Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Love music, don’t steal it

So, let’s say you’re into woodworking.

Not back-porch whittling, but carefully designed, completely unique, seven-grades-of-sandpaper, weeks-to-complete, beautifully inlaid woodworking.

And let’s say your work becomes so popular among your friends and family that you decide to try selling it online. And let’s say one day not long after that you go out to your workshop to finish up that $2000 solid oak custom-engraved headboard you’ve been working on, and you discover that you’ve been cleaned out. There is not one single scrap of wood left anywhere in your 1,000 square-foot workshop.

To add insult to injury, you soon learn the thieves are getting rid of your work online -- not by selling it, though. They’re giving it away, and making their money on the banner ads they can sell based on their site’s high traffic – “Hey everyone, come get (someone else’s) free stuff!” They have stolen your livelihood from you, and now they’re making money by giving it away to people who might have been your paying customers, who might have supported your effort to make a living doing what you do the best and love the most. Who might have made you that rare species, a working artist.

Does this scenario make you angry? Do you feel like the woodworker is getting screwed? Do you think the thieves deserve to go to jail? Do you think the people who take the fruits of the woodworker’s hard labor for free rather than paying for it -- just because they can -- should be ashamed of themselves?

Welcome to the wonderful world of peer-to-peer file sharing.

And welcome to one of the biggest generation gaps in society today.

I am old-school, I admit it. I bought vinyl for 15 years before I laid hands on my first CD and didn’t bother learning how to burn my own mixes until just last year. The technology is undeniably cool.

But the technology is killing the art form I love the most: popular music.

I’ve heard all the arguments – we’ve had most of them already on The Daily Vault’s e-mail discussion list, where the line of demarcation is pretty clear.

If you’re under 25, you most likely think of file sharing as part of the landscape, as institutionalized and expected as the post office delivering snail mail. To many of you, music has always been free and always should be.

If you’re over 25, you most likely fall into one of two categories: the queasy advantage-takers or the moralistic iconoclasts.

Queasy advantage-takers sense on an instinctual level that there is something bad about file sharing -- but it’s so damn easy and everybody’s doing it and you get all this free stuff! Woo-hoo!

Moralistic iconoclasts sit around and lecture people and are typically ignored because, let’s face it, nobody likes to get lectured.

I don’t want to lecture. I just want to make three quick points:

File sharing is not free. File sharing deprives artists of income. The cost of file sharing is less artists making less music. It’s that simple.

File sharing is stealing. It’s only “giving it away” if the owner is doing the giving. If your neighbor gives you his old hammer, that’s giving. If some guy walking down your street hands you an old hammer that turns out to be your neighbor’s, that’s receiving stolen property.

Stealing is wrong. It’s a sign of how disorienting new technology is that this one is even necessary. But it seems that it is. Stealing is not a victimless crime. It harms other human beings. Don’t do it.

Ah, but there’s one further rationalization people use to justify stealing music: file sharing is a great way to stick it to The Man.

This might be true if file sharing only harmed big corporate music labels. But it doesn’t. File sharing harms real people, actual individual artists. If you think that by downloading music for free you’re sticking it to The Man, you are sadly mistaken. Because about 95% of the time, either you’re sticking it to the independent musicians who The Man hasn’t even noticed yet, or you’re sticking it to the aging musicians who already got screwed by The Man twenty-five years ago.

You’re sticking it to the good guys, and you’re deluding yourself if you believe otherwise.

If you still believe that I just don’t get it, and that file sharing doesn’t do real artists real harm, then maybe, just maybe, I can convince you not to take my word for it, and instead to read the July 13 entry on my friend Mark Doyon’s blog.

Mark is a true d-i-y artist, the real-life self-employed singer-songwriter-label manager-distributor-promoter-marketing communications dude in charge of Wampus Multimedia (not to mention his band Arms Of Kismet). He is incredibly talented and incredibly hard-working. And if we continue on the path we’re currently on with virtually unlimited file sharing, we’re going to drive him and the independent musicians whose work he promotes out of business. We are going to rob them of their livelihood, and take away their ability to do what they do the best and love the most.

Do you really want that on your conscience?

What were they defending again?

It’s time for the first edition of our occasional feature Spot The Irony:

Country Stars Morgan and Kershaw Split
Associated Press

NASHVILLE (Oct. 27) - Lorrie Morgan has filed for divorce from fellow country singer Sammy Kershaw, court records show.

Morgan cites irreconcilable differences in the Tuesday filings and asks the court to enforce a prenuptial agreement. The two have been married for six years and they separated two months ago.

Kershaw recently ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor of Louisiana.
Morgan has a home in Gallatin, about 25 miles northeast of Nashville, and filed for divorce in Sumner County Chancery Court there.

Kershaw is Morgan's fifth husband while Morgan is Kershaw's fourth wife.

The thing is, you see, Kershaw ran for Lt. Governor as a conservative, “pro-family” Republican, which makes the kicker in this article kick that much harder. I mean, what would the world come to if we didn’t have conservative Republican politicians like Sammy Kershaw out there quote-unquote defending traditional marriage?

