by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

If the above isn't too screamingly obvious, I've been out on the Cybermain doing my bit to smite the suits of the music industry. For what it is worth, I have been depositing a quarter in a jar each time I hit the copyright bastards. Should there ever be a way to get this money to the artists (and bypass the suits entirely) I will be among the first in line to do so. I will run down to the Post Office and purchase a money order which will then be posted out to the Pay Pal account that I keep meaning to set up. And that is what will pay the artists. Now, about 80% of what I have on my hard drive is stuff that I already own in either analog vinyl or on CDs, so I will, in essence, be paying twice for music, but I'm not adverse to contributing to the people who enrich my life with aural art. I am adverse to paying so much as a dime to the parasites who live off the creative effort of others. We find musical excellence and diversity out there in spite of the corporate hacks, not because of them.

One of my problems with the free import and export of music is that, even when you are not paying the record industry a dime, it still ain't free. The time and effort it takes to find the tracks you want, and then download them and organize them in your player's library is not inconsequential. I would need another couple hours a week or so to build playlists and get them set up to play. And then there is the effort needed to move the files from your computer to your mobile player of choice. I know one person who has about 5000 tracks on his IPod. Now, I don't know how he has them organized, but I find trying to organize about 5% of that is, if not difficult, at least time consuming. There has to be a better way.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005