OFF: Re: Hi again

[Doug Pearson]

On Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:06:46 -0400, Stephen Swann <swann at CUGC.ORG> wrote:

>On Tue, Aug 17, 2004 at 11:20:53PM -0400, Albert Bouchard wrote:
>> On Aug 17, 2004, at 10:24 PM, Stephen Swann wrote:
>> > problem is how to get to hear it, since Napster and its
>> > clones got litigated out of existence, and (the once
>>
>> Come on you know Napster never promoted any new music. It was all about
>> getting stuff you already knew was good for free! ;-)
>
>Actually, I like to own CDs, gives me a nice solid
>materialistic feeling of ownership.  ;-)
>
>Anyway, what I used to do was surf for stuff that I knew I
>liked, the browse that user's directory to see what else
>they had, on the grounds that if they liekd on of my
>favorite bands, maybe they would know of other good stuff
>that I hadn't heard of.  I can name about 30 CDs that I
>bought strictly because of Napster.

Well, Steve, you're probably an exception ;^).

I never used Napster, myself, but the one way I did make use *of* it was
that a former, now sadly deceased :^(, boc-l member used to send me the
stuff that he would download from Napster, which was never either new
stuff, nor stuff I already knew was good, but rather the weirdest, most
off-the-wall things (a lot of novelty songs & "real person"/amateur music
[ala the Shaggs, but much more obscure]) that probably never were, and
never will be, released on CD (this makes me thing that it would be pretty
cool if crate-digging DJ's could "dig the crates" electronically).

But he was definitely an exception, too ...

BTW since we're on the subject, there was an excellent editorial in
yesterday's New York Times about how the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office recently came up with a report saying that (grossly paraphrased)
the current legislative approach to copyright issues in general has been
sort of hijacked by extremists on both sides, and that congress needs to
recognize that copyrights are not intended to either allow
monopolized "what-the-market-will-bear" charges by copyright holders, nor
fully free exchange of copyrighted materials by the general (non-copyright-
holding) public.

If anyone's interested, I'll try to dig up a URL (but you need to
register - free and they don't spam - to look at the NYT website).

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com