"a few words from your lord and master" |
|
before we get all rip-snortin' and ready to go here, i'd like to
dedicate this edition of "a few words from your lord and master" to the
memory of metallica's career before they started picking on us "petty
thieves" that use napster and other file transfer clients to trade mp3
files. uh...guys? correct me if i'm wrong here, but didn't you used to
circulate "bootlegs" of your OWN STUFF when you were getting started?
guess you're just bitter that you didn't have a cd burner and an mp3
encoder back then, aren't you? stupid bastards. welcome to the digital
age. have fun pursuing 5 million court cases at once. see you on line in
front of pearl jam at the "eatin' crow soup kitchen". they were at least
ethically and morally right in their idiotic little legal crusade
against ticketmaster. let's face it, ladies and dobermanns: re-recording and re-distribution of copyrighted musical works has been going on for DECADES, and in my book, say whatever you want to about "intellectual property", there's really nothing inherently wrong or immoral about it, unless you're stealing the actual physical cds. whether it's really legally viable within the present copyright laws, that's largely and highly irrelevant. ever hear of "mix tapes"? didn't the RIAA give up on chasing people for those? oh, that's right. the sound quality wasn't as good as it is on mp3's (debatable, depending on who's ripping and/or making mix tapes on what equipment), was it? according to with metallica drummer lars ulrich, the band is annoyed at the idea of direct, digital, hi fidelity copies of their music being traded en masse by millions of people. to quote ian mackaye: "boo fucking hoo". if the technology exists, people are going to use it. it's a fact of life you have to terms with as a recording artist, and the money people in the music industry might as well come to terms with it too. the sooner they do, the happier music lovers (who are ultimately music BUYERS) will be with them. as a recording artist myself (not one making money yet, but hey, i'll get there soon enough...) i'm more than cool with the idea that people will be bootlegging my material. it'd be flattering to me that my music is "good enough to steal", and ultimately, despite lars ulrich's or anyone else's insistence that they're trying to help us "little guys", i do believe that having some mp3s of my music circulating will give me a much wider audience, some of whom aren't mouth-breathing geeks that spend all their money on bandwidth instead of my cds. i really don't think of it as stealing to begin with. it's actually a lot more similar to having someone lend you a book or magazine. of course, what with this "e-books" thing in the works now, there are people looking to eventually make it illegal to lend your friend a book or a magazine, too. what fun is that? then, i'll never get to yell at my loved ones for returning my hustler magazines with the pages sticking together and brown streaks on the centerfolds! it's greed, i tell ya. well, greed, and i think at least a little insecurity on some peoples' parts about their place in the pecking order. the two most vocal complainers in this napster saga have been metallica (whose market value has been slipping steadily since "load" was released 4 years ago) and dr. dre (who until recently, with eminem's "slim shady lp" and his own "chronic 2000", really hadn't had a hit of any consequence that i can recall since the first snoop dogg album). coincidence? or are some people just a little nervous about their financial bottom lines to begin with? call me crazy, but i don't recall seeing n'sync bitching about mp3s anywhere. please feel free to prove me wrong on that one. and yes, i do agree that it could also be that n'sync are actually mindless animatrons. now, as regular readers of this column know, i'd NEVER tell anyone to go out and do anything illegal or immoral, but...if i were to suddenly become a BAD PERSON and give immoral ideas to our readers, here's what i'd suggest: (remember, i told you not to do ANY of this, and neither myself nor the collector times assumes any responsibility for the actions of their readers.)
oogiewawa!
|
| the crawford files | [Back to Collector Times] |
| [Prev.] | [Return to Opinion] | [Disclaimer] | [Next] |