Similarly, I don't get paid to play music (which is a privilege). I get paid to travel, do interviews, suffer personal abuse & harrasment & flattery, & engage in all the details which enable me to walk on stage. I've noticed that equipment managers, engineers, etc., anticipate being paid for helping to disseminate this "free" music, and that children of professional musicians expect as a right to be fed, clothed & housed. But music is free, to the extent that anyone is able to engage with it, on its own terms.
10.05 A murble of telephony later...
David Singleton tells me that MP3 have cracked Microsoft's Digital Rights Management in Media 4.0 & are trumpeting the news. Please note from yesterday's Diary: "Nothing on public release is `secure' where there is sufficient determination to make it otherwise, and CDs have been making digital audio masters available for 15 years" and "Almost any audio / visual recording or broadcast, even movie, released into the public domain is vulnerable to bootlegging. Established and dedicated pirating on an industrial scale, as in South America, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, will probably continue until sufficient political will and global agreement make this unacceptable. But piracy has not prevented the commercial release of CDs, videos and computer games in unprotected (and probably unprotectable) formats".
A quote from Rodney Collins' "Theory Of Celestial Influence"(which I read at the beginning of 1974 during the recording of "Starless And Bible Black") has remained with me since: "Theft is never innocent". Cf Paul Levinson's view from this morning's reading, that propriety (territorial) interests are "fundamental throughout all forms of life"; Proudhon's "Property is theft"; dysfunctional communal ownership - "What's yours is mine and what's mine is mine too"; the Exercise of Conscious Theft - when we die, all we can take is what we have made of and for ourselves, and what we've "borrowed" is left behind; and the Guitar Craft view: "We only have what we give away".
If we are considering the ethics of bootlegging (or any other action), we look at the aim & intention within the act. Is the acquisition of bootlegged material my "right"? If so, what is my obligation? Anything we acquire, however we acquire it, carries with it a charge which will be met, sooner or later. My prayer is that I pay my debts sooner. When I fly away, I really don't want a pile of unpaid bills to weigh me down.
And from here, we segue into redemption. But that's another story (or was it a presentation at P3 in Tokyo?). And to even mention the word is presumption enough.
18.07 Ade & I had a hands-on day.
"Even genius requires a competent technique."
