Amen, Leslie! Couldn't have said it better myself.
It's obvious if you go back to the list archives there's really only one
person who continually asks for trades on this list (not to mention
cross-posting to about 5 other lists at the same time.)
Many of us spend a lot of money every month for new music. How much one
spends per month has NO BEARING whatsoever on the immorality of trading
commercial releases (i.e. not concert/live recordings.)
In many ways, pirating underground dance music (much of what we talk about
on this list) is much more harmful to the overall health of the music
market than pirating the new Madonna or Ricky Martin single/CD. The
popular producers and artists have a measure of success and can withstand a
certain amount of pirating (and there's certainly a lot of it) because they
can make it up in volume and can draw in large profits from their live tours.
Obviously, pirating underground dance music hurts those artists much more
because they don't see the volume of the pop stars and don't make the
profits touring that pop stars do. It's kind of cutting off your nose to
spite your face - or sacrificing the long-term viability of the artists
you're pirating because they won't see any profits from you and all the
other pirates.
On a purely economic level, don't forget to take into account the time and
money people put into pirating (at the individual level, not talking about
large-scale pirating schemes) probably equals the money it would take to
buy the commercial release; (how much do you value an hour's worth of your
time it takes to buy a CD-R, burn a CD, package it, postage it, bring it to
the post office, etc.) I personally value my time and effort a lot more
than it would take to find a person to trade with and make that trade
happen. My economics tell me that it's cheaper to spend my money in the
store than it would be to spend my weekend burning CD-Rs to trade - but
that's because I value my time a lot more than pirates do.
Pirates should go to usenet or irc to chat with their kind. That's where
all the significant pirating happens anyway.
Sick and tired of trading requests and the motivations behind it,
Gen
At 12:27 PM 2/25/01 -0800, Leslie N. Shill wrote:
>it is important to
>me to support as many artists as i can by actually buying their discs. By
>buying the discs i am making my own small contribution to the well-being of
>the artists, independent music and to the creative process, i think that is
>more important than the ultimate size and scope of my own personal
>collection of discs.
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