Men in suits fucking things up
Ben Hammersley's presentation was one of the highlights at the Les Blogs conference yesterday. A key element of his speech was that while civilization has invented many great technologies that could make this world a great place to live there will always be some "men in suits" who impose rules and regulations limiting the (potential) freedom gained from using those technologies.
While Ben was delivering his thought-provoking statements in Paris, another meeting took place in Brussels. The European Publishers Council gathered and Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the head of the Council, released the following statement:
Consumers are drawn online by free content but this needs to change.Francisco's point is that... well... I guess his point is that "free and unregulated" must be "not free and regulated". It makes me wonder if he has ever heard about Creative Commons and if he is at all willing to accept that the rules of game are changing. I also wonder if he would, by Ben's definition, qualify as a "man in a suit".
And while one might argue that Mr. Balsemao has a case against Google making money off copyrighted content, I don't understand why he simply doesn't encourge the members of his organization to opt out of services such as Google News and try to find alternative means of content distribution. At the end of the day, the consumers will decide where and how to find the content they like, no matter if the content silver or gold.
Related: If you are interested in seeing Ben Hammersley in action, have a look at this short video. [lesblogs]
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