Piracy on Paper

I was reading an article in the December issue of Downbeat magazine called “Thief!” by Ed Enright. It really kind of opened my eyes to a side of piracy that I never really thought of. Of course, I knew it existed and, thus, I knew it was a problem but I never sat and thought about it.

For instance, if you are a jazz musician you know about The Real Books and, if you are anywhere near computer-savvy, you probably have a disc with all three on it plus a few. Now, I can’t lie, I was once presented with such a disc and have a digital copy that I use for reference from time to time. I do have a physical (and legal) copy of the 6^th edition Vol. 1 that I bought a couple of years back which is the main one I use.

The books in question, if you don’t know, used to be illegal, underground fake books that came out sometime in the

1970′s and, apparently, wreaked havoc the publisher’s income-producing “legitimate” fake books. Hal Leonard just recently made an honest woman out of the books by correcting some of the chord changes, replicating the hand written fonts and slapping the original Real Book logo on the cover. There are two great things that came from this, one was the fact that you can now actually find them on shelves and two, the people who created the music inside them actually get a cut!

Last year, I wrote a post about how the people who pirate music effect the music industry. Then, I wrote another on how piracy may actually help us. I may seem a little bipolar to you but I feel that while piracy didn’t cause the recession (though it probably helped), it may be able to shed some light on the how to get out of it by changing the way we think…I digress…

As humans and musicians, we need to ensure we are fairly and legally obtaining these materials. Not just to do what is right but to help keep the music and industry (a term I always use loosely) we love afloat. Whether you think the whole pay for/sell music and art thing is stupid or you think everything should use a pay what you want even nothing model, the fact is, we would all be short a lot of great music if our musical forefathers (and contemporaries) weren’t able to make and distribute their art. Making sure we pay for theirs will help insure we can make ours.