Long Tail Theory Challenged

This article by Patrick Foster appearing in The Australian on line newspaper on Dec 23 ) attempts to provide proof that Chris Anderson’s “long tail’ theory is flawed. (This link briefly explains the theory).
The article leads with:

“The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets.
But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this "long tail" theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year.”
I have no problem in agreeing with the data presented but in the presentation of this there is further unpacking that can be done. The reference here is to “sales” on line in reference to a capitalist market system of supply and demand, the creation and use of markets and the availability of the product to consumers.
I am wondering how many of these tracks that are available for sale on the internet have been downloaded for free, against international or local copyright laws and regarded as a sin by the producers of such material whether they be the authors (intellectual owners) or the sellers.
Briefly, the open sourced nature of the internet, whereby anybody can publish or download digital material is causing conflict with the very basis of capitalism. Similarities between a “real world” marketplace and the internet apply with tangible goods and services. It is when we deal with intangibles such as intellectual property (or more broadly defined as anything that is communicable in a digital form) that we run into problems.
As said previously, the open source nature of the internet creates problems in the ownership/control of digital output. Once it lands in cyberspace, there is really only the cultural concept of this ownership and payment for transfer of intellectual property standing in the way of a user (culturally a consumer) gaining access and use of it.
The article assumes that if you want to have use of this music you must pay for it. This is the idea of those that place it there in the first place in expectation of the internet working under the same principles as a real life market place. Bzzzt, the internet is different.
Anderson’s long tail theory still applies in the way that access to obscure and/or niche markets are available. The BIG difference is that the terms of RL market do not apply. Assumptions include people who want the music can and will pay for it (production/consumption). Also that consumers who like the music are happy to operate in cyberspace under real world economic and property rules, rules which can easily be circumvented in the digital space.
Much tension exists in the entertainment industry over piracy arguably because the industry has become a victim of its own elitism. The rules of entertainment engagement are changing and those who have previously become wealthy through real world marketplace commerce are challenged by the digital escape or loss of the economic fruits of their labour (exploitation) of the abstract terms of ownership of copyright and intellectual property.
In other words, the internet is challenging ownership of intellectual property and by extension copyright. I have no problem with praising and admiring those who can produce such wonders of modern entertainment but I do have a problem with the obscene profits made by the few. Perhaps the internet through digitilisation is in the process of forcing a change in cultural values of intellectual property and copyright.
To close and to put it very simply, the internet by its very construction is not owned by any single person, it is communal property, therefore anything on the internet put on by anybody in digital format basically waives their rights of ownership of that digital production, passing ownership of it to the owners of the internet. i.e. the global internet community (netizens).
Get used to it – it’s going to happen. Chris Anderson’s long tail theory stands – but not for those who wish for personal gain. The profit lies in the increased agency of the internet population through epistemological development hopefully producing a better world bereft of those elite who have gained so much at the expense of so many.
Then again, it is evident the Australian government is making plans to control the long tail under the guise of internet censorship for the protection of its citizens. From the long tail to the thin end of the wedge. Netizens beware!!