I created this blog not 20 seconds ago...

...and nothing's sadder than an empty blog (except things that matter). Here go.

Is downloading music wrong? I'm reluctant to really think about this, because I've got a hard drive full of legitimately purchased music. I try to-- or like to tell myself-- that I primarily (used to be only) download stuff that isn't in print, but in the last year or so that's become a bit lax-- and that's not the understatement it might seem at first. Still, I think morally I'm in good shape. I download stuff I can't pay* for, and stuff I wouldn't pay for and wouldn't get if I couldn't get it free, but I never download instead of buying.

Now, is downloading music legally wrong? Who knows. Depends on which Billy-from-Family-Circus trail of interpretation the Courts choose to enforce. The RIAA is still doing their damndest to muddy the issue. Washington Post has the skinny:

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said. [contemptuously astonished emphasis added]

What's the term for playing a shell game w/ equivalent ideas to lie? Does "Sophistry" cover that? Look at the obfuscation by the phrase "I suppose we can say" for a moment. The assumed truth at the foundation of Ms. Pariser's argument here is the blanket statement "unauthorized copying is theft". "I suppose we can say" is the diplomatic way of saying "though it seems inescapably contradictory, since 'unauthorized copying is stealing', technically it makes a kind of technical sense that making a copy outside the physical disc, even for use by the person who owns that disc, is theft." She wants you (and the judge) to regard that idea as paradoxical but true, not contradictory and false.

Luckily, it's easy enough to get out of this "you have to admit" trap, because it turns out it's OK to restate and even revise your assumptions when they lead you into stupid. Here, we can start by asking the RIAA under what definition of "theft" could making a backup or portable copy for yourself possibly fall. We can continue by questioning the, hey look at this, legality of a literal interpretation of the "unauthorized copying is prohibitied" copyright notice that will be a part of any response they have to our first objection.

And hey look at this too, the Post article does just that, right after Jennifer Pariser's cognitive blasphemy:

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

Writer Marc Fisher doesn't cite any sources for this claim, so his next point isn't hammered home as vividly as I'd like:

As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don't usually kill off old media: That's the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer. [emphasis added]

Movie theater operators thought the arrival of TV in the 50s would be the death of them-- more than a few people remember theaters hanging giant "Fight Pay TV" banners on their marquees. Jack Valenti once said, and I'm still stunned this isn't an urban legend, " I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

See, I wanted this to be a quick post, but now I've gone all thorough. What I'm very gradually getting at is I like downloading most of all because it means the old logistic limitations on distributing content have been overcome by leaps and goddamn bounds. I look it as innovation on the order of the goddamn car. And I understand there's issues of due compensation that still need ironing out; I get that. In these years 2000+ of ours that doesn't have so much as a simple jet pack to offer, it'd be a criminal shame if one of the few working bits of future we have got choked to death by an approach to law that deliberately didn't concern itself w/ right & wrong. It'd suck real bad if we chose that future.




*by which I mean can't pay the artist & others involved for the item because it isn't produced any more, so they won't see a dime from any used copy I buy anyway.