I found this excellent article
on bootlegging and trading in Canada from 2007. It is prior to
YouTube. This newspaper article was written around the same time fans
raised issues about Lyndahere’s (@lyndahere) stalking of Great Big Sea and Alan
Doyle on the previous post “Lyndahere
a blast from the past”
in April 2007.
It is difficult to know whether
or not Lyndahere or her partner were involved bootlegging and
trading. Her partner was also into following bands around so there is a chance he is a bootlegger too. In 2008 she established an
account on YouTube which would have gone against a lot of what the
taping community was about.
“Tape traders live on”
by Steve Lillebeun printed at www.star.com published on the 26 March 2007 (No copyright infringement intended).
EDMONTON – While modern
music fans download their favourite songs through the Internet,
others continue to trade free music the old-fashioned way – mailing
albums to each other through the postal service – as part of a
community that stretches back to the days of Woodstock and free love.
Tape traders,
self-described obsessive fans who record and trade copies of live
performances from their favorite musicians, have operated since the
late '60s.
One Edmonton trader has
collected over 2,000 bootlegged recordings from fellow traders as far
away as Denmark and Japan – which he says is only a moderate-sized
collection.
"I'm always looking
for that really great show when the band really jelled with the
crowd," says the 39-year-old physician, who doesn't want his
name published.
"We try to seek out
these types of shows and collect them, as many as we can."
Artists such as the Dave
Matthews Band and Grateful Dead boosted their careers by supporting
the grassroots phenomenon – even going so far as to reserve
sections at their concerts for bootleggers to set up their own
recording equipment.
Others like Tom Waits and
Bob Dylan are vehemently opposed to bootlegging and ban audio
equipment outright at their shows.
Fans have recorded these
shows anyway, hiding microphones in their hair, jackets or hats.
Record companies have
tried to crack down on unauthorized music downloading a blatant
intellectual property right infringement. Graham Henderson, president
of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, is currently touring
the country, promoting tough sentences for those who make copies of
studio recordings and copyrighted music.
When it comes to
self-created recordings of live performances that are traded in
smaller circles, however, the legalities are less clear.
"It wasn't so long
ago that tape traders weren't a real issue because the technology
didn't exist for widespread dissemination," says media lawyer
Fred Kozak.
"If it was a quirky
bunch of audiophiles trading copies of bootlegged tapes, even the
most vigilant artists were less concerned," he says.
"If (the recording)
gets into the hands of one person who takes steps to make it more
readily available, that gives rise to a great harm, at least in most
artists' minds."
The Edmonton music
bootlegger says he hasn't heard an adequate argument against taping
and trading.
"If you look at the
people that are fans, if you look at my collection, I own everything
these artists put out as well," he says.
And he notes that most
bootleggers don't exchange money – those that do are shunned by the
community.
Gabe Sawhney, 29,
launched the online Canadian Bootleg Traders Index in 1995 for
traders to find lists of available live recordings.
"It was a hobby, I
was pretty obsessed with the music," he says from Toronto,
recalling how he collected and stored hundreds of recordings from the
band They Might Be Giants in his one-room apartment.
While Sawhney stopped
running the index a few years ago, there are still hundreds of sites
that provide listings for traders around the world.
This mailbox-to-mailbox
movement is still active despite new file-sharing networks that have
made finding high-quality bootlegs remarkably faster and easier.
A dozen or so websites
offer BitTorrents, a form of peer-to-peer high-speed downloading of
live recordings from thousands of concerts – Eric Clapton, Black
Sabbath or anything in between.
These sites avoid legal
trouble by posting online disclaimers that state all live recordings
are offered for free and offering artists the ability upon request to
opt out of making their live shows available.
Sawhney says he's never
used these networks because they remove the sense of community that
tape traders have developed.
"There's something
about mailing tangible stuff and the wacky little twists that people
put on it, like making their own liner notes, that would be lost if
it was done online," he says.
"And it does seem
problematic because the online stuff is being watched so closely
these days."
The owners behind
wolfgangsvault.com, for instance, a website archive of vintage rock
memorabilia and high-quality audio recordings, are being sued by the
surviving members of Led Zeppelin, The Doors and a handful of
'60s-era bands.
While legal concerns are
one issue, the Edmonton trader says he hasn't switched to online
because he's too used to the network of contacts he's established
since he began trading in 1993.
The good news, he says,
is that public pressure from fans searching for music has forced
record companies to react – either by releasing their own live
albums of popular bootlegs or by coming up with innovative marketing
plans.
Some bands, including the
Barenaked Ladies, now sell memory sticks containing the audio file
immediately after their live shows.
"It's a great time
in music because a lot of artists are realizing that they have to
release more," he says.
"I would love to own
every show I've ever seen some day. I don't think the record
companies will ever have a chance of stopping us."
