The Only Limits We Set (What Can We Get Away With?)

Call me old-fashioned, but I fondly remember a time when people paid bands for the music they made. All in all, it was a pretty reasonable deal. Musicians wrote a bunch a songs; went into a recording studio, put it all down on tape, and the tracks were then mixed and mastered and printed onto LPs, cassettes, and CDs by record companies--who then made sure that these recordings found their way into record stores and were reviewed in magazines, played on the radio and/or music video shows; and often supported the band as they toured in support of the recording. The fan would hear the song/see the video/go to the show and then head off to the record store to purchase a copy of the LP, cassette, or CD for their own personal enjoyment. And some musicians could actually make an okay, even decent, living off of being a musician.

Sure there were problems with this arrangement. For example, CDs were way overpriced (considering they cost only a few dollars to manufacture--much less if you are printing them in massive quantities); some labels hacked away at their artists' royalties by nickeling and diming them to death; indie bands and labels had great difficulty getting their releases distributed; and forget getting your record played on commercial radio without some form of payola. The list of legitimate gripes was long and sordid. I should know, I was part of the music industry for a decade and saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. (For the record, Moon should be filed under 'good.')

But when you distilled it all down to its essence, music fans paid bands to own a recorded copy of their music.

[Yes, back in the day, some people would make a couple of cassette or CD copies of an album for their friends--copyright law actually makes allowances for you to make a few copies of an album you've bought to give, not sell, to your buds--but nowadays any idiot can rip a CD and put a perfect digital copy on the web for potentially millions of strangers to download without any of them paying a penny to the band/label. This is very different from making a copy just for your friend and it is illegal.]

After all, one of the cornerstones of a capitalistic society like ours is that whenever someone creates something unique to sell in the marketplace, he or she is protected by a copyright that gives them ownership and complete control of their creation. This allows them to license or manufacture and sell authorized copies of their original idea--and go after those who create pirated or bootleg versions of something they own.

So, what changed this basic equation? The brave new world of the internet didn't void all copyright laws--it just made it easier to cheat the musician (and in many cases, their record label--well, what's left of them) out of the money that they're due. It's that simple.

Whenever someone rips a CD and uploads it on the internet via some file sharing site like Rapidshare (making it possible for thousands, hundreds of thousands, or potentially millions of people anywhere in the world, to download a copy of an album for free), he/she is a) violating the band's copyright and, b) denying them income that could help them continue to function as musicians and produce more music that he/she supposedly likes and wants.

I could go on about how musicians have bills to pay like the rest of us (you know, rent, food, gas, health insurance--the basics) and how music file sharing can be particularly devastating for bands involved with small, underground music scenes, like ska's, which have limited numbers of potential album buyers to begin with, but you get the gist of my argument.

So don't be an ass. Do the right thing (legally, ethically, and morally) and buy a band's album from iTunes or their CD from their website or head to your local indie record store and maybe even accidentally come across some other albums that you didn't even know you wanted...