Really Insane Acts of Avarice

One:

Frantz and Bourge were good to music.  And after some reasonable considerations music was good to them.  That is why they were spending a perfectly lonesome Saturday night at home.  That is not why they didn’t hear the knock at the door.

Frantz and Bourge did not hear the knock at the door because that knock carried less volume than the voice of Bourge.  And it was Bourge who was speaking.  He was speaking to Frantz.  “You know Lorne Michaels once said that Saturday Night Live had the hippest audience in television.”

“Who’s Lorne Michaels?”

“The guy who created Saturday Night Live.”

“How do you get credit for creating a sketch comedy show just because its  televised on a particular night of the week?  Take any of those things alone and they don’t amount to much more than public domain.”

“Yes but that’s not the point.”

“Maybe not but it’s a damn fine one.”

“Ok . . . its good.  But the real point here is to question how hip an audience is that spends its Saturday nights at home in front of the TV.”

“I don’t know, how hip is an audience that spends its Saturday nights at home in front of a TV?”

“Not very.”

“As a guy spending his Saturday night at home in front of Cool Edit am I supposed to hold this against them?”

“No, you’re supposed to.”  But Frantz was never to find out what he was supposed to.  At least not from Bourge.  As it happened when the second knock came it wasn’t from a hand attached merely to an arm, it was from a hand that was attached to a door spreader as well.  Once the door spreader had spread the door another item was placed into use.  This was the flash bang.  It banged louder than the voice of Bourge and it flashed brighter in much the same way.  As far as perception went those things occurred at the same time.  After they occurred there was no perception at all.  At least not for thirty seconds or so.  But then it was all over.

Two:

Disoriented as they were they had taken little notice in the men who had black outfits and black flack vests with yellow letterings who had entered nearly immediately after the deployment of their concussion device.  They had not struggled.  As such their suppression was with haste.  It was also without pain.

Bourge and Frantz were now  in a room.  It was square.  There were no windows here.  Now was there a door that could be opened from then inside.  Bourge and Frantz could tell little else about the room.  They were completely in the dark.

From time to time the door would open.  Never was there a knock accompanying.  The light that entered with the door did little to illuminate their situation.  It did less so for their surroundings.  As their eyes grew accustomed to it they only found that it was so bright that all else was washed out.  All the same they could hear just fine, but no one was saying anything to them now.  This included from one of them to the other.

Three:

“There will be no talking in my courtroom.”  That is what the man in the short sleeves and clip on tie said from behind his particle board desk.  “And further more there will be no talking in my courtroom.”

“You call this a courtroom . . . this,” and with that Frantz motioned around in the most immediate areas. “This isn’t a courtroom . . . this is a cubicle.”

“Alright I tried to warn you, bailiff silence the accused.”

“Bailiff?  What bailiff?  There’s nobody in here but you me and bourge . . . and I know who we are . . . so who the hell are you?”

“I’m the judge you copy-right infringing, artist hurting, profit killing son of a bitch . . . and I told you to be quite.”  With that the man pointed at Frantz.  He looked less like a judge now than he had before.  Frantz pointed one of his own fingers.  That left nine others with lesser uses.

“You . . . you’re not a judge . . . you look like middle management.  And this isn’t a courtroom this is a cubicle, and I think we have had about as much of this as we are going to take.”  Frantz stood up.  He then sat back down.  Bourge would have sat down as well, but could not as he had assumed no other position.

The hand that landed on Frantz’ shoulder and steadied his return may very well have been one that had once knocked twice on his door.  The uniform was the same, as was the side arm, as was the flack vest and the four yellow letters blazing across it.  This man had come from nowhere.  Frantz eye’s widened as the gag was put over his face, but it was only when looking at those letters that he understood so many of those things that before he had not.  “Bailiff while you are at it go ahead and cover his eyes and ears, I don’t want him to ever forget that the only thing he gets to see or hear is what we choose for him to see and hear.”  This was done and very shortly after it had been demanded.  “Now what about you?”  The humbug judge now addressed Bourge alone as addressing Frantz would now have no effect.  There was a pause, in that pause Bourge said nothing.  “Go ahead son, when I’m speaking to you you’d better answer me back, and answer me quick.”

