What if libraries were never born?

Sniffle. I fondly remember the days when I'd go trekking up the hill in the blazing heat of Albuquerque, past open fields of prairie dog holes and a Circle K...to visit the public library. Well, sometimes mom would drive me, too. And it was only a few blocks. I digress. Over on the Freakonomics blog, there's an interesting post about what would happen today if libraries had never existed and we tried to create one as a brand new previously unheard of endeavor. What? Give away books for FREE? Let people use, savor, and internalize their content without paying for it? Multiple times? Yeah, they're right. It would never fly. The big publishing houses and the big box booksellers and oh...I dunno, Clear Channel would probably all freak out and lobby lobby lobby and demand that every book be paid for before any valuable information could be leached from its pages...all in the best interests of the authors, of course. (::cough cough:: and their own pockets ::cough cough::) While we have libraries, and I've been expanding my brain on the good words of poets and novelists and essayists and historians for years, this debate is wild and a'ragin' (like that? That's a fake word with TWO apostrophes in it. Probably picked it up from a book in the library) over in the land of Music+Commerce. Should music be free? Books can be read for free. Why can't we listen to a CD for free? Why is the RIAA so concerned with nickle and diming every last cent out of every album sale? Why have they wasted so much time, effort, and customer loyalty on lame encryption that actually gives people's computers a security defect? I'll give you a hint: it's not because they're concerned the songwriter on track 9 won't get paid for the CD sale. Am I SAYING CDs should be free? Not at all. That would be like shooting my foot while it's in my mouth...or something. I hope to make some dough from my art on discs. (Or perhaps my art in files...downloaded by you in your PJs. Whatever works.) That's part of being a musician. Some of us don't like to admit it, but we pay rent and eat Ramen, too. But but but -- much like Freakonomics argues that libraries do several things to help the book industry -- like foster lifelong readers who buy books, introducing people to new authors, letting people just try things out...this can be said of music. too. Maybe I won't buy a random CD off a shelf just because the cover is pretty...but what if my friend emailed me a track and I liked it? I would buy the rest, or go looking for more by that artist. Or even just buy that track, which is $0.99 more spent on that band than would have been if I had never been exposed...for free. Maybe iTunes making it to easy to hack up an album into bits is bad...I am a big believer in the album as a whole entity. Then again, if a crowd of 1000 hears me play a song, and 400 people go home and download that track for a buck, that's awesome. Those 400 people probably wouldn't all have laid down $15 for a full CD, but with the download model I've got my song in 400 new heads. Am I losing money? Am I gaining exposure? Which is better? A wise person once told me, "You can die from exposure, not from too much cash." This is true, I guess. There's no definitive opinion to end this blog post tonight, folks. I'm just thinking out loud.