During this past winter break, I was fortunate enough to receive a gift card to Borders. I decided that I would take a trip to the nearest one and browse for a while.
Wandering around, I found myself in the music section and found a CD that I considered purchasing.
Then I saw another. With a twenty-five dollar gift card and two eighteen-dollar CDs, I had a conundrum on my hands.
Fortunately, I quickly found a solution: I wrote down the names of the CDs so I wouldn't forget, and then went home and bought them on iTunes for about half the price.
Let's face it; CDs are kind of useless nowadays. They're expensive, they create a barrier between the artist and the audience, and they're inconvenient. I have to keep track of a small, fragile disc. I can't scratch it at all, or I run the risk of rendering it useless. I put it in a leather case and then wonder what the hell to do with the original plastic one—personally, I use them as coasters, which is also the fate reserved for the actual CD once it stops working.
Compare that to digital music. You can make backups, re-download tracks with certain services, and buy individual songs for a nearly negligible price. Have you ––ever wanted a single song, bought the CD, and hated ten out of the eleven tracks on it? Not anymore. That's because you can buy eleven songs you actually like at ninety-nine cents per song. In fact, you still wind up paying less than you would have for that CD in the first place.
And it's starting to look like CDs have even less use. According to Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, if you make a copy of a song for yourself then you just "stole a song" (www.washingtonpost.com). This applies to burned copies as well as digital ones. Any copy, according to Pariser, is a stolen one.
She spoke in reference to a recent case wherein the RIAA sued an Arizona resident, Jeffrey Howell, for putting digital music on a file sharing service. The issue at heart was not (italicized) that ripping CDs was equivalent to copying, but a misunderstanding brought the question to the surface, leading to Pariser's response.
Now, I would be happy to argue that her stance is complete nonsense—two words: "fair use"—if that was my actual point. But should this argument find success in court and establish a precedent, we will have yet another reason not to purchase CDs: you can't enjoy them in a meaningful, modern way without "stealing."
With digital media, this problem is far less significant. Admittedly, I can't burn mixed CDs without turning into a felon, but I am (italicized) able to have multiple copies of the same song. In fact, iTunes permits you to download a song to five different locations, and asks you upon purchase if you want to make a backup of the song. Unless they're conniving to put their customers in jail, then I'm pretty sure that means it's legal.
So now I have a choice. I can buy a fragile, inconvenient, expensive piece of media, a shiny fishhook that will dig its way into my wallet and permit the RIAA to angle money from me whenever it thinks I've been up to no good. Or I can purchase a replicable file and listen to it in multiple forms, and not worry that legally listening to a song I like will cost me eighteen dollars.
Yikes. Tough decision.
Robert Wright is a creative writing junior. Reach him at: robert.t.wright@asu.edu.