“Ok then,” Bourge began.  “Now what about me what?”

“That’s it . . . that’s it!”  The man yelled.  He turned red.  An altogether different color than the letters on the strong man’s vest. “Bailiff silence the accused . . . what part of ‘no talking in my courtroom’ did you not understand?”

“Do you want me to answer that now?” But there were not more words from Bourge after this as he was no longer able to speak.

“Alright then that is better.”  The man looked to his desk and some papers that were on this desk.  He spoke back just above them.  “Bailiff send in the victim and the prosecution.”  The strong man had to leave the cubicle to send the other two men into it.  After this there was not room enough for him to return.  The first man approached the supposed bench.  He was the supposed victim and after placing a portable stereo on the desk backed away so that the second man could walk up to it.  The second man shook hands with the judge slightly nodded to each other before shaking hands.  “So Carey, what is it we’ve got here?”

“Well Sherman, what we’ve got here a serious violation of some very seriously violated possible laws.” The prosecutor crossed his arms, he bowed his head and then it shook a bit.  He continued.  “It seems that the accused here were caught with an early version of Mr. P. Fiddy’s,” The judge and prosecutor to a moment to look at the first man.  In this moment the first man gave away a nod of his own, “newest album on their computer hard drive.  In addition to this they used a popular, and illegal I might add, peer to peer file sharing network to upload the material to an undetermined number of users thereby defrauding Mr. P. Fiddy, his label, and our employers out of trillions of dollars in legitimate sales.  As you are aware normally, in situation like this, we would have just sent a virus to their computer and destroyed it.  But I think it’s time we send a real message to these naughty naughty bad music pirates and so it was decided by my office that the Asset Recovery Team would bring them in and they would stand trial for their crimes against industry and by extension humanity.”

“Truly . . . truly disgusting.  So what do you guys have to say for yourself?”  The judge asked Frantz and Bourge.  They could not answer back.  “Nothing . . . I thought as much.  Very well then I am prepared to pass sentence.  By the power vested in me by . . .”

“One moment your honor,” The prosecutor began.  The prosecutor continued.  “If it pleases the court my office, myself and Mr. P. Fiddy have gone to great lengths to prepare our case against the guilty . . . so would you mind much if I went ahead and presented it?”  The judge did not mind.  He said as much.  “This your honor is my client’s newest record.”

“Record . . . don’t you mean C.D.?”

“No your honor, I mean record.”

“But uh, that is a CD you are placing into the machine meant for  playing C.D.’s and it’s and it’s got his name on it.  So I really do think you mean your client’s C.D.”

“Well I can certainly understand how you might think that.  But what your honor must understand is that we pay the artists a percentage of royalty based upon the purchase price of the unit sold.  The purchase price of a C.D. is roughly twenty dollars and the industry accepted purchase price of a record is roughly ten as it has been since records were forced  from the market the better part of 20 years ago.  With that in mind I think you can understand the importance of the undisputable fact that this is a record and not a C.D.”

“Oh yes, yes.  It’s definitely a record, anyone can clearly see that.”

“Thank you your honor.”  The prosecutor placed the record into the C.D. player.  He then pressed a control intended for playback.  Bourge had heard all of this before while Frantz heard nothing.  “Alright your honor, you have just heard the latest original musical offering of the artist known as P. Fiddy.  I would now like to play for you a CDR that was found in the home of the accused.  This CDR was directly produced from the stolen material on their hard drive.”  The prosecutor held up the CDR.  It shone in the artificial light.

“Carey, I really hate to be a stickler here.”  But the judge did not hate to be a stickler, and he surely was not hating it now.  “But don’t you mean ‘record’” The judge then winked at the prosecutor.  There was no wink back.

“I understand how your honor could believe that.  But you must understand that our industry takes in a percentage of the sale of every CDR.  This percentage is meant to offset any possibly criminal use that the CDR may or may not be put to, and while we would love to have that percentage based on the more expensive to produce items that are records the sad truth is we just have not figured out how to get away with that yet.”

