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

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/05/07, Karl Miller wrote:

> 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.

Reliability. 

I have too many experiences of servers failing to want to rely on some
company to store the music I want to listen to. And what happens when
they decide to clear out all the recordings that "nobody" (ie you and I)
listens to?

>   
>  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
> 
Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx