Banned from Napster
10 May, 2000
Hello Rapstation:
I was banned from napster this morning by Metallica and
yet the only Metallica song I had on my drive ever was a
two-minute bootleg of one of their rehearsals and they are
playing an oasis song as a joke.
But, much more important than that song or the hundreds
of others were my songs that resided in my public folder. I
am a writer and poet who has been using digital technology to
record my own songs and compress them into mp3 files to
distribute. I also find old spoken word recordings and match
them with 78rpm beats. For example, I chopped together
Kerouac, Lenny Bruce, and Bukowski with a piano sample from
Patti Smith's song Birdland and called it kerouac vs lenny
bruce. Kerouac gets searched a lot on napster so my track
was downloaded many times. I was spreading my music across
the globe. Also, since the name I use for these recordings
is big80blues.com my URL is carried along with my tracks.
So my art lives because it is experienced by anyone, I
am not reliant on agents or record companies. I was free to
distribute to a huge and avid community of 9 million. My
reward for giving away my music was that it lives with
strangers. I even get fan mail from people who enjoy my
site enough to tell me why. I keep track of when and who
download my content. Several a day and just this morning I
noticed someone downloaded all my original tracks of my own
lyrics and poems. But, when I logged back on I discovered
Metallica had banished me for having their copyrighted songs
on my drive which I did not.
I grew out of Metallica in high school. They just robbed
me of the modern version of the duped tape network of the
early eighties. That was how Metallica was first known,
through their demo traded by metalheads all over the world.
They have reached superstar status and want to close the door
behind them. This is not about infringement it is about a new
way to communicate and share. They should not destroy
something so positive because it is temporarily painful for
them due to possible loss of revenue. Not all of us have work
that has stagnated since the late 80's. Not all of us live
off a musical soul that died on a North European highway.
Some us live in this time and must use computers to
communicate. Not all of have lawyers to manipulate us into
hating a technology not even understood. The members of
Metallica have repeatedly stated their ignorance of computers
or on-line community and yet they are smashing the most
thriving example of it. They are cutting off my ability to
promote my original songs and remixes. The 9 million plus
users of napster are not a threat but a message.
It feels like Metallica have crushed my ability to send
my music all over the world.
New business models must be found. These nine million
users are a warning that you must change to survive.
Litigation will only hurt users like me. Non-users like
Metallica are not losing actual revenue due to theft of
property. They state in interviews they are offended that
they are being stolen from, daring people to have the guts
to steal from Tower Records if they want to steal their
songs. A piece of plastic in a showroom is supported by the
trucks that get there, the road that guided the truck to
the store, the clerk underpaid from the profit of the
plastic discs sale, the factories that made the plastic
discs. All these people lose revenue. You would be stealing
a plastic object as merchandise. Downloading from napster is
access to the information of the song. Your copy is not in
the real space of stereos and coffeetables. No product is
stolen, it is explored, collected, and traded. This is a
digital pool of music lovers who cannot afford to pay 18
dollars for a CD. The modern record industry broke the system
with greed. Artists have to be superstars to survive and
their superstar millions buy much more protection than anyone
like me. Well a world of distribution is being created where
the artist can communicate his own art instantly and without
ever reaching TOWERfuckingRECORDS. All others will follow or
be relics.
Metallica's move has destined them to be relics
For breaking my connection to the napster community I
hate Metallica. When I was in seventh grade I was given a
duped tape copy of Kill Em All and as I blasted it on my
boombox and flailed about the room I would never have
believed such a sound could lead to greedy actions of the
status quo. I do know these self-serving bastards have all
their good music behind them and they will sink out of
fashion as rich sods.
angry,
unagriot
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