While touring Australia to promote new Twitter and Facebook features on Xbox Live as well as his own recording – “You Can’t Touch This” – appearing on the Lips: Number One Hits Xbox 360, Hammer talked about the future of music in the digital age.
“The CD is now the wax album and so it is a collector’s item for people who collect music and love to look at the liner notes and feel paper,” Hammer said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. “I don’t know what would turn them on about having to go through that terrible exercise of trying to open the packaging – it’s unbelievable when you’re trying to open a CD, right? You need a box cutter … it’s a tough deal to get it open. And once you get it open … you go and upload it to your computer.”
A self-professed “geek” who claims to have lost count of how many Xboxes and flat screens he owns, Hammer spoke up against record labels suing peer-to-peer network users for music piracy, saying it was the “wrong strategy.”
He also had a few things to say about Australian film companies pressuring ISPs to block users from trading unauthorized movies.
“When there is a murder done with the gun, do they go back to the guy who sold the gun at the store and arrest him? No they don't. They arrest the person who did it. So in this particular case, somebody is stealing content using the freeway. You can’t go back and sue the construction men,” Hammer said.
“You have to be ever open-minded when you’re dealing with legal, but on the surface, I would say that it would seem like they’re going after the wrong party.”
Click here to read the complete Sydney Morning Herald article.