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Re: of bootlegs and such...

I have to admit I have mixed feelings about bootlegs.  On the one hand, I have
plenty of them, so I can hardly throw stones, and especially for bands whose
live experience doesn't come across well on their "official" albums, I
appreciate being able to experience that on my own time, especially if they
don't come around very often.  I also strongly believe in freedom of
information and the anarchy of distribution.  As I understand it, copyrights
were initially invented to be like patents, to ensure that you got due
compensation for your work for a limited time, before the idea passes into the
public domain, to become part of the fodder that fuels others to even better
ideas, thus making the society stronger.  It was not meant to let people
monopolize ideas or keep making money off an idea for the rest of their lives.
And it's ridiculous that a corporation (not even a person) can keep the
copyright on something a long-dead individual came up with some 80 years ago.

On the other hand, I can understand the trepidation of the artist.  I mean,
this is your life's work, to make music, and you (hopefully) want it to be the
best it can possibly be, so you spend weeks if not months in the studio,
getting everything just right.  You have absolutely no control over a bootleg,
and if you would rather have no recording at all rather than a crummy, noisy,
audience-laden bootleg, shouldn't you have the right to make that decision?  On
the third hand, I think making money off of selling bootlegs is despicible
parasitism, not to mention theft.  Of course, I've bought my share of those in
used record stores, too.  Maybe I'm just letting my desire to hear
rare/different versions of Peter Gabriel songs override my usually strong sense
of ethics, and coming up with a post-hoc justification for why it really isn't
that big a deal... hmmm....  come to think of it, I have no idea what Peter
Gabriel's stance on bootlegs is.  Maybe he doesn't mind.  I hope not.

Ok, I need to get to work now...
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu        http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Standing on a well-chilled cinder we see the fading of the suns and try
to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
				     - Georges Lematre

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