Slashdot Mirror
Pete Townshend On Lifehouse, The Net, And Pirating
An anonymous reader sent an interview with Pete Townshend where he talks about Lifehouse and more. He talks about pirating, as well as how Lifehouse was attempting to address the social implications of The Internet before the world had even heard of it. (BTW, I went to the Who concert in detroit last tuesday. It was awesome. I own something like 50 odd CDs of Pete's music, but to finally see them Live was pretty damn cool. If only I had been born 30 years earlier ;)
How? Play a piece of music to me and I remember it. I can adapt it for new uses; hum or whistle, and maybe even reproduce it faithfully. How do you propose the creator of that music (or of any other piece of information) control it?
In fact, there is no way to control how people use the information you've called up into being once it's been shown, even once, to an audience of any size. Blame God if you like, but that's how people work. Whether or not we then impose a wholly artificial notion of rights onto the subject is secondary. Even as it stands the fundemental rule of copyright law (in the US - you'll find it in Article I) is that the creators of works only have those rights as far as it's good for society, not the creators. And better yet, what's good for society is for the creators to have as few rights as possible, for as short a time as possible.
In fact, since the goal is not to help creators one whit, or restrict how anyone in the world can use information, if it were found to promote the arts and sciences more by abolishing copyrights altogether - that would be only course of action that Congress could take.
So while I greatly respect the pople that create new works, and in fact, _am_ one of those very people, I realize that works are most valuable when everyone can use them. As well as that once you get an audience (and there's very little information that's useful without an audience for it) you've lost your control. You want them to think about your work? Well, you can't take that back.
If this isn't enough, think about this: Who doesn't stand on the shoulders of giants? Where would we be if no one could create works which relied on past works. Science would be forever reinventing the wheel in a literal sense. No author could write a great novel that either opposed another writer's opus or reaffirmed it. Hell, man - we'd be restricted in the words we could use. Restrict information and it's not helpful, it's harmful. Nothing new happens, nothing is done, no progress is made. Let it flow and it's capable of doing great good and inspiring the creation of more of itself.
On copyrights now: I think that they're unconstitutional. The idea _could_ work, perhaps it has worked. But I sincerely doubt that it's working now, and it goes against the spirit of the law of the land. Reform is necessary. No good can come of expanding copyright further, or letting the status quo persist.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Eel Pie is mainly Pete Townshend's solo stuff. For classic Who stuff, you can get that pretty much anywhere.
I grabbed the Lifehouse Chronicles 6 CD box set when it came out back in February (and submitted it to Slashdot..rejected), so it's really the single CD version that's coming out now, which obviously doesn't have as much material. The box set's a little pricey (40 pounds), but they still sell it, and I don't regret for a second spending that money on it. It's great.
If only I had been born 30 years earlier ;)
Finally, someone on /. has recognized that we old farts really did have it better. It is high time that such a prestigious publication as slashdot recognize the truth for what it is.
And, considering that Roblimo is a year older than I am, I'm amazed this has not been addressed before. ;-)