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Cancun “Collapse”

True, just 22 nations led the walk-out, out of 146 participating states.  But just look who the rebels were! 

• Whether you think they are in the right or in the wrong, they are too big to be ignored. 

I believe that the institutions of western capitalism (in particular its multitudinous forms of “limited liability company”) are weak and ineffective, permitting the emergence of high concentrations of power, without countervailing challenge.  Those corporate systems are out of control: with diminishing competition, huge corporate dinosaurs have emerged which are both fragile and destructive, and beyond effective political control.  They are literally monsters, operated by individuals who use them for power enhancement and personal enrichment.  Public agencies are reluctant to confront them, for fear of losing "their" goodwill.   National competition and anti-trust legislation is losing its teeth, as a huge global market paralyses the logic of legal reasoning.  Throughout the the global network of artificial personality, legal enterprises shade imperceptibly into the criminal, as "laundering" and tax evasion proliferate.  In the USA, the corporations have generated a corrupt, morally impoverished, suborned, state.  In Britain they have come to intimidate the only Labour Government of the last quarter-century.  In Italy, they have won through to the Premiership itself.  In Russia, they are the puppet-masters, the Oligarchs.  In Brazil, there is a Faustian tussle proceeding right now, over the soul of the Brazilian peoples, as the new socialist government fights off corporate sector pressures.  

Where do you stand, on these issues?  Drop me a line

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Outrageous Intimidation

Just consider the proposition.  The American music industry, like the film industry, uses its legal muscle to extract massive profits from a small of number of mediocre “artists” whom its members have under contract.  As an industry, it is already as rich as Croesus, exploiting its copyrights and other forms of intellectual property on a global scale and seeking to dumb down the entire aural globe.  Manhattan schoolgirl 12-year-old Brianna was undoubtedly acting in breach of copyright – but what could the “damages” for her breach possibly have been?  The idea that the industry would suffer $150,000 damages per tune from Brianna’s individual breach (which is the only possible subject of such a legal claim) is ludicrous.   Yet that is what the Statement of Claim said.  So ludicrous is the claim that it must itself be considered a form of obtaining money by extortion.  To threaten a poor family with ruin, quite wrongfully – and to force them to pay up $2,000 in cash “to settle the matter” must be a crime.  A crime by the RIAA.   For the only effect of Brianna’s action was to shave off a few hundred dollars from the industry’s obscene riches, and the outrageous personal fortunes of the “artists” and their fellow-perpetrators.  The entire business is a global network of mediocrity, maintained by legalised thuggery. 

Music piracy is one of the few civilising influences in a world increasingly enmeshed by the aggressive enforcement of private property rights.  The challenge to socialists is to find a more balance solution to the problem of cultural strangulation by copyright.  My socialist solution?  To slash all copyright rights to a maximum exploitation period of ten years.  Current periods vary from country to country, often the lifetime of the author/composer plus 25 years.  These periods should be slashed to ten, from the date of first publication.  That would force the industry to keep working, encouraging new talent, generating greater diversity. 

And it would, at a stroke, eliminate a large slice of the outrageous profits of the pop music and entertainment sector.