I just read the article in rolling stone about how the RIAA sued 261 people for downloading music for free from the Internet. One of those people was the piano man’s sisters best friend right here in South Florida. She will have to pay thousands to settle. Me and the guys talking about it after practice. And you just can’t find anything positive to say about it. as an artist you want to be cool to people you know. you don't want to be known as a dick or anything. But stealing is stealing. One of the girls Brianna something told the New York post, “my stomach is turning.” And yes it sucks. She got caught, and no she wasn't the only one doing it. Hell, everyone I know is doing it. And poor musicians, shit, rich musicians are the worst. We all do it. right now I'm sharing over three hundred songs I have downloaded. Most of them, prob about 90% are from cds I already own but I am just to lazy to try to go find them in my CD collection. So that's my bad. and yes there should certainly be some sort of system worked out where by if you already own the song you can download it, but no you shouldn’t be allowed to share it with others to get for free. No fucking way. not till the rest of the civilized world starts letting us use their goods and services for free. so anyday I could get slapped with a law suit myself. And I'm one of those artists myself. And man I would gladly pay them whatever they ask, cause man I'm not going to deny or try to talk myself out of the fact that I am knowingly stealing what I haven't paid for. You know, if you get caught, you get caught. So to Brianna and the other 260 others who got sued by the biz, in all fairness lets put the cards on the table and be nice, cause it sucks that they are being used as examples. You know, but it’s gotta start somewhere. I think anyone would agree that yes its super easy to download songs. Yep. And its a lot cheaper to download one song for free instead of buying a whole album that you don't even want. Yep. And its a lot more convenient to download than having to go to a store or online to buy it. yep. And its a lot faster. Its instant pleasure baby. Yep. And those fucking record companies, they make so much money anyway. they don't need anymore of my money. Yep. And they rape the fucking artists by barely paying them anything and making them pay back all the money they give them and all that. yep. And you know what, if they had their shit together and didn't have such an old business model then maybe I wouldn’t do it. yep. And hey, no one knows if I just download a few songs here and there in my house. Its pretty private and secret and chances are I won't get caught. Yep. All those points are good and more...

But here's the deal kids. All these things may be true. But we’re still stealing. So its really a simple issue. You either steal or you don't. you're a thief or you’re not a thief. Me? I admit it. I'm stealing. If I hear a song I like and I want to go get it for free from the internet, lately I have been doing it. Especially for songs where I don't want to buy the whole album. but here's the deal. I know I'm stealing. I'm not arguing about it. I'm not trying to defend it. in fact I feel pretty fucking guilty about it, because I know I'm literally taking money out of the hands of a lot of people, mostly other artists. And that sucks. And if I get caught I'm going to admit what I did. and pay them what they ask. Cause that's the right thing to do. And yea I'm going to be really happy when the music biz catches up with its technology and makes this a lot easier and cooler for all of us. but I'm not going to use that as my excuse for why I think its alright to steal. There are always going to be people around you who try to talk you into doing bad things by justifying it in some way or another. but you don't have to be a sucker and fall for it. 

That's it for me on file sharing. Case closed. I am thoroughly bored of the subject.

O.k. read this message below first. FYI, friendster is a relatively new internet site where you can post your picture and other info about yourself and have all your friends join you and meet new people through all your friends. Its very cool and very popular right now in America. The creators started it as a free service just to test the market and work out all the kinks. Now they are saying they are about to start charging a fee for the service (duh) and a lot of the people who use the service are freaking out and trying to stop them. Read below for an example of what people post:

friendster fee update:  Its Working. Friendster owner held back the  paying shyt fee another month. Hopefully if you  all jus keep on copying this to your bulletin  boards. The friendster staff will not go through  with the paying plan on friendster. I know I  don’t want to have to pay for friendster and so  do you to get full privileges right? Come on and  and repost this bulletin on your friendster  account to get this world wide. PLEASE DONT REPLY TO THIS. JUST  SIMPLY COPY  AND  PASTE IT ON YOUR BULLETIN BOARD.  Here's the address to the corporate HQ for  Friendster.com: Friendster, Inc.  415 N. Mary Ave., Suite 112-280  Sunnyvale, CA 94085  Phone: (650) 618-2638  Fax: (650) 618-2527  Check-it: You know about the whole paying  thing fuck-it. This 6 degrees of separation  thing is super powerful. That's why network  marketing exists today. My personal network  says  something like 800,000  people or some shit.  If  we post this bulletin all over friendster we  could possibly pressure Friendster to not  charge.  Forget the email thing cuz anyone at the corp.  HQ can just delete like 1000  emails, but if we  all bring it back to the old school and snail  mail their asses to NOT start charging, we  could flood them. yay!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone should repost this message on the  bulletin board!!!

