Not only he is one of the sharpest comedians on earth, he's also quickly becoming our lead crusader against exploitative middle men. Louie, you are our century's Montaigne.
However, there is a slight snag to that: its unlikely he could have pulled this off with out first getting a huge following from the traditional media and all those middle men.
Don't get me wrong, what he is doing is brilliant. And Im so glad that it is Louis CK doing this who I was already a fan of. That down load of his gig for $5 was the perfect example of what we want, an artist in control selling his art of a damn reasonable price, and making good money too. Plenty of people did pirate it, but more than enough bought it. But what we need to see work is people working their way to a similar position, making the same sort of money, but with out having traditional media putting them there first.
What Louis CK is doing is brilliant, but it needs to grow and spread. Im rather hoping that somewhere in the back ground he is passing what he has learned on to fellow artists and this thing can grow.
You have to fight power with power. No, he probably couldn't have done this without gaining traction using traditional means, but so what? He's using the power he's gained in that system as leverage to improve the system.
He's in a position to improve the system because he's a part of it, and only because he's a part of it.
