Slashdot Mirror
How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy
dugn writes to tell us The Consumerist is running a story about how a run of the mill (read non-tech-savvy) music lover was pushed to become a pirate. "I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad."
For the vast majority of that fifteen thousand years you speak of, music wasn't a service that people (regular folk, that is) provided each other at all.
That is such complete and utter crap, such a Big Lie that I'm not sure quite where to begin. Are you american? Such total ignorance/revision of history...
Anyway, no, you're just wrong, since time immemorial "ordinary folk" have had music too. Sometimes with incredibly dirty lyrics.
Not all survives, but in ancient cultures where writing was commonplace, it was even written down in great detail. Even cultures where writing was less common for one reason or another, folk music has been passed down through the ages - see ALL OF FUCKING EUROPE YOU MORON.
(Aside: just because a song has religious overtones doesn't mean it's not for other people *too*. Do you think spectators singing "Guide me" at a Welsh rugby match are doing it for their god (Jehovah in the christian welsh case)? No, they're doing it because it's bloody impressive. And kind of scary if you're on the other side...).
Probably since before we were recognisably human, and it was all primate group-cohesion calls growing steadily more complex, music has been a part of life of every human.
The story's always the same. Some article relating to piracy comes up on Slashdot and everyone's trotting out a thousand reasons why their behavior is acceptable. You know what? It doesn't mean anything to the rest of us. For people who are so keenly set on what they do, it is funny they need to explain themselves so much.
Also, I'm curious if anyone has actually walked up to an artist whose works they pirated and told them that to their face. If you haven't, I'd like to hear why not. Obviously, you're quite proud of sticking it to the man, and patting yourself on the back. Now, some of the better artists I don't think would care.
if transaction volume of some 'market' is any pointer to anything ...
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