national treasure

Thanks to pirates, the record industry has been throwing a hissy over the past few years. I'm sure people who are file sharing does make a difference, but I know that's not the only thing causing record industry to lose money. I will say that even at my office, even before we were producing a national publication, we receive a ton of music. Everyday, CDs in giant padded envelopes arrive for the four or five editors, our publisher, and sometimes some of our sales and marketing folks. Sometimes we'll get a copy of a specific CD. Sometimes we'll all get more than one copy of the same CD. These packages cost $3 and up. Sometimes they're sent priority or express or over night. If we're getting that many, you can imagine how many Spin and Rolling Stone are getting, nevermind every indie rag, fanzine, local entertainment weekly, what have you all over the country. Downloading that Kelly Clarkson track off eDonkey seems like a drop in the bucket.

To combat this, the record industry has been putting all sorts of copy protection and things of that nature on their CDs. As for some of the advances we get, some of them are discs created especially for me, bearing a watermark with my name and my company's name on it, and each track is tagged so if any of them are discovered to have been illegally downloaded by someone, it can be traced back to me. And I guess I'd be forced into a labor camp or have to write bios for boy bands or something like that.

Today I got a package for Lacuna Coil containing their upcoming CD Karmacode. I'd interviewed two members of the band over the phone, and I'd been waiting to hear the new album so I could write up the story. Unfortunately, I'd only been able to hear the single when I spoke to them. It's covered with red warning labels and has my name printed all over it. It had also been sealed with a sticker that had another warning on it and a prompt to read the back for terms of use. They are:

• This CD is for your use only. You must not sell or give or lend the CD to anyone else.
• You must not copy the CD by any means or give or lend a copy to anyone else and in particular you must not make it available on the Internet.
• You must keep this CD in a safe place and take care to ensure that it is not taken or copied by anyone else.
• CENTURY MEDIA (that's the record label) reserves the right to require return of this CD if it believes that these terms may have been breached.

As you can see, it's a lot of responsibility, and if you're wondering if I'm allowed to lend or copy the CD, the answer is no, I can't. I'm not going to, of course, but I appreciate paranoia. I haven't used a file sharing program since Napster got Lars Ulrich-ed and I had to escape to WinMX, which I think got the hammer dropped on it. It's been a long time is what I'm saying, and I don't do it now because I have more music than I can possibly ever listen to, especially since I can't get the same albums I listened to in high school out of my regular rotation. This one isn't as harsh as some of the others, though, which is cool. I can actually play it in my computer--there's one type that causes your computer to freeze when you put it in--and it doesn't say I'm not allowed to play it for anyone. I don't know who I'd play it for, though. It's actually better than I thought it'd be, and that's always cool.

Today I switched the house's cable into my name and I got some super big package I can't afford because I get it super cheap for a few months. I'll enjoy it while I can. After going back to work and doing little else but Myspacing, I came home around 11pm and watched National Treasure with my roommates on On-Demand, which is the greatest invention ever. The movie was goofy as fuck, but it kinda ruled, too. I love conspiracy theories, and if I had the time, I'd get into them a lot more, even if it seems like the make a movie about the Freemasons/Knights Templar every week or so.