Musical Paradox

The music industry has been long overdue a wake up call. The more they whine about profit margins and take to attacking their fan base, the more it becomes obvious that they have taken what must be defined as a basic human need or an addictive human device and severely mismanaged it.

So, Ive been asking myself for years now, "Why can an average American citizen who purchases a gun and leaves it on the seat of their car be held accountable when a child snatches it and uses it for no good, but the music industry has been victimized when they lose control of what they claim is still their property and it ends up on the Internet where young children can, with little effort, commit what they claim to be a federal offense?" Are they the only group in America who can claim ownership of something without the inherent responsibilities that accompany such a claim?

The music company says that people "purchase" music, but they don't actually "own" it. Of course, the magic of copy write babble can be construed to mean just that and, without doubt, as long as the American population never asks themselves how they can "purchase" a CONSUMABLE (not that I would question the permanence of the impact, but, rather, the sanctity of file integrity, subject to the average users occasional crash) and then be subject to a renters contract, I suppose they will continue to use this to their advantage. What next, will food stores demand that you can only use potato bread for peanut butter unless you pay extra to use cheese?

So, here's my question...are we renting, buying, borrowing, or negotiating use of songs...because, as it stands, I think we buy it when it's time to pay, rent when we discover that we can only burn it to disk three times and the first disk was dropped as it was pulled out of the burner, borrow when we purchase a whole song at a whole price and then have to purchase it again because our i-pod songs don't play on another music source, and negotiate when our downloaded license is corrupted, the Internet is jacked up and we can't download the new license for two days until we figure out how to fix it...not a great deal. In the meantime, we can run down to the CD store and buy the disk if we are anxious to pay 14 to 20 bucks for one song because the music industry is forcing full packages of mixes down our throats that allow them to force us to pay for their crappy bomb music in order to buy one song that we want to hear. That's a pretty good deal for them, but the consumer is getting hustled.

There was a big sign in an Military hospital I visited once that said, "The file, the paper, and the print in your records are government property, however, the content belongs to you. Therefore, if you would like a copy, we will make you one, but the original folder will be retained."

I'm thinking, if that is how this works, is the music industry exempt from all law? So, lets get this straight. We "buy" a product...unless we are being scammed, we assume that "buy" implies, like, "buy". Our computer, that we purchased, creates a series of coding sequences that create "replication" of the song, and we may then purchase a CD and our computer, that we bought and own, can manipulate the surface of that CD to create the final product we are after. So, if the medical records thing is consistent with federal law, wouldn't that make the file, the drive, and the configuration OUR property and the contents their property? If so, when some kid takes an image from another kid, all they owe the music industry is a copy...and, according to the hospital sign, that is only upon request.

On the other hand, if the music industry wants to retain full ownership of something they claim is for sale, shouldn't they be held accountable for losing control of their property, entering our homes via the internet, and contributing to the delinquency of minors everywhere? If they think their profit margin is hurting now, maybe they need to experience full accountability and be ban from "selling" anything that they can't seem to make a fair deal on without creating a playground of "crime" for our young...after all, our young are a major marketing target for them...perhaps how they are dealing with our kids needs to be examined.