PC World: The Bare Naked Truth on Music File Sharing

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/00c878ad0a01040800577d95c0379858/pg1.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/00c878ad0a01040800577d95c0379858/pg1.htm</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Music sharing is not new. It's been happening for decades. The only thing that has changed is the technology. This is the crux of the issue - home taping (despite industry propaganda to the contrary) did not kill music. Nowadays, P2P file sharing over the web is faster and brings together huge numbers of people (and does not have the quality issues that tape recording had). This, understandably, scares the begeebers out of record execs. Whether they want to admit to it or not, CRIA and the record labels have had an extreme knee jerk reaction to this because they can't seem to understand the technology or, worse yet, music fans and the culture of the web. Now, entrenched in their position, they can't afford to take a step back and look at the issue from a new perspective."</i><br /><br />This article is a couple of months old, but it's an interesting read - it's refreshing to see musicians standing up and speaking for themselves rather than letting the lawyers from the music companies do it for them.

[bcries]

Good article, I agree. It is also nice to hear Steve Page say "music is not a commodity."

A commodity, in short, is something produced to be bought and sold (i.e. "property"). Page seems to suggest that it isn't the music itself that you buy, but the physical LP/tape/CD that it comes on.

I'm sort of waiting for all the lackeys from the "Going Legit" thread to come out and challenge Page for saying pretty much the same thing I said before: that music itself (and perhaps information in general) should not be treated as property.

[Jason Dunn]

I'm sort of waiting for all the lackeys from the "Going Legit" thread to come out and challenge Page for saying pretty much the same thing I said before: that music itself (and perhaps information in general) should not be treated as property.

I'd pay to see you try and convince an artist like Stephen Page of your arguments that he doesn't deserve to make a living as a professional musician because he's not "producing" anything.

[bcries]

I'd pay to see you try and convince an artist like Stephen Page of your arguments that he doesn't deserve to make a living as a professional musician because he's not "producing" anything.
You'd pay, but you wouldn't be buying any property ;) See, outside of capitalist money-commodity-money exchanges, there are also opportunities for artists to charge admission for performances, and to sell physical items that contain their work.

The classic capitalist attempts to commodify Page's art by treating it as a widget on the CD-assembly-line, produced and packaged. Page is not delluded enough to think that he creates something new every time a copy of "Gordon" is stamped out at the factory. He creates the music once, and records it. The rest is, as he says, an outdated business model.