Welcome back to the tech policy podcast. I'm Corbyn Barthold.

Mike Maznick and Lee Beden are here.

Mike, as most of our listeners will know, is the founder and grand Puba of TechDirt.

Lee is an editor at TechDirt.

Mike and Lee are the authors of a new edition of The Sky is Rising, a detailed look at the state of the entertainment industries.

This report, put out by CCIA and the Copia Institute,

offers a complete look at how people are listening, watching, reading, and playing in the

internet era. In this latest entry in the series, Mike and Lee serve up a lot of good news. They find that we are in a true

golden age of culture. There is more content being produced than ever before. More people are

creating content. More people are consuming content in many different forms. And on the industry side, more money is being

spent than ever before. The sky, they write, is truly rising. I run into a lot of techno-pessimism

these days, and in particular pessimism about technology's effect on art and entertainment.

I keep reading that culture is stagnant or decaying or dying, and that technology is to blame in

some way or other. The internet especially is destroying culture. All the highbrow people tell me so.

But I can't say that I run into much evidence for this proposition.

Denunciations of the internet tend to be based on anecdotes and vibes.

So what I especially appreciate about the sky is rising is that it is detailed and evidence

rich. I look forward to discussing it. Mike Lee, welcome.

Yeah, thanks for having us. We're always excited to talk about this stuff.

I promise we'll do a more granular breakdown by category,

but just to start, would one of you like to give the high-level summary of the sky is rising?

Yeah, and I think it's worth pointing out that this is, you know, we've done this report a few

...