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Newsflash!
According to rock star Prince: “The internet’s completely over.”
I guess it’s time for us Web journalists to pack up our netbooks, shut down our blogs, and go back to dead-tree news, just as God intended.
The 52-year-old rocker sat down this week with the Daily Mirror‘s Peter Willis for a rather bizarre, though not un-Prince-like interview, during which he proclaimed to the reporter:
The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.
Let me write that down. Numbers…are…bad. Got it.
Still, I shouldn’t make too much fun of Prince.
All general weirdness aside, I learned a long time ago that even if someone is misguided in his opinions (understatement of the year here), he usually has a decent reason or two for feeling the way he does.
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It should come as no surprise that Prince, like many artists who struck it famous before the Napster Age, is a big opponent of internet file-sharing. Although he regularly gives away innumerable free copies of his own CDs, the artist takes an ethical stance on blatant piracy. Basically, he’d rather give his fans a gift than have them pry it from his hands. That’s an opinion I can respect.
Most recently, Prince gave the Daily Mirror copies of his forthcoming CD, “20TEN,” to insert into the paper this Thursday as a free gift to subscribers. Obviously, “20TEN” will be released in CD-format only, and will not be licensed to iTunes, Amazon MP3, or any other internet-media stores.
Unfortunately for Prince, however, just because he says the internet is a dead medium, that doesn’t make it in any way true.
He’s free to avoid iTunes–more power to him–but he must understand that as long as he produces listenable music, people will distribute it online.
Even the iTunes Store stopped using digital-rights protection technology in 2009, partly because Apple executives finally realized that DRM is virtually useless–there’s always a workaround.
If UK Daily Mirror readers get their hands on “20TEN” on July 8th, you have my word that someone, somewhere, will start distributing it by the 7th.
It’s the internet. On this playing field, smart, pimple-faced, pro-free-information teens have the advantage.
Rima Chaddha Mycynek is a writer, reporter, editor, photographer, videographer, former talk show host, and all-around journalism nerd. She currently teaches multimedia journalism at Boston University. [
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8 users responded in this post
If the internet is MTV, does that make Facebook the realworld?
Does that then make the trashier, still lingering MySpace “Jersey Shore”?
Not that those teens should have the advantage though. Pro-information is one thing. Pro-stealing artwork is another.
And I’d reverse the two: MySpace was first
I can’t argue with you there!
Prince’s ideas of the internet might be a bit…er… off, so to speak, but he’s not a bad guy or even just a curmudgeon. He’s all for giving away his music, but on his own terms only. I have a lot of respect for that.
Still, we have to be realistic. While piracy might be wrong (and ethically, I agree that it is), there’s not much out there that can prevent it, short of never releasing the music to the public to begin with. It seems that every time a company’s star programmers come up with a new way to protect data, some kid with a healthy curiosity manages to break through the coding.
My head is mostly full of the number 7.
Gadgets are bad because they fill your head with math? Yikes.
You are right, however. The Artist Formerly Known As A Symbol is a loon, but he’s not wrong about piracy.
I wonder how pirates would feel if I stole their work.
yes rima myspace has got to be jersey shore
Remember when he used to be sane ? .. Ya, neither do I..
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