

NPR Intern Gets an Earful After Blogging About 11,000 Songs - danso
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/npr-intern-gets-an-earful-after-blogging-about-11000-songs-almost-none-paid-for/

======
tptacek
Oh, boy, these threads are going to be a whole _bucket_ of fun. 200-odd
commenters competing to see who can most stridently express opposition to the
copyright/royalty/license business model of mainstream music, and 5 of us
getting yelled at for suggesting that maybe private businesses should be able
to pick their own business models, even if they're completely idiotic, and
that everyone has the right to simply not buy music provided under business
models they find objectionable.

But I'm sure the whole thing will wrap up nicely with Hacker News solving the
problem of digital music sales once and for all.

(I didn't flag; the articles themselves are interesting, even if I _utterly
despair_ for the quality of debate they'll inspire here.)

~~~
tikhonj
Oh yes, I should be able to pick my own business model! What fun. I know: I'll
just pay old investors with new investors' money. That may be completely
idiotic, but it works. After all, nobody _has_ to invest in my venture!
There's always some risk in any investment, so it's only fair.

Now, I'm definitely being too glib. But I think you are as well: it's a
complicated issue, and simplifying it down to your view while being almost
unbearably condescending helps nobody.

~~~
tptacek
The problem with your message isn't that it's glib; it's that it isn't
logical. "Just pay old investors with new investors" isn't a business model
(it is, obviously, the definition of a Ponzi Scheme). "Pay a licensing fee for
XXX" is.

~~~
tikhonj
It might be illegal, dishonest and relatively unsustainable, but it is a way
to make money. And existing business models (even legal ones) can still be
dishonest and unsustainable. It is actually a very similar model to a lottery,
except there's more lying involved to get more people to put in more money. So
it's just an illegal and unethical business model.

Also, the argument isn't that businesses shouldn't be able to use that model,
it's that the government shouldn't be helping with draconian laws.

~~~
tptacek
So anything that makes money is a "business model", morally and/or
economically equivalent to any other business model? That can't possibly be
what you meant to imply.

~~~
tikhonj
I never implied that it's morally or even economically equivalent to any other
business model--nothing says that all business models have to be morally or
economically equivalent. But it is a business model very much like an illegal
and dishonest lottery (e.g. people put money in with the hope of getting more
out).

And yet, despite the fact that it is _a_ business model, society does not
condone it. The fundamental point, of which this is a very extreme example, is
that there is no inherent right to a business model.

~~~
tptacek
Look, again, this is simple:

I said something to the effect of "I have a problem with the mentality that
dictates other people's business models to them when we disapprove of the one
they're currently using".

You responded with a glib comment to the effect of "You're suggesting we have
to respect everyone's business models and make sure they work, so everyone
should just run a Ponzi Scheme".

It does not take a cutting intellect to see the problem with your logic.
Essentially what you're engaging in is the time-honored message- board-
forensics tactic of "redefining words to fit your argument". If it makes you
feel better to do that, so be it, but the only people you're going to persuade
with that tactic are people who don't care _what_ you say as long as it
somehow supports file sharing. I wouldn't want to waste my time writing those
kinds of comments, but I can't tell you how to spend your time.

------
pdeuchler
Put morality aside for a second.

The market has clearly dictated they will not support the business practices
of the major record labels, and have instead resorted to alternate ways of
obtaining their music. The record labels must adapt, or they will fall[1].
Econ 101. You can debate morality until the cows come home, but that's not
going to change these simple facts.

[1]Ignoring possible government interference

~~~
tptacek
It's not "the market" when the new channel is based on ignoring contacts and
copyrights, any more than it's "the market" that would be acting if I went to
my local library, scanned all the books, and then resold them at "Bookio.com".

~~~
pdeuchler
I'm no economist, but AFAIK market forces are defined by the way people
buy/sell goods.

Your analogy fails to draw a parallel since you have only one side, the
seller. Also, you're talking about reselling here, where the main debate is
the sharing of music.

However I fail to realize where you deny this is "the market". Consumers are
making their demands known by pursuing alternative ways of obtaining a good.
Seems pretty market-y to me, regardless of the means.

