"Piracy?! Did I forget to take off my Eyepatch?"
I keep hearing about these young people getting charged with "Copyright Piracy" of music available online, and I don't get it.
First off, in my mind, the people that actually create the music that we purchase at bloated prices from large stores with minimal variety have no say in getting any more out of me after I pay for their CD. What do these guys care, anyway? They don't make more than a maximum of 1 Dollar off of each record they sell! It's their Corporate Pimp Daddies in the suits that make all the money off of their work. When I buy a CD containing maybe 3 to 4 with a max of 5 decent songs on it out of an average of maybe 18 to 20 songs, I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it's contents. The moment that you stop churning out mediocre music and start producing original compositions with meaningful lyrics and content, you can argue your rights all day long. But for now, shut the fuck up! Stop all the whining, and get back on the road, where you make all the real money anyway.
Us, you know, the normal people? We work our asses off at jobs we hate, for incredibly low pay in order to entertain ourselves for an all too brief moment with your music, that, more often than not... sucks. Your rights to the royalties are yours, but there is no way that you can get mad at someone for liking your music so much that they would buy a computer, pay for internet service, go online, find a site that holds the files of your music, and spend two hours waiting for a song to be downloaded on a 56K dial-up internet connection. These people love your music so much that they're willing to break the law to get a hold of it... and you punish them?! What the hell is wrong with you?!
And have you ever noticed that the people who get caught breaking these "Anti-Piracy" Laws live in the middle of nowhere? Three guys in Singapore not that far back, a girl in Montana... why are you guys wasting your time arresting them? What, was that teenage girl the Montana underworld mafia Queenpin of bootleg CD's?! Aren't there enough drug dealers, serial rapists and violent street-gangs to keep you busy? Well, maybe not in Montana... it's not exactly the entertainment capital of the world.
I have a great deal of respect for musicians, so I don't make bootleg copies for people. I'll occasionally make a mix-tape CD as a sampler, but I don't sell them... I trade 'em like baseball cards. I like to think that I'm exposing someone to something that they may not buy themselves, and in Underground Hiphop, you don't find out about new artists by going to the local Best Buy and looking through their piles of 50 Cent and Kanye West CD's... you go the closest big city and start diggin' in the crates for future classics. Ameoba's or Fat Beats in L.A. are perfect examples of that kind of old-school record store, and there should be more... but the corporations have assimilated that individuality like the Borg.
There was once a time, in the early-to-mid-nineties, that Target had an actual Hiphop section, did you know that? Now go in there and try to find anything that you would actually be able to listen to... you'd be there for hours, and still not find anything that wouldn't turn into either a drink coaster or frisbee after two listens. I must admit that I'm a Hiphop purist, but I'm not a snob... I'll listen to a CD to see if it's good or not. For instance, I have a friend named Zack who's affiliated with a local Underground Hiphop group called "Life For The Better", and he introduced me to all the great stuff that those guys have been putting out. Cleen and Offbeat are my favorites, but that doesn't mean that BenYomen, Banana 9 or the others aren't worth listening to... in fact, that kind of originality and variety of verbal skills is very similar in many ways to the early Wu-Tang Clan records; where everybody was unique and original... unlike, say... G-Unit.
The point of all this is simple: Stop complaining that people are interested in trying to get your music for free, kick those three hot chicks out of your bed, order your room-service-delivered-over-priced Bangers and Mash and wash it down with some Southern Comfort... you ass!
First off, in my mind, the people that actually create the music that we purchase at bloated prices from large stores with minimal variety have no say in getting any more out of me after I pay for their CD. What do these guys care, anyway? They don't make more than a maximum of 1 Dollar off of each record they sell! It's their Corporate Pimp Daddies in the suits that make all the money off of their work. When I buy a CD containing maybe 3 to 4 with a max of 5 decent songs on it out of an average of maybe 18 to 20 songs, I'll do whatever the fuck I want with it's contents. The moment that you stop churning out mediocre music and start producing original compositions with meaningful lyrics and content, you can argue your rights all day long. But for now, shut the fuck up! Stop all the whining, and get back on the road, where you make all the real money anyway.
Us, you know, the normal people? We work our asses off at jobs we hate, for incredibly low pay in order to entertain ourselves for an all too brief moment with your music, that, more often than not... sucks. Your rights to the royalties are yours, but there is no way that you can get mad at someone for liking your music so much that they would buy a computer, pay for internet service, go online, find a site that holds the files of your music, and spend two hours waiting for a song to be downloaded on a 56K dial-up internet connection. These people love your music so much that they're willing to break the law to get a hold of it... and you punish them?! What the hell is wrong with you?!
And have you ever noticed that the people who get caught breaking these "Anti-Piracy" Laws live in the middle of nowhere? Three guys in Singapore not that far back, a girl in Montana... why are you guys wasting your time arresting them? What, was that teenage girl the Montana underworld mafia Queenpin of bootleg CD's?! Aren't there enough drug dealers, serial rapists and violent street-gangs to keep you busy? Well, maybe not in Montana... it's not exactly the entertainment capital of the world.
I have a great deal of respect for musicians, so I don't make bootleg copies for people. I'll occasionally make a mix-tape CD as a sampler, but I don't sell them... I trade 'em like baseball cards. I like to think that I'm exposing someone to something that they may not buy themselves, and in Underground Hiphop, you don't find out about new artists by going to the local Best Buy and looking through their piles of 50 Cent and Kanye West CD's... you go the closest big city and start diggin' in the crates for future classics. Ameoba's or Fat Beats in L.A. are perfect examples of that kind of old-school record store, and there should be more... but the corporations have assimilated that individuality like the Borg.
There was once a time, in the early-to-mid-nineties, that Target had an actual Hiphop section, did you know that? Now go in there and try to find anything that you would actually be able to listen to... you'd be there for hours, and still not find anything that wouldn't turn into either a drink coaster or frisbee after two listens. I must admit that I'm a Hiphop purist, but I'm not a snob... I'll listen to a CD to see if it's good or not. For instance, I have a friend named Zack who's affiliated with a local Underground Hiphop group called "Life For The Better", and he introduced me to all the great stuff that those guys have been putting out. Cleen and Offbeat are my favorites, but that doesn't mean that BenYomen, Banana 9 or the others aren't worth listening to... in fact, that kind of originality and variety of verbal skills is very similar in many ways to the early Wu-Tang Clan records; where everybody was unique and original... unlike, say... G-Unit.
The point of all this is simple: Stop complaining that people are interested in trying to get your music for free, kick those three hot chicks out of your bed, order your room-service-delivered-over-priced Bangers and Mash and wash it down with some Southern Comfort... you ass!
posted by Todd Tobin at 11:47 AM
3 Comments:
This is really good baby, could not have said it better myself! =)
Thanks, hon...
That's what I thought... from a woman with an ipod.
What a great title. You have a great blog. I was searching for stretchmarks when I landed here. I've got a similar site related to stretchmarks you might want to check out.
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