You know, I used to be someone who thought that if you wanted a song, you go buy it. I had Napster in its day though so apparently I was breaking the law. The only problem was that I would download songs you cannot buy or I would download songs I would not buy.
For instance, back in those days I actually carried songs on my computer from groups like Eminem and Marilyn Manson, of which I liked a few of their songs, but couldn’t stand the artists so much that I refused to buy their material.
Napster died, did the Limewire for a bit afterwards, and then after that went to emule before giving up. Never really got into the bittorrent. The idea is good, but it always seemed slow to me. It wasn’t nearly as good.
So in recent years, I’ve given up downloading music entirely. I’ve become a “good” citizen. The RIAA and MPAA should be thrilled right? Wrong. They noticed something then… people are buying music less now, than they were when napster was around. Can anyone wager a guess as to why? Well its obvious to anyone with a brain. Napster did for the music industry in the 90s what MTV did for it in the 80s. They advertised the shit out of bands. Which is funny if you think of it because right when Napster was starting to do it, MTV decided not to air music videos anymore. What essentially occurred was not only Napster now not advertising for them, neither was MTV. In fact soon enough the only advertising the music industry received was that it was suing 14 year old girls, grandparents who never knew they could download music, people without computers, and dead people too. So sales continued to plummet.
What does the RIAA do next? In their brilliance they decide that the only reason that sales numbers could go DOWN was if people were just massively stealing them! Even though that the number of MP3 traders went down significantly, they thought this. And why not think this? It couldn’t be because the music gets worse every year. It couldn’t be because there is no talent in the industry anymore. It couldn’t be because the only press they receive is negative press. So in order to combat this, they decide that suing their customers is not enough. They start making it illegal to copy your own stuff. Even though there is previous precedent that says you can make copies of your own property. Not only with cassettes and VHS, but going all the way back to the 1800’s with piano rolls[1. You know those rolls for player pianos. Apparently those were pirated too and judges in those days decided it was the owner’s right to copy it, as long as they made no profit of it.] So we end up having a whole slew of crap on our DVDs and CDs preventing them from running in certain areas. Some won’t play on computers at all. Now it is illegal for you to copy and share something with a real friend, you know how it used to be before the internet came around. There is copy protection stopping you in many formats now from burning a CD and putting it on your MP3 players, you need to buy a separate copy of your song. If you can do it now, you won’t be able to in 10 years, this policy is somewhat new but you mark my words this will be impossible in 10 years, and by then it will be too late for us to complain, the law will already have been around for a decade.
In doing all this the RIAA especially has pissed off a number of it’s customers, myself included. Why? Well why not? they are basically telling me that the copy of any CD or movie that I BUY, is not mine, that in reality it is still theirs but now they are charging me for the right to use their shit. So basically I am renting it from them. Well I don’t want to rent their stuff. I want to own it.
So for the last couple of years I’ve done a virtual boycott of the music industry. In all honesty it hasn’t been a difficult boycott. I have only bought on average 1 CD each of the last 2 years. Now I do buy some music off of iTunes, probably more than CDs, but I feel this is a tad more justified than CDs at this point. I get the songs I want for a much lower price and can siphon out the crap. But I still do go through and download songs when I can get them for free. Awhile ago I found a list of great 80s songs for free, downloaded them all. A few months ago some cereals were giving away free iTunes songs, and boy did I buy those when I could! Now I’ve decided that buying from allofmp3.com is ok. The prices are low (usually about 15 cents per song) and not only can you buy it in the mp3 version (meaning that I can put it on ANY mp3 player, not only ipods or zunes or whatever), but I can also buy the raw .wav files so that I could potentially burn it to CD and play it in the car radio. Can’t beat that. Gotta love them ruskies.
The RIAA is trying to come down on the russians hard for this practice. Saying that they will kick russia out of the World Trade Association, but why should they care? What comes from Russia other than oil? And who do you think has more clout anyway the oil industry or the music industry? Let me put it this way… do you think that the US will go to war with Russia because of they are making it so that Americans can’t make money off of music? I doubt it, yet we went to war with Iraq over oil… so go with it Russia, keep hope alive!