Applying Music Industry Logic to Other Enterprises

Tarmle from Autumnal City has posted this little comparison. What if we applied the Music Industry business logic to another business? For example, grass cutting:

I would alter the current grass cutting technology to limit the degree to which it is useful by, for example, raising the cutting device so that the grass is left long, or blunting it so that it cuts unevenly. This will leave the market for grass cutting open to me to provide consumers more effective grass cutting services.

People might try to alter their now limited grass cutting technology to make it as effective as my own. This, of course, cannot be permitted so I must persuade the government to make it illegal to supply consumers with grass cutting technology that may be used or altered to cut grass effectively. In fact, lets make it illegal for people to cut anyone else's grass at all!

Thus my business is secure. I can now justify its existence by actively protecting the grass cutting rights of my thousands of professional grass cutters - you wouldn't want to take away their livelihoods would you? I can further justify imposing these limitations by pointing out that the grass cutting industry already existed and that the availability of new technology threatened it by allowing anyone to cut grass.

But now I have to deal with the issue of people allowing their grass-eating pets to wander through other people's gardens, keeping their grass neat without paying the licensing fees. These Neighbour-to-Neighbour herbivore networks must be stamped out!

Hehe. I think we could continue and extend this a little bit more. For example, why stop at Neighbor-to-Neighbor networks. After all, it's the herbivores themselves that threaten your business. You should aim to make it illegal in US to allow herbivores to graze on any kind of grass.

Agricultural technology should also be legislated. After all, farmers may want to use their farming equipment to cut grass. Therefore you should lobby for all farming equipment to have optical sensors which would detect what type of foliage they are cutting and lock the blades in place whenever they detect grass.

You should also pre-emptively lobby against genetic engineering. What if scientists one day produce a breed of grass that does not grow beyond certain length and thus requires no trimming? It should be prohibited to do any kind of genetic research on any kind of grass like flora.

Thus you completely mess up not only the grass cutting business but also agriculture and scientific sectors. Just like entertainment industry proposed legislation will mess up technology, electronics and computer science.

Tags: riaa, mpaa, entertainment, copyright, copyfight, autumnal city