Conspiracy? What Conspiracy?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, in fact I openly mock them and laugh in their faces (HAAHAHAAHA hollow moon, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!), except for my best friend, whom I love dearly and hate to get into pointless arguments with, but…

… is it just me or does it feel like the big entertainment companies (and I include publishers and Marvel and DC in this) are desperately trying to kill the web, not because of the never-ending Piracy/IP debate, but to stifle the huge influx of free and ingenious entertainment that is being created daily by internet users around the globe.
Consider this; Entertainment companies are dying, not due to piracy or archaic practices, but because technology today puts the power in the creator’s hands.
Once upon a time there was simply no way to create your own product and distribute it to the world. The technology needed to record an album, or shoot a movie, cost more than most people would earn in their lifetimes. But then came video, and then digital technology, and now the internet.
I love the internet, it's like the wild fucking west. Everything and anything can happen here, good and bad. But for creators of any medium, this place is gold.
So nowadays, musicians don’t need to sacrifice 98% of their sales to record companies anymore, comic-book artists and writers no longer need to relinquish the ownership to their works, writers can self-publish and for filmmakers there is the wonderful world of YouTube.

Yes, the distribution available from the big studios/publishers is impossible to compete with, though in some cases that’s not always true, but more and more musicians are signing distribution deals with record labels, rather than signing publishing deals. Radiohead has been an extremely successful independent band for years now, and yes I know they were an extremely successful signed band first, but my point is still valid. Jonathan Coulton has never been signed; he is a 100% internet success.
I think what is happening is the major studios are becoming distributors of content instead of publishers, and this is pissing them off. I honestly think these guys are running scared, they have no (decent) new content coming out, more and more creators are turning to alternative sources for funding and their library of limitless bounty is slowly dwindling away, either through age (if the length of posthumous copyright doesn’t keep growing) or overuse (over-abuse), and so now they want to take away our playground.

But for the little guy this is pretty much the best time in history to be a creator, the resources available are near infinite.
Sites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and Wreckamovie are proving that crowd funding is not only possible but is a faster, and in some cases more successful, means of funding a project, and crowd-funded projects remain the property of the creators. No evil studios to decide that your beautiful one-shot comic should be turned into a never-ending, soul-sucking, creator-destroying franchise starring Nicolas Cage (I’m looking at you Marvel – you are literally turning into comic-book villains. Get it? See what I did there?).
Ten years ago I could never have published an internationally-distributed magazine from my lounge. It was just not possible.

Maybe I am talking total shit here, but it definitely feels to me like there is a bigger agenda here, and I don’t think censorship is it, at least not the way we perceive censorship. I think this is about killing competition and maximising profits from rehashed crap.

I say Fuck ‘em.
What do you think?
PS, some awesome creator owned and independently financed stuff for you.
Jonathan Coulton's Music
Star Wars Uncut - brilliant crowd-sourced version of Ep 4
The Death and Return of Superman - short film by Max Landis
Play By Heart (indie film, this one’s mine)
Bandwagon: Season 1 Playlist. (With Emma Caulfield)
Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog (Joss Whedon magic, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicai Day and Nathan Fillion)