I think what Jeff said is 100% valid.
The Internet is a case where a technology has created a new arena for human
behavior, without there being any societal standards for acceptible behavior.
Or rather, people know what's right or wrong, but the arena doesn't provide
the checks and balances on wrong behavior that real life does.
Eventually people will realize this: The fact that the Internet is a cloud of
stuff that's distinct from everyday experience, doesn't mean that there
are no consequences for behavior there.
What the 'traditional' record companies are up against is that the Internet
is a distribution method for their software that's media-free. Before the
Internet, a company's intellectual property was protected by the fact that
the software (music) was inextricably tied to a delivery medium that normal
punters had no way to create for themselves.
Now that any sucker with a CD burner can bootleg perfect copies of a company's
product, they have to be scared. They have to depend on the goodwill of their
customers to keep people from making 10 copies of a CD for their friends. And
that goodwill is key -- enforcing a ban on unauthorized duplication is
impossible, short of turning the world into a police state.
And unfortunately, the consequences of low level bootlegging are much worse
for small companies than big companies. You may think that labels like
Warp and Ninja Tune are places where cocaine piles up in drifts in the corners,
and six packs of willing underaged women get dropped off daily. The reality
is that it's just about all they can do to keep everyone paid and the lights
turned on. If a major label has a record that sells 750k copies through
legitimate channels, 50k CDR copies floating around isn't a huge loss --
For a company like Warp, where selling 100K units is an overwhelming success,
having 50k cdr copies floating around means that 1/3 of their potential profit
may have gone up in smoke.
So do try and be a good citizen kids. You can't get something for nothing --
it might seem like that, but if you keep scamming companies out of legitimate
sales, pretty soon they won't be there any more. And then you'll have to
satisfy yourself with whatever weak crap shows up on MP3.COM.
Speaking of weak crap, be sure and check out mine at
http://www.mp3.com/chaircrusher
kent williams -- kent@avalon.net
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