"Sharing" Music

This is a bit of spill over from a comment to a post on Bens blog (presently called Refracted Ambiguity with Polar Bear) regarding his old school music piracy.

I will freely admit I was a co-conspirator in his nefarious orchestration of 90 minute cassettes and music “sharing”. But I stand by my previous statement: Those tapes were conveniently packaged 90 minutes of joy.

The real truth is that by the time I met Ben, I was an old hand at copyright infringement. My pirating career began at a very young age, sitting in front of the television with a microphone in hand recording theme songs (sometimes even whole episodes) to various shows on the ABC such as The Goodies, Dr Who and Monkey on an already outdated and cumbersome reel to reel player. Ahh the nostalgic smiles tangled magnetic tape still brings me.

Regardless of how technology has accelerated the speed of music appropriation, everyone should learn the difference:

THEFT – removes the original.

COPYING – duplicates the original, for private use, leaving the original in place.

PIRACY – hijacking and robbery on the high seas.

COPYRITE INFRINGEMENT – producing unauthorised copies of the original for profit.