Pribek

Mark Cuban discussed Chris Anderson’s new book “Free” in his post, “Free vs. Freely Distributed”. Cuban points to the canary in the coal mine…

The future of content outside of the music industry is exactly what you are now seeing inside the music industry. The music industry uses what they have learned from more than 10 years of competing with free. First they cut the size of their organizations to the bone, keeping just those they hope and pray will know best how to guide them through the world of free.

And, of course, the world of free means a glut of music. Mark may have stumbled on to a possible solution…

You get the music industry. Anyone can create any song for no cost, and they do. The problem of course is getting your music to stand out among the millions of songs available at any given moment. Its expensive. Very, very expensive. (If it werent for groupies, would the number of musical artists contract 90pct ?)

Just get rid of the groupies!

Can you imagine? It would be like one giant MySpace/sensitive singer, songwriter/death metal/rap/hip-hop/alternative/folk/white guy blues band/indie bug bomb.

Saturday morning, it’s already warm enough to have the doors open. It’s supposed to reach 85 degrees today. I’m sipping coffee and listening to the Allan Holdworth album “Hard Hat Area”. Good music for the morning. Holdsworth’s music is some of the most evolved, pure, music for the sake of music around. Gary Husband on drums also, I always enjoy hearing him.

I listen to talk radio as background noise a lot. There are two stations to choose from here. One is an ESPN and the other is a Fox news. I listen to the ESPN more during baseball season, the Fox station is bombastic and editorial, sometimes entertaining.

I was listening to the Fox station last night. Bill O’Reilly comes on at eight. I don’t usually listen to him and it has nothing to do with politics. He has an alpha debating style that I find annoying. It’s a technique that is good for winning a debate and bad for the exchange of information. If he is talking with someone who is accustomed to the tactic though, and doesn’t cower, O’Reilly will let him say his piece.

Anyway, last night he said he was going to be talking to Mark Cuban. I like Cuban. I think he is a visionary, put your money where your mouth is entrepreneur. By the way he is Blog Maverick in the sidebar.

The topic was 9/11 conspiracy theories and, more specifically an internet movie called “Loose Change” that Cuban has agreed to distribute beyond the internet. O’Reilly is torqued off that celebrities are getting into the mix. Rosie O’Donnell did an indecipherable cut and paste post on her blog, either endorsing a conspiracy or acknowledging one; I can’t really tell. Charlie Sheen, who has babbled about conspiracy, might be the narrator of the film. And, Cuban whose involvement leaves O’Reilly baffled.

One of the most telling quotes of the show came after the interviews, during the caller section, when a listener told O’Reilly should watch the film and Bill said, “If this thing were contained to the internet, I wouldn’t be paying attention to it”. Now, I’m paraphrasing and that would upset O”Reilly but I only heard it as it flew by. The reason it is relevant is; Cuban has a vision of the present and future in regard to media and O’Reilly does not. You can’t go on ignoring the internet.

The show started with a gentleman from Popular Mechanics who has done extensive writing and research refuting 9/11 conpiracies.

Cuban comes on and O’Reilly’s side is that he shouldn’t distribute the film, it’s propaganda and you should not justify it. Cuban agrees that it is propaganda and feels that you have to expose propaganda in order to confront it.

O’Reilly then compared it to people that espouse the “never was a holocaust” theory and the Nazi propaganda films. Cuban, who is Jewish and had relatives that died in the concentration camps feels that people should have access to all of it. At one point, O’Reilly asks whether Cuban would release a film about the Popular Mechanics findings to which Mark replied, “without a doubt”.

Cuban is right as rain and O’Reilly is dead wrong. You have to know and understand your enemy in order to defeat him. If people don’t have access to “Mein Kampf” and the Nazi films they have less understanding of the mind and motive of the madman and increase the chances of it happening again. If “Loose Change” remains an internet phenomenon it gives the gives the appearance of suppression and thus, adds fuel to it’s power as a propaganda tool.

What about the notion that Cuban could profit from this venture? I don’t have a problem with it if he does. I’m glad that there is someone that has the kind of money to release it, and has enough sack to expose this jive. The kind of money this thing could make doesn’t impress a guy like Cuban. He has a drive that comes from being brought up in a family that was permanently affected by suppression. Suppression is censorship, whether it involves the evil or the good.