John Mellencamp Likens Internet To A-Bomb

[MNeagle]

Outspoken musician John Mellencamp, a fierce critic of the music industry, condemned the Internet at the Grammy Museum on Tuesday, saying, "I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb. [...] It's destroyed the music business. It's going to destroy the movie business."

Reuters writes that Mellencamp added that "some smart people, the China-Russians or something" stand to conquer the US by hacking the nation's infrastructure.

Mellencamp went on to blame MP3 players for ruining the audio quality of music.

He said, in reference to the audio of a remastered track by The Beatles, "[Y]ou could barely even recognize it as the same song. You could tell it was those guys singing, but the warmth and quality of what the artist intended for us to hear was so vastly different."

He also spoke of the difficulty of establishing a legacy through music, Reuters reports:

After a few generations, it's gone [...] Rock 'n' roll -- as important as we think it is, and as big as it was, and as much money as people made on it, and as proud as I am to say that I was part of it -- at the end of the day, they're gonna say: 'Yeah, there was this band called the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, and this guy named Bob Dylan...'

And the rest of us? We're just gonna be footnotes.

Mellencamp's critique of the web comes not long after music legend Prince told the Daily Mirror that he believes that the "Internet's completely over."

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/193988/thumbs/s-JOHN-MELLENCAMP-INTERNET-DANGEROUS-large.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/19/john-mellencamp-internet-_n_686700.html

[RJB]

And the rest of us? We're just gonna be footnotes. What an arrogant ass. Very very few people get to be footnotes. I've seen better "barbands" than him.

[mightymanx]

It must suck coping with becoming a has been.

first denial
then anger
then barganing
deppression
then acceptance

He is comming to terms that the little pink houses have crumbled away into history.

[Book]

http://blogs.tampabay.com/.a/6a00d83451b05569e20120a7305a77970b-450wi

Free .mp3 copies on the internet ate his royalty checks. What a "working-class" poser...lol.

:D

[chad]

he just wants to turn back the clock to when a smoke was a smoke and groovin' was groovin' is all.

[Ares]

John Mellencamp has always been an arrogant self-righteous as*hole. When I was in the military I met a fellow Hoosier who lived down in the Bloomington area. (John Mellencamps neck of the woods) He would say his dad used to beat the sh*t out of Mellencamp in high school when he wouldn't pay him back for the pot he sold him. lol

I've seen him at IU games when my cousin was there. Gives Indiana University of Bloomington a sh*t load of money and they practically give him the keys to the place down there. They give him a stage (i.e. the JM soap box) to preach from when he's performing a "concert". He usually goes off on some political tangent about stupid sh*t. So what he did here is not out of the ordinary for this joker.

[undgrd]

John, I enjoy some of your songs. Stuff your politics.

[Light]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.

And this will happen to the movie business too; just like the newspapers.

[Joe King]

Mellencamp went on to blame MP3 players for ruining the audio quality of music.
If so, how is it that the even lower quality of FM radio didn't ruin it long before mp3s ever came about?

[BrewTech]

Atomic bombs have the potential to destroy the world EVERYONE lives in. The Internet has the potential to destroy the little world that Melon-cramp lives in.

I guess, to him, they are the same.

I would call him an "arrogant bastard", but I have too much respect for Greg Koch.

[Libertytree]

The music business didn't need any help in being destroyed, they did a fine job of it all on their own. Once the corporate mentality was adapted it was lights out, the lust for more and more $$$$ drained it of its soul. I watched it unfold first hand in Nashville, from a songwriters vantage point. They eagerly invited all the big time Cal record execs to come polish and refine the country music scene from a backwoods image into a high brow Hollywood image, it went downhill from there.

[Awoke]

Him and Lars Ulrich should get married and adopt little cry babies.

Mellencamp sucks, imo, and his statement "I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb" goes to show how stupid he is.

The internet is dangerous alright, but not because it may destroy the music/movie industry.

Brainless blue-piller.

[Half Sense]

Mellencamp's latest album is mono — recorded live to an Ampex 601 tape recorder circa 1955, with a single microphone without mixing or overdubs.

