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Evening Reading

by Steve Gibson, Feb 23, 2001 6:00pm PST
Related Topics – Wack News, RIAA

Well rumor has it there is a weekend approaching. ER doesnt know what a day off is, the consummate workaholic, but would like to wish everyone else well. If you can take "those lazy @!!@$'s only work 5 days a week!?" as a well wishing. ER is just hard around the edges though, it's got a soft center.

- Some nerdy stuff just because, scientists have discovered a better conducting material. What's that mean? Well I'm guessing the band will perform a little better. - I sure as hell hope people get over this crap soon, please?. Real fads involve cowboy hats and transparency, not this base stuff. - Did anyone else notice that Clinton pardoned a bunch of people right before he left office? - The RIAA is well on their way to putting Napster out of business, now they are going after the clones.
Lastly, "reparations" for slavery in the US are still being discussed. "Don't get me wrong, I would like to be paid as much as any other African-American, but the healing is much more important than any money."


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  • #1663
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    By: Tosderg x
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    I'm sure this has been said 300 times before, but here's my opinion on the whole napster business:

    Downloading MP3s of copyrighted material that you don't own is wrong, simply because it is illegal for us to do as citizens of the US (crazy Dutchmen can eat my penis ;), and last time I checked we didn't get the right to violate select laws simply because we can rationalize what we're doing as okay or not hurting anyone. It is illegal, therefore it is wrong, since as citizens of the US we agree to abide by the laws that are made, for better or for worse. If you don't like the law, try to change it, but unless it is a serious issue involving critical personal freedoms (note: this does not include easy access to new music :), it is harmful to the greater good of society to show a blatant disrespect for the law on a grand scale.

    On the flip side, I will say that I have been a Napster user since the beginning, IRC and FTP mp3 trader before that, and all along I have known that what I was doing was illegal and therefore wrong, but I didn't feel like I was actually committing an evil moral act by doing it. I wouldn't call myself a theif, merely a lawbreaker. I think that it would be in the RIAA's best interest to push the use of programs like Napster, because (and I know the anti-MP3 crew is quick to jump on people who say this with "yea right! BS!", but it's true) I have bought EASILY five times as many CDs since I started downloading mp3s as I did before, and that's saying something, because I've always bought a lot of cds.

    I never listen to the radio and don't watch MTV, both for the same reasons: I don't like being fed the same song 20 times per day, and the Internet has spoiled me to the point where I absolutely cannot tolerate 5 minute commercial breaks for every 20 minutes of entertainment. The cable hasn't been hooked up to my television in months. I don't miss it.

    It is very shortsighted of the RIAA to completely stomp on systems like Napster for two reasons: One, it's here, people are used to it, people think it is a right now, so it WILL NOT GO AWAY. Napster may go away. The next free alternatives may go away. But SONG TRADING IS GOING TO LIVE ON FOR AS LONG AS PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN MUSIC. Period, end of story. The RIAA needs to realize this and embrace it sooner or later. The second reason they shouldn't crush Napster-like systems is because of users like me: let's face it, the Top-40 listening to teenaged idiot crowd does NOT buy a lot of cds anyway, the people who sit down and burn discs of 13 Britney Spears songs and play their low-quality mp3s on their car stereos while driving down the street are the same people who probably own a total of maybe thirty or forty cds, and depend on the radio and MTV for the rest of their music needs.

    Contrast that with someone like me, who isn't exposed to new music in either of those presentation formats simply because I choose not to whore myself out to commercial interests and "musician of the month" fads. If you take Napster and Internet radio systems from me, I do not get exposed to new types of music by any way other than word of mouth and hearing friend's cds, so my rate of music purchasing goes in the toilet. I buy on average three cds a week, and I have always downloaded at LEAST three songs from each to ensure that I'm getting a quality production (unless it is a new record by a band I have a previous history with), if I can no longer do that, I will no longer purchase cds unless I can listen to them first, and since my tastes are rather obscure, that results in me purchasing fewer cds, and the RIAA taking less of my money.

    Just my long-winded two cents.
    Feb 24, 2001 2:25am PST

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.

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