I don't know. It seems a bit apples and oranges. Yes, on its base level, it's the "music without paying for it" (particularly the "straight up shoplifting" bit, which made me laugh. I think I might have stolen one cassette from Shopko when I was much younger).
But taping shit off the radio onto a cassette? Yeah, you can get shitty mp3s off the internet and many people don't care about the quality, but I'm with the argument that it's not the same thing, because "exact" (see quality) digital copies is not the same thing of having a shitty cassette tape that might break, sound crappy, and if you're lucky, had the whole song without the DJ talking over the intro.
I didn't take away from Lowery's piece that this is all new and no one ever found a way to steal music before, but that's all this guy seems to be focusing on. You can't deny that the easy, immediate access to millions of digital pieces of music is different than the "old school" ways of stealing music. I don't understand why he took such offense to the piece.
That being said, this section is amazing because it just about sums up a good chunk of my own early teenaged years. (And also, that "Ship of Fools" song is GREAT. I need to go hear it now.)
Taping Off The Radio
This was hilarious. I would psychopathically hound DJs at Q107 or WAVA to play this or that song. I would call the request line until my finger fell off from dialing. Please Please Please play Life In A Northern Town by Dream Academy in the next 20 minutes I have soccer practice at 4!!!! And then I'd sit. With my finger on the record button on my boombox. With more laser-like focus than a Central Park squirrel waiting for a German tourist to drop their pretzel. Please don't let the preceding song overlap too much; Please don't talk over the intro you douchebag DJ; Please no ads for Jerry's Ford ruining the ending. I always kept a tape ready in my boombox in case of suprises. The day that Q107 played "Ship Of Fools" by World Party--an unusual tune in the context of 80s pop radio, with weird sounds and misanthropic lyrics, my idea of a good time and probably an error that got a DJ fired--I swear to god I knocked over every piece of furniture in my room to hit record.
I also used to go to my friends' houses with my little portable cassette recorder and tape their 45s by holding the recorder up to their record player. We were lucky if their brothers and sisters weren't making tons of noise out in the hall, or if the music weren't interrupted with me saying "SHHHH!" twenty times.