Pearl Jam, Girl Scouts, Piracy, and Ironic Incompetence

Pearl Jam has a new album out. Backspacer is available today, semi-exclusively at one major retail outlet and hundreds of independent record shops, including locally in Northeastern PA at the Gallery of Sound.

Backspacer was produced and is being distributed independently of any major music label, as is described in this report from All Things Considered. I appreciate the fight that Pearl Jam is putting up against the music industry, where major corporations routinely exploit, bleed dry, and toss aside musical acts as a matter of everyday business, and I hope that their new album sells as well as it would have if they were still associated with their former label. As soon as I get some time off, Ill pick one up.

I used to work in the music industry. (I used to work in a lot of industries for a lot of different companies, all while staying in the same place. Life is strange.) So I can also appreciate the industry's constant battle against music piracy and illegal downloading. Which is why I was a little surprised this morning when I heard a spot for girlsgotech.org, a project of the Girl Scouts, in which two girls sing a song to the tune of "Miss Mary Mack" in which they sing the praises of technology - especially technology that allows you to download music off of the Internet. Now, I'm not sure if they were talking about the joys of illegal bittorrents or the wonders of Apple's iTunes store, which apparently has allowed people to walk around with $150 iPods loaded with $10,000 worth of songs downloaded a dollar at a time. (How does that work, anyway?)

I wanted to find the actual ad itself so you could hear what I'm talking about. I haven't found it yet, but I did find a page on the girlsgotech.org that has links to all of the ads that are currently running. (Apparently this campaign has been going on for five years now.) Go to that page and try clicking on them.

Go ahead. I'll wait.










...so.

Is it more sad or amusing that the ad links on the Girls Go Tech website don't work? I wonder how much else on that website isn't working. Maybe they need a team of Girl Scouts to swoop in and fix the site?