Alice In Wonderland Remix

Luv this remix (noted on Cartoon Brew) by Nick Bertke. He says 90% of the music is remixed from audio from the Disney (1951) film. You can download the mp3 here.

Getting Real

Bob Lefsetz explains why the music industry is even worse off than I thought, pushing them deeper into the hole they've been digging for years. They are so far removed from what is real and passionate in the art of music and in how people connect to the artists that this must seem perfectly reasonable to them, from a business point of view.

This summer in the east hamptons there will be a 5 concert series, costing $15,000 per ticket which buys entry into all five shows, with Prince, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Tom Petty and Dave Matthews.

He aptly compares this concert series to Mitzvahpalooza where Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks spent $10 million dollars in 2005 on his daughter's bat mitzvah, and hired Don Henley, 50 Cent and Aerosmith among others to play two floors of the Rainbow room in NYC for the event.

Bob's right, it's disgusting for the fans, not to mention the idea of the artform, as well as commentary on the state of our society, which has gotten so gluttonous and cynical that even to people who can't afford it, which is most of us, this kind of thing seems reasonable and in no way a slap on the soul of music as an artform.

BOB is so ALIVE

So, secretly. Who is your favorite guilty pleasure read in the blogosphere? Mine is Bob Lefsetz. Actually, I've subscribed to his email list the past few months, which is easier because he only posts once or twice a day and I really want to read it the minute he puts it out. He's HILARIOUS.

I have been blogging about the music industry, IP, security and privacy, the napsterization of anything but in particular digital media, and how stupid legacy media is for about 5 years. So it's not like he's telling me anything I don't already know. But he's just so DAMN'D funny that I can't help it. He's so totally alive and passionate about music, the music business, the integrity of some people and the loss of control by others. And he podcasts about it too, like the Stubhub/Ticketmaster thing.

SoI love reading him, the minute he puts anything out, because he totally believes! It's great stuff.

Don't expect to see anything you haven't read on the music business before, but do expect to be completely and utterly entertained.

Thanks Hank for turning me onto Bob.

Dylan Does Seuss

The Napster Nation at work.

Dylan Hears a Who:

Where are we? Rise of the Videonet

At my session today at Supernova, with JD Lasica (Ourmedia) as our moderator, and Jeremy Allaire (BrightCove), Jonathan Taplin (USC Annenberg Center), and Robert Levitan (Pando), I mentioned some stats and ideas, and I said I would blog those items. The are below.

The first two sets of stats focus on video hosting sites (places where users can upload video) and their use, as far as uploads and user visits or traffic. The third set of data reflects trends in the types of video we see users making and posting online, with an example or two of that kind of video.

1. Users per day/Uploads per day on a few sites we have seen info about:

ClipShack : 2200 users per day. (source: AdBright).

Google Video: 12.5 million users in month of April. (source: Washington Post).

Grouper: 8 million users per month (source:
PR News but on Alexa, that traffic appears to be a one time spike, where their traffic seems to hover around 3 million users per month) and 500,000 registered users (source: Alexa).

Ourmedia: 28,000 users per day (source: AdBright).

Vidiac: Streaming 2 million videos per day and 3 million users per month (source:
Silicon Beat Comment by Adam Beat)

Vimeo: 20 thousand users per day (source: USA Today, 11/21/05) and 50,000 registered users (source: Vimeo's about pages)

YouTube: 50,000 uploads per day, serving 50 million videos per day, with 6 million users per day (source: You Tube Fact Sheet).

2. There is a list ranking the top ten video sites by market share or traffic, published by Hitwise), May 24, 2006. (Several of the traffic stats found in articles, press releases, advertising, etc., also credited Hitwise for the numbers):

1. YouTube 42.94%
2. MySpace Videos 24.22%
3. Yahoo! Video Search 9.58%
4. MSN Video Search 9.21%
5. Google Video Search 6.48%
6. AOL Video 4.28%
7. iFilm 2.28%
8. Grouper 0.69%
9. Daily Motion 0.22%
10. vSocial 0.09%

3. At Dabble, we are seeing different video genres coming up over and over. Users, as opposed to top down TV video producers, seem to work in areas that are accessible and interesting to them. They are not just copying mainstream production styles. The list below is in no particular order as far as prevalence or audience viewing. We just see them a lot:

1. Mini tv show-style -- It's Jerry Time or Ask a Ninja
2. Videobloggers: telling their own life stories like Ryanne Hodson
3. Genre guys: snowboarding or car videos
4. Commentary: Rocketboom or the Bush Blair video.
5. Indie film shorts like Four Eyed Monsters
6. Random.. silly.. funny.. ridiculous... ephemeral Tag: momwalksin tag: lipsync
7. How-to's that actually show you how to do something in detail or teach: French Pod Class
8. Remixs and mashups: The Presidency Then and Now or Matrix Reloaded or Brokeback to the Future.
9. Interviews like those at GETV.
10. Parodies like the 8up commercial.
11. AMV or anime music videos: Loveless
12. music videos - lipsync sitting at the computer, dancing around with music playing, that in effect, remakes the artists own music video into ones the users like, that stars themselves. Here is Hips Don't Lie.

Microformats and Media

Last night I attended a sort of meet up for people Tara Hunt had invited me to, to talk about microformats and media. She had wanted to start with photos, I think because of Riya, but it became clear after talking a bit that similar elements apply to rich media whether the piece being discussed was a photo or a video or an audio piece. The group started out mostly on computers trying to do a group chat, but I didn't have a computer, so I tried typing notes on Josh Kinberg's computer, but the software wasn't recording everyone's comments and it wasn't all that constructive.

I pulled out my notebook (I hadn't brought my laptop) and started writing a short list of elements that are common across all media types, in terms of what elements users publish over and over either on services like Flickr (and other photo sites) or Blip.tv (or other video sites) or audio sites like iTunes. At this point, everyone put away their laptops (funny how the paper can trump the computer once in a while, and while I don't really do paper, except for my notebook, it works for me at times like this). We centered around the notebook and the common document we were discussing, which consisted of a growing list of my notes:

If you want to know who attended, there are photos on Flickr. But the interesting part for me was realizing what we could make with this microformat, for users to publish with, for the publishing tools like Structured Blogging, which takes microformats and makes them into something bloggers can publish through plugins or through other tools that will be built later.

Microformats, as Tantek explained, need to have a page on the MF wiki that shows use cases that cover 80% of what users do now (as a rule of thumb) though arguments can be made for less, if they are really useful (like tags which are much lower across all users). On the Microformats list, the way Tantek and Ryan run it, it's been hard to tell what they meant by examples. When they would make these requests for examples, and I would then look at what people post for the examples, it didn't make any sense to me. But after talking, I think I understand what they want.

It's like the difference between taxonomy and folksonomy. Microformats come out of bottom up user generated use cases. Where as media metadata formats like SMIL and MPEG come out of top down committees. Not that they are bad, we are using those top down formats too in my other work. But as with taxonomy and folksonomy, so with microformats and top down metadata. They both have value and they each come from very different use cases and points of view.