And defending it… and defending it… and defending it…

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Socialized firefighting

As a student of irony, and a student of hypocrisy, and occasionally even a student of California politics, I found this column by former Chicago Tribune reporter and multiple Pulitzer nominee Michael Millenson amusing. Here are just the first two paragraphs:

“As wildfires sweep Southern California, I have been surprised that homeowners in some of the most affluent and staunchly Republican enclaves in the state have not protested the widespread deployment of government workers bearing fire hoses and driving ambulances. The pain of watching one’s life possessions burn to a crisp must almost be matched by the pain of watching tax dollars wasted on a task that private, for-profit firefighters could surely perform more cheaply and more effectively. Yet not even the richest of the fire-torn refugees has expressed regret over government intervention in their rescue.

It’s important to remember that wildfires in California are a foreseeable event, just like hurricanes in the Southeast, blizzards in the Upper Midwest or – to switch from the cosmic to the quotidian – illness or accidents befalling individuals. In bumper sticker terms, stuff happens. If one believes in the marketplace, then it should be up to individuals knowingly facing risk, not the government, to either take prudent steps to protect themselves or face the consequences.”
While the analogy isn’t perfect, it’s certainly valid to point out the disconnect between conservative homeowners lavishing well-deserved praise on their taxpayer-funded fire-fighting services and the same folks resorting to name-calling when government strays into other, arguably at-least-as-fundamental-to-the-welfare-of-citizens services such as health care. “Socialized firefighting,” indeed.

Thanks also to Dan Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee for the tip on Millenson’s column. I don’t agree with Dan every time, but I have a lot of respect for his status as one of the last living moderates in California politics. His writings should probably be covered under the Endangered Species Act.

Barry Bonds: The End

Anybody who’s asked me what I think of Barry Bonds in the last five years knows I have stood by the man for a long time. I witnessed home runs # 500 as well as # 71, 72 and 73 during that amazing 2001 season (the story of how I got those tickets is a post in itself, for another time). I still believe it’s absurd to make one player the poster boy for an unfortunate trend that affected the entire sports world, including hundreds of players he competed against. And I will always be grateful for the thrills he provided me as a fan of the San Francisco Giants.

But after reading the following quote in my morning paper recently, referencing the oft-filmed inlet of water that lies out beyond the right field wall at the Giant’s home park (a.k.a. The Big Phone), I am done defending the man:

“They call it McCovey Cove, but I’ve re-written it a little bit.”

If Bonds wants to disrespect holier-than-thou sportswriters, I don’t have a particular problem with it. There’s been enough unwarranted arrogance and venom in that decades-long tiff to go around.

If Bonds wants to disrespect the Giants’ ownership, there are a lot of Giants fans who will join him in doing that, even ones who think Magowan & co. made the right call by not bringing him back for another year.

But you do not disrespect your elders, and you especially do not disrespect Willie McCovey. Willie McCovey is ten times the man Barry Bonds will ever be, and after this latest outburst of swollen-head syndrome, I sincerely hope the City of San Francisco never names so much as a manhole cover after Barry Bonds.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Once upon a time...

...there was a kid from Northern California who grew up, got married, wrote a lot, had kids, wrote some more, worked in politics, wrote still more, published a dozen or so op-ed pieces, wrote an unpublished novel, quit politics, wrote music reviews and feature articles, took over the newspaper he'd been writing for, ran it to the end of the trail, went to work for a non-profit, wrote another unpublished novel and a hundred or so more music reviews, took over the music review Web site he'd been writing for, got promoted at the non-profit, wrote still more music reviews, left the non-profit after nine years to try working at a for-profit and tried really really hard to like it, wrote another novel, got laid off by the for-profit and was less than heartbroken, and finally said to himself:

"I need a blog."

Or something like that.

At the moment I'm occupying my "between jobs" days with a couple of different freelancing ventures, while staying open to the possibility of finding a communications director-type position in the non-profit world. Me and the corporate for-profit world, we were not what you'd call sympatico. It's not that I have a problem with capitalism, it's just that I don't seem to be very good at it, since the nagging little voice in my head keeps insisting that my work should have a purpose beyond further enriching major shareholders.

In the meantime, my ongoing music-writing gig with The Daily Vault is ridiculously fun, but for all its inherent joys, it remains limiting. I knew all along that at some point I would write about other things -- politics, baseball, parenting, and generally navigating the dizzying, ever-accelerating evolution of our modern world -- again; I just didn't know when or how or for what audience. My first insight into how I might approach it arose out of a conversation I had with my oldest son. "I used to write these kinds of essays a lot," I said, after he'd read and enjoyed one of my early-90s op-ed pieces, "but they don't really fit in anywhere but the op-ed pages, and I don't want to have to tie everything I write about into whatever the op-ed editor has on his mind that week." Thick as I can be at times, the obvious answer did eventually surface.

So here we are. I don't have the slightest idea where this is leading, but that's half the fun. The tank is full, and the open road awaits.