Re: [ARSCLIST] Record Business vs. Music Business: The Shakeout Continues.

[Karl Miller <karl.miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dismuke <dismukemail@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
   
  ***As we enter such a world, the RIAA is still obsessed
with and has desperately been trying to pretend that
people will continue using plastic discs that take up
shelf space and only hold 700 measly megabytes of
data. 
   
  Yes, the "Cheese" is moving. For me, the digital world offers our species a opportunity to break from our "hunter, gatherer" orientation. Further, as bandwidth for wireless networks increases, what need would a person have to maintain their own collection or file, whether it be audio or anything else? assuming that we had a good navigation tool for the information stream and low cost access.
   
  As an employee at a University that provides access to JSTOR I can download PDFs of copyrighted articles. There is nothing keeping me from sending that PDF to someone who does not have the same level of access. Is that a copyright violation? probably so. It is so easy to do, one does without even thinking about it. 
   
  Even in the old days of reel to reel recordings and no email,  as collector of broadcast recordings of music not recorded commercially, I remember how quickly a recording would circulate in what we used to call the "tape underground." I can recall looking for a better sounding copy of a broadcast and finding  a collector on the other side of the globe who had a copy. I would write a letter asking for a dub in the hope that their version sounded better, only to find that their copy had come from mine, something I had recorded off the air 30 years ago! with, of course, several additional layers of hiss which had come from subsequent redubbing. 
   
  Ah, what we used to do...I am reminded of how the Horowitz-Barbirolli Rachmaninoff Third Concerto was "liberated" from New York Public Library (a small microphone was placed inside the headphones with wire traveling inside a shirt to a briefcase with a recorder inside). That tape quickly made the rounds. Where was Leon Theremin when we needed him...an obscure reference a few of you might catch...
   
  Increasingly it seems possible that only one person needs to pay and then it "circulates." These days that applies to commercial recordings/information with no loss in quality.  
   
  I wonder where will we find financial incentives to make more "cheese."
   
  Karl