We agreed that the Media metadata page had examples, and yet, it was overgrown, needed pruning, focused on metadata from the top down, instead of examples of what users do now. So last night Tantek explained what they meant by examples specifically. For example, we need to literally cut and paste a blog post from a user that can be used as an 80% use case, to show something as an example. Fair enough. So now, we need to add these examples in a constructive way, in order to argue the media format elements and microformat need for media publishing. We can think about a short list of elements that users use most of the time, when putting some media online, whether it's a photo at a service, or on their own blogs, or a video or audio piece.

Those elements (from my notes last night) are in the first list, becuase they reflect what I see online, though I will go find stats and use cases to back these up, or argue that the 20% useage of something enriches the whole community and so how far that argument goes -- tags are an example of that.

Base elements:
* Title
* Html URL
* Media URL
* Tags
* Description or quotes (subsets of the object: a video quote and tags/description associated with it, a region annotation note for a photo, or the quote of a podcast and tags/description -- the detail for these subsets exists in the 'more info' section below)
* Creator
* License (defaults to copyright, if none exists, but it's there, by US law, and many other areas of the world)

and for audio and visual:
* Duration

Other info:
(This is not the same for all types of media, and is published by users in very limited ways in practice, or is captured from the device or service or in some way, invisible to the user, and therefore often depends on a service to pick it up.)

The second piece is figuring out the elements and schema that lie around those 80% use cases.

I don't think this is so hard now, despite how chaotic and crazy media metadata can be, where some of that is reflected on the media metadata page. Though that page is a very good attempt to organize the chaos. But I now have a picture of how to make this happen in my mind, that is simple, and gets us to a place where we reflect what users do in practice, bottom up. So, based on my notes last night, I'm going to try to fulfill Tantek's requirements, and see how far I get with it. Will update here with pages as they happen.

Lisa Rein's Songs from the Commons

songs from the commons
on MondoGlobo.net

All songs have one or another Creative Commons licensing, and sez Lisa:

The purpose of this show is two-fold.

On the one hand, I am featuring CC licensed music from the various libraries of it online. Explaining more to artists about how CC-licenses work, and demonstrating that more and more artists of increasingly professional quality are becoming involved in the Commons Revolution.

On the other hand, this show will provide a step by step basic understanding of Copyright Law and how the big cases affect the public, so they can understand better when new cases are decided by the Supreme Court in the years to come.

So basically, if you want to spend five minutes a week learning about Copyright Law, in an attempt to begin to understand what the hell is going on with these landmark cases and how the average person is ultimately affected, while listening to cool music in-between, then you’ll like this show.

This week's focus: The Copyright Bargain {{{MP3}}}

It's hard to move forward in discussing the current copyright situation without first learning a bit of background about the original intentions of the Founding Fathers when they created Copyright and added it to the Constitution. This show will discuss this briefly, and then, in contrast explain the current state of Copyright today.

Great cause and the music is awesome! I especially like Human Nature.

Podding along

I have to say, I just love the pod- thing. I called Peter Hirshberg yesterday and he said hello by way of saying: "hodcasting!" .. made me laugh.

So Doc Searls has posted his second podcast, which I fell into during recording by IMing him.
He's edited it, and it's cute, what with 'the kid' talking all the way through, and Doc trying to figure out how to get all the parts of the audio system up and running.

Nice show. I listened to it while having breakfast today. Starting the day off with Doc and the kid is great.

Bobby Short Died

So, this isn't a napsterization story, but Bobby Short died yesterday, and I loved his work. His music performance was totally analog, and I only ever saw him at the Cafe Carlyle in NY, (which is really old world too) except once at Yoshi's in Oakland. I was taken to the Cafe Carlyle to see him by a friend when I was pretty young, and I was hooked, going back when I could. It was a very expensive indulgence, but on a few occasions over the past two decades it was really fun to touch a rare world that represented great old style, and his singing and engagement with the audience was very elegant, and yet personal, and casual at the same time. It was fun. And I'm sorry he's gone. Rest in peace, Mr. Short.

Bari Koral on Adam Curry

Bari Koral's new song, Aspiring Angel is free for the downloading masses. Adam Curry used it today and Howard Greensteen (or -stein for you finnikee types) got to do the promo on users and developers partying together.

Rock on! We love those mp3 advertisements to go see people perform!

The Musician's Era: Do We Still Say 'Album'?

We use the word, album, to mean several things. We are describing old style vinyl records as in physical media, a metaphorical little box with songs poured into it and packaged for sale, a collection of artistic musical expression, and a particular musician's style and mini-era.

You know it when someone mentions, say, The White Album. They are speaking about a grouping of songs, maybe the idea that they actually purchased it when it came out which would mean they really were referring to vinyl, but they are also talking about the Beatles at a particular time and place in their musical odyssey. And maybe they are also alluding to the Grey Album (BTW, Chilling Effects posted my C&D for that...) that came after. In fact, I would say the Grey Album is an interesting mix of sensibilities: digital music that can be mixed, but with an understanding of 'album as complete musical work' that can somehow coexist in our collective minds right now, in the simultaneous era's analog and digital. So when JayZ put the Grey Album out last spring, we all understood both metaphors of album as a work, and digital remix work. In fact, it is one of the things I found so delightful about the work.

So, now that we've ditched the idea of the little box full of songs, instead buying one song at a time, and we listen to 10,000 song on the biggest remix tape you can imagine via our iPods or phones or whatever, and we don't think about physical media except in relation to the speaker/player system, how will we refer to the musical development and era transitions an artist goes through?

Before, and often still, artists go to the studio (or maybe just crack open their powerbooks) and create a body of work. The assembled songs, in the album format, if successful in terms of an album, would often be similar to a visual artist's gallery show, or a book or movie, as an all encompassing work. The set of songs would be variants, sometimes, or associated in some artistic way. But the concept of the album, the label of it, was what could mark it in our collective minds as a placeholder label that was about the creator as much as the music and time.

When we talk about Brian Wilson in terms of Good Vibrations, verses Pet Sounds there is the meaning of the Beach Boys and Wilson's development artistically. I suppose we could talk about "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" verses "Little Surfer Girl" and it would evoke the differences in the work over time, but the album reference encompasses more. It's richer, marks a lengthier time of development and breadth, conveys a kind of beginning, middle and end to a particular stage of musical meaning, art, style, fashion, references to older work, influence on newer work, etc.

So will musical development change as more people download by the song and musicians know and work with this new way of interacting with music? Or will both musicians and listeners maintain the convention of the reference to an album, even though we don't have them for the other reasons mentioned, to describe an associated grouping of music as a complete work?

RELATED REQUEST:
Also, could someone, Adam Curry, or maybe a podcasting protégé, please start podcasting on what music is about, styles, eras, musician's works and eras? And could they comment on the shifting interactions between the loss of physical media, musical development, listeners and the art of making music? I would love to listen to a show that was about the history of pop music, from the 50s forward, that played examples and exposed me to new stuff. I really only get new stuff from friends or by listening to KALX (the UCBerkeley station) but no one really tackles the lineage of the music, the history, the relationships between styles and eras. I'd subscribe to that RSS feed in a second.

