people who still go to the movie theater despite the high prices. What’s the cause for the infrequent trips to watch movies on the big screen? Free movie downloads! According to the article, there are approximately 660,000 people who regularly download movies from the Internet, and the number is expected to increase to about 50 million by 2010. I’m not so sure that the number will increase that dramatically in that amount of time, but I’m sure more and more people will be exposed to free movie downloading from friends and family and the number will increase exponentially. Many major companies in Hollywood have to cut jobs and sales are decreasing. Keen states that because of piracy, the total lost output from all U.S. industries is about $20.5 billion annually. This figure deals with the lost of annual earnings to U.S. workers, lost tax revenue, and the loss of jobs. Disney recently eliminated 650 jobs, and the number of films in production had to decrease as well. Their ticket sales were down from $1.5 billion to $962 million in the two year span from 2003 to 2005. Warner Bros. cut 400 jobs worldwide in December 2005 alone.

The way the internet is advancing is also a cause for concern, especially with the increase in the bandwidths, which is the transmission capacity and speed of data transfer. With problems in downloading happening less frequently, more people will be encouraged to download movies. Netflix is also making it easer to watch movies, with a wide variety of them absolutely free and ready to watch whenever (as soon as you sign up). Including in the movie industry, small movie stores are going out of business as well. People can just get their movies shipped right to their house as well as just watching them on your computer.

Bookstores around the world are also suffering due to the Internet. I agree with Keen when it comes to the fact that small businesses being threatened. Approximately 2,500 independent bookstores have gone out of business since 1990, according to the New York Times, which is sad to hear because there are so many people affected when that happens. The owners and workers lose their jobs, and many people are just taking summaries from the Internet and not actually reading books. There are so many people who go on sites like sparknotes.com, which actually gives a very detailed summary and points of interest for countless numbers of works. There is no need to read any of the classic as well as modern works, which I think is important in the process of learning. Amazon.com had a 21% increase in “media sales” over the final quarter in 2005, which includes books in that category. It is very popular to buy and sell books for much cheaper prices than a normal bookstore would sell them for, causing for anyone who is up for saving money (everyone in the world) to use this site instead of taking a trip to the store. More and more people are becoming accustomed to doing this, and I think that soon enough there won’t be any bookstores left. Everyone in this day and age does things on the Internet, and the future generations will probably be buying everything from their computer.

News networks are also unprotected from this Web 2.0 craze. People now regularly log onto their computers to find out about what’s going on in the world. A Pew Research study in 2006 showed that 71% of adults (from 18-29 years old) get most of their news online. NBC has plans to eliminate 700 jobs from the total workforce. Thinking about the future, plenty more people will be sadly laid off, causing unemployment to rise even higher (according the U.S. Department of Labor, the unemployment rate is currently about 6.5 for ages 16 and older, which is an increase from about 4% in 2000). The number of people employed in the newspaper industry (according to the Newspaper Association) was down by 18 % between 1990 and 2004. Sadly, the participation that goes along with “Web 2.0” is only going to increase and cause all these different problems to increase as well. I absolutely agree with all of Keen's points, and I am afraid of the future because of the high increase in the population (which is increasing at a rate that is cause for concern) and the decrease in the amount of jobs because of the Internet.

Moore's concept of "sheep devouring men" in his novel, Utopia, was a “reaction to the Enclosure Laws that banned the peasantry from the fields of the great estates.” This relates to our time period, 500 years later, when people who are executives at companies like Google, Youtube, and Myspace, are getting ahead and pretty much stealing from “the little guy.” Nowadays, many people that are at the bottom are not getting what they deserve and are being pushed aside by the “aristocrats” of our time. A good example is YouTube, which was bought by Google for $1.65 billion dollars. There is no need for journalists, editors, producers, publicists, customer-service staff, or a back-office support staff, which causes for less money to be dispersed to others but the main staff of 60.