Just Say No!

Imagine paying for your groceries, and the cashier says: "we've experienced lots of shoplifting recently, so we are going to add 5% to your bill today to cover our losses." That sums up what the Songwriters Association of Canada wants to do in its proposal to add a $5 monthly fee to all internet subscribers' bills in Canada. In return, music file sharing on peer-to-peer networks would become legal. I say, no freakin' way!

I do not download music illegally and I fully support the music industry by purchasing compact discs from retailers such as HMV, Sunrise, Sonic Boom, Soundscapes, Penguin Music, etc. There is no way I am going to pay a penalty or a fee for something I do not do. It's bad enough that a levy has already been added to blank media (cassettes and various CD formats) under the false assumption that they are all being used for illegal copies of music. It's not comforting to know that when I back up some photos I am again giving money to the recording industry.

As I have said before, downloading music sucks. However, I do download some music legally from net labels and I have downloaded free tracks from artist websites. I do not participate in the sharing of music on peer-to-peer networks. This proposal will penalize me as well as those who don't even know how to download music, like most of the geriatrics in the country. Someone has to kill this proposal.

The recording industry shot itself in the foot as soon as it launched the CD format. The costs of producing CDs is, and always has been, less than the costs to produce vinyl records, but in a greedy frenzy, designed to increase profit margins, the Industry collectively hiked prices and alienated music buyers. If CDs were priced at $6.99 or $7.99, we might not have such a huge problem. Don't forget that in the United States the Federal Trade Commission investigated compact disc pricing and concluded that American consumers overpaid $480 million for music purchased between 1996 and 1999. Evidently, record labels exerted pressure on retail outlets to keep prices above a certain level.

I have already emailed the Songwriters Association of Canada to express my opinions. If you hate this idea as much as I do, why not send them an email as well? I am sure iTunes, etc. will have something to say about the loss of its entire Canadian market. Their address is: advocacy@songwriters.ca. Better yet, go to Ryerson University at 7:00 pm this evening to tell them what you think. A public forum is being held at Oakham House. Unfortunately, I cannot attend.

Let's squash this unfair idea before it spreads any further and before it infects other sectors. I can only imagine what's next:

$5 per month in compensation for file-sharing of TV programs;
$5 per month in compensation for file-sharing of feature films;
$5 per month in compensation for file-sharing of computer software;
$5 per month in compensation for file-sharing of porn films ...

etc etc etc ....

My Favourite Website

Imagine a website that had free music, free films, free software, and free books.

I do have a fav website. I have a few. I like Arts & Letters Daily. That's cool. I like Allmusic. That's cool too. I like Space and, well, there are too many others to mention. But, there is one that is my favourite. And that site is the Internet Archive.

The Internet Archive describes itself as "A digital library of internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form." What's cool is that it is free and growing daily. Imagine free access to software, including such bizarre things as Donkey Kong 64 replay, all 13 hours and 20 minutes. There's text, like the Million Book Project, Project Gutenberg, and a Children's Library of 1477 titles.

But wait, there's more. You get a moving images collection, including such titles as Reefer Madness and Sex Madness and much much more. The archive has over 2000 films from the Prelinger Archives. If you want to re-live US election madness 2004, you have your choice of 677 films. It's really amazing. It has Universal Newsreels, all 617 episodes of PBS's Computer Chronicles, Mosaic Middle East News, Independent News, etc., etc. You can stream the videos or download them.

The archive is also home of the Way Back Machine. This is where you would go to get an image of CNN's home page on any date starting in June 2000. Remember this?

The best part for me are the Audio files. There is tons of free music here, licensed under the Creative Commons. Finally, we have sanity in the copyright world. The creative commons operates a flexible copyright scheme. As a result, a whole whack of music is available, free. From Netlabels to open source recordings, and a live music archive of almost 22,000 shows. There is a huge amount of free music. I just downloaded Cisfinitum and Edwin Morris and Mogwai and Axiomatic Integration and Orphax and more.

The Internet Archives seeks to become a home "of the literary 'orphans' (works whose owners are hard to find)" in a digital age. They have filed suit to entrench this view. You can read more about that here.

Technorati Tags: Internet Archive, Archive.org

I think downloading music sucks. I don't understand why people want to get music this way. Forrester Research is predicting that Compact Discs will disappear in five years, and that virtually all music will be purchased from online stores. Maybe I am a Luddite, but I would hate this arrangement.

As we know, downloaded music offers no improvement in sound over CDs. You get no liner notes, no lyrics, no production details, no artwork. Instead, you are responsible for archiving the music. You will keep needing larger hard drives. I have had a hard drive failure. I wouldn't want to have to repurchase all of that music. I have 1200+ CDs.

SACD and DVD audio offer better sound quality than CDs. Surely, music lovers should prefer better sound quality over ease of downloading. It irritates me when I hear people complain that they shouldn't have to buy a whole CD for just one song. If you only like one song from an artist, you shouldn't be a fan. You've been duped.

Downloading isn't more economical. Some online stores are selling songs for 99 cents each. The last Radiohead CD has 14 tracks. 14 times 99 cents is just about what I paid for it, and I have the disc, and the artwork, and I don't have to worry that I will erase the songs, or that my hard drive will crash. And, yes, I like all of the music on the CD, not just one song. I predict that the 99-cent model will soon disappear. We will be paying a lot more than 99 cents in the future.

What I'd like to know is if on online store would sell Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon for 99 cents. It is, after all, a 61-minute song.

I have downloaded lots of legal music, so that I can hear new musicians. That, to me, is the value of downloads. If I want the music, I will buy it.

I'll take a CD any day. Forrester says that within five years, CDs will be things that only old people have. I guess I am old.

Tags: downloading, CDs