RIAA versus all my scratched albums
Ed Bott has been posting some really interesting questions and commentary with a survey and some blog posts on the topic of digital ethics:
Where do you stand on digital media ethics? (article links to six question survey)
The ethics of digital media
Thank you, RIAA
Digital media ethics: it’s personal
The RIAA versus us: a file-sharing standoff
One thing in particular that caught my eye is the discussion of scratched CDs:
What the RIAA is saying, in that official document, is that if your CD gets scratched you can go buy another copy. Sorry, no. For what it’s worth, I’ve been burned too many times by CD players and changers that mangle discs. The very first thing I do when I buy a new CD is to make a copy for use in the car. Then I rip the tracks from that CD to a home server and use those copies for the Media Center PC in the living room or the computer in my office and for filling up our portable music players. (Digital media ethics: it’s personal.)
I'm pretty sure Ed Bott is the same age as me, so this isn't going to be news to him. However, maybe he forgot that back in 60's and 70's and before, if your album or 45 got scratched, as they so often did, you were basically out of luck. Back then, our alternatives to scratched records were:
Trying to get the record store to exchange your record (that was not even gonna happen);
Record them on a cassette tape (the quality was, in a word: Ugh!); or
Go buy another copy.
So, it's interesting to me that scratched CDs gets so much focus in the argument to copy music these days. Hey, I'm not arguing on behalf of the RIAA. I can't stand 'em. I'm just pointing this out for historical purposes.
For those of us spending our hard earned paper route money on our beloved music, we just lived with the scratches. My favorite scratch was on Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Lucky Man." It's in my head right now. I wish you could hear it.