  Post-commercial entertainment  Bookmark and Share Tuesday, Nov
27, 2007  The Hollywood writers’ strike certainly helps throw
this in relief, but it seems clear that the commercial
entertainment industry is in trouble. Digitization and dispersed
internet distribution has made it impossible for them to control
supply, and the intellectual property concepts their business
models depend on seem likely to come under attack or undergo
extreme revision in an era where anonymous collaboration and
open-source development become more and more customary. Not to
wax too utopian about it, but it seems like the idea of
commercial artists working for industry middlemen is rapidly
becoming a thing of the past, and as that changes, the means by
which our society defines what makes for an artist or
entertainer will change as well. Reality TV and blogging are
just the most obvious examples of semi-professional and, in some
cases, post-commercial entertainment supplanting the work of
pros. The expectations we have of polish an