After reading various interviews and articles on Metallica and seeing the Behind the Music special on VH1, I have received the impression that after James met Lars and learned what an impressive catalogue of heavy metal albums he had, he proceeded to sleep over his house and copy these albums to cassette.
While I understand that the situation that Napster creates is on a much larger scale, the philosophy of James' and Lars' actions is the same of Napster users: having copies of music I didn't pay for is okay, and it is also okay for me to offer copies of music to people for free.
Although I am a large fan of your work and I do support your right to protect your copyrights, I find your actions against your fans somewhat hypocritical. I myself once made your music available on Napster. If that incriminates me, fine. I was just following in your example, as I figured that you would have no beef with it.
Apparently, you do. I was wondering if you would address this situation for your fans, as we are wondering why this sudden change in philosophy came around.
I haven't noticed anyone posting this just yet, but I recall reading in Metallica interviews and possibly hearing on Behind the Music that Metallica themselves were participating in similar piracy in their day. After James met Lars, James would sleep over Lars' house and copy Lars' Europeon and otherwise heavy metal albums to tape and keep them for himself. Guess they weren't concerned with those bands getting paid for their "art." How is this any different from what Napster users are doing? I know it's on a much larger scale, but the philosophy is the same. James just didn't want to buy those albums, so he copied them from Lars. Lars willingly let him do this. And now, they decided to chastize their fans for doing the same as they did? If I don't get a chance to ask them about this tomorrow, I hope somebody else does. I love Metallica, and their music. Even their craft after the black album excites me. I'm one of their most loyal fans. However, I myself have been guilty of making their music available to the masses. I figured that they wouldn't mind based on their history, but I was wrong. I must quote the Bible here, although I just about know that everyone will hate this, but the book says "Let he among us without sin cast the first stone." Metallica is far from being without sin on this count. Sure, they have the legal right to do what they're doing, but it makes them out to be evil hypocites.
Most folks today have been posting about the content of this article. I'm going to talk about the principal. I felt like I was back home in New York last summer, during the Senatorial race between longtime incumbant Al D'mato and Chuck Schumer. The battle began when Al told us how many sessions Chuck had missed as a US Representative. We were presented with documented facts that could be backed up. However, they were presented in a negative way. Al was both scared and resentful at the same time. So he struck. And he struck hard. Then the mud flew. Back and forth all summer and through much of the fall. They were probably the dirtiest campaigns in the history of New York. Most people lost interest; others wanted to see both lose. It was disgusting. It appears that Microsoft, the longtime incumbant, governing our machines for many years now, has struck the first blow. Scared? Resentful? Probably both, just like our good buddy Al. Is this the route that Microsoft will take to win people over? To keep their flock in (no sheep pun intended)? Are Linux users and distributers going to follow the same route? Are we going to reach down and pick up some mud to throw back? Will we be able to find similar, anti-NT slanted articles on the pages of Red Hat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and the like? I hope not. I really don't want to see healthy competition turn bad through a war of words (or text in this case). Linux has it high spots and so does NT. They both have their flaws. Users should be able to make intellegent decisions on their own without near insults flying across the Internet from the Powers that be. Otherwise, we might stop caring and hope that both operating systems strangle each other to death. And we don't want that to happen. Not anytime soon at least. Then, we'd be counting on our fingers and preparing documents by hand and going to the library again. All because of one article. Yikes.
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After reading various interviews and articles on Metallica and seeing the Behind the Music special on VH1, I have received the impression that after James met Lars and learned what an impressive catalogue of heavy metal albums he had, he proceeded to sleep over his house and copy these albums to cassette.
While I understand that the situation that Napster creates is on a much larger scale, the philosophy of James' and Lars' actions is the same of Napster users: having copies of music I didn't pay for is okay, and it is also okay for me to offer copies of music to people for free.
Although I am a large fan of your work and I do support your right to protect your copyrights, I find your actions against your fans somewhat hypocritical. I myself once made your music available on Napster. If that incriminates me, fine. I was just following in your example, as I figured that you would have no beef with it.
Apparently, you do. I was wondering if you would address this situation for your fans, as we are wondering why this sudden change in philosophy came around.
Thank you.
I haven't noticed anyone posting this just yet, but I recall reading in Metallica interviews and possibly hearing on Behind the Music that Metallica themselves were participating in similar piracy in their day.
After James met Lars, James would sleep over Lars' house and copy Lars' Europeon and otherwise heavy metal albums to tape and keep them for himself. Guess they weren't concerned with those bands getting paid for their "art."
How is this any different from what Napster users are doing? I know it's on a much larger scale, but the philosophy is the same. James just didn't want to buy those albums, so he copied them from Lars. Lars willingly let him do this.
And now, they decided to chastize their fans for doing the same as they did? If I don't get a chance to ask them about this tomorrow, I hope somebody else does.
I love Metallica, and their music. Even their craft after the black album excites me. I'm one of their most loyal fans. However, I myself have been guilty of making their music available to the masses. I figured that they wouldn't mind based on their history, but I was wrong.
I must quote the Bible here, although I just about know that everyone will hate this, but the book says "Let he among us without sin cast the first stone."
Metallica is far from being without sin on this count. Sure, they have the legal right to do what they're doing, but it makes them out to be evil hypocites.
Most folks today have been posting about the content of this article. I'm going to talk about the principal. I felt like I was back home in New York last summer, during the Senatorial race between longtime incumbant Al D'mato and Chuck Schumer. The battle began when Al told us how many sessions Chuck had missed as a US Representative. We were presented with documented facts that could be backed up. However, they were presented in a negative way. Al was both scared and resentful at the same time. So he struck. And he struck hard. Then the mud flew. Back and forth all summer and through much of the fall. They were probably the dirtiest campaigns in the history of New York. Most people lost interest; others wanted to see both lose. It was disgusting. It appears that Microsoft, the longtime incumbant, governing our machines for many years now, has struck the first blow. Scared? Resentful? Probably both, just like our good buddy Al. Is this the route that Microsoft will take to win people over? To keep their flock in (no sheep pun intended)? Are Linux users and distributers going to follow the same route? Are we going to reach down and pick up some mud to throw back? Will we be able to find similar, anti-NT slanted articles on the pages of Red Hat, Caldera, Debian, SuSe and the like? I hope not. I really don't want to see healthy competition turn bad through a war of words (or text in this case). Linux has it high spots and so does NT. They both have their flaws. Users should be able to make intellegent decisions on their own without near insults flying across the Internet from the Powers that be. Otherwise, we might stop caring and hope that both operating systems strangle each other to death. And we don't want that to happen. Not anytime soon at least. Then, we'd be counting on our fingers and preparing documents by hand and going to the library again. All because of one article. Yikes.