The problem with illegal downloading is that there are too many young adults who want to use it as a surrogate parent to get what they want without paying for it. Yes, I’m on my soapbox again. I am an advocate of every indie artist out there trying to grow their musical passion into a legitimate business for which they are entitled to get paid and they’re getting ripped off by the very peers who claim to love their music but who are enjoying it without paying for it. When I hear about a Boston attorney defending a grad student’s Kazaa file-sharing on the basis that he was “a kid who did what kids do” (Investor’s Business Daily, 7/29/’09), I say ‘bullshit.’ Like the young ‘adult’ I encountered who ripped off U2 music with the lame excuse that U2 has enough money, Joel Tenebaum ripped off Green Day and Aerosmith with the same flippant Internet shoplifting attitude. And, when you steal from indie artists who don’t have near the money of their major counterparts and are trying to make back and possibly even profit from their music I am lit with the arrogance of not just the people doing the ripping off but of Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson for condoning it. So that the subset of self-designated “entitleds” get it, let’s pool their paychecks into a fund for songwriters, performers, backup singers, sound engineers, producers and others involved in the creation of music and see how ‘cool’ the reverse experience feels. Start paying for the music that artists are busting their asses and their wallets to create. And, please, leave your arrogance about everything you know about music at home. I don’t respect your boasting about an artist’s music when you’re picking their pockets at the same time to get it.
I was talking with an indie film producer who spoke to me about the number of illegally-downloaded versions of his latest production that had occurred and how he could no longer fund his own films if people kept stealing his royalties. I was reminded of a guy who paid $250 for his iTV and then bragged about not having paid for the films he had stored on it. You get the point, pathetic as it is.
Tags: Add new tag, aerosmith, Charles Nesson, entitlement generation, green day, illegal file-sharing, U2