I find this hysterical. Lets be real for a second. The people who post messages like this and who don't want to pay for things are usually young people, college or just out, and usually poor. Not in a derogatory sense at all. Just you know, people who don't have any money. They don't have any money so they can’t pay for a lot of stuff. So they download (shoplift) tons of music and movies and whatever else they can get their hands on and they don't pay for it. That’s what your supposed to do when you’re a kid. But I think what happens when you get older, and I don't mean chronologically, but when you cross that line, from being broke and wanting everything for nothing, to having some money of your own and knowing what its like to work hard for that money, is that you develop a real respect for the value of things, and the value of people. When you’re poor you hate everyone who’s rich. You think everything should be free and you’re mad at the world that everything isn't free. And then all of a sudden after a rather rough and tumble decade in your twenties you wake up one day and you have stuff. You have money. You realize that you just worked your ass off for the last few years and you value that. You value yourself. And you value others around you who also have stuff. Who have money. And who have goods and services that you want. Because all of a sudden you have found your niche. You know your own value and you don't mind profiting from it. In fact you welcome it. You realize that this fair exchange of my goods and services for your money or goods or services is a wonderful thing, and vice versa. And life goes on in a very prosperous free enterprise system for all of us. 

The ultra-cool new K street dedicated its entire show this week to the illegal downloading of music. What I like to call digital shoplifting, or should we call it...

My dearest Michigan 

Ahh you stumbled upon the grandest of all themes for artists and coffee house beatniks worldwide. art for its own sake. to starve or not to starve! That is the question. 

but alas many find that after some deep soul searching and a few years struggling for no reason that it is just a unfortunate misconception in mass consciousness---this belief that if you make money at your art that you are somehow not an artist.  its funny cause so many people believe this. and of course this sets them on the course of feeling like they have to choose between what they love doing and making money....  common theme. leads to future depression, divorce, and abusing their children later in life because "they could have been somebody."

But the i assert that the opposite is true. and for the meantime i am in the minority. but we are the happy healthy successful and wealthy minority. that those who choose to not make money with their art but instead make money from some job that they think they have to do to make money are actually, or even worse, they do their art but starve and struggle their whole life because they believe that that is the role of the artist, that somehow there is an "us versus them," a war between the "haves and the have nots" .... these poor souls... the world is full of them. many of them are my friends. 

But are they artists? well if you don’t believe in your art enough to make it your living, to really go out there and do whatever it takes to believe in it and actually (Gasp!) make money from it just like you would from anything else, well not only will never really be happy---i mean truly fucking jumping up and down bouncing off the walls happy---but you will never really be able to fully express your art in all of its glorious potential because it will always hold for that person an air of "hobby," i.e.: not real. 

Dear Music Industry

And yet in the digital downloading controversy—its coming from everywhere right now. On the tips of everyone’s tongues evidently. Anyway, this is from some wacky creative designer out in San Fran. The guy makes a few points, most of them rather surface and not too well thought out. But it helps to understand the mindset of these people. The article and my response are below:

Dear Music Industry. 

Wednesday, September 17 

Hi there. I just wanted to say, fuck you. You have stolen so much money from me and everyone I know that it's hard for me to feel sorry for you. Sue some 12 year old girl for downloading music? That takes some balls. Fight this all you want and I will hate you even more. Do you know how many people bought an album, then bought the same thing on tape, then bought the same thing on CD? Do you know much money you made off of each person as they re-bought music they had once paid a fortune for? I don't think you do.

Hey bro, no one stole any money from you. you bought music because you wanted it. Period. No one forced you too. and another thing you big cry baby. No one forced you to buy your favorite CDs on three different formats like records, tapes, and cds. You did it because you wanted to. are you going to complain next time you buy a new car because you want all the newest technology in that new car versus your old one? Cds were technologically better so you decided to buy them. O.k. cool. What's your point? 

So you sue a 12 year old girl. She obviously was eating into your profits. You could see how she had masterminded a way to screw you out of everything you so rightfully deserve. She got what she deserved, right? Steal from the music industry and you get slapped. That's the lesson you taught us, right?

Uuuuhhhh yea. What is it about “thou shall not steal” that you do not understand? 

We all pay your inflated prices so you can produce crappy music and force good bands to put out "now" sounding music so they can sell more records. Everyone needs to sell more records. I mean, if your record doesn't sell a million copies your a failure right? Bullshit. Your business model is all fucked up. 

Listen, if you think the business model is fucked up, then start a business model of your own that's not. This is America. Its not only allowed but encouraged. Please do. but don't use your opinion that “their business model is all fucked up” as a way of justifying you or anyone else stealing. Why is this so hard for some people to understand?

