"If there is going to be music, someone will figure out how to get paid for it, just like with TV shows."

I don't agree. If there's going to be _professional_ music, someone has to pay for it. But in human history, _most_ music making was not professional. Music (singing, playing instruments) was a hobby, or part of religious observances, or military ceremony, or community celebrations, and only relatively rarely did someone earn a living by singing or playing or composing.

It's certainly plausible that more, better music happens when people get paid to create it, but to suggest that no one will make good music just for the fun of it is insulting to amateur musicians everywhere.

The whole "without copyright, there'd be no creative activity" line of argument ignores the fact that for most of human history, there was creative activity without copyright. Which doesn't mean we should get rid of copyright, it does _encourage_ creative activity, but it also has some costs.

People have been predicting this for years. Sooner or later TiVo and its descendants will push commercials into shows. Other ideas are to run a commercial across the bottom of the screen, similar to animated banner ads. Already some network promos are like this for their own shows, soon it will be for other products.

Anyway, the quote about not believing in the marketplace cuts both ways. Just wait for the howls of protest as these commercials become more interwoven into the shows. I hope people will think back to Frankston's words and remember that business is a dynamic, not static process. They'll want the old-style commercials that can be skipped, but those are going to be gone for good.

New technology demands new approaches. It's the same with MP3 sharing. Sooner or later, good, free music will no longer be abundant. It's not economically supportable. I don't know how it will happen, whether through a successful legal/technical attack on file sharing, or whether people will just stop making good music, but it will happen. If there is going to be music, someone will figure out how to get paid for it, just like with TV shows.