"Gotta have my tunes, man"

I think it's fascinating how the record companies have constructed online music downloading to be an immoral -- not simply illegal --- act on par with illegal drug use. Don't believe it? Check out this video clip put together by some group obviously backed by record companies. It's hilarious because it would be a perfect parody of the War On Drugs PSAs of the late 1980s if they weren't completely serious. Of course, it awkwardly attempts to connect with youth culture, using cool college kids with iPods and host that tries to be "with it," but ends up acting really NARCish. Incredibly, Penn State President Graham Spanier is on the video talking about how illegal downloading costs universities and threatens that it raises tuition costs. He never mentions that it wouldn't cost anything if the corporations didn't viciously pursue a profit.

Forget the bloodless corporations who have constructed the "right" to profit off art; that much is patently absurd. However, there needs to be a more serious debate about art ownership and artists' rights here. On the one hand, it fundamentally enriches our culture to have full-time artists and that is only possible if people pay for their music (that rock and pop stars make much, much more than they should almost goes without saying).

On the other hand, from my perspective, inexpensive or free public access to art of all kinds is essential to healthy democratic society. Unlike visual art, the idea of owning music is still relatively new and has been a completely American in its design. Music ownership has only existed since the 1880s when the phonograph cylinder was introduced. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, purchasing records was very inexpensive and music ownership proliferated. Of course, during this period, prior to deregulation and the Clear Channel revolution, radio also served the function of providing more or less public access to music (to a lesser extent, internet radio is now doing the same today). During the 1980s and 1990s, buying music became far more expensive and less welcoming to young buyers and music sales began to go down. Naturally, with the birth of the internet and the free availability of music, young people widely resisted (although not as a political conscious act) the pricing structure.

Predictably, the corporations' response is to cast those resisting as immoral and destructive. Similarly, as with the war on drugs, this has not stopped the activity. I predict we will be at this impasse until there is a new solution that makes music inexpensively available with a larger portion of the profit going to artists. I know that this is already happening with some of the exclusive music on the iTunes store, but it is certainly not widespread yet.