Sunset Scavenger: Claiming Trademark Violation by DJ Zeph
Because you might confuse garbage collection with music...

Intellectual property has so metastasized as an idea for clamping down on all expression, it's gone from Disney protecting mickey, to the garbage company protecting its trucks and name. Wide Hive Records, producer for DJ Zeph, got sued for trademark infringement for use of this image on the CD cover of DJ's latest record, Sunset Salvage, nee Sunset Scavenger. This is the original cover.

Apparently, after the CD was released, Sunset Scavenger, the GARBAGE collection company for San Francisco and the definition of totally clueless, decided they thought their customers might get confused between garbage collection and hip hop music, so they sued to force Wide Hive/DJ Zeph from using both a photo of their garbage trucks, and the title of the CD which is also their company name: Sunset Scavenger. Though I don't think Sunset Scavenger has much of a case (I've never confused hip hop with garbage collection, though there is hip hop music that some people might call garbage), who wants to mess with a garbage company?

I mean, isn't this the proverbial leg-breaking strong-arm business? Would you want to fight with a garbage company over the censorship of your artwork and commentary? To impress on upon them the subtleties of free speech and cultural expression, free publicity and a kind of hipness like they'll never otherwise know? The difference between garbage and entertainment?

Gregory Howe, Wide Hive Records founder and CEO said, "...we thought the likelihood of confusion was non-existent, but we couldn't afford to get dragged through the courts to defend ourselves in the kind of battle that can often take years to resolve."

This is the new cover artwork and new name that Wide Hive now is promoting for DJ Zeph:

Note, if you're lucky, you all bought a first run copy of the CD ... with its now highly collectable artwork. If not, might check eBay to see if the old one is available in a second sale... otherwise, go the Wide Hive and buy the new one directly from them. Songs online for free listening include Floorwax, Shake It On Down (Featuring Boots from "The Coup") and Underscore. Free MP3's make us purrrrrrrr.

Also, iTunes is carrying some of DJ Zeph's work.

Call for Entries: Samping Contest from Three Notes and Runnin'

The first remix is already up at Three Notes and Runnin'.

What's the contest? Make something good by sampling the music and they'll post it to their site. Here are the details:

SEPTEMBER 15, 2004: Michael Bell-Smith and Downhill Battle are seeking submissions for 3 Notes and Runnin', an online music compilation commemorating and protesting The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Case No. 01-00412 (pdf).

In the case, the court found that NWA violated copyright law when they sampled 3 notes of a guitar riff from Funkadelic's "Get off Your Ass and Jam" for their song "100 Miles and Runnin'". The ruling reversed a district court finding that because "no reasonable juror, even one familiar with the works of George Clinton, would recognize the source of the sample without having been told of its source", sampling clearance should not be required.

Hear the guitar riff in question from Funkadelic's "Get off Your Ass and Jam"

Hear a sample of the NWA song, "100 Miles and Runnin'", which contains the sample. (hint: the sample comes in after the line "when in a black and white the capacity is two", and is looped for 16 bars).

In doing so, the court broke from decades of established sample practice by ruling that all samples, regardless of how heavily manipulated or unrecognizable they may be, are subject either to "clearance" (obtaining permission for use of the sample, usually in exchange for money), or litigation. In an instant, this act made the majority of sample based music illegal. For more, read Why Sample Rights Matter.

To protest this decision, we are creating a forum for sample-based musicians and artists to share their own 30 second songs which have been created using only the sample in question. By doing so, we hope to showcase the potential and diversity of sample based music and sound art, and to call into question the relationship between a sample and its use. All entries will be posted on this site as they are received.

Rules for Submission

1. Your song must be thirty seconds in length.

2. Your song must use only the designated two seconds of the intro to Funkadelic's "Get off Your Ass and Jam" as source material. You can slice it, layer it, loop it, stretch it, filter it, smack it up, flip it, and rub it down, but you can't bring any other sounds into the mix.

Download the sample: 1.5 second 44.1 khz 16 bit Aiff 200k

3. All Entries should be encoded as mp3s and emailed, along with artist name, email or URL, and a brief description / statement to mike@burncopy.com. All entries that adhere to the format of the call will be posted to the website.

Participants are encouraged to process the sound in creative, unconventional and excessive manners, stretching the relationship between the finished result and the source material.

Courtesy of Jason Schultz.

I had to Put Something Else At the Top of This

Okay, this is not a napsterization post either. Well, maybe it is. But I had to do something else after the last rant, and my longer essay is too long to read now, as I'm hungover... last night about 11 people came over for sashimi and champagne, and rolls and rolls of sushi, Japanese pastries and oranges in cointreau, and many sakatinis, lots of Riesling, and coindreaus and viogniers from Eric Texier, my favorite coindreau guy. And at the end, well, what could have been the end, they all asked sweetly for the homemade lemoncello. This has become a habit at midnight, after a decadent dinner party. It started last fall at another one where I offered it after dinner with Vin Santo from Siena, and now, 10 or so dinner parties later, they demand it. I'm going to have to go into full production right away, because I'm down to my last two bottles from the last batch. And, being 27 or 29 and a few years younger than me, they can all handle this so much better than I can, at least the next day. But this isn't why I'm writing this.

The real reason is that after, we went around the corner at say 2am, to my friend Bill's for an 80's vinyl dance party. Thankfully, his upstairs neighbor was also attending the dinner party, so we danced til around 4am. Go Go's "Automatic," Cheap Trick, Loverboy, Devo, MJackson (the wall), Madonna "Get into the Groove," etc. Does it matter that they were in the 8th grade when I was at clubs in NY and at college dancing with this stuff? No. We had a blast, though I have certain regrets as I write this right at this moment. But anyway, the topic at hand is just that vinyl, playing records (they have about 1000 of them) is so great, and you know, so much nicer to listen than mp3s, though I love the convenience and portability. Anyway, I'm sure we were violating some digital copyright of late, though we were doing analog, dancing to loud music blasting around Bill and L's place, up to S's and out to the streets. Mmmm, but semi-public performances are fun.

Grey Tuesday is Today

The album is great. Download it here and check it out. Free the grey album! I think if you have or buy both albums already, black and white, you should be able to hear the grey. Grey Tuesday is in support of the Grey Album. Also look at EMI's C&D on Grey Tuesday.

(ps, I had wanted to host it but having just changed hosters, have not figured out how to get it up there on the new stuff, but if I do, I'll update....)

Update: as noted in the comments the link to the Grey Album was shut down Tuesday night.

