My recent post comparing the RIAA to Richard Scarry’s “Pie Rats” occasioned some vigorous debate in the comments, along with a couple of interesting emails: Jeremy Schlosberg, who did some writing for me years ago when I edited Salon’s technology coverage, wrote in to point me to his Fingertips site, which catalogues freely and legally available MP3s: “Something that tends to get overlooked whenever the MP3 situation is debated is the fact that there are actually an amazing number of free and legal MP3s available online for discriminating music fans, and it’s not all amateur crap either. Discussion tends to focus on the illegal stuff people trade or the legal stuff people are tentatively starting to buy, but there is a rich middle ground of free and legal music that’s worth knowing about as well.”
And Shuman Ghosemajumder emailed to tell me about his Open Music Model proposal. Many readers may already be familiar with Terry Fisher’s proposal for a royalty system for file sharing. These ideas and others like them floating around are evidence that the RIAA’s critics are not simply saying “to hell with the artists” or “to hell with business models.” We’re saying, online distribution — and redistribution — of music makes sense and is here to stay. So what can we do now?
There’s more good stuff on this over in Salon Technology: a point/counterpoint on the RIAA lawsuits, and some letters, and some more letters.
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