more on Live Earth: music piracy as a blow against global warming

I’m not sure what the “global consumerism” the Live Earth concerts are meant to be epitomizing is. Surely the Times isn’t implying that we all live like rock stars, jetting around the planet and smashing up overly air-conditioned hotel rooms? And anyway, the entire Live Earth shebang is carbon neutral, so the Times can’t be referring to the celeb lifestyle, whether we peons enjoy it ourselves or not.

So then it must be the conspicuous, wasteful consumption involved in the sale of music around the globe, right? Well, hey: the music industry is the perfect proving ground for a new paradigm for consumption. In fact, it’s been that proving ground for years, since at least the rise of Napster. Downloading is good for the Earth. Pirate for the planet!

One of the Live Earth infomericals that played during the TV coverage today encouraged us to buy digital music online because it means no wasting gas driving to the mall to buy a CD that was delivered there by a truck wasting more gas. But that doesn’t go far enough. A CD -- the physical product apart from whatever content it contains -- is nothing more than a piece of molded oil. And then there are the plastic jewel cases!

Yes, the music industry is ridiculously wasteful, but the music industry is already addressing the issue, even if it had to be dragged kicking and screaming toward a solution by consumers who knew what they wanted -- cheap, easy downloads of digital music, which are incidentally good for the environment -- long before the industry was willing to offer it.

I’m not advocating piracy (unless it helps change another disgusting paradigm, the one in which the record labels get almost everything and the artists see mere pennies for their work). There are plenty of legitimate places to buy and download digital music. Conspicuous overconsumption? Times of London dudes, music fans are so not gonna take that rap:

The accelerating adoption of digital music has contributed to a 13 percent drop in physical music sales in 2006 (and down more than 30 percent from its 1999 peak) and a nearly 75 percent increase in digital sales that same year, according to RIAA year-end charts.

Perhaps the RIAA’s accelerating crackdown on music downloads is an even greater crime against humanity than we already believed it was. Why does the RIAA hate the polar bears, anyway?

And hey: we can turn all those CDs and jewel cases back into oil.

Rock on, eco-warriors. Rock on.

(Technorati tags: Live Earth, music downloading)