He's no Jack Sparrow
Along the same cheery lines, here's something I came across in the L.A. Times. They can't catch Bin Laden, but I sure feel safer knowing that the feds have nabbed this hardened criminal. It's always heartwarming to see our tax dollars at work, n'est-ce pas? I bet he was the lone rogue at the University of North Carolina who had any stolen music on his PC. It's a little hard to feel sorry for him, though, after this "if you give me probation, I'll preach at my peers" letter. I don't think this pirate is entirely convinced that it's the artists who pay the biggest price either. He's mostly sorry he's in trouble.
Everybody wants something for nothing, and I've come to learn that "free" music is anything but. The hidden cost is enormous. Although I am unqualified to opine on the price of piracy for the artists whose work is stolen, I can describe the price I've paid.
Stealing, no matter how little, or how easy, is never right. There is no justification for downloading music without paying. I'm not just saying this to reduce my sentence; I want to get the message out to young people who might not otherwise understand — copyright infringement, whether it is buying a bootleg album from a street vendor or downloading a song from the Internet, has very serious consequences.
I may be a little dense (especially after the fall), but I fail to see how music file sharing is very different from libraries. It's a good thing, I guess, that I'm not in a position of having to ask a judge for leniency.
P.S. There was a really neat photo series about soldiers in Iraq and medicine on the front lines at the L.A. Times earlier today, but it seems to have disappeared. I'll check again tomorrow. If it reappears, I'll let you know.
Update:
Oh. Here it is. Two things about this slideshow: 1. It has sound with it, so try to watch it on a computer that has speakers so you can hear the interviews that go along with the photos. 2. It's not for the faint of heart.
posted by Stephanie @ 9:39 PM
1 Comments:
I'm not sure how I feel about file sharing. On one hand, I see the point of the music business and that they might be losing some money on the deal. I suspect that it isn't as much as they think. A lot of the people who download music wouldn't go buy it if they couldn't download it anyway. They've only got the music because it is free. I have a lot of music on my computer that I would never have if I had to pay for it.
However, I'd say that the way to combat this, if I was a record company, would not be by prosecuting those who are sharing files, it would be by differentiating your product. Make it better than what you can download. LP records were cool because the cover art was sometimes actually art. It was big and orten pretty. Nowadays, CD covers are usually boring, corporate looking logos if anything at all other than a picture of the artist. Find ways to bring that kind of interest back to your product. Make it worth OWNING for more than just the music. AND make the music that much better. Most files you can download off the free file sharing services are 128 bit. In reality, that kind of sucks. Listen to a real CD and you can hear the difference. It really is better. (Of course, if you rip at 320 bit, the sound quality improves radically.... but that's another hurdle for later since hardly anyone does that). But it doesn't have to be cover art... or drastically better sound quality... but find SOMETHING to set the real thing apart. Include other digital content that is more secure than the songs themselves. Games. Pictures. A key to online features that are actually cool as opposed to stupid and boring.
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