Did anyone read Emily White’s blog post? It’s not about downloading music illegally, and the trichordist’s post is terribly unfair–this David Lowery guy attributes not one, but two suicides directly to her despite the fact that she states that she actually paid for most of her 11,000 songs. (Depressed people commit suicide because they are depressed David.) And all kinds of people are jumping on the bandwagon to remark on how immoral, and how cheap this Emily must be. Hello?? People have been stealing music for hundreds of years. I personally used to go into Philadelphia when I was in my teens to buy Led Zeppelin bootlegs live recordings. I also (re-)purchased every album, cassette and CD that they released, including many of those bootlegs. Do/did I consider that theft? Perhaps, it did have an allure, but to tell you the truth, I think that the band experienced more popularity in my little corner of the world because of what I did, and perhaps netted more record sales in this way.
Further, if all this is true, I don’t think a few kids downloading music is the problem.
Theft of music has long been an issue. Carl Maria von Weber was furious when he discovered that Castil-Blaze was butchering his opera in Paris, but it was this production that brought the international fame that likely drove George Smart of offer Weber his biggest and last commision, Oberon, in 1826.
Indeed, if you consider the oldest surviving complete musical composition, the Epitaph of Seikilos, it’s history is riddled with theft, indeed its position in a museum in Denmark is most likely the result of theft of one kind or another. Should we ascribe responsibility for the death of Seikilos’s friend to Emily White? Give me a break.
