Re: Legal Eagle

[TangerineMan <tangerineman@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Hello All.
> I know this is a boring subject, but  I need to know.
> I have probly over 200 bootlegs of Led Zeppelin in my possession.
> A friend of mine says that I am in violation of the law for this.
> Am I?
> I have been collecting these shows since 1980 and have been under the
> understanding that as long as I
> don't sell them everything is cool.
> If you can help, please do. A web page, whatever. Can you back me up?
> Thank,Ed 

OMFG! Holy crap!!!

Is this true?!?????!!!!!!

OMFG we're ALL going to the slammer!!!!



:-)

Seriously, Ed, don't sweat it. I can't point you to a Web resource off the
top of my head, but somebody among our extremely well informed community
here probably will, and soon.

Suffice to say it's one big mofo'in gray area. Ya gots yer DIY, "information
just wants to be free," Deadhead open-taping crowd convinced that their
worldview would stand up in a court of law, and ya gots yer corporate lawyer
types in suits sayin' it never would.

At this point in time, I'm not worried about my Zeppelin collection. If I
was pirating actual commercial releases of today, the stuff that apparently,
unbelievably, actually sells--the Ashlee/Jessica Simpsons and their clones,
Xtina Aguilera, the hip-hop (95% of which is of no redeeming value
whatsoever), the blindly patriotic country stars, and all the "nü-metal" and
post-grunge (when will that ever end?! Why does an abomination like
Nickelback still exist in our universe?) shite, THEN I might be justified in
expecting some snoop van bristling with antennas to be parked outside my
house, and/or Men in Black to be knocking on my door.

The only places that sell huge amounts of CDs any more are Wal-Mart, Best
Buy and the like. Traditional record stores are dead, commercial
music/corporate rock sucks worse than ever, and YouTube and MySpace have
changed the paradigm forever.

It's the Are Eye Eh Eh's last stand, the writing is on the wall, and they
know it. They've been shitting their pants ever since DAT and CD burners
gave the consumer the ability to create 16-bit, 44.1 KHz audio.

I can't recall the last time I bought a CD. Wait, I think it was "Mighty
Rearranger" at a used CD shop the week after it came out and its original
purchaser had decided it was crap (or else copied it and had no more use for
the original.

But I listen to at least two new CD's worth of great new music a week, on
average. None of it ever released commercially. All of it vital, groovy and
life-affirming,. All of it acquired for nothing more than the cost of my Web
connection and blank media.

_Very occasionally_, once a month maybe, I'll purchase something from iTunes
(recent examples: The Arcade Fire, Patrick Watson, Loreena McKinnitt).