Chuck D, advocate for peer-to-peer
As the lyricist and main vocalist of the group Public Enemy, Chuck D, who’s actual name is Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, helped further political rap music in the 1980s. In 1999, he launched Rapstation.com, a website for rap and a home for the vast global hip hop community. The site has it’s own TV and radio station with prominent DJs, interviews, events, free MP3 downloads and downloadable ringtones. The station wants to empower rap artists so they can turn their craft into a viable living.
Since 2000 he has been one of the most vocal supporters of Internet music file sharing, including a testify before Congress.
Peer-to-peer technology, he says, allows artists easily to reach a worldwide online audience. And to many musicians, the benefits of this technology strongly outweigh the risks of copyright infringement.
The testify before Congress took place in January 2003. Chuck D and LL Cool J there shared their opposing views on file sharing and its effect on the industry. The position of LL Cool J was: “I’m not against technology, I’m not against the Internet, I just wish that music could be downloaded legitimately.”
“Technology giveth and it taketh away, and the industry knows this,” Chuck D said. “The horseshoe makers probably got upset at the train manufacturers because the new industry took away their transport dominance, just as the train manufacturers probably got mad at the airline industry.” And further: “As an artist representing an 80-year period of black musicianship, I never felt that my copyrights were protected anyway. (…) I trust the consumer more than I trust the people who have been at the helm of these companies. P2P to me means ‘power to the people’.”
Chuck D is besides his artistic and political activities Commissioner of SLAMjamz, “the record label for the 21st century”.
Artists Break With Industry on File Sharing - Washington Post
Rappers in Disharmony on P2P - Wired
photo: Chuck D & Falvor Fluv - © Javier Mediavilla Ezquibela, original post at Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license Attribution 2.5
[…] to Chuck D of Public Enemy, P2P means “Power To The People“. True to that nature, and following the footsteps of Radiohead with In Rainbows, Saul […]
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