I think it all comes down to marketing and advertising. In the end you may not make as much with an HBO/Comedy Central special, but would anyone know who Louis CK is without these?

It's more of a branding thing with the specials and getting your name out there. It may not payoff up front, but the deals that come after it (such as Louie, the TV show) make it well worth it in exchange for the money lost.

The trick isn't really building a platform for smaller indie people to do these sort of things, that's easy and already available widely. The trick is building a service where these smaller indie people can make it big without having to go through the big players like HBO/Comedy Central first. YouTube is on the right track and Pandora/Spotify seems to be doing this for music, they just need time to growth, because as big as YouTube is, it still doesn't have the weight and advertising ability that a channel like HBO/Comedy Central has. As the ability to sift through the junk becomes better and better via analysis of social cues/demographics, it will be easier for these sort of simple "I don't care if you pirate because it's cheap enough" models to take off for smaller people. But at that point YouTube or whoever fills that gap just becomes the next HBO/Comedy Central and the cycle repeats.

Bottom line is there's always going to be a "big wig" who owns almost all the eggs. For standup comedy it's Comedy Central and HBO. If you can make it there you're set. Maybe someday it will be the YouTube comedy channel, but someones going to always come out ahead and being the leader means you can set your own price on what you wish to pay (as HBO/Comedy Central has done here).

Nitpick: I agree with much of what you've said here, but as it pertains to Spotify, the majors have them by the balls, and the financial predicament that puts them in likely has some influence on their outrageously low payout rates which are steadily alienating musicians, independent and "signed" alike. (As an independent/amateur electronic musician, one of the qualities I look for in a distributor to get my music on iTunes, etc. is "does not submit songs to Spotify.")

I suspect that the type of solution you've described may work, but in its current incarnation, Spotify aint it.

Opportunity rises for a new product. The findhispornfinder, that checks if someone has run the product from findhisporn.com on your computer.

From what I've seen this is how the response has been to every petition thus far. They basically give an overview about the topic and some historical information but really say nothing and promise nothing. It's the equivalent of setting a trashcan in your office and putting a sign on it that says "Complaint Department".

Yep. "If enough people care, we'll copy/paste a press release." But what else could we have expected? That they'll drop everything, gather the experts, and rethink the past N decades of policy just because enough people on the internet clicked a button? Just another reason that the type of mass democracy that people keep saying that the internet will bring won't work without some Big New Thing for how people interact. There are still too many people and too many ideas.

Would be humorous if this petition got the necessary signatures to get a response: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/actually-ta...

Thanks. It won't make any difference but I still love it.

Everyone please sign this petition. The sign up process sucks but it will be worth it to make the Obama spin machine have to respond to this.

It's not that hard for the Obama spin machine to respond to this. "Blah blah blah, of course we take all suggestions very seriously. In fact we have already done [something unrelated]. We thank you for your interest. Give us money."

Exactly. The UK government did this a few years ago, and every response amounted to "we're going to do it anyway".

The Obama administration is pretty much the Bush administration with better PR.

The youngest self made billionaire was 23 when it happened for him, and that was with a ton of connections. Relax, you still have 3 more years before you're a failure.

When I was 21 I tried to do what you tried to do here, and I ended up living with my sister with -$83 in the bank by the time it was all said and done. I am 24 now and doing much better in life, but it was a long road to get here. I can promise you that it will get better, but you will have to work for it.

My suggestions:

- Start filling out applications for any and every job. Get a job. It doesn't matter if it's cleaning toilets or flipping burgers. Right now there are people with PHD's who are riding on the back of a garbage truck. Put your pride and passions behind you, and take any job you can get.

- Until you get that job, do anything you can to get money. Go door to door with a lawn mower and cut grass. Troll the free section on craigslist and find a way to sell the items listed there. Walk into the small mom and pop shops in your area and ask if they need any help involving IT whether it be building a website, designing a flyer, setting up a wireless network, fixing a computer, anything. Ask if you can leave your number with them if anything should come up in the future.

There's always a way to make a few extra dollars, and you'd be surprised how much small businesses are willing to help out someone down on their luck who actually wants to work. Swallow your pride, get out of the house, and get face to face with people who have succeeded where you have failed.

Best of luck to you.

"The youngest self made billionaire was 23 when it happened for him, and that was with a ton of connections. Relax, you still have 3 more years before you're a failure."

haha