All very interesting stuff, but will the issue
of piracy ever be resolved? We are allowed to sing someone else’s
song for free. So, is it OK to download them for free? What about
swapping them over the net? What about burning them to CD?
A 2003 survey of music artists, managers and industy professionals,
many of whom have been kicking up a stink about illegal downloads,
revealed that of the 45 per cent who download music, 50 per cent
never pay for it. Sneaky!
A US survey estimated that 26 million Americans are music file
swappers. That works out to about 1 in 10. Around 80% of young people
surveyed (aged 18-29) said they didn’t care about the copyright
concerns. Those aged 30 to 64 were most likely to express concern,
but not by much more.
Many of those younger people surveyed would not even remember a
time before CDs and MP3s. Back in those days, music piracy looked
less like a bunch of files on an iPod and a little more like a large
collection of dodgy cassette tapes with handwritten covers.
Before that, people just used to imitate the stuff they liked and
play it live. Back in the 60s if one band became popular, another
one would pop up with similar haircuts, similar songs, even a similar
name: The Crickets, The Beatles, The Monkees, The Animals…
So what is the theme here? Whether it is music on the net, music
on a cassette tape, poetry from a book or another ship’s cargo,
it can be so easy to live like a kind of pirate, taking whatever
we want and convincing ourselves it is OK to do it. (How many pens
do you have in your bag? How many of them did you buy?)
Piracy is about more than music, it is about that attempt to experience
something which is probably a little too far out of reach. Like
someone else’s stuff.
We come into this world with two instincts: grasping and sucking.
It is perfectly natural for us to want to grab and take, but when
everybody is grasping somehow everybody misses out.
Something lovely happens when we live not just for ourselves, but
for others. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to know that,
on the ocean of life, your boat and crew are safe.
|
