stevenpiziks (
stevenpiziks) wrote2008-04-20 08:16 pm
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Q Lead-In
Quite some time ago, fellow UWGer Erica Schippers showed me the famous fan video that combines the song "The Internet Is For Porn" with images captured from World of Warcraft. (In case you're on of the five people on-line who hasn't see in, go here: http://tinyurl.com/3hsn3m )
Anyway, I learned song itself is from the Broadway show AVENUE Q, which is a parody of SESAME STREET done for adults, complete with R-rated humor and situations.
Rather later, I discovered AVENUE Q was coming to the Wharton Center up in East Lansing. I told Kala about it--she had seen the video clip--and wanted to see the show, too. There were good seats available, so I bought a set of tickets on-line. I also bought the CD because I like it better if I already know the music going into a show.
All this is a roundabout way of saying that, unfortunately, I'm a living example of why certain people argue that the ability to violate copyright and illegally spread music around via the Inernet is a =good= thing. The main argument of such people is that copying music for free and spreading it around encourages people to sample music they otherwise would not have and then they'll go out and later =buy= the stuff. In my case, I saw the illegal version--the on-line video is a violation of copyright--and a result, I bought the CD and two fifth-row tickets to the original show, thereby benefitting the copyright holders.
Ironically, I don't support this argument. The people who own the copyright should get to decide whether or not they want copies of their work spread around. It's their property, after all. The owner must decide whether or not the potential benefits outweight the liabilities. Also, I think I'm a rarity. Most of my students download enormous amounts of music for free, but when I ask them how often they then go out and buy albums by the artists they download, they shrug. "Never," is the most common answer. "Almost never," comes in second.