I did it for the childrenPolice in the U.K. and the Netherlands shut down the Cadillac of file-sharing services, OiNK, in coordinated raids yesterday. OiNK is a members-only torrent site notable for its wealth of yet-to-be-released material (60 such albums have been available through the service this year alone, according to "authorities") and its requirement that all files made available for trade have a bitrate of 192 kbs or higher (as opposed to iTunes standard 128 kbs AAC format). Hence, it's kind of like a country club peopled by cool kids (read: internet music nerds), fenced off from the watery cymbals and mislabeled tracks (have you heard Bob Dylan's "Stuck in the Middle With You" yet?) available to the maws-agape masses across the rest of the internet. Accordingly, OiNK users have reacted to news of the shutdown with Barbara Bush re: Katrina levels of out of touch-ness; the league leader thus far, as unearthed by Idolator: "Sorry if this has already been posted, but I'm following the San Diego fires right now, and this is just another devastation right on top of it."
Look: I used to download music back in the heady days of my youth, when Napster, and then Audiogalaxy and LimeWire were the industry standards for copyright violating. That I don't anymore is because a) I can't find a suitable client for Mac, b) I don't even have time to listen to all of the music I'm buying nowadays, let alone all the stuff I could possibly be downloading, and c) call me a wuss, but I don't want to have to end up settling with the RIAA for $20,000 or some ridiculous sum if I lose the lawsuit lotto. So believe me when I say that the whole morality angle in the illegal downloading debate doesn't really bother me that much.
What does bother me is the oblivious self-righteousness that people display when this issue arises, as if it's their divine right to download whatever they want without paying a single red cent to any of the people involved in writing, recording, manufacturing, promoting, or distributing the song. I understand that the music industry sucks, that it's ridiculous to pay $18.98 (who the fuck buys CDs for the MSRP, I'll never know) for a piece of plastic with 14 songs on it and only 2 or 3 of them any good whatsoever. Furthermore, I'll agree that the industry has not acquitted itself particularly well in handling this problem, launching a legal intimidation campaign against its target market and screwing over actual paying customers by surreptitiously inserting malicious spyware files on CDs. They're dicks, and if you want to steal from dicks, that's fine; maybe they deserve it. But getting indignant when those same dicks take action to prevent you from stealing their shit is kind of ridiculous.
This whole "Waaah! Waaah! I have a blog! I hype these bands! I'm an integral part of your ecosystem! How could you do this to me?" shtick is both deluded and unseemly. I don't disagree that file-sharing has helped to raise the profiles of certain acts - it's no mistake that the current indie boom started to pick up steam right around the time the Napster generation went off to college. However, facts are facts: 2000, right before the illegal downloading wave broke, was the biggest year in the history of the music industry, with titles blowing past the platinum mark left and right, and number one records routinely moving 500,000+ units in a single week. A mere seven years later and the music biz is in complete free-fall, with number one records coming in with a mere 60,000 copies sold, a total that might have snuck an album into the top 40 back in the good old days. The most garish example I can cite: Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds, an album that launched six singles into the Billboard Top 40 (one shy of Michael Jackson's record seven for Thriller), has moved roughly 3 million copies in 57 weeks since its release; in 2000, N'Sync's No Strings Attached moved 2.4 million copies in one week.
Is the RIAA' s approach (and those of analogous international trade groups) self-defeating? Yeah, and the industry would probably be far better off expending its energy trying to figure out how to cope with what is now, as Ronald Reagan once said of the Iranian Revolution, "a fact of history." However, this idea that OiNK's estimated 180,000 users are somehow indispensable in moving copies of Curtis is also pretty fucking retarded. And make no mistake: it's records like Curtis, Thriller, and the Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2 that have buttered the industry's bread, not 100,000 copies of Feist's latest here, or 60,000 of Our Love to Admire there. Again, should the industry be acclimating itself to the new realities of the 21st century? Absolutely. But are they somehow out of line demanding that a fat, stationary target like OiNK be shut down? Not really.
Frankly, the whole illegal downloading epoch is nothing if not a fascinating study of the psychological makeup of America's youth. The RIAA (and MPAA) have both tried to liken downloading to the theft of material goods: you wouldn't shoplift of steal someone's television would ya? Most kids wouldn't do those things, not simply because they fear the legal repercussions, but because they grasp that stealing is immoral. When I steal a material object, not only am I obtaining it free of charge, but I'm also depriving you, the rightful owner, of its use - therein lies the harm. However, illegal downloading is manifestly different: if I download a song, I'm just making a copy of it - it doesn't affect your ability to have the song too. The harm done is far more abstract. Furthermore, society at large doesn't seem to feel that illegal downloading is all that big of a deal - there's no widespread opprobrium associated with the practice that might help reinforce its illicit nature. In fact, most people have a "blame the victim" mentality, seeing illegal downloading as some kind of karmic retribution visited upon a fat and complacent industry built upon victimizing both its customers and the talent alike.
Perhaps against this backdrop it shouldn't be surprising that many shut-out OiNKers have started rending their garments and gnashing their teeth at the site's demise. And, after all, I'm sure that a great many of them are being genuine when they say that they used the service to find obscure commercially unavailable material or music by newer, lesser known bands that would benefit greatly from a mention on their blog (shout out to my boys in...uh...THE ARCADE FIRE!!!! YEE33EAH!!!). However, I can't help but feel that most of the vitriol/bewilderment is due to an unfathomable (okay, somewhat fathomable) sense of entitlement that has led them to believe that what they're doing is not only not wrong (in either the amoral anarchic realm or civil disobedience senses), but that, by shutting down OiNK, the industry and the authorities are visiting an injury upon them.
