The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are just that; a police force. Out of the ten Canadian provinces and three territories, only three have their own provincial police force, so the rest of of the country falls under the jurisdiction of the RCMP. Many towns and small cities are also under their jurisdiction.
They might be chasing bad guys overseas and setting up spy operations, but the average Canadian citizen is more likely to receive a jaywalking ticket or a dog poop citation from the RCMP.
One the duties that the RCMP have taken on is cracking down on illegal downloads. You read that correctly. From the reclusive pervert who downloaded 500 Gigs of porn to the unsuspecting kid who just happened to download a couple of bit torrents, anyone can receive a citation and a large fine in the mail. They simply find you through your IP address.
So, one day some oblivious Canuck will be having coffee and downloading some crappy mp-3's and he might suddenly be confronted by a bunch of dudes with boy scout hats accompanied by 8 German Shepherds breaking down the back door. All those crackheads stealing expensive bikes are of little consequence to the RCMP, because there is some evil downloading afoot.
This endeavor is so futile that is borders on the laughable. The floodgates have been opened and this torrent of wayward bytes has become almost unstoppable. The double-edged sword of the computer revolution has bitten us on the ass, but more specifically, has bitten the music industry straight in the bag.
The moral ( and legal) implications have been with us pretty much since the dawn of the internet. There have been high profile cases such as the infamous Metallica vs. Napster debacle. The multimillionaire longhairs are still among us and Napster has gone the way of Netscape, but that court battle resulted in a Pyrrhic victory. There were may other illegal music downloading sites that soon popped up. They have come and gone, but as long as there are computer nerds and crazed hackers, there will bit torrent sites.
Case in point is The Pirate Bay. They have been playing cat and mouse with authorities ( not sure which authorities exactly). They seem to stay one step ahead by constantly changing country code domains. One day they will be using .kz ( Kirghistan) and the next just as likely to be using to. ( Tonga). ( Tonga is an island country in the South Pacific made up entirely of metallic postage stamps).
Some so-called private torrent sites have recently popped-up. There is one in particular (sounds similar to Twhat.cd) that is making the rounds. This site is run by some unusually angry and power-mad computer geeks. Like most basement-wankers they wield their power in cyber-space and are fond of uttering idle threats. In the real world people of this ilk would be quickly dispatched with a few skillful punches to the face, but alas, this is not the real world.
Access to this site is granted after completing an " entrance exam". One is required to answer many arcane technical questions in order to be accepted as member. The alternative is to be invited to join. The criteria are as complex as they are convoluted. There are over two hundred " rules" These rules are, of course, enforced by un-groomed and asocial geek sergeants-at-arms, and one can be summarily banned for any perceived slight or transgression.
Keeping an active membership is just as complicated and is an ongoing process. One is expected to seed one's entire CD collection to the site and keep it seeding 24/7 in order to keep up a predetermined seeding ratio. Should other members not want these particular files, they are removed from the site and you are right back at square one. You may not seed other torrents that were obtained elsewhere, they want your CD's only.
In all fairness, there is a lot of obscure music available on this site and most of it is in a lossless format ( FLAC). Any audiophile worth his salt will treat mp-3's with the contempt that they deserve and only download lossless files ( as it should be), but the process is so tedious that it could easily become a very time consuming obsession. There is a simple solution to avoid all of this nonsense; one could simply buy the music.
Just never you mind why I have intimate knowledge of this torrent site. I am not condoning or denouncing illegal downloads. It is not my intention to pontificate on the moral and legal aspects of this practice. It exists and one will have to come to to one's own conclusions.
I think that on a certain level, the music industry did it to itself. Consumer goods have always been more expensive in Canada, because we are not taxed enough. The vast majority of the Canadian population live within an hour or so from the U.S. border. This has given rise to the uniquely Canadian pastime of cross-border shopping. When a case of 24 beers cost almost $30 and CD's used to retail for $28, the temptation to take a little drive to a place like Bellingham WA is hard to resist. CD's in the U.S. were a more reasonable 15 bucks or so, but the fluctuating value of the Canadian dollar did not always make it worthwhile to drive down there.
Back then it would just be easier to head to the local CD store downtown and pay the exorbitant prices. I did enjoy spending an afternoon at the Virgin Superstore ( changed to HMV later), but had to limit my CD purchases, otherwise, at those prices, I could have easily spent spent two weeks' wages in an afternoon. To complicate matters I have a tendency of liking very specific types of music, a lot of it by independent bands on small labels, I found the mainstream selection at the large stores lacking.
Many large North American cities have seen an upsurge in the rates of commercial leases, sometimes reaching astronomical levels, making many music superstores unsustainable. This, and the ease of free downloading, were definitely contributing factors to the demise of CD's and CD retailers. I did find the average retail price of $30 for CD's hard to swallow.
