The Culture of CD Burning

An anonymous reader points to this "good article from the Boston Globe about the culture of CD burning, and how hard it will be for the RIAA to stop it. Some interesting quotes: 'There's a "sex appeal" to burning CDs, says [Sheryl] Crow, adding that it is a social event for young people, just as listening to 45s was once a social event for their parents.' An interesting one from Hilary Rosen: "I ask them, 'What have you done last week?' They may say they wrote a paper on this or that. So I tell them, 'Oh, you wrote a paper, and you got an A? Would it bother you if somebody could just take that paper and get an A too? Would that bug you?' So this sense of personal investment does ring true with people." Seems like at least one musician thinks his A paper is being peddled all over town.

Comments

Re:Stop, thief!

[fishebulb]

they dont go looking for the unknown guys, they MANUFACTURE another boyband, or find a rock band with one good song knowing they will be a one hit wonder

Re:Duplication Device

[Lumpish Scholar]

Imagine that there was a "duplication device" that could clone whatever you put into it - a watch, a TV, a car, whatever. Imagine it only cost $.20 per use....

Interestingly enough, there was a science-fiction short story published in Analog ... exactly along those lines... some alien race dumped a matter duplicater and the plans for it on the human race, with the apparent intent of causing human society to self-destruct. Instead, the humans worked out the obvious solution: since anything could now be duplicated, the only thing that has value is unique originals, and the way to make a living is to design and create unique originals of things.

Ralph W. Slone (writing as "Ralph Williams"), "Business As Usual, During Alterations", Asounding, July, 1958. Great story.