“Oh I understand, its clearly a CDR.  Anyone can see that.”

“Thank you your honor.”  The CDR was placed into the stereo and again a play button was pushed.  As with most in his industry this judge knew little about music, still he was able to tell that the record and the CDR were remarkable in their similarities.  In fact other than the name P. Fiddy being often repeated on the record and not on the CDR they were exactly the same.

“Alright then I think I’ve heard enough, if the prosecution has no objections  I’m ready to pass sentence.”

“Not so much an objection your honor as a suggestion.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean that this is a very unique and very important case.  It’s the first time that a crime like this has been brought to trial in a court like this and I think we should proceed very carefully as to only set those sorts of precedents that best serve the interests of the artist, the artist’s humble label, the artist’s humble label’s even humbler trade union, the record buying public and humanity in general.”

“Damn that’s a lot . . . a lot to live up to.  Do you think the two of us are capable?”

“We have to be your honor, which is why I have been given this.  Excuse me just a moment.”

“Sure.”  The prosecutor ducked out of the cubicle.  He returned with an attache that had been left behind the outer half wall and placed it on the proxy bench.  He opened the attache and handed and bundle of stapled papers to the judge’s ever open and taking hand.  The attache was then closed and returned to where it had before been.  “What is this?”

“Well you see your honor in our industry, and by that I mean the one you and I serve, it has long been known that you can’t take chances with things.  The unknowns lead only to unforseen outcomes that cannot always be fully manipulated for the sakes of security and stability.  So it is much better to control all aspects of an endeavor . . . sure creativity and competition may suffer, but what is creativity next to productivity, and competition . . . competition  has never been a friend of ours.”

“Alright, fair enough . . . so what is this?” The judge rustled the paper’s he had been handed.  They had never left that hand.

“That is a script your honor.  Or rather it is two.  One for me and you can keep the other.  From this point forward we will read from the script and all will occur as it must.”

“Hmm, ok.  So which one is yours and which one is mine?”

“That doesn’t matter, as with so many things within our industry you will find that those two tomes are exactly the same.”

Four:

Bourge and Frantz sat right outside the half wall that the outer wall to the cubicle.  Frantz was closer to the attache case but did not know this as all of his senses remained subverted.  Bourge had no thoughts on the attache case or who was further or who was nearer.  All his attentions were centered on the heavy and strong man.  The man with the gun who had traded in the flack vest for a windbreaker.  The letters they carried were the same.

Inside the cubicle there were no strong men.  Instead there was the judge, the prosecutor, P. Fiddy and a young lady by the name of Avril Latrine.   She had been led in as Bourge and Frantz were forced out.  The judge and the prosecutor maintained the roles they had assumed before.  Fiddy and Latrine were now assuming the roles of Bourge and Frantz.  It did not matter which one was supposed to be which one.  “OK so I just start reading here,” Latrine pointed to the script that she had been given.”

“Yes, start right there . . . but you have to wait for the right time to read those parts or none of this will work.”  The prosecutor informed her.  She continued with her concerns.

“Ok I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m a punk rock princess ok.  That means that I’m a non conformist . . . that means that I’m a rebel and I won’t do what you tell me to.  I  mean I’m my own person ok, I mean you know . . . you know what I mean ok . . .I dress the way I dress.  I’m an original individual.”

“Oh no Avril . . . you’ve got it all wrong.  I don’t want you to be anything that your not.  This is all to help you be the you that you really are.  That is what this script is all about.” The prosecutor countered but was promptly stopped by the P-Rock Princess who was having some concerns.

“I don’t know man, something about that just doesn’t sound right.”

“Of course it doesn’t that’s because you are a non conformist.  And I appreciate that about you.  The industry appreciates that about you.  So let me just put it another way.  Instead of looking at this as a situation of me having you do and say exactly what I want you to do and say lets just pretend that you and I are making a record right now.”

“Alright in that case let’s go.”

“Alright then lets go indeed.”  The prosecutor shifted his attentions to P-Fiddy. “What about you Mr. Fiddy, do you have any concerns that I can correct?”

