I found this article really frustrating. The US government forces American tech companies to spy on users, so US companies are to blame? These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? The author is amazingly willing to accord French bureaucrats the right to regulate the cultural consumption of Frenchmen. How is this defensible? Should we knock Netflix because it…
You spend years elaborating complex way to let mainstream exists and makes money, without disturbing it too much, but still keep a working amount of culture disruptor and new ideas growing. And you even create way for the mainstream to do that, enabling cross pollination.
Then suddenly, a group that know nothing about your rules and believe that "all rules are bad anyway" come and control the main way to consume mainstream culture, rendering all your organisation void, cutting the money and support for the smallest groups.
Woops, you have to rebuild everything. Except that this time around, you have no grasp on that "mainstream" to get cooperation and build a working ecosystem.
The "market" is well and all. But an ecosystem need rulers and law enforcement. Too much rules is not good and i may agree that France and Europe was a bit too much (is a bit too much) coercive right now. But there is probably a middle ground that can be found.
Well now, i still believe lawmakers and rulers are decade behind the need of today technology. But it is not just "regulating consumption". It is also about future and keeping an healthy pool of new and fresh ideas.