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure how this responds to my comment, since reselling books I scan
from the library seems perfectly analogous to the market you propose.

~~~
pdeuchler
There is a clear disconnect to both of our interpretations of each other's
comments. Please see my response to the other comment in this thread.

~~~
tptacek
I'll read and respond to that comment, but I'd like to reiterate that the
comment you made immediately above the one I'm responding to is nonresponsive.
The analogy I've provided, of pirating and reselling books from the library,
is in fact perfectly analogous to the issue we're discussing.

------
Codhisattva
For a much better post than the skimpy NYT rehash see :

[http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-
emi...](http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-
at-npr-all-songs-considered/)

~~~
tptacek
David Lowery (the former lead singer of Cracker [of "Low" fame from the early
'90s] and Camper Van Beethoven [of "Take The Skinheads Bowling" fame from the
'80s), the guy who wrote the page at the link you posted, took up this issue a
few months ago to great effect, complete with numbers, and we kind of
discussed it then a little:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3850935>

------
Cd00d
Two initial reactions: 1) with the current state of iTunes and Amazon
downloads, it seems easier, safer, more legal, and more supportive to buy
songs, instead of relying on P2P. You can't claim to be a music lover with 15
GB of free music, IMHO - you're only a collector without commitment.

2) She claims that the music wasn't illegally downloaded, implying to me that
she trades legally purchased copies with friends. Since she's only purchase 15
albums worth, I'd claim she's a leach to her friends, as that seems really
uneven an exchange.

I dunno. I'm older now, and selectively downloaded free music when I was
younger and poorer. I never wanted to collect hundreds of albums I would never
get around to listening to, so even in the Napster heyday, my collection
didn't explode like others. Now I buy my music, but I don't know if that's
because iTunes removed the ethical dilemma for me, or because I have more cash
and maturity.

Though these days, I seem to only listen to podcasts.

------
leot
Let's say that a musician goes $50k in debt making an album. They are now
given a choice: would you rather be listened to by 50 million people and get
no immediate money, or by 10k people and be quickly made whole?

Which do you suppose they'd choose?

The fact is that celebrity, attention, and "coolness" are more than enough
reward for most aspiring musicians.

Anyone who gets famous by giving their art away has been _more than fairly
rewarded_ for their work. Evidence for this comes from the 10k+ ultra-capable
undiscovered who would happily _pay_ to take this artist's place.

[Edit: I write this as someone who has earned good money through music, and
thus I'm not sure what is being objected to, here. It is plainly true that
fame brings instantaneous massive rewards and significant potential to earn
more, later. It is also plainly true that even in the current "bad" economic
environment for music, millions of people spend 10s of millions of hours each
week writing, rehearsing, and performing. Clearly, the motivations are not
primarily monetary.]

~~~
tptacek
Unless the band you create is called Sparklehorse, and you're considered an
indie-musician's indie-musician, and you collaborate with PJ Harvey and Tom
Waits and Danger Mouse and James Mercer, and tour with Radiohead, and end up
destitute living out of your old recording studio too in hock to hospitals to
pay for mental health care and then shoot yourself in the chest.

On the plus side: now you're _extra_ famous.

~~~
leot
Isn't this more an indictment of the U.S. social safety net than it is of the
economics of music performance?

And, am I to conclude from your statement that, in fact, all artists who are
as good as Sparklehorse are entitled to sufficiently remunerative
compensation, in addition to their fame and prestige?

~~~
tptacek
A. Yes

B. No

I'm just responding to the "fame can be its own reward" sentiment I detected.

------
maxko87
Just curious, how does she have 15gb of "legally downloaded" music that she
didn't pay for?

~~~
_delirium
I assume she means that she didn't download it, but copied from a friend or
similar. And, the law is a bit inconsistent on whether that's legal, since it
depends strangely enough on what technology you use to do the copying, which
may be leading to some confusion.

Copying music on analog media for personal use from a friend is fair use,
under the Audio Home Recording Act; in return, the music industry gets a
kickback from every blank tape sold to compensate them. However, the AHRA does
not apply (in either the fair-use or kickback portions) to copying music from
a friend for personal use onto your iPod. It's not clear very many people who
aren't specialists understand that home-taping is legal but home-iPodding
isn't...

------
rhizome
Once again, killing (or at least assaulting) the messenger.

