The File Host as Cop

There has been much ado lately about copyrights. As there should be. The writer of a book, a song or a movie deserves full credit and any remuneration that work generates. It is theirs.

But when things aren’t copyrighted, and are merely the object of corporate derision, should the same laws apply? Should any law apply?

As noted in this blog before, I am a fan of concert bootlegs. This is not a casual, overnight hook-up, but a committed, twenty-four/seven, long-term relationship. These are recordings of bands and artists in whom I possess intense interest.

And as such, I have faithfully purchased every copyrighted offering, extravagantly enriching all concerned. While this doesn’t entitle me to free subway rides or a civil rights upgrade, it does make me and those like me passionate consumers of the brand.

And with so much corporate hand-wringing about customer retention and the overwhelming cost of bringing new customers to the door (especially in the struggling music industry), is ours really the fire they want to douse?

I speak of the wholesale deletion of Internet files by file hosts, based on some vague and nebulous notion of copyright violation. This fear was instilled by the now-infamous bust of MegaUpload by the F.B.I. last January at the behest of enormous entertainment conglomerates.

Despite my favorite music blogs routinely deleting officially-released tracks from their posts, they are just as routinely subjected to baseless threats and file deletion because they may have violated a copyright.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a direct quote. May have.

Put down your i-Phone for a moment and consider that. If the specter of business interpreting and enforcing law isn’t enough to induce involuntary bowel spasms, perhaps suspicion and supposition becoming scientifically-sustainable fact will.

Pick a name out of the phone book. Call the police. Then tell them this individual might have been speeding last Tuesday. Pretty far-fetched, isn’t it?

Then imagine them acting on it.

This is what happens on the Internet every day.

This is businesses idea of law enforcement. No facts. No proof. No clue. Just lots and lots of assumptions.

Bootlegs are a convenient, three-legged mutt to kick in lieu of capturing the elusive greyhound which is the real problem. It’s casual, path-of-least-resistance policing. Law from the nacho-stained cushions of a La-Z-Boy.

And—sodomites excepted—who can’t get behind that?

I freely admit that in the face of global warming, our stubbornly-anemic economy and ballooning income disparity that rivals that of a third-world nation, this is a fairly minor concern.

But I also have this silly idea that those who aren’t breaking the law shouldn’t be treated as if they were—especially by an entity completely unrelated to and educated in law enforcement.

But that’s just me.

Short cuts to any portion of our judicial process and the way we practice law are never, ever trivial. The interpretation and enforcement of law must always be separate from business. They can't ever overlap.

Because now we know what it’s like when they do.

The Bootleg

Bootlegs have always occupied a unique niche in the music world. Fans craved them. Record companies despised them. Their late-sixties, underground origins appealed to fans of a music which was far outside the mainstream.

We hear rock music everywhere nowadays. But you didn’t stand a chance of hearing Cat Stevens, much less Cream, when you turned on a TV, stepped into an elevator or went to the supermarket in 1970.

And what better way to show your contempt for The Man than to buy a record that completely bypassed established business channels?

Many bootlegs became legendary. Liver Than You’ll Ever Be, an audience recording of a 1969 Rolling Stones show in Oakland, was one. The Great White Wonder, a collection of studio recordings made by Bob Dylan after his supposed motorcycle crash in 1966 was another.

It's possible Liver Than You'll Ever Be provoked the officially-released Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out! in an attempt to re-direct the revenue going to Liver back into record company (and band) pockets. Conveniently, it just happened to be a pretty good live album as well.

The Great White Wonder brought a wealth of unpublished Dylan songs to the public at a time when his profile was low, and probably did more to keep his name in front of his audience than either Dylan or his record company would care to admit. 

Ironically, bootlegs became so popular record companies attempted to capitalize on the buzz, as was the case with Nils Lofgren’s live album. And record labels for Tom Petty and John Hiatt even issued promotional live albums which mimicked bootleg's cover art.

Aerosmith went them one better and named their 1978 live LP Live! Bootleg, complete with inaccurate track listing. Someone was paying attention.

And while bootlegs didn’t technically represent copyright violations, record companies viewed them as an infringement—at least when they weren’t inspiring marketing ploys.

In record company eyes, fans wanting to purchase the version of “Stairway to Heaven” they heard on the radio would confuse Live on Blueberry Hill for Led Zeppelin IV, and being disappointed at the quality of the recording, would never buy another Led Zeppelin album again.

Of course, the reality was quite different. Fans (which we need to remember is short for fanatic) who purchased Live on Blueberry Hill already owned Led Zeppelin IV.

What record companies hadn’t yet realized was that consumers of bootlegs were insatiable. They possessed every Led Zeppelin or Bob Dylan or Rolling Stones album and wanted more.

Musicians were more ambivalent. They recognized the offhand tribute bootlegs represented. On a 1978 tour stop in Los Angeles, Bruce Springsteen even began a concert broadcast with the greeting “Bootleggers! Roll your tapes!”

Being bootlegged had become a status symbol. People weren’t risking arrest to capture an Olivia Newton-John show on tape. It was Neil Young. The Who. And Pink Floyd. Big-time heavyweights who inspired intense passion in their fans.

But bootlegging wasn’t anything new. As far back as the late-nineteen-forties, jazz fans were covertly recording Charlie Parker gigs, and in perhaps the ultimate tribute ever accorded a musician, transferred only his solos to 78s and LPs.

But the profit motive always muddied the water. Fans were gouged by unscrupulous folk who didn’t always deliver on their promise. I’ll never forget the bootleg cassette I bought which presumably contained a concert of a favorite band of mine.

After discovering it contained only three poorly-recorded songs and part of a fourth, I was miffed. But what was I going to do? Call the Better Business Bureau? The Attorney General? The police?

This is where the computer comes in. If digital technology hasn’t completely legitimized the bootleg, it’s at least taken them from shadowy gas station parking lots to the bright light of the Internet.

Fans can upload a show and share it with other fans free of charge. No dodgy dudes selling stuff out of their trunks, or having to be privy to which stores are selling. It’s by fans for fans—which is how it should have been from the beginning. A complete delete of the profit component.

And bootlegs sound so much better, too. Concert recording has evolved from holding a hand-held mic connected to a portable cassette tape recorder to digital devices which intercept IEM signals.

Many bands actually accommodate tapers, correctly figuring it’s another avenue to get the word out. My Morning Jacket, the Drive-By Truckers and Gomez are just a few of the bands following in the Grateful Dead’s footsteps.

Concerts are special events; they place you at the point of creation, not unlike the big bang that created the universe. Hearing a special band on a hot night without the filter of commerce is a thrilling and wonderful thing.

Bootlegs are honest and genuine in a way a commercial release could never be. You’d be shocked at the amount of studio sweetening (called overdubbing) that goes into a typical live album.

Just as acidic vineyard soil produces the sweetest grape, a bootleg’s less-than-pristine sound quality can actually deepen the listening experience. You have to listen “harder”. You have to meet a bootleg halfway.

It's a medium that prizes performance, not production. All of this can make for a demanding, but rewarding, listen.

Ascoltare felice!