Re: GG and Napster and MP3

Is it ethical? If the artist or copyright holder feels legitimately ripped off, then it may be unethical. The question is not yet frameable as a clear-cut ethical problem because there are still so many areas which elude confinement. A significant issue is one that Mary Jo mentioned in relation to her own use of Napster: many people who download songs are motivated to purchase them. What artists like Metallica (you may or may not wish to call them artists) don't seem to comprehend is that services such as Napster may actually INCREASE their CD sales. Bands like Metallica are fighting a losing battle, and in their outmoded mindset and simplistic opposition they seem intractable in the naive assumption that technology will not overturn the entire music industry as we know it. Whether they like it or not. Given the fact that they are strolling in front of an oncoming avalanche, they might as well accept it and roll with it. The very real possibility is that everyone will be better off if we find a way to take advantage of the technology without damaging artistic rights and corporate interests. Ultimately, it's up to the artists themselves to be pro-active and to redefine what empowerment and artistic control really mean today, and what these concepts may mean tomorrow. I believe that Gould already realized in the 1970s that the social, cultural and historical role of The Artist was changing irrevocably.

To oversimplify the ethics: provided that the artists and record company and other parties receive their "fair share" of the proceeds and the consumer/music lover also gets a fair deal, I see no reason why Napster-like entities can't be legitimized. The dilemma, of course, is defining "fair share" but this has long been a problem between artists, record companies, and consumers. Courtney Love and others have blasted their record companies for their overt greed and championed the concept of Napster. Others, like Ani De Franco, have decided to go the independent route. What is evident is that Napster, or any clones which will inevitably rise to take Napster's place in the unlikely event that it should it be shut down, cannot be stopped any more than the technology that drives these changes can be held back from its relentless onward momentum. The technology is light-years ahead of global capitalism's glacier-like response time, and this only serves to dilute the ways in which technology can benefit us.

Given his devotion to technology and to the studio, and in the context of the prescient ideas informing his famous essay "The Prospects of Recording" (1966!) and several others, without doubt I think he would have possessed the foresight to accept it and bend it to his will. Shortly before his death, when his Columbia recording contract was up for renewal, he contemplated setting up his own record company, but perhaps sensing that he was a bit ahead of his time, he signed the contract. I think this tells us that he would have been an early adapter of MP3 and had he lived to experience the turn of the millennium, he likely would be ensconced in a high-tech retreat on Manitoulin Island, doing his bit to ensure the demise of the concert hall (he predicted live performances would be extinct by the year 2000) and would very likely have been dispensing music kits from his own website on his personal label.