Music Piracy? I Feel Another Rant Coming Along.....

I got an MP3 Player for my birthday recently, and have spent the last couple of weeks studiously filling it with MP3s ripped from my *extensive* CD collection...

I have also illegally downloaded quite a few albums worth of tracks via a P2P file sharing program, and have transferred them on to said player with no qualms concerning music copyright whatsoever.

The reason for this cavalier attitude is quite simple.

I am a music fan. I like music. I want to have music.

Why should I not have access to music? As a *pretend* musician myself, I understand the copyright laws as much as the next man. I realise that by downloading Judas Priest's "British Steel", I'm shirking my responsibilty to the music industry, and depriving a band I have always quite liked of the princely sum of (in this case) £7.99 (which they really must need to keep all their legal battles against each other going...).

But, as I already have paid for this particular album 20 odd years ago, why should I have to pay for it again? It's just the medium that has changed.

Is it against the law for me to play my old "British Steel" cassette into my PC, and rip the tracks onto my MP3 Player? I don't think so...I paid for that - it's fucking mine!

So, what's the big deal?

OK, so I have also downloaded a few albums that I haven't heard before - "Dance Of Death" by Iron Maiden for one, but in all honesty I really wouldn't have bought this without hearing it anyway. And after listening to it quite a bit, I don't think it is worthy of my cash...I never contemplated buying it before, and my original decision has been vindicated.

Similar with "Toxicity" by System Of A Down - now I have downloaded it, and actually quite like it so far, I most likely will go out and buy the CD, just because I can then have it properly on CD. So SOAD (and the whinging multi-national music company conglomerates, who earn multi-millions of dollars selling bollocks like Britney and Ashlee Simpson to impressionable kids) get a positive result through file sharing!

I remember well the campaign in the early 1980's - "Home Taping Is Killing Music!" with a skull and crossbones underneath, plastered on nearly every LP and cassette.

All I can say is" "Utter Tosh"...

If home taping was killing music, how come music has survived, in fact no, how come it has flourished? It can't have been the campaign, as everybody ignored it! Everybody borrowed albums off each other and copied them at will! Now with CD burners, it still goes on....

There's one thing that gets on my tits, though.


How come, if the music industry is losng so much money through file-sharing, they can still afford to produce the type of musical diarrhea that gets into our "Charts" every week? Who buys this crap?

If the music industry spent more money on A&R, signing proper musicians who can actually play and sing, and even write their own songs, and promoting their songs in musical collections, or "Albums" instead of fly-by-night one-hit-wonders, then perhaps they would see a return on their outlay....

Instead of mercilessly ripping off the poor 10 to 14 year olds who only now what to like through reading fashion comics and watching Saturday morning kids television....