Yet Another Copyright / Remix Culture Struggle With a Mouse or Why I Get Whiplash Thinking About the Disney Diachotomy

Noah Shachtman/Wired in Copyright Enters a Gray Area look at DJ Dangermouse's new Grey Album, which piled the words from rapper Jay-Z's Black Album on top of the rhythms and chords from the Beatles' legendary White Album, and which caused EMI to C&D'd Dangermouse. Didn't ask permission. The album is no longer underground, and so as it becomes a mainstream hit, it's been "noticed" and therefore is off-limits. Musicians can pay a fee to cover a song, but can't remix without proper blessings.

After eTech, I went to Disneyland and California Adventure (which is relatively new, and did I mention California Adventure is a trademarked name? Trademark is forever, so remember, you can't officially have a California adventure, at least in name, without getting permission). Hadn't been to Disneyland since I was a junior in high school, and before that when I was 9. It's all still there, pretty much the same, except I understand that it's also been rebuilt, perfected, detailed, not to mention the content which is massaged, packaged, sifted and coiffed, though still very clearly derived from other obvious sources.

Most notable, though was the total remix it all is. Every detail, the California architectures and icons, the colors, materials and plants, the cultural references (the golden gate bridge is there in "miniature" at about 50' high, what looks like Sacramento Street near the Presidio, the Santa Cruz boardwalk, the Ahwanee Hotel, Thomas Molesworth, surfer culture - nonstop they pipe in the beach boys in most sections - Monterey Bay and what looks like Paramount Studios) as well as an Aladdin 45 minute test show (testing for Broadway?) that was okay. Parts of it were well done, the sets, the lights, the flying rug, but otherwise it was just okay, too much cheese-musical, OTT on that, but they had tons of remix cultural references to make it updated, quoting and riffing on lines from recent movies (yes, Austin Powers can fit into Aladdin, in case you were wondering), making jokes, etc.

Disneyland was next, and well, it was the rip, mix, burn experience all the way, babe. Seemed much smaller (shorter, as well as less spacious) than I remembered. At the little theatre showing Steamboat Willie cartoons, they outright rip-off Oliver Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, with no parody, no commentary. I was wondering if they don't keep that little display going (it wasn't nearly as busy as other attractions with 75 - 90 minute posted waits) so that their Washington DC lobbyists can say that Steamboat Willie is an integral part of the Disneyland experience and therefore we must protect it by extending copyright.... Maybe not, maybe relatively minor as a reason to prolong copyright protection in the scheme of things (read: Mickey Mouse memorabillia), but demostrating that Steamboat Willie is still part of the program can't hurt.

You mother told you: do as I say, not as I do. Riffing is bad. It's stealing. That riff over there, oh no, we thought the whole thing up and therefore deserve complete protection in perpetuity.

Again, architectural, cultural and older (and out of copyright) artistic and literary references are riffed to the hilt. Went on the teacups, but all the other lines were 75 or more minutes of waiting and this was a three hour trip. Disneyland is primarily three things: rides/games/displays, restaurants and food outlets, and shops to sell Disney merchandise, equally spaced visually as you walk along the perfectly groomed, packaged and manicured streets. We stopped by Mickey Mouse's house where cartoons were showing for those in line to see him:

And took a quick photo of the mouse, who, when asked whether he preferred Roy or Mike, shrugged, threw up his hands and smiled. Er, that smile's painted on. But the shrug was real.

As is Disneyland. Part real, part fantasy. Part their imagination, part other's they've stolen (or riffed) from. But considering that everything, right down to the smallest touches and gestures contains both, you'd think they'd lighten up on the protectionist intellectual property bit. Too profitable, I guess, to turn back now. Whoever has the most lobbyists wins. And that's what Dangermouse is facing.

Cool Catalog of Music Posters

Naoki at Music Posters Archive is doing a lovely job of cataloging music posters he cares about (though they are commercially available for order from another rather ugly site). The nice part are Naoki's comments to the side of each poster he lists, which tell us what he thinks, why a poster matters to him. Nice project blending the blog format, digital media and a love of music.

I would love to know what public domain posters exist, those posters given freely by bands to their fans though still under copyright, as well as posters from a variety of sources besides just the one he currently references.

Coleman Hawkins:

Napsterization of TV and Movies From Internet Piracy?

Holland & Knight, a law firm with worldwide presence, has in their latest newsletter an article on FCC Issues Broadcast Flag Order to Protect Digital Content (by Kristen E. Fligel) about how because of fears of napsterization, the MPAA has pushed the FCC to issue the Broadcast Flag order - meant to combat internet piracy. She notes:

The MPAA reports that as a result of piracy, the U.S. motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion each year in potential worldwide revenue, not including Internet piracy losses. According to the MPAA, "It is safe to assume Internet losses cause untold additional damages to the industry."[1]

This isn't quite right. It is very important to note that the $3 billion per year piracy figure is actually that piracy that occurs outside of internet piracy (people selling homemade DVDs and VHS tapes on the street, for example, with movie content videoed from a movie theater). Internet piracy is actually estimated by Informa Media (a Media Industry research company) at about $92 million per year as of last year, because so few people will hang out waiting for 24-36 hours to download a movie over their thus-clogged high-speed internet connection.

the "...Study, from U.K-based Informa Media, concludes that, Hollywood and other film copyright owners have far more to gain through legal streaming, online subscription, e-tailing of discs and other legit downloads than they stand to lose.... But the sector's main advantage so far is speed and infrastructure (or lack thereof). Online film piracy will only reach the problem level that the music industry is suffering when most homes have super high-speed fiber optic connections, and that's not likely to be pervasive before 2020".

Holland & Knight/Fligel may believe they are writing in an objective manner, but leaving out this information slants the story in favor of the MPAA's assertion that the Broadcast Flag was necessary in the first place, when in fact the real piracy problem is unrelated to internet downloading of movie/TV content. In fact, the MPAA's own representatives have asserted that the BF has a lot of problems.

And as far as foreign piracy, Fritz Attaway has "admitted that there were currently no recorded losses from piracy of broadcast shows." He also admitted "the broadcast flag would still be completely and utterly useless at addressing the problem. The thing leaks like a sieve." Attaway goes on to admit that existing consumer electronics and the analog airways will keep the BF from being effective.

The H&N newsletter does mention the many issues still outstanding, including the analog hole, the fair use problems for users trying to do normal things like time shifting TV shows, the analog to digital and digital to analog problem, whether existing equipment will continue to work after July, 2005 when the BF goes into effect, whether the FCC has jurisdiction to order the BF, whether the BF will motivate competition, distribution and facilitate the digital transition, but the article offers no solutions.

Napsterization of TV and Movies From Internet Piracy?

