Film and food, the difference, USA & Europe. High Culture. American Culture is not so much winning, as that culture is becoming more mainstream and that this proces has started in the culturally more eligantary US of A (not economically) and thus it seems that the world is becoming more American. It is the same with movies. Stronger European movies would probably just mean an European version of Holywood.

Some more on information sharing. The Internet from a content point of view is another variant on tradegy of the commons. Everybody wants to consume free content and although people would be willing to pay for good content in reality nobody does, because there is no mechanism. If there was some instance collecting say USD 4 per person per month for content and would redistribute that to content providers, then with 300 million Internet Users there would be 14.4 billion dollar available for quality content. Now I think that 4 USD would be a good deal for that. But there is no mechanism, so we end up with free content done for free by amateurs, how much effort these people put into it and how much I appreciate that.
One way out of it, is the way DoCoMo with their I-Mode product does it. They pay content providers per use and take the money from the users. They don't produce content, just create the market, rather differently then America Online does it. AOL buys and sells the content, ie doesn't create a market but achieves a similar effect through central planning.
What is needed is a big Internet company, preferably an ISP and somebody like Yahoo! that starts the system and then enrolles everybody else.

Three golden rules and you'd be a happy and good man.
1. Be Simple. Our life is frittered away by detail, simplify, simplify, in the words of Thoreau. It helps. Get rid of the details that get in the way of what you really want. If you always solve the little problems, before doing the big thing, you'll never get there. Realize what you want and do away (boldly) with all the other stuff.
2. Be Honest. Tell people what you like and what you don't like. Why you do what you do. Reason with them, like the Godfather said. At worst they'll respect you. At best they go along with you.
3. Be Nice. Being nice to other people never hurts. If they are not nice to you, remember that you might become dependent on them, even if you are not now, before you strike back.
Oh, well, it is rather general, but I think they're good rules. Be Simple really is be yourself. Be Honest is really explain yourself. Be Nice is just that.

The short comings of Information Capitalism are shown in a very clear way in the Medical World. In order to create a business model for Medical Research, patents are granted on Drugs. In order to recapture their spendings on research, the medical industry sets a monoplistic price for their products, ie aiming for profit maximalisation without competition, instead of non monopolistic price, where the price in the end is the same as the production cost, plus a reasonable amount to cover risk. This leads to drugs that cost more to buy then they cost to make (and a lot more, that is).
People die, because we cannot find a better model. That is sad. In the end it all adds up to that somebody has to pay for the research and then the drugs could almost be free. Now the become almost free after 20 years of monopolic behaviour of the drug industry that is needed to pay for the research. There should be a better model.