File Sharing: The Barn Raising of the Digital Age

Out in the country, when a farmer needs a new barn, his neighbors all get together to help him build one. I don’t know if this is actually true or not. I’ve seen this in a couple of movies, the most memorable scene being from Witness. In real life this charitable practice may or may not occur. For all I know when a farmer needs a new barn the other farmers may get together and steal his lumber and nails to prevent him from building it. If that is true then just let me say that I think farmers are assholes. If that is true I will boycott all farm products--except pork.

If farmers do get together for barn raisings then that would be like internet dorks getting together for file sharing. Say a new kid comes on the internet and he/she doesn’t have any J Lo music. That kid could end his or her J Lo-less misery by downloading a bunch of crappy J Lo tunes. You can’t store hay or animals in a pirated MP3 of a shitty top 40 band but you know what I mean. If you don’t know what I mean then just forget this stupid analogy and I’ll start over.

The music industry is trying DESPERATELY to explain their loss in sales on computer file sharing sites like Kazaa and Sharebear. This whole campaign was probably instigated by the record industry marketing division to cover up for their horrific incompetence. The truth is that the recording industry has been selling lousy products for the past several years. By going after people who share files with trumped-up lawsuits they are about to completely alienate their entire market. (Someone needs to tell me how the record industry has a right to examine a person’s internet usage without a search warrant. This is a privacy issue that needs to be addressed immediately.)

I am completely convinced that the record industry has been developing and planting computer viruses on the file sharing sites because they haven’t been able to cut off the heads of all of the Napster hydras through legal means. They also won’t be able to prevent people from making bootleg CD’s now that every new computer is equipped with a CD burner. Way to think this whole problem through from the beginning, guys. Way to take your example from the War on Drugs handbook.

What the industry needs to realize is that they are in the service industry and they need to cater to the public—not the other way around. Unlike food and water, people can actually live without crappy pop music. If they want to expend all of their energy promoting stuff like Brittany Spears then sooner or later they are going to have to realize that the entire American record-buying public isn’t 13 years old.

I may be a bad example because I have been playing classical music for a few years now but I can’t even remember the last CD I purchased. I have so many classical CD’s in my collection that I really don’t need to buy another classical CD as long as I live. I haven’t completely given up on pop music but it looks like it has given up on me.