~~~
ghshephard
I don't actually see it that way. Admittedly, there is always some gray area
when it comes to Intellectual Property, but, in this case, the intern's
behavior was just disgraceful. Stealing is stealing. Ever since reasonably
priced alternatives (iTunes and Amazon) of non-drm content in flexible
packaging (per song purchasing) became available - music listeners have no
excuse for stealing music.

I.E. This might have been excusable behavior in 1997-2009, but starting
January 6, 2009 (The day Apple removed DRM from iTunes), the rationale for
stealing music effectively disappeared.

Now, Game of Thrones torrentors on the other hand....

~~~
zheng
Here's my issues with this line of thought. For one, why is 99c considered
"reasonable" for a song? I feel as though this price point has little to do
with the economics of the song-making business and a lot to do with the
economics of iTunes/etc. Secondly, what is "convenient"? Why is iTunes
downloading convenient, but watching GoT on HBO's online service not? I'm not
saying they are equal, I think iTunes is easier, but why does the line fall in
between them? Basically, the writer in question thinks the line still falls on
the other side of iTunes, so why does that make their behavior disgraceful?

~~~
tptacek
Why do you get to demand a third choice, besides "Pay 99 Cents" and "Don't Get
The Song"?

A small bag of M&Ms costs, I don't know, 79 cents? Why is 79 cents considered
reasonable for 29 peanut M&Ms? If I object to that price, and instead pony up
the marginal cost of those M&Ms and their packaging (more like 13 cents), am I
being reasonable or unreasonable?

~~~
JoshTriplett
First, to answer the broader question: we get to "demand" another choice
simply by expressing an opinion about the structure of the market, the lack of
sensible choices, and the existence of bugs in the legal system that need
fixing. At least in this case, I don't think anyone in this discussion harbors
any delusions that downloading a song qualifies as legal, but most of the
people in this discussion can make a sensible distinction between _right_ and
_legal_ ; anyone wanting to change the legal system has to have the ability to
discuss bugs in that system.

That discussion remains distinct from the question of whether any individual
person would choose to (openly or secretly) flaunt the existing legal system
and take the associated risks; I don't personally want to take those risks,
but that doesn't mean I see those choices as _wrong_ , just _currently
illegal_.

To answer the more specific question: since you've already seen all of these
arguments play out enough times to become jaded by them, you already know the
entire line of arguments differentiating physical property with scarcity from
infinitely copyable digital files. In short, taking a bag of M&Ms means the
owner of them no longer has it, whereas copying (not taking) a file leaves the
original in place.

~~~
tptacek
Did you read my comment, or did your nerd brain instantly detect "comparison
between $PHYSICAL_PRODUCT and $ENTITY_EXPRESSIBLE_AS_A_NUMBER" and cause you
to blurt out this comment? Because I addressed the point you thought you were
making against my comment.

I mean this playfully. If we were discussing DOM corruption or block cipher
modes I would probably have a hard time carefully reading comments that
disagreed with my worldview too.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I did read and fully understand your comment, and no, I don't think you've
addressed the point in my comment. However, I do agree you've suggested a
subtler issue than the one usually discussed in this context, and since my
comment used terms like "scarcity" and "infinitely copyable", I may have come
across as endorsing a much more simplistic argument than I intended to make.

You described the idea of taking a physical item and paying only the
manufacturing cost of that item, and I'd assume you intended that to define
copying a file as taking it and "paying" the copying cost of 0.

However, those two actions still have a fundamental difference, and not one of
price. Assuming a price (zero or otherwise) also assumes a particular entity
owed that price; the analogy you made assumes a price inherently owed to the
original author of some piece of data, and that copying the file amounted to
refusing that price and choosing to pay 0 instead. When I disagreed with that
analogy, I didn't intend to imply that the zero cost of copying data provides
a justification; rather, I disagreed with the implicit assumption of
inherently owing any particular price to the author (zero or otherwise).

