Esem/Eesn

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an observation about torrents

#

Strikes me that previously a person would rip a CD they had bought, in order to bring the content to the online domain. Otherwise, to share the content on said CD required a physical meeting or another form of direct connection/communication, to request or offer the content. But there was a net benefit of increasing reach.

Almost all of today's (inherently digital) music originates online, so to buy a copy, and then repost the files someplace else, brings nothing across a physical/virtual border. It merely chips away at content ownership under the guise of spreading the word / promoting the work.

It's not the work that ends up being stolen, merely its ownership erodes. The connection between author and audience.

My work gets pirated as much as the next person's. Still, hard to reconcile the worlds of creating and file-sharing music, seeing that food and shelter don't respond to bitcoins, stars, likes, comments, shares, followers, or plain old smiles.

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