The question isn't who's going to let me: it's who is going to stop me. "A powerful argument for reducing inequality and revolutionizing how we use the web for the benefit of the many rather than the few." Kirkus "Jonathan Taplin, more than anyone I know, can articulate the paralyzing complexities that have arisen from the intertwining of the tech and music industries ... Every musician and every creator should read this book." Rosanne Cash, Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Google. Amazon. Facebook. The modern world is defined by vast digital monopolies turning ever-larger profits. Those of us who consume the content that feeds them are farmed for the purposes of being sold ever more products and advertising. Those that create the content - the artists, writers and musicians - are finding they can no longer survive in this unforgiving economic landscape. But it didn't have to be this way. This is the story of how a small number of ideologically driven libertarians took the utopian ideal of the internet and turned it into the copyright-mauling, competition-destroying, human-hating nightmare it has become. Their revolution began with a simple premise: to conquer the world, they would steal the value of art (as well as the value of everything else of importance to human beings) from its creators. It is the story of a massive reallocation of revenue in which $50 billion a year has moved from the creators and owners of content to the monopoly platforms. And if you think that's got nothing to do with you, their next move is to come after your jobs.

Author Biography

Jonathan Taplin is Director of the Annenberg Innovation Lab and a former tour manager for Bob Dylan and The Band, as well as a film producer for Martin Scorsese. An expert in digital media entertainment, Taplin is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the California Broadband Taskforce and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's Council on Technology and Innovation.