Most of the artists don't get much more than a dime. You give them pennies as you sue 12 year old girls, making their parents cough up $2,000 of their hard earned money. You seem to think you have a hold on everything. I am here to tell you don't. Your grip is slipping so fast. It's right in front of your face and you are just too stupid to know it.

This is where the guy kind of slips off the deep end. sounding more like a serial killer. It is true that us artists don't get a lot per CD sold—but its more like a dollar not a dime... Still doesn’t give any one a reason to start stealing from us. and that 12 year old girl who is stealing songs everyday? If her parents only had to cough up $2000 then consider them lucky. They are lucky that the girl is not in juvenile somewhere, as she would be if she went into a store and stole the music, which is exactly what she is doing: stealing. 

Went to Madelynne O'Ryans house tonight for dinner. She and Mohdie are in town. Maddie is pregnant now. She looks so beautiful and sweet and happy. Mohdie is so cool now. You can tell he's really happy that she is preg. I felt such joy being there with them. Their family means so much to me. They have been my second family for a very long time. It is so nice. I have the same thing with Cleo’s family as well. And I really hope that all the problems between us don’t ruin that.

Hi Michigan,

Long time. How is the fastest pen (computer) in the west?

I have to take time to answer your email... so much. But I just read your response about downloading. wow. Ok. Babe,. just because we have discovered a way to steal stuff doesn’t make it right. And just because you (people in general) don’t like the "insert your derogatory expletives here about the" corporate types who own the companies we work for" doesn’t all of a sudden justify stealing from them or the artists they work with. I know you know this. You are too smart not to. But I know how easy it is to find the mind searching desperately for ways to justify stealing or other such acts when they seem really really easy and appear that we may not get caught for them. 

In the studio all day yesterday, over twelve hours, adding two new tracks that may or may not go on the new album. but we worked our butts off. 

I am tired of seeing a different articles or dissertations pop up every other day about music downloading. People are wasting their time and everyone else’s talking about it, philosophizing about it. what we need is a programmer to come out of the closet and he will make millions of dollars overnight. The solution, what will happen, is very obvious. Hear it now, believe it when you see it. All music will be digitally encoded with download stamps, to prevent it from being downloaded except through proprietary software that comes on everyone’s computer that you pay a monthly fee for, just like you now pay for your phone bill or your electric or your cable. All computers will begin to be manufactured with anti-music-downloading software that you can turn off by paying your monthly bill. Don't download music? Don't pay. Don't want people to have to pay to download your music—for example with a free promo track? Then don't digitally encode your new song; or better yet—encode it open or closed, depending on if you want people to be able to stream it or download it and how many times. If you choose to, you can always go buy a “descrambler” to avoid paying like many assholes currently do in order to steal cable TV. Cliona told me the other day, “I guess people just don't feel the criminality of it as much because they don't really know the victims and no one really gets in trouble for it.” once this system is setup it will be more illegit to steal music, etc. like anything else, internet access, electric, etc. most people don't go around stealing that stuff. it's a service and most people are happy to pay for it. again, what we don't need is more people talking about it, ruminating on it. what we need is for the programming to be done and licenses secured with all the major computer manufacturers. 

Current Spin: rock bottom by Robert Wyatt. A classic, although it hasn’t gotten under my skin yet. 

An email from a friend: this topic is everywhere these days, for good reason,

“Is it legal (as far as copyright laws go) to burn CDs at home and distribute to your friends as gifts? An item on Haley's Christmas list is a CD burner; she wants to make CDs for her favorite music and give it to her friends as gifts ... I am not sure but think gifting is OK but

selling these type of CDs may be illegal - thought you could shed some light ..... “

O.k. literally it is not legal unless they are for yourself only because then those other people will not have to buy the cds for themselves, so the artists lose money and concert tickets go up even higher because it is the only way that we can make our money now. But some people argue that if people like the CD they will go buy it anyway to get the artwork etc, so I don't know the answer for you. I personally don't even like burned cds for myself because you don't get the real thing—you don't get the true artist’s vision---and half the time they don't even work, but a lot of people her age do like them cause they don't have much money, so I kind of think it is the wave of the future unfortunately. So we will see. I think it is inevitable that, A, people will keep doing it, and that B, we will start adding royalties to CD burners and blank CDs to pay the artists that are creating the content that warrants their existence in the marketplace in the first place, and  la princessa , that if it does continue, that concert tickets will continue to go up because musical artists will have no other way to support themselves or their families except from live appearances as more and more unique ways of obtaining recorded music for free become available to the consumer.