Digital Music and Ethics

Last year was an exciting one for fans of classic rock, particularly for fans of Eric Clapton. Clapton reunited with former band-mate Steve Winwood for three performances at New York City's Madison Square Garden. In essence, it was a reunion of Clapton's and Winwood's band from the late 1960s, Blind Faith. By all accounts, the concert was incredible. But because they only played three concerts in New York, many fans, including myself, were unable to attend. Thankfully for us, there is YouTube. Not only is there a Web site where users can upload videos they have created, there are also people that are willing to record parts of the concert and post them on that Web page. Just hours after the first Winwood/Clapton concert I was able to find excerpts from the concert on YouTube, including this one featuring Clapton and Winwood covering Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing."

Most of the recent uproar concerning digital music and copyright issues has centered on peer-to-peer file sharing. Rarely do we hear about the recording industry taking action against those who distribute bootlegs, such as the one above. It is hard to find a news story about bootlegging and its consequences, but there are thousands of sites, like this blog, that brazenly advertise bootlegs and some even allow users to download entire concerts. There are even Web sites that inform you how to create a bootleg.

Bootlegs have been around for a long time. You can find bootlegs of Bob Dylan, Beatles and Grateful Dead on records or cassette tapes if you know where to look. But with digital technology creating increasingly smaller video recording devices and the Internet allowing users to distribute video around the world, some form of bootlegging can be done by almost any concert goer.

While bootlegging is no doubt illegal, I think the recording industry has just chosen to ignore this phenomena. It concedes that bootlegging exists, but have decided to focus its efforts on catching those who share large amounts of music through peer-to-peer services such as Limewire. They recognize that most of these illegal recordings are of poor quality, and the recent popularity of concert DVDs prove that consumers are willing to actually pay for high quality, legal recordings of concerts. While I have seen much of the Clapton/Winwood concert on YouTube, I would gladly pay $15 or $20 to have a legal copy of the concert on DVD.