Ask not for whom the bell tolls, mp3 blogs. It tolls for thee.

There's an interesting flame war debate brewing over at Stereogum about the posting of un-downloadable streams instead of mp3s, if all that a song's "people" will allow is a stream. The gummers want to know: would their readers rather have a stream that they can't download, or nothing at all? Predictably, there are some "teh RIAA sux" comments scattered about in there, but I was pleasantly surprised to see so much reasoned dialog taking place. "Dan" said it best (with the perfect tinge of combativeness and condescension) when he said:

If you said no to streams, you are, plain and simple, not an intelligent person.

Also, if you treated the question as "Streams Vs. MP3s," you're potentially not an intelligent person. Of course it's nicer to have something you can "take" with you.

You're here because you like music. If you won't listen to new music because of some childish irrational preference, don't, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted. It just means you're spoiled and entirely too picky about the way you listen to something for free.

Idolator is concurrently tackling a similar issue:

From now on, we will not host "leaked" pre-release tracks that have not been sanctioned for posting by record labels. However, because a leak is newsworthy, we'll continue to link to sites that carry them when we come across them in our websurfing, and we'll maintain our "Leak Of The Day" feature, albeit in a new format.

When tracks from the new White Stripes record leaked, I was amazed to see how quickly the blogs Hype Machine was linking back to were being shut down -- Not "track removed at label's request"-ed. Shut down. Cool new music blog community Mog allows users to upload songs they blog about for streaming (and embedding anywhere!) via flash player, simultaneously covering their ass and making users question whether it's worth the effort to create a new ^zShare account. Is it too soon to claim that the pendulum is beginning its slow, deliberate swing back towards piracy-as-unfashionable?

Don't get me wrong. Piracy is never going away. Never ever ever. And until the purveyors of the content get their heads on straight, it will remain fairly rampant. But I think we're seeing the beginning of the end for those who unabashedly wave the flag of piracy as a badge of honor. Blogs are a big enough deal now to have to play by the rules. And that's okay.