I guess that's one way to survive in today's music business - spend $200 making an album and you only need to sell 20 copies to make a profit. :)

[Saul Mine]

Outspoken musician John Mellencamp, a fierce critic of the music industry, condemned the Internet at the Grammy Museum on Tuesday, saying, "I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb. [...] It's destroyed the music business. It's going to destroy the movie business."

Musicians said the same things when Edison invented the phonograph. They said all the same things again when the LP album was invented. Movie makers said the same things when the VCR was invented. I haven't seen any quotations, but I bet the book makers said the same things when the printing press was invented.

[Apparition]

So, he prefers a time of limited technology and little advancement?

He might as well be a Luddite for that matter.

[Phoenix]

Eat shit and die, punk!

http://thepiratebay.org/search/John%20Mellencamp/0/99/0

I can never get the images from his original Cherry Bomb video of the white girl and the ape kissing out of my head.

[Phoenix]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.


He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their
density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement
or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be
a subject of property.

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

[Uncle Salty]

Poor Johnny Cougar, lamenting the end to the price fixing oligopoly that screwed artists and consumers for decades.

What a turd.

[Bullion_Bob]

The internet has, without a doubt, dramatically changed the number of people buying artists CD's.

Musicians have to go on tour more often now to pull in the cash they used to get x10 from just writing hit songs.

[Bullion_Bob]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.



Intellectual property rights exist, and they should.

[Phoenix]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.



Intellectual property rights exist, and they should.


No they don't and no they shouldn't. Just because the corporate-owned government claims they do, does not make it so, any more than they claim corporations have "rights."

READ it again:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their
density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement
or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be
a subject of property.


Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813

[Phoenix]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.



Intellectual property rights exist, and they should.


I always love this essay:


http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf

Journal of Libertarian Studies
Volume 15, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 1–53
Ludwig von Mises Institute www.mises.org

AGAINST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

N. Stephan Kinsella


We see, then, that a system of property rights in “ideal objects” necessarily requires violation of other individual property rights, e.g., to use one’s own tangible property as one sees fit. Such a system requires a new homesteading rule which subverts the firstoccupier rule. IP, at least in the form of patent and copyright, cannot be justified.

It is not surprising that IP attorneys, artists, and inventors often seem to take for granted the legitimacy of IP. However, those more concerned with liberty, truth, and rights should not take for granted the institutionalized use of force used to enforce IP rights. Instead, we should re-assert the primacy of individual rights over our bodies and homesteaded scarce resources.

[Gaillo]

John Mellencamp likens the internet to the A-Bomb?
Interesting.
I liken John Mellencamp to a dumbass.

[Mouse]

The Intarwebs make the business platform of the Grateful Dead more genius than ever. Let everyone have your music. The recorded studio versions you must pay for, the bootleg recordings you must buy a ticket for. A gigging band with some records brings in a lot more money than the recordings. The sheet music, lyrics, etc are copyright. You wrote the song and lyrics. Record it, write it out and send a copy to yourself certified mail, asshole.

I like to think I am a musician. I have a few records. None of them did well :) I keep playing anyways. These metallica lawyer jew rockers need to eat some crow. Sheryl Crow. Then they will have to get that taste out of their mouths. Bunch of whiners.

[Bullion_Bob]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.



Intellectual property rights exist, and they should.


No they don't and no they shouldn't. Just because the corporate-owned government claims they do, does not make it so, any more than they claim corporations have "rights."

READ it again:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their
density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement
or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be
a subject of property.


Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813


So you're saying patents, and copyrights shouldn't exist? You think it's ok for someone to put a tremendous amount of time energy, and money into a something truly original only for everyone else to copy it, whereby the person that did all the work gets sold out?


Sorry, that's not only wrong but it's dishonest, and immoral as well.

Music may be one thing, but there so many inventions that would have never come to pass if the inventor had no motivation to profit from it knowing everyone would soon steal the idea and not credit the source.

This is also why you get kicked out of university for plagiarizing.

Very similar to someone who works their azz off all day to only to hand out welfare cheques to people that don't want to work. Personal use sans profit is one thing, but some people profit off DJ'ing gigs with downloaded MP3's.

[Phoenix]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.



Intellectual property rights exist, and they should.


No they don't and no they shouldn't. Just because the corporate-owned government claims they do, does not make it so, any more than they claim corporations have "rights."

