Cities and suburbs, real and imaginary.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Not Music Piracy and Interfictions Zero

Two things of note this morning, and first allow me to celebrate the library and something my lovely fiance taught me about libraries.

Libraries often carry CDs of music that one could borrow. For instance, she brought over the dancey funky sci-fi  sounds of Jamiroquai's "Traveling Without Moving". We popped it into my computer because it is the best sound system in the apartment. Immediately, iTunes imported the CD. Naturally, my iPod inherited the new imported CD immediately. Of course, my time spent moving large, heavy plates up and down and running in place were enhanced by the dancy-funky sci-fi sounds.

So, let's review this thing I discovered over the weekend. Libraries let you borrow CDs. Libraries are awesome. iTunes auto-imports anything you place inside your computer. If you were so inclined, you could keep the tunes you just imported forever and ever, or even export them to a new, blank CD.

Naturally, it is only fair and just to delete all of these copies the moment -- the very moment -- you return your CD to the library for the next music pira... I mean, legal borrower of library media.

I would never condone Music Piracy. That is easier and safer than anything with Warez or even "ripping" CDs. That promotes libraries. At the expense of evil music companies. While promoting musicians that I could better support by going to their live shows with my fiance, buying two tickets (three or four if we go with friends or Angie's sister) and dancing and having a good ol' time at the live show. No, this is terrible. And illegal. And wrong. Just delete the CD's content from your personal library when you deliver the CD back to the library.

Am I the last guy to figure this one out, or what?

*cough*

In other news, Interfictions Zero is live with their first of a revolving series of essays, dedicated to providing a critical foundation to interstitial texts. The first essay was a combination of personal essay and literary criticism involving prostitutes in Havana and Junot Diaz' Pulitzer-Prize winning The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. My essay on Mosaic Texts, ripped wriggling from the pages of the thesis I just mailed out, will be coming soon from this very on-line anthology.

Check out the first of many interstitial essays, and check-in every month for a new look into the strange texts between things.

(link: http://www.interstitialarts.org/projects/interfictions0.php )

1 comment:

James said...

It has been over a decade since I last heard Jamiroquai and almost as long since I heard anyone mention him. Looks like a trip to youtube is in order.

I recently moved from this little town in the middle of nowhere, whose library was this tiny, cheap building with a few shelves and a collection of CDs, movies, and video games that had to outnumber the books. If you are cheap, broke, or twenty minutes from the closest movie store or supermarket it is really nice to have access to that sort of media, but man... the people who worked in the library were not exactly happy with it. I am a heavy reader, apparently one of the few in the town, and often found myself listening to their complaints as I waited for them to finish checking out my books. Apparently they didn't enjoy feeling like a glorified video store.

The only problem I had with getting disc media from a library was the condition of the disc was often poor unless you managed to snag a new arrival. I'm a former pirate, now reformed, but I guess I was never all that good of one since it never occurred to me to pirate music from CDs borrowed from the library. Not that I'd start now... it is just too easy to get the music you want cheaply or use Youtube, Pandora, whathaveyou to listen to what you want.