Holland & Knight, a law firm with worldwide presence, has in their latest newsletter an article on FCC Issues Broadcast Flag Order to Protect Digital Content (by Kristen E. Fligel) about how because of fears of napsterization, the MPAA has pushed the FCC to issue the Broadcast Flag order - meant to combat internet piracy. She notes:

The MPAA reports that as a result of piracy, the U.S. motion picture industry loses more than $3 billion each year in potential worldwide revenue, not including Internet piracy losses. According to the MPAA, "It is safe to assume Internet losses cause untold additional damages to the industry."[1]

This isn't quite right. It is very important to note that the $3 billion per year piracy figure is actually that piracy that occurs outside of internet piracy (people selling homemade DVDs and VHS tapes on the street, for example, with movie content videoed from a movie theater). Internet piracy is actually estimated by Informa Media (a Media Industry research company) at about $92 million per year as of last year, because so few people will hang out waiting for 24-36 hours to download a movie over their thus-clogged high-speed internet connection.

the "...Study, from U.K-based Informa Media, concludes that, Hollywood and other film copyright owners have far more to gain through legal streaming, online subscription, e-tailing of discs and other legit downloads than they stand to lose.... But the sector's main advantage so far is speed and infrastructure (or lack thereof). Online film piracy will only reach the problem level that the music industry is suffering when most homes have super high-speed fiber optic connections, and that's not likely to be pervasive before 2020".

Holland & Knight/Fligel may believe they are writing in an objective manner, but leaving out this information slants the story in favor of the MPAA's assertion that the Broadcast Flag was necessary in the first place, when in fact the real piracy problem is unrelated to internet downloading of movie/TV content. In fact, the MPAA's own representatives have asserted that the BF has a lot of problems.

And as far as foreign piracy, Fritz Attaway has "admitted that there were currently no recorded losses from piracy of broadcast shows." He also admitted "the broadcast flag would still be completely and utterly useless at addressing the problem. The thing leaks like a sieve." Attaway goes on to admit that existing consumer electronics and the analog airways will keep the BF from being effective.

The H&N newsletter does mention the many issues still outstanding, including the analog hole, the fair use problems for users trying to do normal things like time shifting TV shows, the analog to digital and digital to analog problem, whether existing equipment will continue to work after July, 2005 when the BF goes into effect, whether the FCC has jurisdiction to order the BF, whether the BF will motivate competition, distribution and facilitate the digital transition, but the article offers no solutions.

Lisa Rein Sings Too!

She just posted free music and video from her December 13th show in SF here. Man, is there anything she can't do? Writer, video blogger, XML/RDF programmer, teacher, rocker-babe and musician, political activist, and true believer! Check out the In The Spirit video. Lisa is so hot!

Here's the flyer from the show, in the greatest of SF art rock poster traditions:

Lisa Rein Sings Too!

She just posted free music and video from her December 13th show in SF here. Man, is there anything she can't do? Writer, video blogger, XML/RDF programmer, teacher, rocker-babe and musician, political activist, and true believer! Check out the In The Spirit video. Lisa is so hot!

Here's the flyer from the show, in the greatest of SF art rock poster traditions:

Lisa Rein Sings Too!

She just posted free music and video from her December 13th show in SF here. Man, is there anything she can't do? Writer, video blogger, XML/RDF programmer, teacher, rocker-babe and musician, political activist, and true believer! Check out the In The Spirit video. Lisa is so hot!

Here's the flyer from the show, in the greatest of SF art rock poster traditions:

Legal MP3 Blog

Check out LegalMP3Downloads. It's a blog devoted to posting legal mp3 download info. They've aggregated links to a blogload of artists and music, but they are very anti-piracy (see the latest post, an open letter to DVD-Jon). However, the great majority of posts and links go directly to music, and if you want legal mp3 content, they probably link to it.

Nice job on getting so much content together and organizing it (scroll down to see a nav system on the right side).

Legal MP3 Blog

Check out LegalMP3Downloads. It's a blog devoted to posting legal mp3 download info. They've aggregated links to a blogload of artists and music, but they are very anti-piracy (see the latest post, an open letter to DVD-Jon). However, the great majority of posts and links go directly to music, and if you want legal mp3 content, they probably link to it.

Nice job on getting so much content together and organizing it (scroll down to see a nav system on the right side).

Legal MP3 Blog

Check out LegalMP3Downloads. It's a blog devoted to posting legal mp3 download info. They've aggregated links to a blogload of artists and music, but they are very anti-piracy (see the latest post, an open letter to DVD-Jon). However, the great majority of posts and links go directly to music, and if you want legal mp3 content, they probably link to it.

Nice job on getting so much content together and organizing it (scroll down to see a nav system on the right side).

Mediapost On Music, Gets It Wrong In Multiple Ways

Yesterday I got an email from Mediapost with this article: The Record Industry Continues To Crush the Life Out Of the Fans By Cory Treffiletti. I read it, and was interested in seeing the SFGate article (the backup) and in replying to the author.

Here is the reply I tried to post through their email reply box at the bottom of the email column, which didn't work in getting this response into their forum even after multiple tries, here:

Hi, You are a site, and email notification service, devoted to online media, and yet I cannot email the writer of this article (in case you are worried about posting email addresses, there's code to scramble online email addresses to keep spambots from getting them... and there's spam assassins to catch the rest of the spam) and you've emailed me an article without links, so that I cannot directly read the article at SFGate myself or connect your words to that exact link, if I want to blog it or somehow continue the conversation online.

I suggest that you open up your network to the whole internet, so that information is free and flowing, and your conversants can connect with and to you easily. Thanks,

The article itself is on the ASCAP lawsuits filed against an SF tavern owner (Skip's Tavern, on Cortland Avenue, Bernal Heights), who hired bands to play there, and ONLY bands who play original music where they did not have to pay the licensing fees. ASCAP sued, not once but twice, but because they hired a private investigator, who says the bands played covers, though the bands deny it, and specifically have said that they don't even like the cover music ASCAP claims they played. The Mediapost article gets this whole thing completely wrong, and by not linking to the article, makes it hard for readers to get back to the SFGate article, which is the source, to figure this out.

In fact, the real controversy is that the Skip's Tavern doesn't want to keep fighting with ASCAP to have original music playing bands play on their stage, even though ASCAP has no business here, because the music is ORIGINAL, not covers. And the other controversy here is that Mediapost got it wrong, and wouldn't link to the article that sets the record straight.

Treffiletti/Mediapost also assert that the reason the music industry is losing money is that the quality of music has declined, and live performances are good marketing toward this end. The second part is true, but the first is questionable: I'd say there are five or six factors that have all in part caused the decline of the music biz: instead of releasing 38.9k separate titles (like in 2000) the RIAA now releases around 27k per year so there is simply less product (see George Ziemann, owner of Azoz and MacWizards Music, who has analyzed RIAA statistics on music sales), people are done replacing old records with CD's so the intense buying for that reason in the 90's has dropped off, the recession the past three years, piracy on things like KaZaa, general hatred of the RIAA, and the expense until recently of CD's at around $18.99 meant people would by less. These are in addition to the lowered quality of music.

Treffiletti/Mediapost are playing like old media, where they assert things, and then make it hard, or technically impossible, to comment as my multiple attempts to use their comment/forum system show, as well as giving no author email, so that my email reply attempt to the original email, which was never responded to and since it was sent from Mediapost's general email address, probably went to spam hell.

