the many relationships involving the sale of noise

On the planet EARTH, noise has become quite a commodity. Now we are not talking about your garden variety sounds here, this is top of the line, cream of the crop, one object striking another to produce a noise, noise. For hundreds of years people have gathered around talented noisemakers just to gain an earful of their style of sound, be it the keypounding harmonies of Wolfgang Mozart, or the vocal volumes sung by Luciano Pavoratti. In the last century though, people have found certain ways to retain this noise so that folks can gather, and listen, without physically gathering. From magnetic tapes to various circular disks, people are able to enjoy whatever it is that moves them without actually moving. So in the process the noise producers have lost the privilege of being able to choose who and where they produce noise. in come the scavengers. To "manage" how, where, and who by, these noises are heard, a very ingenious creature evolves. the agent/manager. the agent/manager makes deals with other agent/managers, saying things like "ok my noisemaker will come to your noisemaking place and make noise, people will pay you money to come to your noisemaking place to listen to my noisemaker make noise, after which you will count all the money they paid to come and listen to this noise, and you will hand over to me an aggreed upon percentage since i brought the noise to your noisy place and of that percentage i will give my noisemaker a smaller percentage. even though he makes the noise; I make the deal"

Now, do not get confused into thinking that all these noisemaking places are in the physical realm. No-no-no some of the noisemaking places are acutally on the aforementioned disks and magnetic tapes. In comes the recording industry (the industry in charge of recording these noises onto the discs and tapes).

This is where things get ugly.

Since the agent/manager is not in direct relations with the peoples purchacing disks or tapes, there is no formal agreement beetween the noisemakers and the consumers via the agent/manager This does not sit very well with the agent/managers or the noisemakers. To add to the noisemakers and agent/managers frustration the consumers of these tapes and disks have found a way to duplicate and share these noises with each other, cutting the noisemakers, agent/managers, and the recording industry out of the loop. In the past the noisemakers were very fond of making noise for audiences, but since the audience is no longer directly in front of the noisemaker and the agent/manager is no longer cutting deals with other agent/managers to bring the noisemakers to the place where the noise is made, certain people are beginning to feel left out. To even further the woes of the noisemakers and agent/managers, and the recording industry; consumers (or as we will now call them "non-consumers") have found a way to share this noise with each other without having to make formal introductions on a financial basis with the noisemakers, the agent/managers or the recording industry. Using a "computer" (an electronic machine capable of storing imformation, i.e. music, movies, lewd pictures of people doing morally reprehensible things with sheep, and other fun stuff) non-consumers can employ a vast interconnected informational system called the internet. The typical non-consumer can spend time (which is a commodity that we are finding out is worth much more than any form of currency) transferring (in this case) songs to and from other non-consumers depending on interest. Probably the most preturbing fact to the agent/managers is the fact that the consumers have become non-consumers. As consumers, the consumers consumed the noisy items that the agent/managers offered up. As non-consumers they do not. So... In response the agent/managers in conjunction with the "recording industry" (the group of peoples in charge of putting noise on the disks/tapes in the first place, so you can see why they feel a tad responsible) decide to attempt to put an end to all of this sharing. Much resistance has been encountered since every EARTHLING is taught at a very early age that sharing is good. Since sharing has been termed "good", to attack that (attacking is what people usually resort to when something makes them angry) would be "bad". The agent/managers in conjunction with the recording industry (this is how they choose to work now) have created a relatively new (and slightly vague) term called "copyright infringement". Also because they cannot attack the non-consumers for "sharing" they have taken to attacking the system employed by the non-consumers to "share".

This is the current dillemma (also in the current time), are the various sharing-systems employed in the sharing of the music guilty of this "rampant-sharing"??? Because these sharing-systems are not guilty of "rampant-sharing" themselves (they only provide for the sharing people an easily operable system with which to share), and because no-one will attack people for sharing (because EVERYONE knnows that sharing is good) the agent/managers and the recording industry have nowhere to go with thier frustrations.

It is being proven that you cannot attack a method or a system even though they have been given the "bad" label, niether of these are physical entities. People who habitually argue with non-physical entities are considered by most to be either insane or cursed by an extremely persistant dead relative.

So.... the humor in this argument is the fact that the contested noise is not actually the noise made by the noisemakers but a reproduction of the noise made by the noisemakers. Say for instance you hear your nieghbor say a few choice words to his wife, at a raised volume of course so that you can hear it, there was no agent/manager, nor recording industry. Only the noisemaker (your nieghbor), and the non-consumer (yourself). You store this noise made in your body's computer (your brain) and, because of the intrest it held for you (remember these were "choice" words uttered), you repeat it to your friend. Well your friend likes the sound of the noise and decides to repeat it to two of his friends, who in turn repeat it to two of thier friends, and so on and so forth (this vast network of friends is kind of like the vast network of computers used to share music). Well, in time the noise gets back around to your nieghbor who finds it very interesting that his buddy in Taiwan knows what he told his wife two weeks ago and is calling him at his house in New York to tell him and they haven't spoken since the Rolling Stones did thier 1989 tour of the U.S.. So he does a little investigating and finds out that the initial reproduction of the noise was from your mouth, and decides to come over to see you to talk to you about it. Needless to say your nieghbor is not too happy to hear that his noise was duplicated and distributed without his permission. Whereas you explain that you heard this noise on your own, nobody forced you to listen, and that if he did not want his noise to be heard then he should have 1. not made the noise 2. made a much quieter noise or, 3. made the noise in a different language so that the duplication and distribution of that noise by you was virtually impossible. You then tell him that you were only "sharing" what you thought was an interesting noise with your "friends" and explain that he is not really mad at you for "sharing", rather he is mad at the fact that his noise got out and distributed without him making a buck by it. He ponders this for a while and decides you are right because not-sharing (greed) is "bad"......


The idea that not-sharing is bad is what drove the noise makers to make the noise for the audience in the first place, and to share to even larger audiences the agent/manager came about so that the noise maker could concentrate on making more and better noises for bigger audiences, then to share with audiences who could not physically be in front of the noise makers the recording industry came about to share on an even grander scale. Somewhere along the line the audience itself got it into thier heads that all of these people were doing a fabulous job and just wanted to help in the fine business of sharing, came up with ingenious systems for sharing alot, super-quick. Since there is no money involvement beetween the rampant-sharers the recording industry, the agent/managers, and the noise makers feel insulted that THEIR system has been outmoded and, in turn are in the process of kicking-screaming-crying to draw attention to the fact that their system DID work. The system they employed DOES work. Music is distributed far and wide and reproduced massively for the benifit of the consumers. As for the non-consumers, they have no need for this since they do not consume. Essentialy the real beef is held with the evolution of the non-consumer. Before the non-consumer there was only the consumer and the agents involved in producing items for their consumption. Now with the non-consumer the agent/managers feel left out because they do not have to take the noise that the noise-maker made to the recording industry have them record it, then sell it. Nor do they need to deal with other agent/managers to bring the noise-makers to a noisy place to make noise to have it be heard by the peoples. Instead, poeple can use thier computer at home to get the noise they want from other peoples computers, and if they like the noise they will retain this sound in the computer in thier head and on the computer at thier home so that they can share the noise with other people who like the sound....

In the beginning of all this hoopla noise-makers made noise for anyone who happened to enjoy the noise being made. Now, after the introduction of the agent/manager, the recording industry and foremost the introduction of money noise-makers will hardly be satisfied by making noise for free.

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