The copyright industry is America’s largest export, something I learned just a few years ago. We still make and sell products and services, but Hollywood is at the top of the list. We sell our decadence to the rest of the world, and they’re buying it. I think the average American gives little thought to this, and yet it is by this that we are judged.

We’re proud of our smut, aren’t we?

I have written many times about the greed of the copyright industry and how this greed is one of the key fuels in the disintermediation of all forms of media — the unbundling thereof. For years, we’ve been forced to pay $18 for a music CD, for example, when all we wanted was one song. We sat through endless commercial interruptions while watching TV, because we had no choice. All of that is changing as media is unbundling and we are rebundling it for ourselves.

important to understand that — in many ways — this same copyright industry brought it on themselves. When any industry begins suing its customers, as the RIAA has done in the U.S., one can safely assume it has lost its way.