aeblog

ipod-less

I was about to shoot myself at work, so I decided to go on a bike ride this afternoon to clear my head and get exercise. I had the second movement of Beethoven's 5th in my head the entire time and was thinking to myself how lucky I was to have all these great melodies floating around in my head and in the collective heads of our society. And then I started thinking about the closing down of clutural freedom that some of our lawmakers seem to be advocating in the name of capitalism and - other than getting angry - I just couldn't imagine a world in which this melody in my head keeping me going on my bike ride and giving me some happiness in an otherwise not very pleasant day wasn't free and available. I mean, no one disputes that Beethoven wrote this melody, and I doubt anyone would argue that the man himself should not have been compensated for contributing this beauty to the world, but thank god I'm not going to get a bill in the mail tomorrow from his estate for my thoughts.

Creative people do deserve to be compensated somehow for what they do. That's the only way they will be able to continue to do what they do. However, the method of compensation and the insistence on compensation for any use of any two second snippet of something will dry up our creative souls even quicker than no compensation at all. As per my thoughts yesterday, all art feeds off of previous art in one way or another and that symbiotic relationship is being put in danger, I would argue, by the direction of copyright law nowadays and the RIAA suing ten year olds.

The good news is that I quit my job yesterday, so I don't have too much longer of being forced to waste my time and be associated with such an embarassment.