Take a Bootleggin' and Keep on Kicking
The launch of Depeche Mode's current world tour in Florida was attended by 8,600 fans. The number participating in it, however, was far greater. As the show unfolded, audience members fed text and multimedia handphone messages to their friends, who in turn uploaded their contents to various DM-themed online forums throughout cyberspace.
The result: real-time, piecemeal reports of the event. They captured some of the experiences that make rock concerts so thrilling--identifying each song as it is played; and being able to see the performers, knowing they are there that very instant.
By the next morning, the official Depeche Mode Message Board was flooded not only with responses to these reports, but also links to high-quality audio and video clips. Anyone that spent more than a few minutes on the board would be able to provide an account of the concert as if he or she were really there--from the mannerisms of frontman Dave Gahan, to how the band screwed up their 1983 hit "Everything Counts" so badly that they had to re-start it.
Being able to take in all this information makes me feel a little better about being unable to fly New York City in December to catch Depeche Mode (and opening act The Bravery) at Madison Square Garden. More significantly, though, it also situates me as a member of a tech-savvy generation in a tech-heavy era.
Digital photography and web publishing have made journalists of the everyman, and spectacles of the everyday. Where people were once content with experiencing life, they are now obsessed with capturing, documenting and preserving it. It isn't because life has gotten any more newsworthy--it is, rather, because the act of documentation itself transforms the mundane into the extraordinary. It is an offer few can refuse...an offer that speaks to our inner celebrities.
Squared with the practice of keeping diaries, this phenomenon gives rise to blogging, with all its exhibitionist undertones. Squared with pop music, this gives rise to bootlegging on a grand scale. It isn't enough to have heard a 'live' recording of a band anymore--now you have to be able to hear the exact concert you went to over and over again. And guess what, you can, you will--and so will everyone else. The internet will be bogged down with more photos and videos than the world has use for.
This practice is so rampant that it surely has legal implications--not implications for the bootleggers, but implications for the law itself. Like it or not, covert phototaking and recording is here to stay. And yet, life goes on. Perhaps it's time for lawmakers to stop thinking about how to protect businesses so much, and business people to start thinking of alternative business models that won't have lawmakers breathing down the necks of average joes.
But hey, being an average joe myself, I'm not about to embark on a treatise on intellectual property and pop culture. My clever-arse student days are over. Now, I'm just going to hit 'play' on my Windows Media Player again and wait for Dave to say "what the fuck was that!!" when he realises he's singing on the wrong bar of "Everything Counts"...
The result: real-time, piecemeal reports of the event. They captured some of the experiences that make rock concerts so thrilling--identifying each song as it is played; and being able to see the performers, knowing they are there that very instant.
By the next morning, the official Depeche Mode Message Board was flooded not only with responses to these reports, but also links to high-quality audio and video clips. Anyone that spent more than a few minutes on the board would be able to provide an account of the concert as if he or she were really there--from the mannerisms of frontman Dave Gahan, to how the band screwed up their 1983 hit "Everything Counts" so badly that they had to re-start it.
Being able to take in all this information makes me feel a little better about being unable to fly New York City in December to catch Depeche Mode (and opening act The Bravery) at Madison Square Garden. More significantly, though, it also situates me as a member of a tech-savvy generation in a tech-heavy era.
Digital photography and web publishing have made journalists of the everyman, and spectacles of the everyday. Where people were once content with experiencing life, they are now obsessed with capturing, documenting and preserving it. It isn't because life has gotten any more newsworthy--it is, rather, because the act of documentation itself transforms the mundane into the extraordinary. It is an offer few can refuse...an offer that speaks to our inner celebrities.
Squared with the practice of keeping diaries, this phenomenon gives rise to blogging, with all its exhibitionist undertones. Squared with pop music, this gives rise to bootlegging on a grand scale. It isn't enough to have heard a 'live' recording of a band anymore--now you have to be able to hear the exact concert you went to over and over again. And guess what, you can, you will--and so will everyone else. The internet will be bogged down with more photos and videos than the world has use for.
This practice is so rampant that it surely has legal implications--not implications for the bootleggers, but implications for the law itself. Like it or not, covert phototaking and recording is here to stay. And yet, life goes on. Perhaps it's time for lawmakers to stop thinking about how to protect businesses so much, and business people to start thinking of alternative business models that won't have lawmakers breathing down the necks of average joes.
But hey, being an average joe myself, I'm not about to embark on a treatise on intellectual property and pop culture. My clever-arse student days are over. Now, I'm just going to hit 'play' on my Windows Media Player again and wait for Dave to say "what the fuck was that!!" when he realises he's singing on the wrong bar of "Everything Counts"...
posted by The Empty Signifier @ 11/04/2005 08:30:00 pm
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