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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.
It doesn't bother me that they get an easier start for their projects. It doesn't bother me because I learned a lot preparing my paper. It's not going to teach me any more sitting on my hard drive.
Are they shortchanging themselves by taking my paper? The professor knows they've seen my paper. She expects them to "carry the ball a little further". Then I get to see my project continued in a way I couldn't.
Perhaps this is off topic now. I just don't think Hilary Rosen knows how to share in an academic environment. Bad analogy.
She was probably the kind of kid who hid library books so no one else could get the information she was using so she could blow the curve for the rest of us.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
> 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. This device could literally destroy our society.
Destroy, indeed. It would fundamentally change our society, but that's a far cry from wholesale destruction. Firstly, why should I cry about stores going out of business because we no longer need them? Because of all of the poor workers who don't have jobs any more? If they're the ones you're worried about, let me ask you, why would any of these poor people need their jobs any more? They'd use the machine to get what they need and want, just like I would. We'd all have to find jobs that don't involve manufacturing or transport (of goods), or we'd need to restructure society to compensate for not needing to make anything (although unless you had a REALLY BIG MACHINE you'd still need labor to build things like houses and cruise ships and spacecraft and such), but I can't see that as a bad thing on the balance. I mean, Porsche wouldn't make any money selling Boxsters any more, but people would still need the roads maintained, and there would always be a need for teenagers pumping gas. To extend to the digital music world, no artist would be able to sell CDs, but there would still be a huge demand for concerts (which is where the real money is in the music industry, anyway).
> Why doesn't the same logic apply to digital music? Sure CD's are way over priced, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go steal! Sorry to rant but I'm tired of people trying to justify what they know is not right!
The same logic does apply to digital music, but that's tangential to my problems with these people. The uses to which I wish to put my content are completely legitimate, but still I run afoul of their howling complaints that I'm stealing food from the mouths of these artists' children. For example, I want to watch DVDs on my high-powered Linux box. I bought the DVDs from my local Best Buy, and I don't copy them, but I'm not allowed to create, buy or use a DVD player for Linux because of the DMCA. For another example, I own a very high quality CD jukebox, which is attached to my multi-thousand dollar sound system. Because they say CDs need to be protected, they produce CDs which will not play on my CD player (note, not a computer, but a friggin' CD PLAYER!) and don't bother to warn me that they won't play, and won't let me return them if I should buy one and find that it's a coaster. For a third example, I can't play said same CD in my computer, but they provide digital tracks for computer use. Only, if you'll remember, my machine runs Linux, so I still can't listen to the tracks, because they require Windows Media Player. Again, finding my way around this so I can listen to a CD that I bought legitimately has been outlawed by the DMCA, so I'm stuck.
I'd be very interested to hear how any of this qualifies as justification for doing something wrong. It seems a lot more that a bunch of record companies and movie studios got together and decided that they could make a lot more money by enforcing a badly outdated business model on me, without any real concern as to whether they're screwing me in the process.
Virg