To elaborate on that distinction: if I want to copy a chair, I can look at it,
perform measurements of it, perhaps perform some materials analysis, and given
sufficient skill I can make a copy of it, all without affecting the original.
I argue that I have the inherent right to perform that process. That process
will almost certainly entail some cost to me: for instance, I'll have to
purchase materials to build the copy. However, I don't inherently owe any
price to the original designer or builder of the chair, beyond what I might
have originally paid them to obtain the original chair. I'd consider the
copying of a chair in this manner exactly analogous to the copying of a
digital file in all relevant respects. As it turns out, copying digital files
requires no particular measurements, materials analysis, or skill, and costs
effectively nothing; however, that particular detail doesn't matter for the
question we've both asked, namely "does the copier inherently owe anything to
the author". And if we build a system to automatically analyze the chair and
print a new one on a 3D printer, and can thus copy a chair at minimal expense,
that doesn't affect the key question either.

Bringing that back in the direction of copyright, the same thing applies to
the copying of a physical book: that process typically involves a non-zero
cost, in some combination of time, wear on equipment (copier, scanner, etc),
and possibly materials (if copying onto paper), but the conclusion remains the
same.

And to go in a different direction: if I hear a song, and later sing it
myself, I've copied it (lossily) with my brain and vocal cords, at zero cost
to me and zero inherent price owed to the singer or author of the song. We've
had infinitely copyable goods long before we had computers.

If you take a bag of M&Ms and pay less than the cost, the proprietor of those
M&Ms no longer has them, and cannot then choose to do with them as they see
fit; I'll assume from your use of that analogy that you already agree that
such an action violates basic expectations of property rights, and that the
proprietor of the M&Ms can choose to demand any particular price or none at
all. I agree with you completely there: you don't have the inherent right to
steal a bag of M&Ms because you find the price not to your liking. However, I
hope I've made it sufficiently clear why I don't find that situation analogous
to copying a file, or to copying a chair, or a book, or a collection of sound
waves.

However, your analogy does actually suggest a rather clear approach to
handling trade secrets, or (as brought up by another reply to my comment)
private information. If someone chooses not to distribute certain information
at all, then taking it from them against their will does not seem reasonable
to me. For instance, if someone breaks into my personal system, copies my
passwords or encryption keys, and distributes them to the world, I don't
consider that reasonable, despite the copying occurring at zero cost; _that_
situation seems quite analogous to the one you described.

That seems like an entirely different situation from the one more commonly
addressed by copyright, namely the original author choosing to distribute
information and then attempting to control the subsequent distribution of that
information by others. I'd argue that the author has every right to choose
what to do with the information they have, including not distributing it at
all; however, if they choose to distribute that information to others, I'd
also argue that those others have every right to choose what to do with the
information _they_ have, including distributing it further.

