Monday 30 April 2012

Interesting news today, with the High Court ruling that ISPs must block The Pirate Bay site, and the inevitable kneejerk shock reaction about the goverment taking even more interest in our internet use. I am deeply suspicious of the government deciding what I can and can’t access, but I don’t buy into the ‘everything should be free – Gawd bless the liberating pirates’ nonsense either.  The justification for using torrent sites generally given by supposedly well-mannered law-abiding citizens is some variation on ‘film and music companies make it so hard and expensive to access content legally’, and with scary anti-pirate videos, and tedious unskippable irritations on DVDs, you can see their point.

But this only really applies to visual media. Does anyone have a huge problem finding legal music online? Even on iTunes, where Apple take their hefty percentage, it’s cheaper than the physical CD, and real obscurities that aren’t currently on release crop up for download on specialist sites like Ubuweb.  I don’t like the way that Apple have squeezed a huge profit margin out of music sales, and I don’t particularly like the way that musicians are stupid enough in return to advertise them with their illuminated MacBook Apple logos on stage (‘you’ve just taken my earning potential but hey, you’re cool and from California so I’ll light up your logo everywhere I go’).  But buying music is cheaper than it’s been for years, and easier, so why nick it?  Even musicians who live on the tour bus still have to make recordings and sell them, to show the wider world what they’re up to.  Recorded music is not going away, and to make it properly costs money.  Pay for it please.