Welcome to 'Transmitting to Earth'. I'm Charssun and I'll be your host. This blog and podcast is a byproduct of VoyagerRadio.com and is intended to provide the most timely information about this Internet radio station. It is also intended to be a fun and accessible electronic journal with commentary focusing on Internet radio, podcasting and webcasting issues and technologies, music, and some of my other interests. I also offer personal perspective about being an Internet radio broadcaster (and podcaster).
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Making Music Piracy Even More FunMy opinion about MP3 sharing/stealing has fluctuated over the years, but my current belief tends toward the view that mass distribution of MP3s via peer-to-peer apps is harmful to some people's incomes--and though I'm excited about the current cultural shift taking place and am enjoying the transformation of the way music and other media is being distributed, and am especially excited at seeing more independent artists and labels surface, I'll be refraining from extending my music collection beyond what I consider reasonable limits. In other words, I don't think it's harmful to share MP3s with or make mixCDs for friends or family members who are unlikely to buy the music or distribute it with others--such as my parents, who don't even have access to the Internet--but you won't find me running a 24-hour Hotline server, unless I'm sharing MP3s that artists have asked me to distribute to the rest of the world. (You also won't find me distributing porn, because I'd feel bad for cutting into the actors' paychecks. They don't make that much money, you know.)
That said, I find it amusing that a company called Music Games International is developing a computer game designed to teach young students not to bootleg music. The game is called "The Music Pirates Game", and it's being created to keep youngsters from growing up into full-blown RIAA-targeted lawsuit magnets--pirates, that is. The game's developers say the game is "a great benefit to the RIAA"; as to why they seem to want to appease the RIAA, I don't know, and perhaps it should be investigated--not that there's anything wrong with their intentions, but it seems so Metallica to want to assist the RIAA in their efforts at self-preservation, and at least with Metallica the intention was clear since the band's own livelihood depended, in part, on their record sales. Perhaps this game developer is purely altruistic, wanting to teach the kids how to stay out of trouble while simultaneously preserving a dying industry. Then again, maybe they're nothing more than a business trying to market a product they wish to sell. Whatever their reasons, the game could quite possibly cause quite a stir in the waters of our moral consciousness, but maybe not in the way its developers intend. For it's one thing to possess moral boundaries, it's quite another altogether to attempt teaching young minds the difference between burning CDs for fun and burning CDs unlawfully. I remember wrestling with a similiar issue when I was an adolescent: Is it okay to record radio broadcasts using my ghetto blaster's cassette deck? And was it okay to make mixtapes for friends and girlfriends? Back then, I could care less who I distributed the music to--I wasn't thinking in terms of mass distribution, I was simply making a thematic tape for a friend. I knew stealing a cassette from the local Wherehouse was wrong, but I didn't consider sharing a few songs with friends to be the foundation for a lawsuit. Still, I wondered, just a bit, but not enough to make me quit making mixtapes--they were too fun to make. I felt my creative side being exercised with the challenges I'm sure sound designers face all the time: What sounds/songs should I use an an intro? What should follow? Should I insert a random soundbyte here? At this point in the mixtape, how do I imagine the listener is responding? I would take all these considerations into mind as I manufactured my mixtapes, and the end result seemed to be a unique combination of sounds whose origins may have not all originated in my bedroom studio, but whose final signature was ultimately my own. Ultimately, the decision to share/steal/distribute/exercise our God-given right to works of art/perform the criminal act of violating the copyright laws of Congress/slay the RIAA rests in the individual's moral compass. A computer game trying to teach youngsters may actually have some influence, but probably not much--unless it's a really fun game. If the game is mind-blowing fun--which would certainly be a challenge, since this whole RIAA versus the world deal is getting tired--then maybe a few kids would hesitate before clicking their mouse button on the Kazaa download. More likely, the game will be copied, modified by creative gamers to portray a less attractive portrait of the RIAA, and distributed via P2P to most of the world. In which case, the game will be seen as one more painful blow to the RIAA.
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