Nice conversing with you, guys! How 'bout some new media conversing, where the audience has both eyes and ears, as well as a mouth.

In a related note, see this BuzzMachine post on comments useage in blogs. He, and Fred Wilson, are all for the conversation that is open, and involves the writer, and the audience and lets the links from one writer to the next happen to create the conversation.

THE EMAIL EXCERPT:

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
The Record Industry Continues To Crush the Life Out Of the Fans
By Cory Treffiletti
This is indeed MediaPost's Online Spin, but since I sometimes use this space to critique the music industry (positively and negatively), I wanted to make you all aware of something that recently made the pursuit of illegal downloads look like pre-school behavior.

Have you ever patronized a bar to see a local band consisting of your friends and colleagues? How many times have you sat and listened to a relative unknown sing covers of your favorite songs, with a sprinkling of some originals? Well, it looks like those days may be on the way out if the record industry has their say.

Over the last three years we have all heard repeatedly about the steps the music industry has taken to curb illegal music downloads, but it seems their greed knows no boundaries. In a recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle, a tavern owner was forced to stop featuring live music due to lawsuits filed by ASCAP. The lawsuits held the tavern owner responsible for unauthorized covers of ASCAP copyrighted music by local musicians who were playing in the bar. These bands obviously played the music in homage to their favorite artists, and to showcase their own musical talents, but "spies" from record companies and ASCAP were placed in the crowd and subsequently filed two lawsuits against the owner of the tavern in less than a year. Rather than dealing with these lawsuits, the bar was forced to retire the live music in favor of a jukebox or silence....

...

What are your thoughts?

To respond now, enter your comments below and click 'Post Reply.'

>>>And then there was a "box" to post my reply, which I tried three times, and it never appeared here: "see what others are saying."

Mediapost On Music, Gets It Wrong In Multiple Ways

Yesterday I got an email from Mediapost with this article: The Record Industry Continues To Crush the Life Out Of the Fans By Cory Treffiletti. I read it, and was interested in seeing the SFGate article (the backup) and in replying to the author.

Here is the reply I tried to post through their email reply box at the bottom of the email column, which didn't work in getting this response into their forum even after multiple tries, here:

Hi, You are a site, and email notification service, devoted to online media, and yet I cannot email the writer of this article (in case you are worried about posting email addresses, there's code to scramble online email addresses to keep spambots from getting them... and there's spam assassins to catch the rest of the spam) and you've emailed me an article without links, so that I cannot directly read the article at SFGate myself or connect your words to that exact link, if I want to blog it or somehow continue the conversation online.

I suggest that you open up your network to the whole internet, so that information is free and flowing, and your conversants can connect with and to you easily. Thanks,

The article itself is on the ASCAP lawsuits filed against an SF tavern owner (Skip's Tavern, on Cortland Avenue, Bernal Heights), who hired bands to play there, and ONLY bands who play original music where they did not have to pay the licensing fees. ASCAP sued, not once but twice, but because they hired a private investigator, who says the bands played covers, though the bands deny it, and specifically have said that they don't even like the cover music ASCAP claims they played. The Mediapost article gets this whole thing completely wrong, and by not linking to the article, makes it hard for readers to get back to the SFGate article, which is the source, to figure this out.

In fact, the real controversy is that the Skip's Tavern doesn't want to keep fighting with ASCAP to have original music playing bands play on their stage, even though ASCAP has no business here, because the music is ORIGINAL, not covers. And the other controversy here is that Mediapost got it wrong, and wouldn't link to the article that sets the record straight.

Treffiletti/Mediapost also assert that the reason the music industry is losing money is that the quality of music has declined, and live performances are good marketing toward this end. The second part is true, but the first is questionable: I'd say there are five or six factors that have all in part caused the decline of the music biz: instead of releasing 38.9k separate titles (like in 2000) the RIAA now releases around 27k per year so there is simply less product (see George Ziemann, owner of Azoz and MacWizards Music, who has analyzed RIAA statistics on music sales), people are done replacing old records with CD's so the intense buying for that reason in the 90's has dropped off, the recession the past three years, piracy on things like KaZaa, general hatred of the RIAA, and the expense until recently of CD's at around $18.99 meant people would by less. These are in addition to the lowered quality of music.

Treffiletti/Mediapost are playing like old media, where they assert things, and then make it hard, or technically impossible, to comment as my multiple attempts to use their comment/forum system show, as well as giving no author email, so that my email reply attempt to the original email, which was never responded to and since it was sent from Mediapost's general email address, probably went to spam hell.

Nice conversing with you, guys! How 'bout some new media conversing, where the audience has both eyes and ears, as well as a mouth.

In a related note, see this BuzzMachine post on comments useage in blogs. He, and Fred Wilson, are all for the conversation that is open, and involves the writer, and the audience and lets the links from one writer to the next happen to create the conversation.

THE EMAIL EXCERPT:

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
The Record Industry Continues To Crush the Life Out Of the Fans
By Cory Treffiletti
This is indeed MediaPost's Online Spin, but since I sometimes use this space to critique the music industry (positively and negatively), I wanted to make you all aware of something that recently made the pursuit of illegal downloads look like pre-school behavior.

Have you ever patronized a bar to see a local band consisting of your friends and colleagues? How many times have you sat and listened to a relative unknown sing covers of your favorite songs, with a sprinkling of some originals? Well, it looks like those days may be on the way out if the record industry has their say.

Over the last three years we have all heard repeatedly about the steps the music industry has taken to curb illegal music downloads, but it seems their greed knows no boundaries. In a recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle, a tavern owner was forced to stop featuring live music due to lawsuits filed by ASCAP. The lawsuits held the tavern owner responsible for unauthorized covers of ASCAP copyrighted music by local musicians who were playing in the bar. These bands obviously played the music in homage to their favorite artists, and to showcase their own musical talents, but "spies" from record companies and ASCAP were placed in the crowd and subsequently filed two lawsuits against the owner of the tavern in less than a year. Rather than dealing with these lawsuits, the bar was forced to retire the live music in favor of a jukebox or silence....

...

What are your thoughts?

To respond now, enter your comments below and click 'Post Reply.'

>>>And then there was a "box" to post my reply, which I tried three times, and it never appeared here: "see what others are saying."

Mediapost On Music, Gets It Wrong In Multiple Ways

Yesterday I got an email from Mediapost with this article: The Record Industry Continues To Crush the Life Out Of the Fans By Cory Treffiletti. I read it, and was interested in seeing the SFGate article (the backup) and in replying to the author.

Here is the reply I tried to post through their email reply box at the bottom of the email column, which didn't work in getting this response into their forum even after multiple tries, here:

Hi, You are a site, and email notification service, devoted to online media, and yet I cannot email the writer of this article (in case you are worried about posting email addresses, there's code to scramble online email addresses to keep spambots from getting them... and there's spam assassins to catch the rest of the spam) and you've emailed me an article without links, so that I cannot directly read the article at SFGate myself or connect your words to that exact link, if I want to blog it or somehow continue the conversation online.

