The ersatz civil liberties champions at the EFF are true to form in the wake of the RIAA suits against music thieves: trolling for memberships. Here’s the pitch:
Join EFF and support our efforts to protect file-sharing.
But of course — pay the EFF and you get free music for life. What a deal.
Sorry guys, but we don’t need you screwing the recording artists, the record companies have already got that covered.
Oh come on. The EFF is not endorsing illegal copyright infringement, and you know it. They’re not suggesting you can get free anything.
File sharing is legal, as long as the files you are sharing have the permission of the copyright holder to do so. Why do so many people forget that ? Because everyone thinks a knife is a weapon and not a kitchen tool ?
As to being opportunistic…Shriver was seen to be “trolling” at WalMart the other day, too. It’s common.
The recording industry has a business model for broadcast royalties that has already been applied to the internet. The problem for the recording industry is that it makes several dollars for every CD sold, but only a few cents for each song played “on the air” or “over the wire.” Of course, the artists get only a small fraction of those royalties. The longer the recording industry hangs on to the CD business, the more lawyers and PR flacks they can hire. They know that they can’t sell CDs forever; that soon everything will be sold over the ‘net, but they will fight for every last buck in the meantime.
For now, file-sharing networks will go deeper underground, and there will be a backlash against the lawsuits. I, for one, have not purchased a CD in years, and I don’t steal copyrighted files. I do subscribe to MusicMatch, which doesn’t allow me to keep a copy of the music, but does let me play the genre of music, or the artist, or a particular song, on demand.
Video on demand is next. I’m willing to pay a fair price.
So, musicians claim they own and have the right to declare what may be done with their artistic work after it has left their heads and become part of the mass conciousness.
How, then does they propose to excersize their ownership? Music is not only spread over the internet – it is recorded from the radio, or from originals loaned by a friend. It is sung in the streets, halls, backyards, and bathrooms of the world and spreads like a computer virus – transmitted orally and received aurally.
In this age, when recorded music is another form of information that can be stored indefinitely, and infinite copies made, if an ‘artist’ wishes to survive in his chosen field, he must learn to turn from hoarding his creations, and instead focus on developing his stage presence.
Stage presence is the one thing that can’t be transmitted in the data stream.
We’ll have to change our mindset. As information flow becomes more liberal, we have to stop thinking of songs as advertisement for albums. The music must instead be used to attract listeners to come to see you.
It’s that, or communism, really – and as I understand it, you Yanks don’t fancy that notion.
It’s funny to note that the electronic age is taking the art of musicmaking back closer to its source in live performance….