Freeloading
How Our Insatiable Hunger for Free Content Starves Creativity
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Narrated by:
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Chris Ruen
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By:
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Chris Ruen
About this listen
Internet piracy: It’s an eternal battle pitting indies versus corporations, free spirits against the money-grubbing Scrooge McDucks of the world.
Right?
Sort of, sometimes - maybe not. Freeloading takes a critical, cool look at a near-pervasive phenomenon that involves almost everyone who taps a keyboard: Beyond that, it's a reminder of the truism that for every action there are consequences. What happens when we pirate a favorite work of art - a song, book, or movie? And as importantly: What, if anything, can or should be done about it?
Internet piracy has created unlikely allies. On the one hand, there are original creators of content, including artists and corporate copyright holders - on the other, legions of free-spirited consumers who see themselves in the hacker/OWS tradition.
Author Chris Ruen, himself a former dedicated freeloader, came to understand how illegal downloads can threaten an entire artistic community after spending time with successful Brooklyn bands who had yet to make a significant profit on their popular music. The product of innumerable late-night, caffeine-fueled conversations and interviews with contemporary musicians such as Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, Ira Wolf Tuton of Yeasayer, and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, Freeloading not only dissects this ongoing battle - casting a critical eye on the famous SOPA protests and the attendant rhetoric - but proposes concise, practical solutions that would provide protection to artists and consumers alike.
©2012 Chris Ruen (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
After finishing this audiobook, listeners will come away with a new understanding of how piracy hurts creativity. Performing his own book, writer Chris Ruen, a former freeloader himself, offers a critical look at the consequences of freeloading without condescending or scolding listeners. Instead, he presents his arguments in a reasonable and earnest tone, describing the compromises that artists must make in order to make up for the loss of revenue due to piracy. Ruen includes interviews with contemporary musicians such as the Hold Steady and Yeasayer to humanize the problems of stealing creative works. Listeners will also discover practical solutions that will both protect artists and allow consumers to enjoy their work.
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Now in the top 3 best books I've ever read
- By Brian Esserlieu on 05-26-11
By: Eli Pariser
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Who Controls the Internet
- Illusions of a Borderless World
- By: Jack Goldsmith, Tim Wu
- Narrated by: Bob Loza
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Is the Internet erasing national borders? Who's really in control of what's happening on the Net--Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or powerful countries?In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world.
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Mostly delves into questions of law
- By Amazon Customer on 05-07-11
By: Jack Goldsmith, and others
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Risky Is the New Safe
- By: Randy Gage
- Narrated by: Randy Gage
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Risky Is the New Safe is a different kind of book for a different kind of thinking - a thought-provoking manifesto for risk takers. It will challenge you to think laterally, question premises, and be a contrarian. Disruptive technology, accelerating speed of change, and economic upheaval are changing the game. The same tired, old conventional thinking won’t get you to success today. Risky Is the New Safe will change the way you look at everything!
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Very Enjoyable
- By Michael on 04-19-13
By: Randy Gage
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Googled
- The End of the World as We Know It
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jim Bond
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Googled, esteemed media writer and critic Ken Auletta uses the story of Google's rise to explore the inner workings of the company and the future of the media at large. Although Google has often been secretive, this book is based on the most extensive cooperation ever granted a journalist, including access to closed-door meetings and interviews with founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt, and some 150 present and former employees.
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Audio production could have been better
- By David on 11-12-09
By: Ken Auletta
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The Nineties
- A Book
- By: Chuck Klosterman
- Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman, Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. Landlines fell to cell phones, the internet exploded, and pop culture accelerated without the aid of technology that remembered everything. It was the last era with a real mainstream to either identify with or oppose. The ’90s brought about a revolution in the human condition, and a shift in consciousness, that we’re still struggling to understand.