Now, if you want a thoughtful read from someone mourning the passing of OiNk, I highly recommend DJ Rupture's blog post on the subject. As both an music fan/audiophile and a musician whose material was available on the service, Rupture brings that rarest of commodities to this discussion: a sense of perspective. So put a smile on kids, and before you get all huffity-puffity about navigating the new morality of the digital media age and how you're really helpful, like a remora or something, just remember: Robin Hood was a thief too, and people still like that guy.
Look: I used to download music back in the heady days of my youth, when Napster, and then Audiogalaxy and LimeWire were the industry standards for copyright violating. That I don't anymore is because a) I can't find a suitable client for Mac, b) I don't even have time to listen to all of the music I'm buying nowadays, let alone all the stuff I could possibly be downloading, and c) call me a wuss, but I don't want to have to end up settling with the RIAA for $20,000 or some ridiculous sum if I lose the lawsuit lotto. So believe me when I say that the whole morality angle in the illegal downloading debate doesn't really bother me that much.
What does bother me is the oblivious self-righteousness that people display when this issue arises, as if it's their divine right to download whatever they want without paying a single red cent to any of the people involved in writing, recording, manufacturing, promoting, or distributing the song. I understand that the music industry sucks, that it's ridiculous to pay $18.98 (who the fuck buys CDs for the MSRP, I'll never know) for a piece of plastic with 14 songs on it and only 2 or 3 of them any good whatsoever. Furthermore, I'll agree that the industry has not acquitted itself particularly well in handling this problem, launching a legal intimidation campaign against its target market and screwing over actual paying customers by surreptitiously inserting malicious spyware files on CDs. They're dicks, and if you want to steal from dicks, that's fine; maybe they deserve it. But getting indignant when those same dicks take action to prevent you from stealing their shit is kind of ridiculous.
This whole "Waaah! Waaah! I have a blog! I hype these bands! I'm an integral part of your ecosystem! How could you do this to me?" shtick is both deluded and unseemly. I don't disagree that file-sharing has helped to raise the profiles of certain acts - it's no mistake that the current indie boom started to pick up steam right around the time the Napster generation went off to college. However, facts are facts: 2000, right before the illegal downloading wave broke, was the biggest year in the history of the music industry, with titles blowing past the platinum mark left and right, and number one records routinely moving 500,000+ units in a single week. A mere seven years later and the music biz is in complete free-fall, with number one records coming in with a mere 60,000 copies sold, a total that might have snuck an album into the top 40 back in the good old days. The most garish example I can cite: Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds, an album that launched six singles into the Billboard Top 40 (one shy of Michael Jackson's record seven for Thriller), has moved roughly 3 million copies in 57 weeks since its release; in 2000, N'Sync's No Strings Attached moved 2.4 million copies in one week.
Is the RIAA' s approach (and those of analogous international trade groups) self-defeating? Yeah, and the industry would probably be far better off expending its energy trying to figure out how to cope with what is now, as Ronald Reagan once said of the Iranian Revolution, "a fact of history." However, this idea that OiNK's estimated 180,000 users are somehow indispensable in moving copies of Curtis is also pretty fucking retarded. And make no mistake: it's records like Curtis, Thriller, and the Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2 that have buttered the industry's bread, not 100,000 copies of Feist's latest here, or 60,000 of Our Love to Admire there. Again, should the industry be acclimating itself to the new realities of the 21st century? Absolutely. But are they somehow out of line demanding that a fat, stationary target like OiNK be shut down? Not really.
Frankly, the whole illegal downloading epoch is nothing if not a fascinating study of the psychological makeup of America's youth. The RIAA (and MPAA) have both tried to liken downloading to the theft of material goods: you wouldn't shoplift of steal someone's television would ya? Most kids wouldn't do those things, not simply because they fear the legal repercussions, but because they grasp that stealing is immoral. When I steal a material object, not only am I obtaining it free of charge, but I'm also depriving you, the rightful owner, of its use - therein lies the harm. However, illegal downloading is manifestly different: if I download a song, I'm just making a copy of it - it doesn't affect your ability to have the song too. The harm done is far more abstract. Furthermore, society at large doesn't seem to feel that illegal downloading is all that big of a deal - there's no widespread opprobrium associated with the practice that might help reinforce its illicit nature. In fact, most people have a "blame the victim" mentality, seeing illegal downloading as some kind of karmic retribution visited upon a fat and complacent industry built upon victimizing both its customers and the talent alike.
Perhaps against this backdrop it shouldn't be surprising that many shut-out OiNKers have started rending their garments and gnashing their teeth at the site's demise. And, after all, I'm sure that a great many of them are being genuine when they say that they used the service to find obscure commercially unavailable material or music by newer, lesser known bands that would benefit greatly from a mention on their blog (shout out to my boys in...uh...THE ARCADE FIRE!!!! YEE33EAH!!!). However, I can't help but feel that most of the vitriol/bewilderment is due to an unfathomable (okay, somewhat fathomable) sense of entitlement that has led them to believe that what they're doing is not only not wrong (in either the amoral anarchic realm or civil disobedience senses), but that, by shutting down OiNK, the industry and the authorities are visiting an injury upon them.
Now, if you want a thoughtful read from someone mourning the passing of OiNk, I highly recommend DJ Rupture's blog post on the subject. As both an music fan/audiophile and a musician whose material was available on the service, Rupture brings that rarest of commodities to this discussion: a sense of perspective. So put a smile on kids, and before you get all huffity-puffity about navigating the new morality of the digital media age and how you're really helpful, like a remora or something, just remember: Robin Hood was a thief too, and people still like that guy.
