Set aside the debate over whether music downloading is wrong, wrong, wrong, horribly wrong, the sort of wrong that inspires movies written and directed by Mel Gibson. (Put it over there in the corner, standing it up carefully so it won’t fall over.)
It may be a total non-issue. Because music downloading is dying anyway, with no help from the recording industry and its team of attack dogs.
The problem? Other music downloaders.
Crack open a file-sharing program and search for songs by, say, Tears for Fears. Some predictable results come up — Head Over Heels, Shout, Sowing the Seeds of Love, Pale Shelter — but some others come up as well.
Like Don’t You Forget About Me, from the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club. And I Know This Much Is True. And Hold Me Now.
If your reaction was “Hold on — weren’t those by Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet and the Thompson Twins?” then, well, a) you’re old and b) you’re right, and you know more than some of the people swapping MP3s out there.
Mislabelled music abounds online. And since the whole beauty of going digital rests on the ease of finding files, mislabelling is a big problem. Worse, a lot of the music you can download is unusable, distorted beyond belief or cutting out after a few minutes. (Insert your favourite recording industry conspiracy theory here.)
Bad information drives out good. What’s the point of meticulously labelling your carefully ripped music files, if the stuff you’re getting in return winds up being nothing but boy bands singing two thirds of an R&B song?
So rest easy, major record labels. Relax, media conglomerates. Downloading may yet succumb — not to threats, but to incompetence.