I suggest that you open up your network to the whole internet, so that information is free and flowing, and your conversants can connect with and to you easily. Thanks,

The article itself is on the ASCAP lawsuits filed against an SF tavern owner (Skip's Tavern, on Cortland Avenue, Bernal Heights), who hired bands to play there, and ONLY bands who play original music where they did not have to pay the licensing fees. ASCAP sued, not once but twice, but because they hired a private investigator, who says the bands played covers, though the bands deny it, and specifically have said that they don't even like the cover music ASCAP claims they played. The Mediapost article gets this whole thing completely wrong, and by not linking to the article, makes it hard for readers to get back to the SFGate article, which is the source, to figure this out.

In fact, the real controversy is that the Skip's Tavern doesn't want to keep fighting with ASCAP to have original music playing bands play on their stage, even though ASCAP has no business here, because the music is ORIGINAL, not covers. And the other controversy here is that Mediapost got it wrong, and wouldn't link to the article that sets the record straight.

Treffiletti/Mediapost also assert that the reason the music industry is losing money is that the quality of music has declined, and live performances are good marketing toward this end. The second part is true, but the first is questionable: I'd say there are five or six factors that have all in part caused the decline of the music biz: instead of releasing 38.9k separate titles (like in 2000) the RIAA now releases around 27k per year so there is simply less product (see George Ziemann, owner of Azoz and MacWizards Music, who has analyzed RIAA statistics on music sales), people are done replacing old records with CD's so the intense buying for that reason in the 90's has dropped off, the recession the past three years, piracy on things like KaZaa, general hatred of the RIAA, and the expense until recently of CD's at around $18.99 meant people would by less. These are in addition to the lowered quality of music.

Treffiletti/Mediapost are playing like old media, where they assert things, and then make it hard, or technically impossible, to comment as my multiple attempts to use their comment/forum system show, as well as giving no author email, so that my email reply attempt to the original email, which was never responded to and since it was sent from Mediapost's general email address, probably went to spam hell.

Nice conversing with you, guys! How 'bout some new media conversing, where the audience has both eyes and ears, as well as a mouth.

In a related note, see this BuzzMachine post on comments useage in blogs. He, and Fred Wilson, are all for the conversation that is open, and involves the writer, and the audience and lets the links from one writer to the next happen to create the conversation.

THE EMAIL EXCERPT:

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
The Record Industry Continues To Crush the Life Out Of the Fans
By Cory Treffiletti
This is indeed MediaPost's Online Spin, but since I sometimes use this space to critique the music industry (positively and negatively), I wanted to make you all aware of something that recently made the pursuit of illegal downloads look like pre-school behavior.

Have you ever patronized a bar to see a local band consisting of your friends and colleagues? How many times have you sat and listened to a relative unknown sing covers of your favorite songs, with a sprinkling of some originals? Well, it looks like those days may be on the way out if the record industry has their say.

Over the last three years we have all heard repeatedly about the steps the music industry has taken to curb illegal music downloads, but it seems their greed knows no boundaries. In a recent article from the San Francisco Chronicle, a tavern owner was forced to stop featuring live music due to lawsuits filed by ASCAP. The lawsuits held the tavern owner responsible for unauthorized covers of ASCAP copyrighted music by local musicians who were playing in the bar. These bands obviously played the music in homage to their favorite artists, and to showcase their own musical talents, but "spies" from record companies and ASCAP were placed in the crowd and subsequently filed two lawsuits against the owner of the tavern in less than a year. Rather than dealing with these lawsuits, the bar was forced to retire the live music in favor of a jukebox or silence....

...

What are your thoughts?

To respond now, enter your comments below and click 'Post Reply.'

>>>And then there was a "box" to post my reply, which I tried three times, and it never appeared here: "see what others are saying."

What Will Consumers Pay for Digital Downloads for Albums Verses CDs

Consumers Expect Substantial Savings On Digitally Distributed Albums from © Ipsos.

Sweet spot for CD's? $11.99. Sweet spot for an album's worth of digital downloads? $7.99. Gett'em while they last.

What Will Consumers Pay for Digital Downloads for Albums Verses CDs

Consumers Expect Substantial Savings On Digitally Distributed Albums from © Ipsos.

Sweet spot for CD's? $11.99. Sweet spot for an album's worth of digital downloads? $7.99. Gett'em while they last.

What Will Consumers Pay for Digital Downloads for Albums Verses CDs

Consumers Expect Substantial Savings On Digitally Distributed Albums from © Ipsos.

Sweet spot for CD's? $11.99. Sweet spot for an album's worth of digital downloads? $7.99. Gett'em while they last.

Perspectives on Napsterization

From Lucas Gonze:

Tania's roommate Chris is a rock musician. He's a hip guy, skinny, slack, low key, playing in a band cool enough to tour a bit. I am not hip. I am a post-bohemian comp sci guy, balding, with a spreading waist, almost 40. So it was very wierd when it came out the other day that Chris agrees with the RIAA sue em all strategy. And then it struck me: in the magical backward world created by Napsterization, rock musicians are The Man. Chris is The Man, and I'm not?! Huh?

Perspectives on Napsterization

From Lucas Gonze:

Tania's roommate Chris is a rock musician. He's a hip guy, skinny, slack, low key, playing in a band cool enough to tour a bit. I am not hip. I am a post-bohemian comp sci guy, balding, with a spreading waist, almost 40. So it was very wierd when it came out the other day that Chris agrees with the RIAA sue em all strategy. And then it struck me: in the magical backward world created by Napsterization, rock musicians are The Man. Chris is The Man, and I'm not?! Huh?

Perspectives on Napsterization

From Lucas Gonze:

Tania's roommate Chris is a rock musician. He's a hip guy, skinny, slack, low key, playing in a band cool enough to tour a bit. I am not hip. I am a post-bohemian comp sci guy, balding, with a spreading waist, almost 40. So it was very wierd when it came out the other day that Chris agrees with the RIAA sue em all strategy. And then it struck me: in the magical backward world created by Napsterization, rock musicians are The Man. Chris is The Man, and I'm not?! Huh?

Madonna's Selling Direct

Here. Her new single, "American Life," is $1.49. C|Net has the scoop on Madge.

Madonna's Selling Direct

Here. Her new single, "American Life," is $1.49. C|Net has the scoop on Madge.

Madonna's Selling Direct

Here. Her new single, "American Life," is $1.49. C|Net has the scoop on Madge.

The Copyright Wars Heat Up

With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

And this from the Economist:

...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."

What can you say. Spot on.

The Copyright Wars Heat Up

With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

And this from the Economist:

...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."

What can you say. Spot on.

The Copyright Wars Heat Up

With this: KaZaa is suing the RIAA. Apparently the countersuit is meant to assert that they have “obscenely” abused their copyright powers.

And this from the Economist:

...Certainly, the content industries are likely to experience the most upheaval. They may be able to retard the growth of copying on the internet for a time, but they cannot hold back the advance of technology altogether. This will undermine their existing business models, based as they are on print, analogue broadcasting and the sale of physical products such as compact discs. Even if the “total copyright protection” scenario sketched above prevails, content providers will have to reinvent themselves."

