I don’t want to get into a lot of “podcast-proselytizing” in this blog, but this piece from today’s Washington Post caught my eye:
“Internet Illiterate” Mom Sued Over Music Downloads
The RIAA has given Patricia Santangelo, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two, a lovely Christmas gift: a lawsuit for music piracy because some kid (not her own kid) got on her computer and downloaded a couple songs. Are they serious? Twelve-year-old kids? Deceased grandmothers who don’t own computers? Divorced moms?
I actually am not a fan of KaZaa (or however you spell/capitalize it) downloading. I think if rights are owned, you really shouldn’t download music tracks for free. It just seems a bit tacky not to pay anybody anything at all for a song.
But this is really beyond the pale. Between Sony’s installing secret quasi-spyware on your computer whenever you buy one of their CDs and the RIAA’s suing computer-illiterate soccer moms for illegal downloading, it seems clear to me that the end is near for Big Music. (And the end’s been on the horizon for a couple years now.)
It’s a shame there’s not yet a great publicity machine for “independent” artists, because there are some genius musicians out there that haven’t made it into Big Media yet (if they ever will). The difference, though, between the music biz now and that of 15 years ago is that now those artists can actually sell their work on places like CDBaby and other web sites, and actually get much of the money that results from the transaction.
Here’s hoping that more “major artists” will see their way clear to jump off the Big Music bandwagon and shift the way we look at popular music.
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A poor deceased lady and a 12 year old girl who thought she was paying KaZaa for the music? God! I really don’t know what’s going on with these nutcases.
I love buying CDs from the local music store and find it so much better than downloading mp3s off the net. You get to hold the CD in your hand, go through the inlet, read the lyrics, look at the nice pictures and it’s also better quality.
The flip-side is that I believe P2P networks to be awesome!
You get to share music how you normally would (eg. a friend really likes a song you have and asks you to burn it for him/her) and you get to know people with similar taste in music and maybe get introduced to more music that you didn’t know existed and that you really like.
I think shutting down WinMx and Audiogalaxy was a real bad idea. I usually downloaded a song or 2 that I’d heard of and then if I liked the album, went out and bought it! This isn’t just some story, I actually did go and buy the CD!
But recently I’ve grown vary of the music industry. I think putting rootkits and spyware on your computer to trace how many times you’ve heard the songs and how many copies you’ve made of the CD is just plain evil!
I haven’t had a rootkit installed, but a friend of mine from Germany brought along a few CDs of hers when she was visiting me over the summer and as soon as put the disc into my computer, it installed some ugly player.. without my consent!!!!! And then, when we wanted to get the names of Windows Media, it wouldn’t allow Media Player to detect it! That’s just pushing limits… If I’m not mistaken, which I might be, the CD was the second Pink album.
To sum up I wanna say that the music industry is driving itself headfirst into the a the ground. For all you know, we’ll soon have musicians rebelling and starting their own Podcasts with quality songs available for download. That would be great wouldn’t it? And we could pay them directly! They’d get the entire 10$ for the album through PayPal or whatever! Why do they need the those companies anymore? The distribution channel has become shorter, it’s now possible to have a direct link between the artists and us! Just like the Word Nerds Podcast. I’m not getting it through a cable operator or a radio/record company… it’s a direct download.
What do you think Dave?
Hi Dave,
Read this interesting Blogpost by Dark Lanternist on his blog: RIAA shooting itself in the foot and quickly releoading
and they strike again, in India! On the latest Coldplay CD, X&Y… which happens to be really popular here.
Bad, Bad Coldplay
This has been the last straw on the camel’s back for me, I’m done buying music CDs.