The sky didn't fall and music didn't die.
UNITED STATES/BRITAIN, 1980-PRESENT: Since long before the internet was widely available for personal use*, the recording industry has been trying to stop the duplication of music and movies. The messages have been variations on two main themes.
The first is that it’s illegal. The “Home Taping is Killing Music” campaign, started by BPI back in the 80s went so far as to say (incorrectly) that home taping was illegal. It wasn’t and it still isn’t.
The second theme was that home taping would kill the music industry by financially starving it to death. If you could tape the music from a friend, the logic went, you would never need to buy an album. Album sales would therefore plummet, recording studios would go out of business and artists would die hungry. Those poor rock stars that you know and love would be hurt by your actions and you would have blood on your hands.
We know the degree to which this is bullshit now, just as the cool adults did back then. Even most of the kids my age knew on some level that this logic was fucked, if only based on the few interviews with musicians we had seen or heard. I don’t ever remember hearing anything positive said about record company executives and I do remember hearing quite a few nasty things being said about them. To believe that these executives would have the musician’s best interests in heart when pleading with the public to stop making copies was willful ignorance, or just plain stupid.
Skipping forward to present day, the claims from the RIAA are the same as they ever were, but the game has changed. New laws have been signed and new technology is in play. Back then, you made one, maybe two copies of an album before you would really notice a degradation in the quality. Today, the first copy is as good as the 100th, Back then, you could tape music from the radio if you didn’t mind the beginning of the song being talked over or the end clipped. Today, you can record free streaming music from any number of providers like Pandora or Rhapsody with even less disruption to songs.
Downloading copies of whole songs or albums (yes, I still call them that) is clearly illegal, given the laws on the books, just like jaywalking, lying on your taxes and ripping that tag off of your mattress. The difference between these is that only one affects the bottom line of multi-national corporations, so only one is rigorously enforced. I could go on for a while about the outrageous sums of money the RIAA is trying to sue people for, but then I would be getting away from the Cold War era.
People have been sharing music since it was first recorded. The ways that we share, and the means to prevent it, have changed with technology. There’s always going to be a way to get around the latest roadblock. If you really want it, you have to work for your rock.
*The internet was technically invented in 1969, but was limited to mostly universities until the 90s.
The radio waves are empty
Leave a Reply