So usually when I write a Zoomtard everyone is like, “Oh Kevin you are so smart and so wise and your rapidly greying hair makes you so attractive.” Or, “Kevin, you are the closest a theologian has ever come to reminding me of Shakira”. Last time me and the Pope had coffee he insisted I take mine with a shot of Smirnoff Ice (he claimed that was a Bavarian tradition) and he told me that Zoomtard posts are “Einfach Klasse!”
So I was surprised when no one liked my most excellent MP3s-as-underwear analogy a while back. But I thought a little bit about it.
And I still think the Pope is right. I rock.
My basic contention is that music is a vocation. It is not an industry in the sense that we have seen it for the last fifty years. Many livelihoods can be supported by vocational activities. But not many episodes of Cribs.
If we are going to live in western democracies then we have to accept the most basic ground rule that the market is king. Technology has outstripped the market in a way that cannot be legislated or regulated back into place. So either the market for music licences purchased by the consumer has to change (shrink) or insist on staying as it is and die.
I have access to every great painting created in the last 800 years. It’s here at the tap of my keyboard. I can embed Da Vinci into my powerpoint presentations and I can stick a perfectly copied Mark Wallinger sculpture on the front of a mix cd for a friend I make of legitimately purchased albums (which is illegal).
Has art stopped? Simply because I can access the finest Irish contemporary landscapes in seconds and take them all home for free to print at my desk doesn’t mean that artists have stopped painting.
It does mean that when your daughter says she wants to become an artist, you know she will probably always be a bit poor.
But that was always the likelihood with art.
And with music.
People still have a hunger for painting and sculpture in an age when we can digitally mimic the great masters in our home. And I predict that in decades to come, when all your music is not produced by the same five companies, your kids and grandkids will have as diverse and explorational a musical palette as you have. But they probably will mostly be musicians living and working in your city, gigging in your coffeeshops and venues and maybe even working fulltime for the government.
By the way, apropos of nothing at all, here’s a link to Mumblin’ Deaf Ro, my favourite Irish songwriter. He works for the government. He takes many years to make an album. His two albums are masterpieces. And we sent him an email one day and asked him to come play at our wedding and he came. He only lived on the other side of the city.
You probably still don’t agree with me. So at least go read the moderate side of my position over at Marginal Revolution.
Your Correspondent, Has a special harddrive to back up the Zig And Zag albums
Zoomtard: 
Yo
the images you bring up are very different from an actual da Vinci painting. The size in scale and the pixels that make up the monitor are very different to the oil paint.You can’t replicate that yet.
Its much easier to copy music and er…nick it
I am listening to Wilco on Spotify. Mathematically it is a massively deficient expression of the reality of a digitally mastered recording of “Leave me like you found me”.
So how is that different from a high quality digital representation of a Roy Liechtenstein print?
The market cannot define morality. That is part of the dogma of the free market! How can they resort to ethical language when it comes to mp3s but live constantly in the world of “free choice” when we’re discussing selling pornography to children over mobile phones (that actually happens you know- MENTAL!)
I think its more up to the artist to define morality.
If Roy L was alive with web 2.0 and asked that we wouldn’t make digital copies of his prints what would be the right thing to do?
Zoom i think you off here but im warmning to it …only a bit .
on a tangent to this i gather you are saying that you freely download music? yeah? assuming you do how do you deal with the weaker brother stronger brother thing when it comes to things like this in blogging. Is there a case for not putting this discussion out there for all to see?
as for Wilco,it all boils down to what they want done with their work -they may be OK with digital copies of their work being made or they may want a record company to sell their work.
It puts the ball in our court though. And if we don’t like tennis…
..or even the rules of tennis maybe we just need to find a different ball game?
what about this guy who won the complete rights to a Sufjan song and invites people to his flat to listen to it one at a time in his flat with headphones?
I like it:-)
The artist definitely can’t define morality Conor. Richie, I actually use Spotify for music now. I love it!
This discussion is really more about a way to crack open the Christian reponse to the market place and its inherent presumption that it gets to define what is right or wrong (it is no improvement to make the creators the moral guardians, in place of the sellers)
I do not believe that the weaker brother teaching relates to me using Zoomtard to sketch some theological ideas 🙂
Wilco are only known to you and me because they did agree to the production and distribution of digital copies of their work on CD. For which I hope they were handsomely paid. But the moment they sold the rights they lost all rights to decide how those copies would be used (within the logic of the marketplace). As such, Conor, your tennis analogy falls short.
The ball game we play is the 5 multinational corporation game. Christians assume that we are bound to obey the rules they set. I actually remain unconvinced that this is the case with respect to certain intellectual property laws….
maybe food is the same.
when a farmer sells his veg to Tesco he looses his rights to how his veg will be sold or used.
The people who profit most from it are Tesco and associates and they can decide how they distribute the veg.
But just because we all have a right to food I still can’t walk into Tesco and take a cucumber without paying for it just because food is something we have a right to.
If I could walk into Tesco with some type of cucumber replicating device and make copies from a Tesco cucumber by taking a picture that might be something different….
In the real world though if we don’t want to be controlled by the corps we need to go to the farmer direct or else bite the bullet with the idea that Tesco will make profits from us.
And maybe the same with musicians.
EXACTLY! I am not in any way advocating that everyone should download mp3s, but I am asking us to question the received logic of morality at work behind the information piracy discussion. And I think you’ve made my point better than I could. We need to go direct to the producer. Less people will get mega rich, but we are fooling ourselves if we think people will stop growing food.
How much more so when the “commodity” is not properly a commodity but music?!
sketchpad metchpad…Zoomtard is a soapbox 🙂
Only cos people read it now! It wasn’t a feckin’ soapbox back in November 2003 when it was just me myself and my desperately inarticulate gropings that no one appreciated.
Now everyone appreciates my groping.
was thinking about the feeding of the 5000. Jesus did cucumber replication in a way.
Is that not one of the dangers with technology?
We fool ourselves into thinking we’re miracle workers.
Also we’re so lost in awe at technology that we lose God wonder
I do declare a red herring has been sighted! 😉
🙂