Hey all,
Go ahead and give us some feedback in the new poll up on the right. I'm looking to take the temperature of the OGians on illegal media downloads. I have a feeling we will have a diversity of opinion not seen since we all weighed in on the Biden pick (good times, I remember them fondly).
I also ask because I recently stepped up my downloading (or 'renting, as some would have it), as I missed the first half of the new Battlestar season and have no interest in waiting for it to come out on DVD, amongst other things. My daughter got wind of this and was all over my gravy about it. What do you all think, should I amend my ways, get back on the straight and narrow, wait a year to pay $79 for some BSG action?
Poll results will published Monday, so vote today!
mostly i'm in the Spandau Ballet category... with exceptions.
ReplyDelete1) i read plenty of blogs - builtonaweakspot par example - whose entire M.O. is to share a track from an obscure band in the hopes you'll by their alb. i've bought plenty.
2) again, i stick mostly to "i'll only download it if it's out of print," but "out of print" has lately come to include things that are rare and expensive on ebay, say.
3) but then.... there are a few blogs from around the globe that post mid-period boz scaggs albums, say, that, were i to buy them, i'd be buying 'em for $.49 in a thrift store.
all in all, i spend more bread on records and cds and mp3s than a lot of people. and i take care that my spending dollars go to those that are making the obscure weirdness with the handmade art and the hopes of going on tour. neither ripping off Paul Simon nor Universal seems like a sin to me, but i just don't like their product, ya know?
on the wings of such un-self-critical platitudes, i go about my business.
can you give feedback on the poll? 'cos I notice it goes straight from guilt/shame to outright enthusiasm if you do download media. I know polling is all about assigning increments in the best way you can, but there's got to be some kind of ethical medium in there.
ReplyDeletepersonally, I think downloading allows massive cultural opportunities, while demanding of content producers to create new and attractive options for legitimate financial support.
It may not seem like it on the surface, but prior to publication, each poll is painstakingly crafted for at least four months by the technicians at OG Labs, located one-quarter mile beneath the small prairie town of Webster, South Dakota. Each word is agonized over by a crack squad of statisticians, methodologists, semioticians, philosophers, and assorted oddball social scientists. As such, the results of any OG poll should be received as the Word of God and the poll itself as the Vehicle for His Divine Revelation.
ReplyDeleteI hope this answers your question.
Gabba,
ReplyDeleteAn relation our polls bear to science is coincidence. (Pay no attention to Wobs. He lies.)
This poll is merely my attempt to provide myself cover when those undigested bits of beet and blots of mustard keep me wake at night. "All my friends do it," is all I need in most cases.
Always up for a "smash capitalism!" utopian discourse on the power of peer-to-peer "sharing," which can't help but to devolve into half-informed "postmodern" ramblings about how we can't know if content produced in an uncompensated environment would necessarily be "better" or "worse."
I lie?!? SEXIST!
ReplyDeleteMy failure lies in my inability to type, rather than in my inability to understand or remember Dickens.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty reluctant to steal content in general, but it really depends on availability and value.
ReplyDeleteTo take one example, I would gladly pay to watch current episodes of Weeds, but I'm not interested in subscribing to whatever premium movie channel it's on. If my cable company would make them available on pay per view, I'd probably buy them. But they don't, and so my choice is to download or wait.
I don't usually download, but when I do it's because content distributors don't value by business enough to make their product available to me. I say, that's on them.
I forgot to mention my very different attitude toward overpriced software. There's almost no piece of software I wouldn't pay $50 for rather than steal. By the same token, there is absolutely no piece of software that I wouldn't steal if the alternative were to pay upwards of $100.
ReplyDeletei'm kind of surprised by this string. are y'all persuaded by those "piracy is stealing" previews that they show at the cinema, too?
ReplyDeletei'm all for intellectual property rights, I suppose, but isn't the democratic potential of the interweb all about a culture of file-sharing, free-ware, freelove?
OurTunes not iTunes!
the aforementioned content of shared files has an, at best, contingent relationship to materiality when that materiality is constantly in a state of recalibration by the market. I have a fairly small monthly income, and like lex dexter, i buy a more than average amount of musical product. This subtle admission could be cross-referenced with OCD/fetishistic consumption.
ReplyDeleteIf i paid for all the music i listened to I would not be able to listen to much. If I have come across something online which is available and amazing, I will in turn buy it in the most decadently material format offered. when i do buy, it is usually used, direct from the artist/label, or at least a heady independent distro. Most new stuff I know to buy, was first encountered on a blog, also usually independent, and by that I most certainly do not ever mean Pitchfork. Anything worth it's salt will trickle down from there in ten minutes.
Those creative producers/slaves-to-a-label would have remained unknown and less purchased were they to be endlessly dragged along by the label/disperser into plastic where their intellectual cut will always be laughable.... music should be subsidized, not bought and sold. when you buy you reward the manufacturer far beyond the artist, regardless of any symbolism. go to shows and buy merch. then the cash goes straight to the band.
(insert dry heaving here)