Bruce and the boots

I've often wondered about the trade of Springsteen boots and the inability of Sony to do anything to stop it from happening.

Now, whether I should admit this or not I'm not sure, I clamor to get the latest Boss boot and it seems that everyone running sites such as theboots.net, www.brucebase.org.uk and advertisements in Backstreets Magazine are willing to feed that need. My question is, how can people run these sites and/or distribute these boots without legal harassment from Springsteen's label? Do they not want to protect their investment?

It seems to me that the recording companies are still having a hard time figuring out who they should go after for copyright infringement -- take for example the recent ruling on Internet radio. The fact that companies such as live365.com will need to pay millions of dollars to stream music to eager listeners (who actually PAY for the service) seems to be a complete lack of foresight. People who are willing to PAY for online radio are typically the same people willing to PAY for CD's or MP3's. Why is it that the record companies don't go after the guys who bring recording devices into concerts and then release those recordings for profit? I don't get it.

When I was setting up www.springsteentracker.com and was trying to design a custom shirt for the site, I had to go through dozens of designs before the IP folks at CafePress would allow our design -- they were worried about copyright infringement and, to their credit, defended Springsteen's brand in order to protect themselves from his "team" of lawyers who were obviously waiting in the wings to shut them down.

I also notice that the BTX doesn't allow the trade of illegally obtained materials yet there is an active stream of MP3s that are distributed through the site and announcements of live video footage proliferate the forums. Heck, even YouTube removed a slew of Springsteen videos from their site without provocation (this preventative measure must relate to the recent acquisition by deep-pocketed Google).

My personal view is that the more of this stuff that appears, the more time (and money) I invest in the artist. Take the recent Seeger Sessions tour -- I was ABSOLUTELY going to see a show but there were a lot of others who weren't interested...until they saw some early footage on YouTube from the European shows -- almost a try before you buy scenario. I would guess that more than a few people bought tickets as a result of the footage captured and placed on YouTube.

So whether you agree with it or not, bootlegging has opened up some of the best Springsteen material never available on vinyl and, quite frankly, helps us all during the long Springsteen dry spells.

Ramble/Rant over.