Wicked awesome article on file sharing

[ollie]

Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered.

Recently Emily White, an intern at NPR All Songs Considered and GM of what appears to be her college radio station, wrote a post on the NPR blog in which she acknowledged that while she had 11,000 songs in her music library, she’s only paid for 15 CDs in her life. Our intention is not to embarrass or shame her. We believe young people like Emily White who are fully engaged in the music scene are the artist’s biggest allies. We also believe–for reasons we’ll get into–that she has been been badly misinformed by the Free Culture movement. We only ask the opportunity to present a countervailing viewpoint.

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.

You are doing it wrong.

[Northern Wish]

Is this the same David Lowery that was the front man for both Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven?

What a well written article that opened my eyes.

Thanks for posting Ollie!

Edited June 19, 2012 by Guest

[Northern Wish]

For those interested, yes it is the same guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lowery

He sounds like a fucking genius. I'd love to have dinner with him sometime.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I think it is just great to see the term wicked awesome. That's all. Goodnight.

[Hal Johnson]

I've been saying this forever - the ISP's are guilty of ripping off the entertainment industry as much as any individual. If they were held accountable, internet service prices would likely have to increase quite a bit. But I'm sure they'd work it out.

But it’s worse than that. It turns out that Verizon, AT&T, Charter etc etc are charging a toll to get into this neighborhood to get the free stuff. Further, companies like Google are selling maps (search results) that tell you where the stuff is that you want to loot. Companies like Megavideo are charging for a high speed looting service (premium accounts for faster downloads). Google is also selling ads in this neighborhood and sharing the revenue with everyone except the people who make the stuff being looted. Further, in order to loot you need to have a $1,000 dollar laptop, a $500 dollar iPhone or $400 Samsumg tablet. It turns out the supposedly “free†stuff really isn’t free. In fact it’s an expensive way to get “free†music. (Like most claimed “disruptive innovationsâ€it turns out expensive subsidies exist elsewhere.) Companies are actually making money from this looting activity. These companies only make money if you change your principles and morality! And none of that money goes to the artists

[ollie]

I've been saying this forever - the ISP's are guilty of ripping off the entertainment industry as much as any individual.

OK, but that doesn't absolve the individual from guilt and it's still the individual's responsibility to make an informed decision about piracy.