Napster Bad (a.k.a. Show Me the Money)
So I'm watching the MTV Video Music Awards, as many of you probably are as I'm writing this. My reason is pretty much to root for the forces of good music (rock, rap, hip-hop and the like) and against the forces of bad music (*N SYNC, etc.). However, when I saw the little "comedy sketch" our boy Mr. Lars Ulrich dreamed up for his anti-Napster campaign, I saw red, and when I get mad as you all well know by now, I head straight for the keyboard. Oh yeah, BRILLIANT concept, Lars; getting us to think that sharing music should be just like sharing any of your other possessions. Just trot one half of our disappointing pair of hosts for the evening (sorry, Wayanses, it's just not working out, BRING BACK CHRIS ROCK NEXT YEAR!!!) and then we think it's part of the show, like MTV wants us to stop "stealing" music from these poor souls that are going to go hungry if we burn a couple of CDs.
OK, sarcasm's over, now it's time for the venom. Hate to break this to you, Mr. Ulrich, if I may call you that, but you are comparing apples to oranges. I don't get paid millions of dollars for having a good computer, nor do I get to sign a contract and travel all over the world and have all the alcohol and women I want because I have stuff in my apartment people like and want for themselves. The fact is your band makes music millions of people love and you get LOTS and LOTS of money for it. Oh, don't bother hiding behind your whole "this isn't about us, it's the young up and coming bands" defense. If you haven't noticed, those young up and coming bands are the ones hawking their music via sites like MP3.com, who thanks to your willing accomplices in the recording industry, just had to fork over an unreal and outrageous $25,000 per CD they claim was "stolen" due to the MP3 format. That's $25,000, or to put it in more real terms, about twice the cost of a CD if you buy it in a record store. A slight exaggeration perhaps (not by much, though), but the fact is CD prices are too high and so if you want to make a difference, Lars, you really should be getting on the backs of the record companies to have them drop the prices a tad and then all those college students could actually afford the CDs and not go on Napster and download them.
Incidentally, the judge who made that ruling might want to actually LOOK at the law instead of making up his own. According to copyright law, if you own the CD and make MP3 copies of the tracks and keep them on your computer, that is perfectly legal, because in buying the CD you own the rights to the tracks on that CD. So, if you wish to store them on, say, MyMP3.com, that is legal according to copyright law. Remember ROMs, the video game lookalikes that you had on your computer? If you owned the game in its Nintendo, Sega, etc. format, you were allowed to download the ROM of that game. If I remember it right, though, the FBI bullied every last ROM site out of business, because the video game makers feared exactly what the record industry fears now. Figures.
Back to Napster. Now I've read the sob stories from the record store owners who claim they're going out of business because of Napster. Let's face it, it's a convenient target. If I'm a record store owner and I see my sales slipping, I can pin it on Napster and everyone will feel sorry for me and join the fight to shut Napster down. However, Napster isn't putting anyone out of business. The more likely culprit is the online music stores, like Amazon and CDNow. I will admit that I have bought a ton more CDs online than in the actual stores. Only rarely do I set foot in a music store, due to the fact that I can usually save money if I buy a CD online. If your choice is $18.99 in a record store or $12.99 plus a couple bucks shipping and handling online, which are you going to choose? Oh by the way, CD sales are still climbing, but you wouldn't know that if you listened to Lars.
He also doesn't want you to see the polls that say that the majority of Napster users buy more CDs after using Napster. For me, the determining factor in buying a new CD is if I hear three songs I consider good. Before, this would take months as I had to wait for three singles to come out before I could make a decision or I would have to sneak a listen to someone else's copy. Of course, if Pearl Jam or Blues Traveler or some other band I'm big on has a new CD, I'll buy it the first day it's out; hence, my rare trips to the record stores. Now, I can download a couple tracks online, take a listen and make a decision. Actually, I don't use Napster for that purpose, but if I did I would. Actually, that's what I like about the online music stores that offer samples of the songs. I'll bet Lars probably goes after them next, somehow trying to make us believe that listening to 30-second samples takes food out of his kids' mouths.
So what do I use Napster for? Honestly, and Lars and his cronies won't like this, but: I use it to download songs from artists that I only like one or two songs from, for the purpose of making mix CDs. You know, like the old days, when you taped songs off the radio to make mix tapes. I'll bet you did this when you were a kid, Lars. Bet you didn't know this, but that's technically copyright infringement! The record companies tried to make us believe for the longest time that home taping would destroy the industry, that people wouldn't buy albums anymore if they could just dub off copies at home. Well, we all know that didn't happen. I get the one or two songs I like and if someday I decide to buy the CD and hear the rest of the tracks, that's cool too. There are plenty of other people in the here and now who like the artist enough to buy the whole CD or have by the hundreds of thousands in the past.
Yeah, there are a lot of people who are out to steal whole albums of songs, sometimes even before they are released, through avenues like Napster. Those yay-hoos are the ones abusing the privilege. I personally would never do that; if I wanted the whole CD, I would do the right thing and shell out the damn money for it. I like to think I'm in the majority in regard to that, and that these yay-hoos are few and far between. Those who grab the whole CD just so they can save a few bucks are 1) cheap and 2) probably not the type of people you would trust in the first place. I'm talking about someone who downloads whole CDs and then tries to steal cable or something. When stuff like that happens, of course musicians will get riled up and they have every right too. What they shouldn't be doing is going after all of us who aren't about that. If you are an artist, like Madonna, whose songs are winding up on Napster before they get to the stores, then you go after whoever did it and make them pay. I don't have a problem with small-scale legal manuevering, but to go after everyone is ludicrous. Now, it's like some sort of moral crusade.
