In his response in the Feb. 18 issue of The Spectrum to my Feb. 16 letter, Eric Tower again misinterpreted a few items.
George Zornick's original point approached the idea that sometimes a revolution is needed to improve the quality of life for a nation's people. The industry that Tower seems to love so much may have never developed this well had it not been for the revolt against the British crown.
It is in the same vein that I believe that the time for change has come. While I would not adopt a point of view as extreme as Zornick's, I agree with the sentiment he put forward.
I, like Tower, agree with the Republican idea of a small government that does not interfere with matters that it has no business interfering with. There comes a point, however, at which that has to end.
In the same way that many parents will not let their child burn down their home before they intervene, I believe that the time has come for the government to become involved in the issue of the commercial distribution of music. The music industry was given free reign and has since abused that privilege. That is why they now deserve the punishment of government interference.
I am also by no means disrespectful of property rights as I am quite capable of understanding the logic behind the ways in which the capitalist music industry operates and have also taken several courses that dealt with such rights. I would therefore never, as Tower mistakenly claims, "advocate theft."
By again putting forth the merits of voting with your wallet, Tower furthermore forgets that we are not in the 1950s anymore and that the media landscape has changed drastically since then. It is due to this that not everyone is able to resist the marketing efforts of the media conglomerates as well as he and I are.
While we are media literate and actively thinking people, many will simply do what the media tell them to do. Why else would musical acts with no merit whatsoever like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears be so popular?
Before you dismiss this as a conspiracy theory, consider the fact that those media outlets are very cunning in marketing their products.
By creating what authors John Seabrook and Douglas Rushkoff have termed a "giant feedback loop," they are able to take subcultures created by people, repackage them into a profitable product line and market them to a wide audience. This will then prompt certain people to rebel against the mainstream and create new co-cultures after which the loop begins again.
Examples of products of this loop are Limp Bizkit and Insane Clown Posse, two bands that had absolutely no talent or popularity before it was given to them by media companies under the guise of providing an alternative to mainstream pop music to the public.
This is as much about "supporting theft" as much as vacationing in Saudi Arabia supports terrorism. But let us agree to disagree, as this is a far more important part of our democracy.
