Even today, the old adage “What goes around comes around” is alive and well.  Or, wait, maybe its “Cheaters never prosper”…?

When it comes to Mirko Tobias Schäfer’s article “Participation Inside,” it seems once more that civil disobedience just doesn’t quite get the final results middle class society fights so rightly to receive.  Is it government control or merely capitalism, or both, that causes the continual battle between them and their consumer audience, that wonderful dialectic confrontation?

Napster produces an excellent example of civil disobedience.  Representing the consumer audience, Napster usurped government/capitalism control with its P2P.  Copyright infringement does present a valid issue, well, to a point.  Technically, Napster wasn’t buying or selling music, it was “sharing. ” However, yes, its glory was not long-lived, and government/capitalism realized the benefit of consumer control.

Smartly so, “they” allowed the consumer, the audience, to enjoy their childlike frolick across the internet, accumulating, archiving, constructing… smelling the flowers here and marking so in Facebook, or inviting friends to a tea-party or whatever event and whimsically sharing it with the world.  Well, the consumer does not get the last laugh.  Once again.  They are marked, numbered, and categorized by their actions.  Oh, yes, and marketed to too.  Or is that “Toto, too? ”

The Wizard of Oz…oh, I mean, The Internet.  A  consumer agency with a consequence.