Why I'm Bound For Breaking Rocks In The Hot Sun
Hilary Rosen wants to slap my ass in jail.
Okay, I say, fair enough. I've probably done enough bad things in my life so far to land me in a long-term shared timeshare with a guy named Bubba, I figure, but why, Hilly (and I hope you don't mind if I call you Hilly. Seems to me that we now share a more than passing relationship, you and I - what with you trying to put me in jail and all)? What have I done wrong this time?
I'm a thief? And I'm conspiring to put musicians on the welfare line by stealing their intellectual property? I see.
Maybe I should explain: In the beginning, there was a brave new network of computer users known as the Internet (yes, I know that there's more in the beginning, but I'm trying to make this story simple), populated largely by the sorts of people who made deals to trade cassette dubs of their Jethro Tull and Frank Zappa bootlegs - exactly as their brethren the music geeks had been doing for years at concert parking lots and seedy basement head shop record stores.
Thing is, the techno-geeks figured out a way to digitize the songs on their tapes, which led directly to such niceties as the ability to more permanently archive their, ahem, 'live recordings' as data files (MP3s) on their computers or as audio tracks on CDs. Suddenly, bootlegging music, which once required lots of specialized equipment, was now easily done in the bedroom of your average pimply-faced 12-year old geek - and the deep fans of bands who lived and died to hear every improvised note or studio fart by their heroes rejoiced.
One music geek in California, college student Shawn Fanning, built an application to allow easy sharing of these files among wildly disparate fans anywhere in the world. Napster was amazingly successful, and was noticed by the mainstream media back in mid-2000 when once-mighty metal kings Metallica, led by drummer Lars Ulrich, publicly threw down on the file-sharing pioneers at Napster.
"It is…sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is," said Lars, forgetting that, in the bad old days before they were platinum, Metallica built a fan base on the trading of their demo tapes from denim-jacketed junior headbanger to to black t-shirt wearing hesher headbanger - forgetting that the band itself once made a commodity out of its own 'art'.
The Metallica-led lawsuit was only the first. Napster was eventually left trying to make friends with the same major labels it had alienated so horribly in its first two years of existence, offering to actually pay for the music it pointed users to and disappeared from radar shortly afterwards. There's still a website at http://www.napster.com, but it offers only promise of sorts that it's a 'work in progress'.
But the gates were opened: in the wake of Napster, scores of other file sharing schemas popped up. The anti-file-sharing brigade turned to a new spokesperson presumably because Lars Ulrich was too busy counting the money he had restored to Metallica's coffers. Hilary Rosen, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America took up the role as flag-carrier in the fight against this sort of thievery.
At this moment, let me offer up a personal reminiscence: back when I was a pimply-faced music geek in high school, my pal Rodney and I would spend the occasional weekend at record conventions, revelling in the company of other antisocial record collectors (nearly always male) as we snatched up bootleg recordings of our favorite artists (me the Who, while Rodney worked the Beatles road).
Were these recordings anything the artists wanted to see the light of day? Certainly not, as anyone who has listened to the between songs studio chatter of a Byrds recording session where leader Roger (Jim) McGuinn dismantles drummer Michael Clarke or the now-infamous 'Troggs tapes' (rumored to be the germ of This Is Spinal Tap) would attest. But these were recordings of important historical note, especially to an awkward teenager who though everything Pete Townshend uttered was genius - and one who would never get to see his idols in full tilt (although I did get see the Keith Moon-less band on the first 'farewell' tour in 1982).
Every time we went to such conventions, the running joke was about the RIAA. We assumed that any time we went to those shows, a gang of sharp-dressed thugs (looking as if they had stepped out of the extra's dressing room from Men In Black) would burst through every conceivable entrance, brandishing submachine guns and talking into sophisticated radios and arresting us all.
That never happened, of course, but I still find it ironic that the RIAA is, once again, my enemy.
The RIAA is making a lot of noise right now, crying that they are protecting 'artists rights' while quashing the evil pirates who are trying to steal what should be rightfully paid for. It's hard for me to understand what it is they're trying to do, but I think their actions are roughly equivalent to the Salem villagers who chose to start burning the women they believed were witches in response to events they didn't care for or understand. I suspect that the RIAA (and the major labels) are seeing a small drop in revenues and choosing to blame the scary unknown thing out there - file sharing.
I don't begrudge Lars Ulrich (or any other artist) the right to make money from their creations - I want them to make money. I realize that at least one thing Hilary and the RIAA cry is true - if we take away renumeration for art, art will cease to be made. On the other hand, I, like most people who are not RIAA members or compatriots, see an opportunity for musical artists to oversee and distribute and sell their music in a manner far more effectively than ever before.
Thing is, I'm one of those thieves. I use a filesharing application called KaZaA, which lets me play in the vast digital pirates playground. But I primarily use it to collect hopelessly obscure or long out-of-print tracks, so I can listen to them once or twice and never return to them, like most of my records and CDs. I've never utilized filesharing as a tool to download entire albums, just to check out a song or two by an artist before I plunk down sixteen of my hard-won dollars to buy the CD itself. I own, on one format or another (vinyl, tape or CD) most of the songs I've downloaded.
So am I the most evil person in the world? Possibly. But not on account of my sharing audio files of copyrighted music with others.
Bonus Fat…
The world of music delivery is changing. Maybe it changes in way that's beneficial to consumers(fans) and performers alike, but more likely it doesn't. In the meantime, here are a couple of great resources for online music.
EMusic (http://www.emusic.com) is a site that gets it. ("EMusic's service is designed for avid music fans", says their PR material, and it's true. For an eminently reasonable monthly subscription ($9.95), users can download as many MP3s as they want, from a better than might be expected roster of artists. The user owns the MP3s they download, and can burn them to CDs, place them on portable listening devices or leave them on their hard drives.
Epitonic (http://www.epitonic.com/) is another site that understands the way things should be. Some labels aren't so brain-dead as to assume downloadable music is only another direct revenue stream that they have to control. I've downloaded songs - and I've bought entire CDs - by bands like Badly Drawn Boy, Radar Bros., Blonde Redhead, Retsin, The Handsome Family and Negativland, and it was all at negligible promotional cost to the labels.
This is how it should work. This is the way radio worked before it became big business (roughly 1953, I figure).
And, for what it's worth, I still think Lars Ulrich looks like a chipmunk storing food for the winter in his cheeks…