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by jMyles 885 days ago
You are using the word "theft" in a way which does not describe conduct that is actually theft.

Not all of us participate in the form of thought control that has been euphemistically pushed as "intellectual property."

2 comments

I'm just curious if you believe that physical property or real estate is similarly a form of "thought control" that does not actually exist. "Property is theft" is a common saying in some intellectual-political circles, especially about land.
I don't know... I seem to go back-and-forth on the larger property question throughout my life.

But I certainly think that the casting the act of copying bytes from one medium to another as "theft" is propagandistic and dishonest.

Your question is disingenuous IMO. Physical property is about physical things, not thoughts. "Intellectual property" is literally about thoughts and work based on them - it's in the name.
Hey, sorry, I read your profile briefly before replying... do you play bluegrass as your main gig or as a side hustle? Your new album is a bop.

Anyway, I don't think there's much I can say to change your mind - talk to other artists, especially those who are artists as their main hustle.

> do you play bluegrass as your main gig or as a side hustle?

Main gig, although of course the sands are shifting rapidly with regard to what that means, for precisely the reasons this conversation is so stimulating.

> Your new album is a bop.

Jeez man that's a nice thing to say. I'm really proud of it. We worked really hard on it. It has been fascinating to see and hear the responses; the story that I tell is one of "open source" and "traditional" having roughly the same meanings as applied to the intellectual property frameworks surrounding them.

I'm curious to hear what you might think of the album played in this order; I think it gives a darker and more contemplative perspective:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ucmjLc88iZdfKi9zlU5HP

> talk to other artists, especially those who are artists as their main hustle.

As you can see from the ensemble on my record, I've become friendly with a good chunk of the mainstream bluegrass world (which is a fairly tight-knit community). I think that a lot of artists are just very frustrated with the system as it is, where they are pitted against their own fans (or whomever wants to simply download and listen to their music) with the industry acting decidedly as a middle-man.

I am reasonably (but not totally) confident that musicians, and particularly purveyors of what have come to be called "the traditionals", will be among the main forces seeking to dismantle the IP system in the next couple of decades.