Whatever happened to the old credo, "I just want to share my music with the world"? Now, apparently it's "The world doesn't get to hear my music until they pay me." On a night when a lot of jokes fell flat, Lars, your attempt at humor may have been the worst of them all. Of course, if you guys win this whole Napster case, you'll continue to laugh all the way to the bank. If that is to happen, I have a feeling that those of us who you are pointlessly going after will make sure we wind up ultimately having the last laugh. Bank on it (pun intended).
OK, sarcasm's over, now it's time for the venom. Hate to break this to you, Mr. Ulrich, if I may call you that, but you are comparing apples to oranges. I don't get paid millions of dollars for having a good computer, nor do I get to sign a contract and travel all over the world and have all the alcohol and women I want because I have stuff in my apartment people like and want for themselves. The fact is your band makes music millions of people love and you get LOTS and LOTS of money for it. Oh, don't bother hiding behind your whole "this isn't about us, it's the young up and coming bands" defense. If you haven't noticed, those young up and coming bands are the ones hawking their music via sites like MP3.com, who thanks to your willing accomplices in the recording industry, just had to fork over an unreal and outrageous $25,000 per CD they claim was "stolen" due to the MP3 format. That's $25,000, or to put it in more real terms, about twice the cost of a CD if you buy it in a record store. A slight exaggeration perhaps (not by much, though), but the fact is CD prices are too high and so if you want to make a difference, Lars, you really should be getting on the backs of the record companies to have them drop the prices a tad and then all those college students could actually afford the CDs and not go on Napster and download them.
Incidentally, the judge who made that ruling might want to actually LOOK at the law instead of making up his own. According to copyright law, if you own the CD and make MP3 copies of the tracks and keep them on your computer, that is perfectly legal, because in buying the CD you own the rights to the tracks on that CD. So, if you wish to store them on, say, MyMP3.com, that is legal according to copyright law. Remember ROMs, the video game lookalikes that you had on your computer? If you owned the game in its Nintendo, Sega, etc. format, you were allowed to download the ROM of that game. If I remember it right, though, the FBI bullied every last ROM site out of business, because the video game makers feared exactly what the record industry fears now. Figures.
Back to Napster. Now I've read the sob stories from the record store owners who claim they're going out of business because of Napster. Let's face it, it's a convenient target. If I'm a record store owner and I see my sales slipping, I can pin it on Napster and everyone will feel sorry for me and join the fight to shut Napster down. However, Napster isn't putting anyone out of business. The more likely culprit is the online music stores, like Amazon and CDNow. I will admit that I have bought a ton more CDs online than in the actual stores. Only rarely do I set foot in a music store, due to the fact that I can usually save money if I buy a CD online. If your choice is $18.99 in a record store or $12.99 plus a couple bucks shipping and handling online, which are you going to choose? Oh by the way, CD sales are still climbing, but you wouldn't know that if you listened to Lars.
He also doesn't want you to see the polls that say that the majority of Napster users buy more CDs after using Napster. For me, the determining factor in buying a new CD is if I hear three songs I consider good. Before, this would take months as I had to wait for three singles to come out before I could make a decision or I would have to sneak a listen to someone else's copy. Of course, if Pearl Jam or Blues Traveler or some other band I'm big on has a new CD, I'll buy it the first day it's out; hence, my rare trips to the record stores. Now, I can download a couple tracks online, take a listen and make a decision. Actually, I don't use Napster for that purpose, but if I did I would. Actually, that's what I like about the online music stores that offer samples of the songs. I'll bet Lars probably goes after them next, somehow trying to make us believe that listening to 30-second samples takes food out of his kids' mouths.
So what do I use Napster for? Honestly, and Lars and his cronies won't like this, but: I use it to download songs from artists that I only like one or two songs from, for the purpose of making mix CDs. You know, like the old days, when you taped songs off the radio to make mix tapes. I'll bet you did this when you were a kid, Lars. Bet you didn't know this, but that's technically copyright infringement! The record companies tried to make us believe for the longest time that home taping would destroy the industry, that people wouldn't buy albums anymore if they could just dub off copies at home. Well, we all know that didn't happen. I get the one or two songs I like and if someday I decide to buy the CD and hear the rest of the tracks, that's cool too. There are plenty of other people in the here and now who like the artist enough to buy the whole CD or have by the hundreds of thousands in the past.
Yeah, there are a lot of people who are out to steal whole albums of songs, sometimes even before they are released, through avenues like Napster. Those yay-hoos are the ones abusing the privilege. I personally would never do that; if I wanted the whole CD, I would do the right thing and shell out the damn money for it. I like to think I'm in the majority in regard to that, and that these yay-hoos are few and far between. Those who grab the whole CD just so they can save a few bucks are 1) cheap and 2) probably not the type of people you would trust in the first place. I'm talking about someone who downloads whole CDs and then tries to steal cable or something. When stuff like that happens, of course musicians will get riled up and they have every right too. What they shouldn't be doing is going after all of us who aren't about that. If you are an artist, like Madonna, whose songs are winding up on Napster before they get to the stores, then you go after whoever did it and make them pay. I don't have a problem with small-scale legal manuevering, but to go after everyone is ludicrous. Now, it's like some sort of moral crusade.
Whatever happened to the old credo, "I just want to share my music with the world"? Now, apparently it's "The world doesn't get to hear my music until they pay me." On a night when a lot of jokes fell flat, Lars, your attempt at humor may have been the worst of them all. Of course, if you guys win this whole Napster case, you'll continue to laugh all the way to the bank. If that is to happen, I have a feeling that those of us who you are pointlessly going after will make sure we wind up ultimately having the last laugh. Bank on it (pun intended).
Labels: file-sharing, music, Napster
posted by Dave | 3:57 PM
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