Hopefully I've managed to make it clear that my comment came from a position
of careful thought, not from a pattern-matched knee-jerk reaction. :)

~~~
tptacek
It really seems like you just listed out a bunch of things that are different
about a bag of M&Ms and a piece of music without addressing the economic
question. I think I understand that an M&M is different from an A minor chord
voicing.

About the closest you came to the point I raised was to point out that even if
you "square up" with the M&M vendor by paying his cost basis, you've still
deprived that vendor of the right to sell their music --- oops, I mean M&Ms
--- at the price they determined.

In other words, the closest you came to my point was by agreeing with me.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You seem to have completely ignored any parts of my comment that didn't
directly agree with you, and then attempted to reimpose the analogy that I
spent the entire comment systematically rejecting. Specifically, I made the
point that the rationale for copying data has nothing to do with its zero cost
to copy, and even with a non-zero copying cost the rationale still applies.
That rationale depends on the differences between a bag of M&Ms and a piece of
music (or other data), which you dismissed as not "addressing the economic
question"; you said that you "understand that an M&M is different from an A
minor chord voicing", but then you reimposed an analogy that assumes you can
treat them identically. I addressed the economic question quite plainly: a
copier does not inherently owe anything to the author of the copied data.
Anyone currently in possession of a piece of data can let anyone else copy it
(on whatever terms they see fit), and the author has no inherent right to get
involved in that transaction. They currently have an _artificial_ right to get
involved in that transaction, hence this discussion.

To further abuse analogies for a moment (note that I used "candy" rather than
"M&Ms" to avoid confusing the copying analogy with trademark issues): if I
open up a stand across the street from the candy vendor and start giving away
free bags of candy, I haven't "deprived the vendor of the right to sell their
candy at the price they determined". They have no such right; they have the
right to _try_ to sell it. (They might even successfully sell a few bags to
people who don't want to cross the street.) Fundamentally, I've done nothing
wrong and I owe the candy vendor nothing. I certainly don't owe them the cost
basis of a bag of candy, and implying otherwise would make no sense. Even if I
created those bags of candy by purchasing a bag from the vendor and analyzing
it so I could precisely duplicate it, I still owe the vendor nothing beyond
the original price I paid for that one bag of candy. Do you see anything
particularly wrong with that analogy? (If you'd like to complain that I've
suggested giving away something that costs a non-zero amount to produce,
consider that people routinely provide free downloads even though they pay for
bandwidth.)

~~~
tptacek
Exactly what is the difference between depriving the owner of the bag of M&Ms
of the opportunity to make more money than they paid to obtain the M&Ms, and
depriving the owner of a song copyright from the opportunity to make more
money (really, any money) from their investment in that song?

Your answer seems to be that the latter opportunity is "artificial", but here
"artificial" seems to be a synonym for "pertaining to copyright". If that's
the best you can do, I stand pat on my M&M analogy.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You seem to have responded to the first paragraph of my comment; the second
paragraph answers your question.

I've argued that an inherent difference exists between copying something and
taking the original. Your analogy discusses taking the original, and I've
already agreed that taking the original does not seem acceptable; applying
that analogy to information produces a useful approach to handling trade
secrets and personal/private information.

However, you've provided no reason or rationale to treat copying something the
same as taking the original. Your analogy does not cover that case, and your
subsequent comments have not addressed it either.

Person A has a piece of data. Person A lets person B copy that data. What
gives person C any particular right to complain?

Person A has a chair. Person A lets person B construct a copy of that chair.
What gives person C any particular right to complain?

I view this as simple rent-seeking.

(The rest of this comment just responds to your specific complaint about
"artificial", which seems like a side-track. The point above represents the
fundamental point of my series of comments.)

> Your answer seems to be that the latter opportunity is "artificial", but
> here "artificial" seems to be a synonym for "pertaining to copyright". If
> that's the best you can do, I stand pat on my M&M analogy.

I've made the assumption here that you don't mind having a discussion about
rights that does not assume the current state of law as having any
particularly inherent claim to optimality. I don't want to privilege the
hypothesis; I want to determine the optimal approach. Assuming the current
state of law puts the burden of proof on anyone arguing to change it. Starting
from nothing and arguing about what laws _should_ exist puts the burden of
proof on anyone wishing to construct a right where none inherently exists.
Hence my use of the word "artificial": I don't intend it as a synonym for
"pertaining to copyright"; I intended it as a label for a "right" that would
have no particular reason to exist without the explicit construction of laws
to enforce it.

I've also made the assumption here, based on your original analogy, that you
already agree with the notion of property rights over physical property; I
agree with that as well, so I've simply taken that as a given without
exploring that issue further. I hope you agree that we don't need to explore
that. You can either think of such rights as inherent, or think of them as
artificial and assume that we agree on sufficient justification for them to
exist. Either way works for the purposes of this discussion. I've stated this
assumption explicitly to stave off any complaint you might have in response to
my previous paragraph that "property rights are artificial too by that
definition".

You also seem to believe that property rights extend to information, which I
don't agree with, so _that_ point I've explored quite extensively. I don't
consider those rights inherent; I consider them artificial, and I don't
believe they have sufficient justification to exist.

