Is the internet taking the Mickey?

ROBERT Levine, one-time features editor at Wired magazine and former editor of Billboard, has written an excellent introduction, Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How it can Fight Back, to the huge gap that divides media and technology counterparts.

Media companies create content, such as music, text and film. Technology companies mainly distribute. Disney and Warner are content; Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, distribute.

Levine says technology companies have it all their own way, while media companies struggle to keep up. Levine takes issue with Chris Anderson, his colleague at Wired, who believes that because distribution costs are falling, ie broadband is getting faster and cheaper (although Ireland lags behind in this regard), most cultural offerings will inevitably be free.