READ it again:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their
density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement
or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be
a subject of property.


Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813


So you're saying patents, and copyrights shouldn't exist?


You're arguing with Thomas Jefferson, not me.




You think it's ok for someone to put a tremendous amount of time energy, and money into a something truly original only for everyone else to copy it, whereby the person that did all the work gets sold out?


As long as attribution is made, yes.




Sorry, that's not only wrong but it's dishonest, and immoral as well.


"Dishonest" and "immoral" only in your mind. I find it immoral to try to CONTROL people's very minds by claiming that your "property" in their head is subject to your will.




Music may be one thing, but there so many inventions that would have never come to pass if the inventor had no motivation to profit from it knowing everyone would soon steal the idea and not credit the source.


Let's look at this myth. If the profit motive were not involved in, say, the battle between Windows and Linux, we'd all be running Linux with, uh, no loss of productivity, ease of use, or options for creativity.

Let's look at it again: who invented radio? Nikola Tesla. Because of "patent law," who still usually gets the credit? Guglielmo Marconi.

I never advocated claiming an invention as one's own, if one did not invent it. You're adding a strawman to the discussion.




This is also why you get kicked out of university for plagiarizing.


Only claiming someone else's idea as one's own, not for borrowing ideas. In fact, the very progression of knowledge is dependent upon the free sharing of ideas. Apply the absurdity of "intellectual property" to knowledge, and we come to a dead stop.




Very similar to someone who works their azz off all day to only to hand out welfare cheques to people that don't want to work.


Name some of these often-cited, never sourced "people that 'don't want' to work."




Personal use sans profit is one thing, but some people profit off DJ'ing gigs with downloaded MP3's.


DJs get paid for gigs for their actual productivity, not for making new CDs. A DJ's work is successful because the "intellectual property" is already within the heads of the dancers, etc. And again, we see you advocating CONTROL of what people possess in their heads.

[Light]

A DJ's work is successful because the "intellectual property" is already within the heads of the dancers, etc. And again, we see you advocating CONTROL of what people possess in their heads.


LOL
So if the people are dancing to the music in their heads why do they need a DJ?

[Saul Mine]

He's correct about the effects of file-sharing: The popular music business model is falling apart.


Excellent!

No one "owns" music.



Intellectual property rights exist, and they should.


No they don't and no they shouldn't. Just because the corporate-owned government claims they do, does not make it so, any more than they claim corporations have "rights."

READ it again:

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light
without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to
another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been
peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made
them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their
density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move,
and have our physical being, incapable of confinement
or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be
a subject of property.


Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813


So you're saying patents, and copyrights shouldn't exist? You think it's ok for someone to put a tremendous amount of time energy, and money into a something truly original only for everyone else to copy it, whereby the person that did all the work gets sold out?


Sorry, that's not only wrong but it's dishonest, and immoral as well.

Music may be one thing, but there so many inventions that would have never come to pass if the inventor had no motivation to profit from it knowing everyone would soon steal the idea and not credit the source.

This is also why you get kicked out of university for plagiarizing.

Very similar to someone who works their azz off all day to only to hand out welfare cheques to people that don't want to work. Personal use sans profit is one thing, but some people profit off DJ'ing gigs with downloaded MP3's.

You are imagining things. You are quite correct according to your train of logic, the fallacy is that you are working from logic, not reality. There are several aspects of reality here, all of them more or less unknown to the average music fan. The best known hidden fact is that performers get almost nothing from their recording contracts, except advertising. They do personal appearances because fans will pay well for tickets and the record companies hardly pay anything. It's not an accident that a lounge singer will cut an album and then give away copies to people who attend his show in the lounge. He assures himself of steady lounge gigs that way.

Artists and inventors nearly always get more money from the first use of their material than they do from all repeat performances. Lots of inventors don't bother to patent their inventions because they make more money selling books on how to reproduce their results than they can get from patents on it. They hype you hear about "piracy" is exclusively from companies who hold patents and copyrights and have no talent to ever do anything good by their own efforts.

[mick silver]

he mad ... he need more money ... ass hats like him never have enough

[silver solution]

[
if the inventor had no motivation to profit from it knowing everyone would soon steal the idea and not credit the source.

