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Ted Nugent
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 14, 2001 - 01:23 pm: | |
By TED NUGENT
My younger brother Johnny and
I rounded the corner of the vast parking lot
outside the concert arena and immedi-
ately spotted the greasy hippie with the
huge bag slung over his arm. Brothers
Nuge looked at each other with a gleam in
our rock n’ roll eyes and stated in unison,
like military commandos: "Bogie, 12
o’clock!"
We approached the young man at a
steady gait, stepping past his three or four
customers. Though I had my hair pulled
back tight in a ponytail, he looked con-
fused. Still, we figured he had to recognize
me, given that he was selling Ted Nugent
T-shirts at a sold-out Ted Nugent concert.
We surrounded him and told him that
he could not sell shirts with my name and
photograph on them. It was illegal, unfair
and unacceptable. At this point Johnny
and I yanked the canvas bag of merchan-
dise and cash from his grasp and de-
parted, returning backstage to hand out
the cheap imported booty to friends, crew
members and charities. I used some as
rags to clean my guns.
We relentlessly repeated this across
America for years, determined to stop the
unjust bootleg merchandising of my copy-
righted image. We ran into occasional re-
sistance, but it never deterred me from
taking what was rightfully mine. Even on
ABC television I faced threats from some
punk who thought he was dealing with just
another pushover dope-smoking hippie
band that he could rip off with impunity.
Hell, I hunt grizzly bears with a bow and
arrow. Bring it on, greaseballs!
I didn’t need anyone to explain to me
whether selling or giving away other peo-
ple’s products without their permission
was the right thing to do. Common sense
is alive and well in America if you’re not
stoned, drunk, greedy or just plain stupid.
To think that anyone could even argue that
Napster has the right to give away an art-
ist’s product is ridiculous.
Hey, I have a good idea! I’ll just stand
outside the local grocery store and offer
its food free to the public. It doesn’t matter
if the owner took the risk, pays all the
taxes and overhead, struggles with a bu-
reaucratic land-mine field of regulations
and laws, invests his warrior work ethic in
bucketsful of sweat day after day, and basi-
cally busts his butt to provide a quality
service and jobs for the Community. Hell,
no. I’ll just make that decision for him,
thank you, and give away his products and
hard-earned money. Who does he think he
is anyway?
The same applies to recording artists.
We invest sweat and blood and millions of
dollars creating musical products. It takes
years of insane sacrifice and grueling tour
schedules and intense effort. To think a
third party should be allowed to give away
our product for zero compensation is brain-
dead and un-American.
The Recording Industry Association of
America attributes a 39% drop in ship-
ments of compact disk singles in 1999 to
this Internet downloading system. Full-
length CD sales also dropped dramatically.
In the short amount of time Napster has
been in front of the courts, its users have
grown from a few thousand to more than
50 million. Thank God common sense is
still operating in the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals, which recently ruled Napster
must stop providing unauthorized music.
Artists - or grocers for that mat-
ter - who wish to give away their own mer-
chandise or services as a promotional or
marketing scheme can have at it. But on
any legal or intellectual level, only that
individual can legitimately make the deci-
sion. Artists and record companies al-
ready give away an enormous amount of
free goods. No one outside that business
circle should dare to do it for them and
expect to get away with it.
Facing a runaway freight train of tech-
nology, we in the industry are moving to
upgrade the quality of music delivery
while also protecting copyrights, intellec-
tual property rights and freedom of
speech. With the book and motion-picture
industries also susceptible to the sort of
pirating Napster encourages, these com-
munities will increasingly have to fight
with us if they are to protect their fu-
tures.
There is no reason for allowing intellec-
tual pr0perty to enrich lives without pay-
ment to the artist or business team. I’m
just an 01’ guitar player, but surely what is
fair is fair. I’ll leave the mind-boggling
technology to the experts, but if I want
bread, I’m going to pay the baker.
This editorial first appeared in the Wall Street Journal Tuesday March 13, 2001 |
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