Neil Young is still cool

So obviously the most effective way to get teenagers to not do something is to tell them that it's wrong, immoral, and illegal, and dangerous--despite the extreme amount of pleasure they get from doing it.  This is one of many good reasons that the music and movie industry's attempts to stop online file sharing are doomed to fail.

It's the equivalent of "Just Say No" and abstinence education.  I don't know I guess there may be people out there who never tried anything new when they were growing up and are completely devoid of pleasure and ambition as adults and so maybe they think that things like that can work.  Or maybe they just have shit for brains.

Actually, yeah, shit for brains it is.  But let us not dwell on it.

Neil Young shows a rare amount of common sense for a musician of his generation in stating publicly that he doesn't mind piracy.  I'm not sure what he means by his comment that the kids should have 95% of it, and his previous invective against it was foolish, but I'll let it slide since he is now reformed into the world of reality.  (He's still misguided in trying to promote a bizarre un-needed digital music format, but how much technological savvy can you expect of a musician of his generation, after all.)

Piracy, indeed, is the new radio.

But let us not let facts get in the way of our Pure Moral Crusade against the Stealing of musical bits.  Nothing gets the kids more enthused than a Moral Crusade.  I suppose it works on the feeble minded ones.  Or the ones that really don't care for music.  It happens.

Compare this to the deluded Memorandum of Understanding between several large ISP's and the various Hollywood mafias.  In it, they very carefully outline their understanding of the situation, which is preposterously wrong.  For example this gem:

"Online Infringement also may contribute to network congestion, negatively affecting users’ Internet experiences."

No, this is what the internet is for.  The only thing negatively affecting users' experiences is assholes trying to track them down and sue them.


And spam.  Spam sucks, too.