[/quote] Then the world did not need them.

[Phoenix]

So if the people are dancing to the music in their heads why do they need a DJ?


Do you hum songs in your head? Did you sing to yourself?

[Phoenix]

It must really burn the asses of the diaRIAA and the fellow-traveling retards who support "intellectual property" that there isn't a damn thing they can do to stop file-sharing. ;D

[Joe King]

It must really burn the asses of the diaRIAA and the fellow-traveling retards who support "intellectual property" that there isn't a damn thing they can do to stop file-sharing. ;D
While that may be true, if someone could copy your lifes work, and then make use of it for themselves without offering any compensation, what exactly is your motivation to create anything of value?

For example, how would you feed your family if everyone could sit back and watch you work and then instantly produce an exact copy for their own use of whatever it was that you produced?
While telling you, "sorry, I don't need your work, I just need to see it".

Keep in mind that without the original, the copy you make so much use of couldn't have existed in the first place.
Also, the idea that recalling something in your head is the equivalent of having a tangible copy of it is, at best, laughable.


So how exactly do you reconcile all this with the 8th Commandment that I would assume, based upon your posts, that you fully endorse?
The Thomas Jefferson argument you make doesn't really cut it as you've posted that you don't recognize gov law in your personal life, but only Gods law.
In case you didn't know it, Thomas Jefferson was def a part of the government that you've posted is not yours.

So how's it all fit?

Just curious.

[Mouse]

I believe in property rights and in copyright protection. I just think a better avenue for music is to produce, freely distribute and sell the crap out of concert tickets and other goodies. Make a standard product and an enhanced product while you are at it, and charge extra for the lost minute on the end of whatever song.

I have been ripped off for original riffs/materials and it sucks. But you can't (in music) run to the lawyer every time something sounds like something else, because the fact of the matter is (in music) 99% chance you ripped it off from someone else and don't even know it. There is nothing new under the sun with respect to Western music. It's all been done.......before.....

Now you get into inventions, that's different territory. Music is music. They shouldn't steal it from you but you shouldn't be so stupid to follow a broken marketing model that was originally designed to impoverish you anyway while enriching the usurer corporatist at the label. Music is a different animal with regards to IP. You cannot stop the pirates and you should wish you had more pirates if you are trying to make music. The more the merrier. Let them all play my shit everywhere, as loud as possible and people will be like "what's that?". Then they want it. Maybe they pay, maybe not. You get a good following and you tour and do shows and make money on t-shirts and tickets and food and whatever.

The music industry has been destroyed already. It's just pumping out the last vestiges of corporate build-a-band crap and then it will fall. Do you really want to listen to a band that was "created" by some sheister in Hollywood who had a image in mind, some crappy marketing plan and then hired a bunch of "musicians" who can't play for shit and made them record some music that some other sheister wrote specifically for the product and marketing? It's all bullshit mass media run by the you know who's. The real bands out there are either fighting the labels and playing in the system or telling the system to F off and making and distributing their own stuff. AKA Radiohead.

Rant off.

[Phoenix]

While that may be true, if someone could copy your lifes work, and then make use of it for themselves without offering any compensation, what exactly is your motivation to create anything of value?


A strawman and a benighted inability to see moral alternatives in one statement there.

First off, what you materialists cannot seem to understand is that money is not the only motivator to invent. Most of the great literature, the technology, culture in general of past millennia was not invented because someone could profit off of it. They did it because they loved culture or technology, they had an Ideal that writing, or making music, or making a machine, or whatever, was in itself valuable.

Which leads us into your strawman of "without offering any compensation." The only inventor denied compensation is he who has his idea taken as one's own by someone else. Besides the rewards of inventing itself, prestige and privilege are also "compensation." No one is supporting the theft of someone's idea or piece of culture, ascribing their own name to that which they did not create, which is usually called "plagiarism."




For example, how would you feed your family if everyone could sit back and watch you work and then instantly produce an exact copy for their own use of whatever it was that you produced?


ANOTHER strawman. NO ONE is "unable to feed their family" because of BitTorrent or copying DVDs at home. If you disagree, name even ONE "artist" who is unable to have a basic standard of living due to file-sharing or home copying.