I refuse to assume the burden of proof here. You argue for copyright law, so
you cannot assume copyright law when making your argument. Please actually
argue for it. :)

~~~
tptacek
You're fixating on the same point over and over again, probably because it is
the point that _every nerd ever_ fixates on when this discussion comes up.
"The copy leaves the original owner no worse off".

If you actually think through the scenario I presented, you'll see it's more
equivalent to copying than you're crediting. The M&M "cheat" is recouping the
M&M owner for their cost of goods sold. The M&M owner is _no worse off_ ,
because the owner can simply buy another bag of M&Ms and wait for the next
"sucker" to come along and pay retail.

This is obviously an absurdity. The person who takes a bag of M&Ms, coughs up
the wholesale price, and walks out with the product is obviously guilty of a
crime: shoplifting. Everyone agrees with this. But the economic impact to the
shopkeeper is the same.

Why do you accept one and not the other?

Please don't write another 20 paragraphs about "rent seeking" and "copying"
and plans for chairs. By your own definition, the shopkeeper is "rent seeking"
when he charges more than his cost basis for the M&Ms.

You put a lot of effort into writing, obviously. Put a little more effort into
thinking. When someone is caught shoplifting, do we have them pay the
wholesale price of the item they stole as damages to make the retailer whole?
Of course not. If we did that, there would be no disincentive whatsoever to
steal; if you win, you get the item free, if you lose, you get a discount. But
you're applying that same logic to unlawful downloads. And, lo and behold,
there is apparently no incentive whatsoever for anyone to compensate artists.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You're fixating on the same point over and over again, probably because it is
the same point that _every "intellectual property" advocate ever_ fixates on
when this discussion comes up: "the original author has an inherent right to
demand payment for future copies, and copying deprives them of those
payments".

I haven't attempted to argue whether the original author (note my not
accepting the term "owner") will be worse off from the copying. I haven't
fixated on that point at all; it never once entered into my reasoning. The
original author is a third party to the transaction of copying; they have _no
standing to object_. Party A has data; party A lets party B copy that data.
Neither party is the original author, so the original author has no standing
in the transaction.

Please do not assume that people who disagree with you must not have put
enough thought into it. I have put a great deal of thought into my position on
copyright, and I came to a different conclusion than you did. Your analogy
provides no new information to lead to any different conclusion. I do not
appreciate you dismissively lumping my arguments in with "every nerd ever" and
assuming I have not put my own thought into the issue.

> By your own definition, the shopkeeper is "rent seeking" when he charges
> more than his cost basis for the M&Ms.

No, my own definition had absolutely nothing to do with the cost basis for
M&Ms or any other physical product. Please don't attack a strawman. I defined
rent-seeking the same way economists do, namely attempting to extract economic
rent from a third-party transaction:

'Rent, by contrast with these two, is obtained when a third party deprives one
party of access to otherwise accessible transaction opportunities, making
nominally "consensual" transactions a rent-collection opportunity for the
third party.' -- <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking>

That seems to describe copyright quite accurately, doesn't it?

We both obviously agree on about property rights over physical property. Thus,
we both obviously agree that the owner of a bag of M&Ms has the right to
charge whatever price they see fit, and nobody has the right to take that bag
of M&Ms on terms the owner does not approve of. You keep bringing up your
analogy, bringing up the obvious absurdity it implies about property, and then
trying to jump from there to a conclusion about copying. We fundamentally
disagree over whether an author has the right to control the copying of data.
To accept your analogy as having any meaning in the context of copying data, I
would have to accept the concept of copyright as a property right the author
has over the copying of their data. Circular reasoning at its finest,
disguised by way of an appealing-sounding analogy.

> Why do you accept one and not the other?

Why do you assume one implies the other? I have no particular reason to think
of data as property, so I don't. Why should I believe otherwise?

------
mhb
_"...what she really wants is simply to pay to subscribe to “one massive
Spotify-like catalog of music that will sync to my phone and various home
entertainment devices...”_

Isn't that what Rhapsody is?

~~~
smspence
Pretty much. And isn't that what Spotify is? or is it implied that Spotify
doesn't have a library as big as she wants?

