Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

A. It was not easy reading, but neither was it quite like reading a textbook, the most boring reading of all. Q. So it was close to boring? A. Yes, but I'm just not a technophile. I was a psychology major and studied Fortran back in graduate school, so you can see where I stand now, regarding so-called high technology. Also, I gave up television and newspapers some time ago, and I've been to one movie in twenty years ("The Help"). Levine writes about all these businesses, and he's very current. I'm not, so much of what he wrote I just didn't comprehend. Q. Well, what else did you learn besides that you are not up-to-date in most media? A. About the electronic storage suppliers who rent space to people or websites, who then use them to download pirated copies of movies, books, or whatever, to sell to other people. Q. Would you recommend this book to the general reader? A. No, sorry. It's complex and filled with what I thought was mostly scuttlebutt, interesting to insiders, maybe, but not to the general reader. Levine intends, I guess, to be proposing ways that newspapers, the music industry, the movie industry, book publishers, what he considers today's culture, to cope with the steam rollers of Google and the other second-hand packagers of information and culture, the ones he calls parasites. They produce nothing but use what others produce to make a lot of money. Q. Do you agree with him about this parasite idea? A. No. Remember, I'm just a lay person on these issues, but in my own mind, I think these big businesses, movies, television, music, publishers, newspapers, are all free riding. They may be culture to Levine, but to me they are essentially non-producers. They produce, but their products are not essential to living, or even to living a good life. They produce things Americans, and others, can conspicuously consume when they, the consumers, have more than met all their basic needs. Were these businesses to become obsolete, the ones Levine advocates for, it would not bother me in the least. Were they to adapt and survive, more power to them. Q. In other words, you were not that vested in either side of the issues in Levine's book? A. Right. Q. Okay, so you had problems with his premise, but how was his style and the pacing of the book? A. Not easy to follow, for me. He did over one hundred interviews, but the results are spread all over the book. The chapters, though sometimes focusing on one industry or another, seemed to lack coherence. Really, after he started throwing up this name and that name of big wigs in technology or media, I had to start speed reading. But, if you know these people, the vice president of Public Knowledge or the public relations person of Universal or BMI or an Arkansas newspaper publisher, it all may make more sense to you.