Demonoid Aftermath: Hey Canada, I’m not going to buy music ever again

A canadian music buyer - one of the many Demonoid users affected by the recent block the site had to put in place to avoid legal action by the CRIA - wrote an open letter to the organization decrying their recent move against his favorite tracker.

In his own words:

I listen to heavy metal music, a form of music that “the industry” stopped supporting many years ago, so I have a hard time feeling any sympathy. Sites such as Demonoid have done far more to promote the music I love than your organization or the industry in general has ever done.

Its the classic story of a boy who loves underground music promoted by an obscure torrent tracker, is tired of getting cock blocked by an industry that doesn’t care about (or have a stake in) the music he’s trading on the site. You can almost hear the angels crying for him, and the lawyers cringing at him.

But he goes on:

25 years ago, I primarily learned about music from friends who dubbed a copy onto a cassette tape, where I could listen to it and make a decision if I wanted to buy the tape for myself. Now, many years removed from school, my “gang” of friends to share music with has shifted from cassette tapes and the school cafeteria to sharing mp3’s online. I listen to some things that I don’t like, and consequently, I don’t buy those albums. What I do like, I buy, or at least I used to, before your decision intended to stop me from hearing new music.

Some of us even traded cassettes online, before Napster was born. You kids with your fancy bit torrentz and your make out partys.

But his coup de grâce was:

The record labels and CRIA have gone to great lengths to tell us that downloading and sharing music is killing the music industry. Open your eyes and you will see that the music industry dinosaur has already been killing itself for years, and by resisting technology rather than embracing it and using it to their advantage. “Oh, but they have,” you try to insist, pointing to the sites devoted to selling music in mp3 format online. I notice that most of the metal bands I am interested in are still not available through these services. I also notice that buying an entire album ends up costing as much, if not more, than if I went to buy it in the store, even though there are no longer costs of materials or shipping that have to be paid for, and once again, I fail to come up with any sympathy for the music industry. I hope the music industry does die, because I know that music itself will not die so with the corrupt aspects of the industry gone, only then might music once again flourish.

Amen, Brother!

The full letter is at Torrent Freak.