Perhaps it's generational, a new brand of music consumer who is not familiar with the retail experience. Maybe it's the ease of downloading the latest pop song, the music being as disposable as the mp-3 file itself. Then again maybe it's paying a buck to download one song only from I-tunes; quick and dirty and only a dollar. Or maybe it's just the inherent cheapness that is endemic to the human race as a whole. Everybody loves a deal, but free stuff is better. Who doesn't rejoice when finding a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk (an increasingly common occurrence because of our new weird plastic money here in Canada, it just slides out of your pocket).
A few years back, when Linn made the decision to stop making CD players altogether, I sensed a little bitterness in some Linn aficionados. Linn had seen the future and the future was digital streaming and network players. I was curious about this new direction and went to see my friends at the Linn shop. Linn people ( and most other audiophiles) are never ones to back down from a technical challenge. The network players seemed complicated and required Linn's software and you had to figure out how to turn your iPhone into the remote control device to run all this. I was a little overwhelmed at first. Also I didn't have, nor want, an iPhone. I didn't need a GPS in my phone to figure out where I was, and the RCMP could easily find you with a GPS enabled iPhone.
I asked my buddies at the Linn shop how it all worked and they showed me, although I sensed a slight lack of enthusiasm on their part. It turns out that Linn recommended that the users of this new device hire a " ripping service" to get all of their CD's inside the box. Other than occasionally letting one rip, I wasn't sure what a ripping service was. I wondered if it was like those guys that staple photocopied ads on telephone poles offering to transfer VHS tapes onto DVD's.
When I asked my friend what happens when you acquire new music and you want to load into the Linn software. His flippant answer sort of annoyed me as he stated that " There isn't anymore good music". The national Linn rep was on hand and he chimed in " We just don't have the artists anymore." Problem solved it seems., but I called bullshit.
There was tons of new music being made and I wanted it. The boys at the Linn shop were convinced that I was some kind of hillbilly. This might have something to do with the Rockabilly and Country CD's that I would bring along every time I visited and wanted to listen some equipment. Then again, I found their own tastes in music questionable ( I'm just being polite, they had bad taste in music). Still, it wasn't the answer that I had been expecting ( also sorry Linn and Ivor, a freakin' ripping service ? C'mon !).
Before all this, I been ordering CD's from places like the now-defunct Hepcat Records ( they even had a printed catalogue). There are now many specialized sites like this nowadays, and you don't even have to buy the physical CD if you are so inclined, you can purchase a FLAC download sent directly to your computer.
Before Elon Musk was making funny-looking cars that ain't got no gas in 'em, he had started a company called Paypal. Now Paypal is as ubiquitous as credit cards and most on-line stores accept it.
If one wants to get music, Amazon has pretty much every CD ever pressed. Bulgarian mountain goat yodeling ? Got it. Scottish Death Metal Bands with Tourette's Syndrome ? How many would you like ? Drunken Canadian hockey-fight songs ? More than you can shake a stick ( as it were ) at, and we have 'em in English and in French. Whip out your Paypal and all this can be yours. If you bought a Tesla car with Paypal, good for you. Give Elon a call when you are stranded in the middle of a highway a long way from home with dead batteries.
There are many sites for the more arcane musical genres as well. If one likes independent music with an emphasis on Americana, CDBaby out of Portland OR has thousands of names to choose from. If you don't like shitty pop music with cowboy hats, you can find out what's going on in real Country music at Lonestarmusic. com. If your tastes are less on the good ole boy side, Allflac.com has a huge selection, and the name implies it is all in FLAC. Linn has their own label and at Linn Records you can find some stellar sounding 24 bit files.
I guess that CD's original claim about perfect sound forever was short-lived, if not short-sighted. Who could have anticipated the demise of the CD retailer? HMV just re-opened a scaled-down version of their store downtown. CD's are the last thing that they are interested in selling. They have lots of glittery T-shirts, bobble-heads and other shiny things for tourists.
I don't trust all those bit-torrent sites anyways. Who knows what kind of havoc these sites of questionable origin can wreak on your computer. Woe is you if you're using a PC, but these sites even make Mac's go a little wonky. They have a tendency to generate lots of those insidious pop-under ads. Sure I would like to make a million in 7 days, beat all the slot machines in Vegas and meet some Russian models, but my hard drive doesn't seem to agree. So don't be a cheap-ass. Buy some music, save yourselves some headaches and keep your hard drive safe. And who knows, you may help support some independent musicians and help them buy some new guitars and have something other than Ramen noodles for lunch. And that can't be a bad thing.
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