“Me?” Fiddy laughed.  “No man, I know what is happening here and I’m fine with it.  But I would appreciate it if we didn’t pretend that this is something it’s not.  This is business, this is about making money and believe me, a man from my circumstances understands and appreciates the money far more than you ever will.”

“Fair enough, judge I believe we will start with you.”  The judge started at the top of the script.

“The prosecution has brought some pretty compelling evidence against the two of you.  I’m inclined right now to pass sentence.  But I will forgo that inclination and give the two of you the opportunity to defend yourselves against these heinous charges.  That being said . . . what do you have to say?”

“Well your honor,” Mr. Fiddy began, “I would first like to question the legitimacy of these proceedings.  This is not a court.  You are not the government and if the courts and the governments functioned in the ways that they should it would be your industry that would be sitting where I am right now.”

“An interesting sentiment accused, but altogether a naive one.  Sure we are not the government, sure we are not elected, have no covenant with the people and represent nothing other than our own interests.  But when a corporation or a union representing and directing a number of corporations dictate all means of production, distribution, consumption and every point to which a persons life intersects with those things are we not in fact a defacto government?”

“A defacto authoritarian government maybe, but by no means a legitimate one.  Of course there is very little about your industry that is legitimate is there?  You engage in price fixing so that a product that costs roughly two dollars to make, manufacture, market and distribute is sold for twenty.  And instead of covering the cost of that item yourself you recoup it from the artist.  That is to say for every CD sold you charge the artist two dollars even though he or she is at most making fifty cents from its sale.”  There was a long silence.  No one was saying anything.  That was the usual mechanism of such things.  The prosecutor broke the silence.  He broke it with the following words and kind nudge.  “Um Avril darling I think it’s your turn to speak.”

“Oh . . . ok.  And that’s not all.”

“Avril honey, I know that we don’t have the luxury of using the digital enhancement your voice is used to, but lets try and read the lines with a little more conviction.”

“Sure thing Carey,” she cleared her throat and began again.  “And that’s not all.”  But that was all there was nothing more to this particular line.  And so it was the judge’s turn

“Of course we take a percentage of what the artist makes, that’s business . . . that is how we make money . . . besides artists only exist because of this.  Records don’t get made without our money so what’s it to you if we get a decent return from our investment besides the artists make plenty of money of off concerts and endorsements . . . they aren’t starving”

“No they’re just filing for bankruptcy because even when they sell millions of copies of a record they still have to sell millions more before they’ve paid you back and start to see a profit from songs they’ve written that you own and recordings they’ve made that you own.”  Avril was getting much better at reading her lines.  It showed.  It was now Fiddy’s turn.

“And even if they are making money from concerts and career killing endorsements how does that justify you robbing them blind on all other accounts.  And your returns are hardly what I’d call decent . . . artificially inflating prices by a thousand times isn’t decent, it’s obscene.”  The judge stroked his chin, that’s not all that he regularly stroked.

“I’m sorry that you find the proposition of a free market so disturbing.  But if the public didn’t like what we put out there they wouldn’t buy it . . . how can we be blamed for that?”  P-Fiddy proceeded to answer just that.

“Banding corporations together under a single trade union to squeeze out all competition and set the price of a product at whatever you want it to be is fairly a free market approach.”  The judge laughed.  He then laughed some more.

“Well you got me there, in fact you’ve got me on a lot of things . . . and if I were to allow you to continue you’d have me on a lot more.”  The judge laughed again, but by this time it had rounded down to something more like a chuckle.  “I’m sure you could get me on things like us inflating the cost of making a record from around five grand or so to five hundred grand or so just so that we can pay a lot of people not off our own dime but off the dime of artist recoupment,

