smircthink
I was farting around on YouTube, looking at this and that, when I came across a video by one of my favorite bands. It was of a song I hadn't heard before. I thought I might like to have that new song on my iPod, and set about thinking of the best way to do this.
The solution is simple. I have a shareware application called Audacity I got from the web, which I set to record, then play the YouTube video, and it makes a 'wave' recording of it. Then I export the 'wave' as an MP3. Add it to my iTunes library and I'm done.
As I was beginning this process I felt a twinge of guilt. Not that I was breaking a law, but because I didn't wish to steal from one of my favorite groups. Though, that really isn't the case, because I may not have purchased the CD in the first place, depending how much radio play the song recieved. Why would I want to buy something that I could hear on several different radio stations, several times throughout the day?
It is a bit like the pre-crime concept in the Philip K. Dick story, Minority Report. If you imagine all the digital thievery going on every moment of every day on the web, there is no way that all those folks would have purchased all the music they are downloading.
That is why the RIAA has illegally bribed our government into enacting absolutely draconian laws to impose on twelve year girls and little old ladies: they see the money the are NOT raking in, whizzing around out there in cyber-space . . . this universe that they don't understand . . . and they want it, they want it all!
Corporate sponsors of the RIAA do not understand the world as it is. They understand production, product and profit margins. Make it, truck it and sell it. All they know is that you are getting what they are selling without going to a store to buy it. That's why they want to come into your house and look at what's on your hard-drive.
You notice I haven't mentioned the artists. It isn't that artists are not concerned about getting paid. They do want to get paid and most of them would like to be rich, but it is not the reason for their existence. It isn't the reason they became what they are. If they made no money, they would still do what they do.
What's my point? I ripped the audio from the video and put it on my iPod. I don't care if corporations shrivel up and die. If corporations die music won't disappear. Well, people like Britney Spears might not exist, but who would care?
An artist would practice his craft if he had to pay to do it. He would work fifty-five hour weeks driving a trash-truck just so he could make a video of himself playing a ukulele to upload onto YouTube.
The sad fact is corporations won't die. They are a disease that we are destined to live with forever. If they cannot find a way to make music profitable then they will move onto to something else. They are just lacking in imagination when they start pushing around the unwashed masses.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
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