How Alcohol Sale Laws are Ruining the Future of Music

For nearly all music venues, the majority of profits do not come from ticket sales, or food, or crappy pizza or water or merchandise. No, it comes from beer. Liquor. Booze. Alcohol.  And I'm not here to say that this is wrong. You do you, business-owners. What I am here to say is that it is absolutely absurd that the sale of alcohol, as well as the laws surrounding it, would restrict younger, prospective show-goers from seeing their favorite performing artists.  One of the best ways to be inspired to create, to try and get into a community with other artists is to watch them in their most primal state, on stage, guitar/microphone/drum sticks in hand. Meeting one's heroes inspires awe and passion in people that simply can't be recreated at a computer desk, or with an iPod.  But these laws, which were created with good intentions, are only doing one thing, and that's destroying existing music communities, as well as ruining any chance of these communities to sprout and grow.  Dare I say, that they are ruining small, independent, do-it-yourself venues themselves.  But why were these laws created?
To answer this question, we first must state something which is obscenely obvious: People like to drink alcohol. Not just those who are of the legal drinking age requirements, but those under it too.  One can argue the effects of alcohol on developing brains and social habits all day, but at the end of the day, it's not going to stop high school and college students alike from getting their hands on some booze for their weekend outings.  It's a fact of life.  As a reaction to this, however, lawmakers across America have crafted legislation that limits how businesses which sell alcoholic beverages can conduct business in the presence of those under the legal drinking age.  No one under 21 past certain hours, no one under 21 allowed period, no one under 18(AKA no one who can't be held responsible for their own actions in a court of law) allowed.  And it's these young concertgoers that are the meat and potatoes of thriving music communities.
Let's compare three cities and their music scenes, three cities which most Troy citizens can relate to. These three cities are Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton. Let's break it down one by one.
Cincinnati has a very large number of independent venues, clubs, bars, and other performance spaces.  Of the numerous variety of performance areas in Cincinnati, you would truly be hard pressed to find one which restricts it's customers based on age. And how is business in Cincinnati? To describe it as booming or thriving would be quite the understatement. Bands from Cincinnati are exploding into popularity, because anyone can go to any of the shows they put on in any venue in the city. This gives the DIY venues more revenue, which gives the artists more money and incentive to perform, and it gives the kids something to aspire to.
Next, let us take a peek at Columbus.  Columbus' music venues are less expansive, boasting a handful of venues run by the music promotion company PromoWest, and several small bars located here, there, and everywhere. The scene? Thriving, but lacking when it comes to new kids on the block.  I only just recently was able to meet and befriend the artists whom I've admired for years in Columbus, such as my local favorites Sleep Fleet, Van Dale, and This Is My Suitcase(RIP).  Without the ferocious velocity that comes with the youth audience, the scene will grow stagnate with time, as artists either get a break or give up.
Finally, let us look at Dayton, our closest big city. Dayton has almost no performance spaces, with almost all of it's DIY spaces drying up and dying in the late 2000's.  The only music venues available on a regular basis are bars and clubs, which, by law, must restrict it's audience on certain days of the week/certain hours.While some bands exist in Dayton, the only way I've ever been able to hear about them is either A) browsing the internet for hours, scouring for one connected to Dayton or B) a Dayton band playing on the bill of a familiar Columbus or Cincinnati band.
It is of my belief that, in order for music to thrive in cities like these and many others, that these alcohol sale laws must be banished, if not revised.  If not, I fear that the future might not be too bright for the hub of cultural creativity that is local music communities/scenes.

On Net Neutrality: The Future of a Free America

With the exponential growth of the world wide web over the past decade, the industries of the olden-days have taken their time to keep up with the latest technological trends, always assuming "this one's just a phase." Well, the internet sure as hell isn't going anywhere just quite yet. But in the corporate world's recent game of catch-up with the web, the idea has slipped into their heads that instead of not only paying for access to the web, one should also pay for access to the sites that they regular.  Imagine paying four or five dollars a month just to log onto Facebook and update your status, or upload the family pictures.  Imagine having to pay eight dollars a month just to watch cat videos on YouTube. It's mind-boggling to think that a price can be put on our daily entertainment and livelihood brought about by the web, yet there has been a recent push to begin the process of doing just that.  In this development, however, a backlash has began to take shape.  Internet activist groups like the infamous 4Chan basement dwellers Anonymous and other rights-based groups have created a firestorm of disgust and repulsion to the idea of a non-free web, a, "non-neutral web."  With recent legislature coming to votes in our national congress such as the infamous SOPA and PIPA, people have gone in an outrage, myself included, trying to rail against this blatant attack at our personal freedom.  The FCC's Open Net Order was recently knocked down by a circuit court of appeals, threatening the very nature of our internet freedom, by making it legal for internet service providers(herein referred to as ISP's) to tamper with broadband allocation and data transmission at their own will.  Luckily, however, Democrats in the House and Senate have recently began promoting legislation to constitutionally protect net neutrality, which is chugging it's way through subcommittee's and the standard legislative process as I type/you read.

A common response to the idea of net neutrality is that, in the interest of our lovely capitalism and the spirit of free enterprise, that to block an ISP or third-party companies control of the Internet is unconstitutional, out of the bounds of not only Congress or Executive action, but rather any lawmaking body in existence.  This is what I call, "a stupid opinion that merits no points given in the game of life." Net neutrality is not a matter of free-enterprise, but rather of the rights of the voice of the American citizen.  A struggling American may already have trouble paying for Internet access alone, and then on top of that add a bill to go onto Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, etc.? It is a literal wall put up by ISP's in order to maintain peace in the terrifying world of copyright infringement, government upheaval, and general law and order. Is is analogous to passing a law that would require anyone wishing to speak their opinion anywhere, not just in public, to pay five dollars for a month's worth of talking.  But, even then, you still have a limit on the amount of information you can release and consume, or else that's another fee.  The attack on net-neutrality is not some heroic battle-cry from the conservative base of Americans in defense of our freedom, but rather, a full-fledged attack on the very foundations of not only our inalienable rights as American citizens, but our rights granted to us as citizens of the world.  And that is a breach of constitutionality on the most fundamental level.

Here lies a link to a petition on the whitehouse.gov website to protect net neutrality. While I know that the responses warranted by these petitions has never been desirable, I believe it is in our best interest to let the government know that this is a big. "NO!" https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-neutrality-directing-fcc-classify-internet-providers-common-carriers/5CWS1M4P