Jarzemsky has an interesting article up on litreactor.com where he discusses the past record of books and art being controversial (or banned), and how with increased factionalization on the Internet (you’re able to limit your exposure only to the type of media that doesn’t offend you) something is lost. Excerpt from the article:

The upside of this factionalizing is that true challenges to art and media have been few and far between in recent memory. When confronted with the vast content dump that is the Internet, the average media consumer is going to stick with things that conform to their mode of thinking, that were recommended to them by like-minded people, and that seem to be in their political and moral “safe-zone”. When there is unlimited access to unlimited content, the potential for somebody to be outraged is drastically reduced, because they have a plethora of alternative options to choose from. The downside is that while this potential for challenge, censorship, et al has been decreased, so has the potential for debate and discussion. It’s not that literature or art itself has gotten less controversial, it’s that the audiences that are moved to pick up a book that might be challenging are probably not going to be challenged by it, and those that might benefit are going to stay mired in the realm of opinions that reinforce their own.

Today is the SOPA and PIPA Internet blackout day. I think Wired nailed it with this:

There is also a deep question here about the priorities of media executives. SOPA and PIPA represent a legal strategy that focuses the attention of business leaders on stopping losses rather than promoting innovation and building new products. It obfuscates the fact that piracy is, in the long run, an unavoidable cost of doing business, one that should be bearable provided the fundamentals of the business (say, customer satisfaction) are sound.

The big content creators, including the members of the MPAA and the RIAA, must stop trying to use legislation and the government as a tool to avoid innovation. They need to find ways to change or improve their business model, but as long as our legislators pander to their laziness, they won’t.

In the race to brand everyone else’s politics as “1984,” I think we’ve forgotten the true masterstroke of that book: It’s a deeply cynical work which shows us that love, a thing of beauty that grows even in the harshest conditions, can easily be destroyed if the right methods are used.