consumer article #1

Here' s an article I wrote for the inaugural issue of 'The Consumer," the new incarnation of the Pio's former music insert 'The Ear' :

As 2007 came to a close, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) suddenly further-tightened its grip on the Internet’s pervasive and illegal exchange of copyrighted music, unleashing a series of federally-backed crackdowns upon some of the more notable contributors from the web’s untold number of file-sharing host sites and music-leaking blogs. Within a short span of weeks (some even within a few days), the RIAA shut down infamous host site albumbase.com, the invite-only torrent community Oink.cd, and pesky leaker-blogs “nodatta” and “robin hood of indie music” (both incarnations 1 and 2).

During that same brief span—and perhaps not coincidentally—Sony and Warner Bros. announced that they too would begin selling DRM-free (unencrypted) music through various online outlets like iTunes and Yahoo. The last of the four major record labels to do so, Sony and Warner Bros. follow in the foot steps of EMI and Universal, who made similar DRM-removal announcements early last year.

Of course, the consequences of such actions are hardly earth-shattering; many readers out there (all two of you) may even quickly dismiss the potential victims as limited to esoteric music-snobs. But keep in mind that a majority of these sites illegally share just as much “mainstream” music as they do “indie” and other underrepresented material—in other words, that copy of the new Jay-Z or the new Killers record you copped last week, if it wasn’t initially purchased legally by yourself or someone you know, probably has its origins in one of the aforementioned sites (or at least a similar one).

More importantly, however, is how the latest batch of RIAA and DRM drama once more calls attention to that digital-age-old debate over the free exchange of copyrighted music, an issue that’s at once chronic, ubiquitous, and easy to gloss over.

Just about everyone is a perpetrator of music “theft” on some level; and more often than not any moral guilt or rational hesitation what-have-you is wholly overcome by the more immediate possibility of temporally- and economically-unencumbered aural gratification. Not surprisingly, the most common justification out there for our generation’s rampant and illicit music sharing essentially boils down to: “we simply don’t have the money or access or time to possibly cover all of the records we’re interested in listening to. If we didn’t ‘steal it,’ we would never have heard the music otherwise, and we’d rather listen to it than not”

While this type of thinking comes off as more than a little self-centered, it’s also hard to genuinely contradict. I mean, shit, I know I go through an existential crisis over my own exploitation of the internet’s free music smorgasbord (e.g. the PDX Pop Now! Compilation that’s playing in the background as I write this article came into my hands without a dime dropped) just about every other week, and to date I have yet to settle on a singular stance or solution; quartered between the often-opposing poles of wanting to support the artists, wishing to posses their latest albums, limited spending money, and no truly comparable record store in town, I almost always end up ‘stealing’ my music instead of paying for it. In an admittedly weak and rationalized defense, I justify this “theft” by convincing myself that I’ll support the artists later by attending there concerts or picking up the vinyl copies of there records (I’m somewhat of an aficionado). Yet this is only applicable to those bands or records that I’m really into—not the dozens of other bands whose music I acquire illicitly but end up not liking (enough).

But everyone else is dong it, right?

Sure. Which cuts right to the heart of the matter—it’s just so damn easy. For every blog or host site the RIAA shuts down, ten more usually spring up the next day, making most new records just a search, click, and stable-internet-connection away. Anonymity plus ubiquity breeds impunity and complacency.

Only, no matter how easy it is to displace the consequences of illegal music sharing with the satisfactions of convenience or a righteous “fuck the man!,” those consequences are real. And so-far they have been detrimental to everyone in the music industry—not just the big-dog music executives, but the more blue-collar people like sound engineers, independent record store clerks, and above all, the struggling artists. So while sharing copyrighted music may always be an available option, the gradual elimination of DRM codes and increasing threat of federal prosecution make it ever-more more difficult to justify.

We all love music, but is that enough to steal? Think about it.

(Update: Robin Hood of Indie Music 2 is back and running for the time being, and nodatta has a new name: nodatta2.blogspot.com. fancy!)

(Second Update: Robin Hood of Indie Music 2 is now exclusive to a limited number of invites based on donations)