allofmp3.com
I bumbled into a disturbingly professional pirate
music site based in Russia, allofmp3.com . You pay by the
megabyte, usually at around ten cents per song. I downloaded God in Three
Persons, by The Residents. This is an album I own on vinyl, but I haven't
gotten around to ripping any of my vinyl. (My record player hasn't been plugged
in in 5 years, I think.) It worked
great.I'm a big believer in the
possibility of a certain level of piracy. People should be able to share their
music and movies to some extent with their friends and family. Napster may have
stretched that pretty hard, by sharing with millions of "friends." Fining 12
year olds thousands of dollars for copying music is pointless,
counterproductive, and wrong. However, commercial piracy is a different matter.
If anybody profits from creative work, it should be the artist who made it.
(Not necessarily the "owner," which is all too often an evil faceless
corporation that robs artist and public alike, and contributes nothing.) And I
sincerely doubt that The Residents received a penny of the $1.17 I paid for
their album. I justify it in this case because I already own the music, and I
was just paying for the convenience of the digitization, but these Russians
certainly don't care about that.When
money changes hands, piracy suddenly becomes ten times as evil. If I'm going to
make a copy of a videogame for my friend, that's one thing. If I charge him $10
for that copy, that's criminal.All of
mp3 is a nightmare for the intellectual property cartel, and nearly impossible
to combat. I think it would be nice if I could just download the music from The
Residents' own web page directly, and give _them_ the dollar. If legitimate
music is cheap enough, the pirates can't profit.
Filed Tue - July 12, 2005, 05:55 PM in
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