Lately, I have been listening to Slacker Radio with a Premium account
($10/month), and it is very much like Spotify and/or Rhapsody, and I have been
pretty impressed with how big the library of music is that can be played on-
demand.

~~~
mattmanser
Don't get musicians started on spotify, it's terrible for artists.

------
nerdfiles
All the same, as consumers we are being punished for either (1) desiring and
getting music in the means most convenient and historically accessible to us
or (2) desire and getting technology in the means most convenient and
historically accessible to us.

The historical, political, and mercantile lines draw behind the scenes is a
theatre we are not privvy to. Pulling the card "you're actually supporting the
big wigs of tech and the cost of the big wigs of music" all to make the point
that the big wigs of music could enable artisans assumes that artisans
themselves trust and believe in the music industry.

The point I want to make here is that all of this is heavily historical. We're
to simply overlook our desires, aforementioned, because of historical and
political threads which largely interplay outside of our control? I mean to
suggest that, in a sense, reprimanding anyone for jumping onto these
historical presentations of music and technology seems like reprimanding one
for not staying inside because it _might_ rain, or because aliens might
attack. Whether they do or not is a fact of the matter, but should we await
for Apple, RIAA, etc. to play their course while they continue to tantalize
and bombard us with all sorts of "technology"?

One obvious point is that _that is difficult_. The growing philosophical trend
of the counter-culture is this: Hey! Musicians were still making a living out
of their music _before_ technology put any of us into this mess!

~~~
briandear
Spoken like a true intellectual. Historically people have stolen photographs
and graphics to use on their web pages. Is that cool? Image if someone just
ripped off one of your client's advertising slogans and used the same design
to sell their products. All's fair when digital right?

This "historical" argument is the same argument that people use to explain all
manner of social ills. It's a cop out. It was wrong historically to steal and
it's wrong now. People have a personal responsibility, it isn't societies
fault that this girl is a thief.

~~~
nerdfiles
I'm suggesting the new departure, a new form of problem is this: casually, it
is her fault, but this is irrelevant to responsibility. Responsibility
involves a conscious acknowledgement of the world around you, and one is at
fault, personally, for a lack of consciousness of that world. However, what is
the problematic is the presentation of (1) and (2). Independently, they are
harmless. We should consume as much music and as much technology as we can,
but whether their political, historical and mercantile threads interweave, we
are face with a problematic.

I take a majority of this way of thinking from Alain Badiou: the truth
procedures of music and the truth procedures of science. What is most
interesting to me is that a truth procedure of polity is _seemingly_
determined by the historical presentation of file sharing software and music.
I should hope that my arguments do not justify theft, though I may be led
astray by my own constructions of thought. But what I am most concerned here
is with White's role played as a militant, within the political theatre of
piracy; by Badiou, she would be considered a "militant of truth" I believe.
One who compels who to witness a "rupture" of the system which _presents_ such
a militant. Her superior's condemnation, to me, presents something that might
be expected: that we should be compelled by a _person_ to deal with these
abstractions which have happened upon our political drama.

People do have a personal responsibility, but at the same time, "personal
responsibility" is a function of an social structure. I do not mean to address
any "casual" but rather "semantic" description of this "responsibility." What
connections (political, historical, etc.) immediately can be drawn from our
_decision_ (rather than hypothesis or principle) that White is "wrong"? One
conclusion is "education"; but one problem is that a society may very well
believe that stealing is "right," like ours. How _might_ one present a
counter-indoctrination? From their perspective, this may be how it is
presented. We have had decades to mature the ideologies, I believe we are now
at a time where we must accept that fact. Some of these ideologies are
inherently confrontational. Calling it theft does not entail that any
particular action should follow, so it seems that in the absence of one, we
might inevitably decide, produce such a _decision_, what those actions should
be. I should hope that I am prompting such a discussion.

It _is_ theft. But it is theft born out of a period that allowed dogmatisim to
mature.

------
JAMan
I have one question for everyone: who cares?

~~~
mattmanser
The girl herself cares and is naively lamenting about it while not realising
her lack of perspective is part of the problem. It's the whole point of the
article you dum-dum.

Read before you comment.

