Comment Re:How many? (Score 1) 342
No, because a lot of the content creators don't care. With the exception of a few high profile "creators" who use royalties alone to bankroll their lavish lifestyles without having to create anything anymore, most would tell you they are happy just knowing someone likes their work. Though there are some creators out there in the public making a stink about it, its mostly the middlemen that are throwing the tantrum.
To use another car analogy, its more like car dealerships fighting tooth and nail to be the only source of purchasing a car. They install DRM that makes sure if you miss your payment, the car won't start. They make laws that make tampering with such devices illegal.
When new technologies are created to make purchasing and maintaining a car quicker and easier, they try to squash them. They fight websites that make it easier for individuals to trade or purchase cars. When a new car manufacturer tries to sell directly to their customers instead of using expensive middlemen, old laws are used to keep them out. When 3D printers are cheap enough and robust enough to print auto grade parts, the dealerships will lobby congress to make patents last indefinitely and sue file sharers as patent violators asking over 200k per violation.
What the content distributors need to do is adapt. Once the content turned into bits that can be copied indefinitely at zero cost, their business model was gone. They should have embraced technology and created itunes before an electronics company, one that was actually barred from entering the music industry because of their name, come in before them and grab the new market. Hell, they are in the packaged goods business, not electronic distribution, so they should embrace that and make the best packaged goods they can. Instead of selling us a digital copy of their artists' creations on a cheap plastic disc in a cheap plastic container for $15 - $20 that are guaranteed to break, sell us something valuable. The Beatles in Mono comes up as a good example, though a bit extreme.