or you might bring up the fact that we destroy the aggregate value of music by only allowing for the least common denominator to be heard so that we can have a product marketable to the largest reaching cross sections of groups, and to make sure that we never have to worry about a less than stellar supply of talent because the average customer has been conditioned to never expect stellar talent and of course you could use that to segue into how we accomplish that.”  The judge had stopped chuckling altogether now.  He had suddenly become grave, he had suddenly become serious.  In a moment he would be stroking his chin again.  It is unknown if any of this was called for by his script.  “You could bring up the fact that to preserve our business model of providing only the least common denominator at prices a thousand times over free market value we must control every aspect of the industry and we further have to exert absolute control over nearly everything that is seen and heard.  After stating that you would no doubt assert that the way we do this is through partnership and trade union direction through and to all the corporations involved in this industry.  That the record labels are not only inextricably bound together but are further in collusion with all other mainstream media outlets.  That the labels use third party channels to pay radio stations to make sure that only the music they want heard is played over airwaves that are owned by but not answerable to the general public . . . that in effect we are using your property to make a racketeered  profit off of you without any form of compensation.  That these radio stations are owned by huge corporations that also own magazines giving glowing reviews and stories to the very music we engineered to be anything but deserving of glowing reviews and stories.  You could also point out that these very companies also own movie studios and television stations, including all of the music channel television stations, that make extensive use of these songs and artists.  You would probably use the example of us having one of these friendly television stations broadcast the Grammies which invariably leads to larger record sales from featured artists which leads to more money for those labels which leads for more money paid to the radio stations owned by the vary parent company that made broadcast of the Grammies possible in the first place. I’ve no doubts that you would meander about these points for a long while bringing up example after example and exploring all the finer points which would just point to the same thing . . . the inescapable conclusion that we steal from the record buying public, we steal from the public airwave owning public, we steal from the artists and we steal the most from those artists who deserve to be heard but never will be because we just will not allow it.  All of this will culminate in your final thoughts on these matters . . . these thoughts will be that our industry did not come upon this as conspiracy but rather as part of the natural economic trend and that these trends will soon start to work against us.  Have I left anything out?”

“Yes,” Either Fiddy or Latrine said this.  It does not matter which.

“Of course, you would also want it made known that you are not necessarily anti corporate, indeed you want there to be more corporations and even more small businesses.  You want the increase in quality, decrease in price and ability for artists to negotiate a decent contract that competition breeds.  You want to point out that these would be the trends working against us and they already are.  Indie labels have become so prevalent because of the new ease of digital production and distribution that we have had to call many of our own major label artists as “indie” in order to cover up those artists that actually are independent.  And the reason that we are bleeding green isn’t because of the copyright infringement on the internet but because the internet has led to a significant loss in the control we exert over all of  what is seen and heard and as such we are already losing out to the competition of a superior product.”  The judge paused.  “Of course we know all of this already, and we know it very well.  That is the real reason you are here today.  We are losing market, we are losing to trends.  But we are powerful enough to reverse that.  We are powerful enough to download a record you put on the internet via one of those peer to peer networks, copyright that album, turn it into a money maker for us and then drag you in here and make you pay for the very act of theft that we perpetuated on you.”  The judge pounded his gavel.  It was the only realistic prop in all of this.  He pronounced sentence and he called for the bailiff.  The accused were removed, but only for a short while.

Five:

Frantz was sitting in a cubicle that had once been his courtroom.  That had been nearly three weeks before.  Now this cubicle was his office.  He worked here eight hour shifts, five days a week and was even allowed one of them for lunch.  It was lunch that Bourge was now inviting him to.  And it was to this that Frantz was responding. “Give me a minute, Carey says the fourth album I wrote this week isn’t similar enough to the over three . . . and he wants this corrected before I go home today.”  Bourge thought about asking Frantz why he didn’t just submit one of the other three albums he already turned in that week . . . or for that matter one of the five he turned in the week before.  But Bourge did not ask these questions, deep inside he knew the answer and knew that those kinds of answers had to be ignored.  So he just jangled the chain on his hip and raised his hand to his green mohawked head.  He fiddled the ring in his nose and realized that the training courses had been right . . . it was in fact much harder to be an individual on the inside when you focused so much on being one on the out.  He tapped Bourge on the shoulder saying “See ya buddy.” and shuffled off to the cafeteria with no more thoughts on the silly lament that neither he nor Frantz were good to music.