Couple updates on the controversy involving NPR intern Emily White, who recently blogged that, while she didn’t “illegally” download music, she had only paid for 15 albums out of a music library containing 11, 000 songs:

1) Someone with whom I was discussing this issue recently said to me, “What’s wrong with her uploading promotional materials sent to record stations? [One of White’s ways of procuring new music.] The record companies want ‘tastemakers’ like Emily White to get that stuff.”

My response: While that’s not a crazy argument—record companies certainly try to get new music in the hands of hipsters for promotional reasons—they’d probably prefer that she buy it. And anyway, who’s to say that Emily White didn’t comb the back catalogues of the record stations where she worked and upload, say, the complete Neil Young?

Where does NPR stand on the matter? It’s actually unclear from their ethics policy, which says this of “review materials”:

Review materials are for reviews, not personal gain.
We may accept free event passes, copies of books or other materials for the purpose of doing reviews or stories. These items belong to NPR and may not be sold. In many cases, they will be kept for possible future use and reference. They also may be distributed to staff for personal use (including donations to charities) after they are no longer needed.

That doesn’t really cover creating copies of review materials for personal use…

2) David Lowery, formerly of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, has written what has become, I think, the most widely read response to Emily White.

Lowery notes that in paying for the technology used to steal music—iPods, computers, Internet bandwidth—Emily White, an avatar of her generation, is actually supporting massive corporations while screwing artists.

“Congratulations—your generation is the first in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to weirdo freak musicians!”

Lowery, who now teaches a course on the music business at the University of Georgia, also makes this point [emphasis added], which I think is an important one:

Now, having said all that, I also deeply empathize with your generation. You have grown up in a time when technological and commercial interests are attempting to change our principles and morality. Rather than using our morality and principles to guide us through technological change, there are those asking us to change our morality and principles to fit the technological change–if a machine can do something, it ought to be done. Although it is the premise of every “machines gone wild” story since Jules Verne or Fritz Lang, this is exactly backwards. Sadly, I see the effects of this thinking with many of my students.

I would like to hear more from Emily White, but she seems to have gone into hiding. (Not, so far as I can tell, because NPR has fired her.)

FInally, I will say that I saw Cracker at the 9:30 Club in Washington on November 18, 2023—Counting Crows were the warm-up band—and they were awesome. Here is one of their best songs.