Also, the idea that recalling something in your head is the equivalent of having a tangible copy of it is, at best, laughable.


Mr. Joking is claiming he is smarter than one of America's greatest minds, Thomas Jefferson.




So how exactly do you reconcile all this with the 8th Commandment that I would assume, based upon your posts, that you fully endorse?


Your interpretation of the Eighth Commandment is, shall we say, "in error."




The Thomas Jefferson argument you make doesn't really cut it as you've posted that you don't recognize gov law in your personal life, but only Gods law.


Thomas Jefferson was a private man when he wrote that. And he was applying God's laws to the issue.

You are applying Satan's. One cannot serve God and money.

[Joe King]

While that may be true, if someone could copy your lifes work, and then make use of it for themselves without offering any compensation, what exactly is your motivation to create anything of value?


A strawman and a benighted inability to see moral alternatives in one statement there. Moral "alternatives"? I thought the Bible was about moral absolutes.

First off, what you materialists cannot seem to understand is that money is not the only motivator to invent. Most of the great literature, the technology, culture in general of past millennia was not invented because someone could profit off of it. They did it because they loved culture or technology, they had an Ideal that writing, or making music, or making a machine, or whatever, was in itself valuable. Sorry, but I'm not a materialist. And I realize that money is not the only motivator. However, you can't support yourself if you don't have any. And if you can't get any from doing your work, you do something else.

Which leads us into your strawman of "without offering any compensation." The only inventor denied compensation is he who has his idea taken as one's own by someone else. Besides the rewards of inventing itself, prestige and privilege are also "compensation." No one is supporting the theft of someone's idea or piece of culture, ascribing their own name to that which they did not create, which is usually called "plagiarism. While not plagiarism, you are still making use of a tangible copy of someone else work.




For example, how would you feed your family if everyone could sit back and watch you work and then instantly produce an exact copy for their own use of whatever it was that you produced?


ANOTHER strawman. NO ONE is "unable to feed their family" because of BitTorrent or copying DVDs at home. If you disagree, name even ONE "artist" who is unable to have a basic standard of living due to file-sharing or home copying.
I don't know any of them personally enough to know their finances, but I do know that if they don't earn as much as they need to live, they end up having to do something else and that could easily preclude them from producing more of the work you like to copy.




Also, the idea that recalling something in your head is the equivalent of having a tangible copy of it is, at best, laughable.


Mr. Joking is claiming he is smarter than one of America's greatest minds, Thomas Jefferson.
If digital recording/copying machines existed in his day, he very well may have thought differently about it.




So how exactly do you reconcile all this with the 8th Commandment that I would assume, based upon your posts, that you fully endorse?


Your interpretation of the Eighth Commandment is, shall we say, "in error."

Seems pretty clear to me.
(Exodus 20:15 - Deuteronomy 5:19)...
The pagans of the wicked world are filled with the lust of greed and think nothing of robbing, stealing, or cheating to get what they want. (How they got something is not important--that they DO have possession of it is all that counts in their book!) But, God's People are not to be that way (for theivery is of the Devil--John 10:10). And we are to respect the rights and priviliges given by God to certain people to hold securely the possessions, property, and rights that they do by God's Law.




The Thomas Jefferson argument you make doesn't really cut it as you've posted that you don't recognize gov law in your personal life, but only Gods law.


Thomas Jefferson was a private man when he wrote that. And he was applying God's laws to the issue.

You are applying Satan's. One cannot serve God and money.
Your interpretation of this issue smacks of the sophistry you typically denounce, as you seem to be ok with convoluted interpretations of plainly written words.
I also understand that everyone is biased in favor of their own actions. ::)

[Neuro]

Bad for music business good for music!

If people that are musically inclined, instead of being coerced by industry hot shots to copy a previously winning concept, as is the reality today, instead pursued to create something that is unique and inspired by something that vibrates in tune within themselves, then I can't see any losers. The Internet is a tool to bring out this original piece of art to as many people as possible. And I am sure that the artist can find opportunities to get rewarded for their honest work.

[Light]

So if the people are dancing to the music in their heads why do they need a DJ?


Do you hum songs in your head? Did you sing to yourself?


Sure, I often hum and sing songs to myself, but I don't dance to it. Maybe you do.

Make a video for us.