In which I’m in SO much trouble.

I’m no longer allowed to post MP3s on this server ’cause I keep getting in trouble for it.

If I understand it right, goblinbox.com is physically located on a server colocated at The Planet, which is, I think, a server farm somewhere in California. I think my buddy Keef owns the box in question, and shares its operating costs with an awesome friend of his, Codergirl. Or something. To be honest I never really asked and the point is that I get free hosting so I need to be a good girl about it!

The first time I got in trouble for hosting copyrighted material, it was totally my fault. I’d been posting occasional playlists for y’all to check out, and/or uploading files for my own use and then spacing out on deleting the files later. The Planet got a lawyerly letter, which they forwarded to Codergirl, who forwarded it Keef, who forwarded to me. Codergirl’d gzipped’d the files together for me and put them below the site’s root, but I didn’t really need them so I deleted the file. Problem solved.

This time when I got in trouble The Planet actually disabled my account for a bit and said something about this being my second offence. Well, it’s actually all Jethro’s fault (tee-hee!) because I let him store a bunch of music files on my server while he was in between computers. (There were no links to the files, but because goblinbox.com is so well-indexed the files were easily located by lawyers. Natch.)

My account’s been restored now, and all those files are gone. Deleted. Erased. No more. The only MP3s on this site now are recordings I’m actually personally on. I guess if I feel the need to post music in the future, I’ll do it offsite at one of those free file hosting places.

The thing about these damned MP3 files is that you don’t really own them. Say you go out and spend your hard-earned pay on an album and take it home and rip it so that you can have a copy on your computer, another on your MP3 player, a copy in your truck, and so you can burn a backup CD in case the original gets scratched. You own the physical CD and can do pretty much anything you want with it: you can play it on any stereo you encounter, you can lend it to your buddy, you can leave it out in public where anyone can get it and listen to it, etc. But you emphatically can not store electronic files of that CD in a public place for your own use or the use of your friends and family without breaking the law and eventually getting a nice letter from a solicitor somewhere that goes something like, “We have learned that your service is hosting infringing files on its network. These files contain sound recordings by the artist known as Jamiroquai. These sound recordings are owned by one of our member companies and have not been authorized for this kind of use. We have a good faith belief that the above-described activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”

The more ‘free’ MP3s come through my life, the more money I spend on music! I wish the entire world would go check out Baen’s Free Library experiment or JPK’s Free Reads or any of the thousands of musicians who post loss leader MP3s and shut the hell up about filesharing and copyright infringement already fer chrissakes. If I run across one or two songs I like, I’ll buy the album. I may not do it immediately, but I do buy it eventually. Since I don’t listen to the radio or watch MTV or have any exposure to new music whatsoever, the only way I’m ever going to find music I wanna buy is if it comes to me in the form of an electronic file I can put on my iPod.

Carrying around space-hogging CDs is so nineties.