From: Peter Gannushkin <shkin@shkin.com>
AM> Burning unauthorized audio IS stealing.
I think burning a CD technically is NOT stealing at all. Stealing is taking somebody's else property away, so this person doesn't have it anymore.
Well, it is stealing. It's stealing the artist's royalty that otherwise would have been paid if the burned-copy-recipient had bought a legit copy instead. However, I still burn unauthorized copies, because as I think has been established, getting the music out to people who wouldn't hear it otherwise ultimately constitutes a GREATER GOOD that trumps the small royalty theft. I go all the way back to 1982 and getting a couple of homemade compilation cassettes of punk gems ("Lose Your Job" and "Lose Your Friends," in a punk trilogy that will probably never be completed [in true punk fashion] by "Lose Your Self-Respect") that led me to buy gobs of legit releases by the Huskers, Minutemen, Clash, Buzzcocks, Pistols, Meat Puppets, etc etc. Still, I try not to kid myself -- the greater good started then and starts now with a small theft. V/A compilations definitely have more good karma than burning whole albums for friends; burning OP albums has more good karma than burning in-print albums; burning albums from major labels is better karma than whole albums from indie labels, which I don't like to do anymore if they're in print. The same friend who made those tapes 20 years back gleefully downloads everything he can via various peer-to-peer methods, because his contention is that the music industry as it currently exists is evil, with labels stealing from artists, and the sooner we crush the existing recording industry and cut the corporations out of the loop, the sooner the artists can deal directly with their public. In this vision of the future, studio recordings would exist only as free tastes to be freely disseminated, which would encourage the artists and their audiences to get up offa their couch and conduct the REAL business of music -- live performance, with as much of the gate going to the artist as possible. It's not a fully-formed theory, and even if it were I'm not sure I would agree with all of it (I have a hard time with artists doing studio work entirely "on spec," as it were), but it brings up some interesting and legit points, so I thought I'd toss it out here. William Crump