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A Very White Middle-class Take On The Nineties
- By Umar Lee on 02-10-22
By: Chuck Klosterman
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Buying In
- The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are
- By: Rob Walker
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Marketing executives and consumer advocates alike predict a future of brand-proof consumers, armed with technology and a sophisticated understanding of marketing techniques, who can effectively tune out ad campaigns. But as Rob Walker demonstrates, this widely accepted misconception has eclipsed the real changes in the way modern consumers relate to their brands of choice. Combine this with marketers' new ability to blur the line between advertising, entertainment, and public space, and you have dramatically altered the relationship between consumer and consumed.
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Lets you in on the secret...
- By Jeff on 07-06-08
By: Rob Walker
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To Save Everything, Click Here
- The Folly of Technological Solutionism
- By: Evgeny Morozov
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In the very near future, smart “technologies and big data” will allow us to make large-scale and sophisticated interventions in politics, culture, and everyday life. Technology will allow us to solve problems in highly original ways and create new incentives to get more people to do the right thing. But how will such “solutionism” affect our society, once deeply political, moral, and irresolvable dilemmas are recast as uncontroversial and easily manageable matters of technological efficiency?
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The about face shift in view I've been looking for
- By McKane on 03-18-15
By: Evgeny Morozov
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We Are All Weird
- The Myth of Mass and the End of Compliance
- By: Seth Godin
- Narrated by: Seth Godin
- Length: 2 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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We Are All Weird is a celebration of choice, of treating different people differently and of embracing the notion that everyone deserves the dignity and respect that comes from being heard. The book calls for end of "mass" and for the beginning of offering people more choices, more interests, and giving them more authority to operate in ways that reflect their own unique values.
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Says same thing over and over and…….
- By NYNM on 09-25-11
By: Seth Godin
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Dream Year
- Make the Leap from a Job You Hate to a Life You Love
- By: Ben Arment
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 7 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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What if someone could guide you, step-by-step, as you identify, plan, and launch your dream career - in just one year. That's what Ben Arment does in his transformative coaching class, which has helped hundreds of people reinvent their lives to enjoy greater enthusiasm and fulfillment while also making a living. Now he's sharing his best insights, advice, and inspiring true stories in Dream Year. You'll find out how people just like you are discovering (or rediscovering) what they were truly born to do, then following a proven process to make it real.
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Motivational!
- By ajanicad on 03-21-15
By: Ben Arment
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Appetite for Self-Destruction
- The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age
- By: Steve Knopper
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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For the first time, Appetite for Self-Destruction recounts the story of the precipitous rise and fall of the recording industry over the past three decades, when the incredible success of the CD turned the music business into one of the most glamorous, high-profile industries in the world - and the advent of file sharing brought it to its knees.
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Awesome Book
- By Todd on 08-15-09
By: Steve Knopper
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The Impact Equation
- Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?
- By: Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
- Narrated by: Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Three short years ago, when Chris Brogan and Julien Smith wrote their best seller, Trust Agents, being interesting and human on the Web was enough to build a significant audience. But now, everybody has a platform. The problem is that most of them are just making noise. In The Impact Equation, Brogan and Smith show that to make people truly care about what you have to say - you need more than just a good idea, trust among your audience, or a certain number of followers.
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Almost as good as Contagious
- By Bruce on 05-15-13
By: Chris Brogan, and others
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Frenemies
- The Epic Disruption of the Ad Business (And Everything Else)
- By: Ken Auletta
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and profound reckoning with the changes buffeting the $2 trillion global advertising and marketing business from the perspective of its most powerful players, by the best-selling author of Googled. Advertising and marketing touches on every corner of our lives, and is the invisible fuel powering almost all media. Complain about it though we might, without it the world would be a darker place. And of all the industries wracked by change in the digital age, few have been turned on its head as dramatically as this one has.
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Good; not for beginners
- By DV on 10-05-18
By: Ken Auletta
What listeners say about Freeloading
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Martin De Leon
- 03-16-18
Could be much shorter
It starts being pretty interesting, and as a whole is very amusing, but then it goes on and on with the same ideas.
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- Richard
- 04-19-14
Not limited to music
Would you try another book from Chris Ruen and/or Chris Ruen?
Not at the moment. I was disappointed that such a broad topic would be limited to the music industry.
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