What can you say. Spot on.

NET Act May Be Coming to You

Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.

On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.

NET Act May Be Coming to You

Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.

On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.

NET Act May Be Coming to You

Declan McCullah of Cnet recently wrote a piece on an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft Act (1997) which could be used soon by the Justice Department to prosecute P2P file sharing pirates. Several US Senators sent a letter last summer to the DOJ asking for this, but not much came of it. However, according to the article, the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance have been active with the DOJ in pursing this. Apparently there have already been some successful convictions using the NET Act, but not for P2P piracy. While the odds of being the test case are low, it may be that someone somewhere soon is the target. Of course, if this happens, the NET Act won't be obscure for long.

On a related note, a consortium of music sellers including Best Buy, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment, Virgin Entertainment and Wherehouse Music has decided to collaborate to sell digital music online. So there may soon be better alternatives to P2P piracy on the way.

25 Lessons in HYPNOTISM

by Ethan Persoff / Horse Music: Music made from other music. 13 Tracks, recorded March through September 2002, posted online January 2003. I just love internet distribution; it's the access we get to so many things that would have been so difficult to find, the access to so many customers that can now be reached, the material that would have been impossible to make money on when it had to all be recorded on physical media in order to be distributed.

1st track, introduced by Loren Greene. Very nice. Freebasing the internet never felt so good.

25 Lessons in HYPNOTISM

by Ethan Persoff / Horse Music: Music made from other music. 13 Tracks, recorded March through September 2002, posted online January 2003. I just love internet distribution; it's the access we get to so many things that would have been so difficult to find, the access to so many customers that can now be reached, the material that would have been impossible to make money on when it had to all be recorded on physical media in order to be distributed.

1st track, introduced by Loren Greene. Very nice. Freebasing the internet never felt so good.

25 Lessons in HYPNOTISM

by Ethan Persoff / Horse Music: Music made from other music. 13 Tracks, recorded March through September 2002, posted online January 2003. I just love internet distribution; it's the access we get to so many things that would have been so difficult to find, the access to so many customers that can now be reached, the material that would have been impossible to make money on when it had to all be recorded on physical media in order to be distributed.

1st track, introduced by Loren Greene. Very nice. Freebasing the internet never felt so good.

BubbRubb Mixes Audio and Video

Cool stuff. Check it out.

BubbRubb Mixes Audio and Video

Cool stuff. Check it out.

BubbRubb Mixes Audio and Video

Cool stuff. Check it out.

Rage Against the Machine Say Yes to Downloading

Looks like somebody's in conflict with somebody else over what it means to get napsterized....

Rage Against the Machine has posted an exclusive collection of free audio downloads and video streams on its official website as a gesture of goodwill toward fans who were recently banned from Napster for downloading tracks from the group's new album, "Renegades" (Epic/Sony). The ban was enacted by the group's management and record label without RATM's consent, according to a statement from guitarist Tom Morello.

Your classic artist verses industry tiff. If only the industry could see that loss leaders work for Safeway, and might for the music biz also. Oh well.

Rage Against the Machine Say Yes to Downloading

Looks like somebody's in conflict with somebody else over what it means to get napsterized....

Rage Against the Machine has posted an exclusive collection of free audio downloads and video streams on its official website as a gesture of goodwill toward fans who were recently banned from Napster for downloading tracks from the group's new album, "Renegades" (Epic/Sony). The ban was enacted by the group's management and record label without RATM's consent, according to a statement from guitarist Tom Morello.

Your classic artist verses industry tiff. If only the industry could see that loss leaders work for Safeway, and might for the music biz also. Oh well.

Rage Against the Machine Say Yes to Downloading

Looks like somebody's in conflict with somebody else over what it means to get napsterized....

Rage Against the Machine has posted an exclusive collection of free audio downloads and video streams on its official website as a gesture of goodwill toward fans who were recently banned from Napster for downloading tracks from the group's new album, "Renegades" (Epic/Sony). The ban was enacted by the group's management and record label without RATM's consent, according to a statement from guitarist Tom Morello.

Your classic artist verses industry tiff. If only the industry could see that loss leaders work for Safeway, and might for the music biz also. Oh well.

Matt Johnson of The The on The Boss and How He Ain't Gonna Take It No Mo

The The Verses The Corporate Monster:

After much deliberation I have decided to offer track by track, week by week free downloads of my latest album 'NakedSelf' from my official website: www.thethe.com.

This decision has not been taken lightly and below I explain the reasons why. As the tensions between artist and merchant are rising very fast I also want to stress the positive in this statement as I think this is an exhilarating time to be involved in music.

See this movie of an interview with Matt Johnson: .

And here's a link to listen to their singles:

Matt Johnson of The The on The Boss and How He Ain't Gonna Take It No Mo

The The Verses The Corporate Monster:

After much deliberation I have decided to offer track by track, week by week free downloads of my latest album 'NakedSelf' from my official website: www.thethe.com.

This decision has not been taken lightly and below I explain the reasons why. As the tensions between artist and merchant are rising very fast I also want to stress the positive in this statement as I think this is an exhilarating time to be involved in music.

See this movie of an interview with Matt Johnson: .

And here's a link to listen to their singles:

Matt Johnson of The The on The Boss and How He Ain't Gonna Take It No Mo

The The Verses The Corporate Monster:

After much deliberation I have decided to offer track by track, week by week free downloads of my latest album 'NakedSelf' from my official website: www.thethe.com.

This decision has not been taken lightly and below I explain the reasons why. As the tensions between artist and merchant are rising very fast I also want to stress the positive in this statement as I think this is an exhilarating time to be involved in music.

See this movie of an interview with Matt Johnson: .

And here's a link to listen to their singles:

DJ Shadow Samples...

He talks about how hard it was to clear rights for his work in an interview with David Krinsky/Rolling Stone:

Clearing samples is always difficult and interesting and time consuming and frustrating. It really shows you that the legal profession is really just who talks the best talk and who fights the best fight. It's just all semantics and who wants it more and who is glib and who is the biggest BSer . . . It is quite unsettling as an artist. The music that I make is a collage medium. The music industry and the legal profession need to update the way they think about samples. The way it's done now, lawyers still pretend like it's some great infringement -- an affront to everything musical, which we all know is not the case. Sampling has been around long enough. There are many classic songs that everyone loves that are made from samples. So to try to pretend that it's some sort of "How dare they!" is just silly.

Check it out. Good discussion on how he feels about downloading verses bootlegging, and why one is okay but the other, making money off artists without paying them, is not okay.

DJ Shadow Samples...

He talks about how hard it was to clear rights for his work in an interview with David Krinsky/Rolling Stone:

Clearing samples is always difficult and interesting and time consuming and frustrating. It really shows you that the legal profession is really just who talks the best talk and who fights the best fight. It's just all semantics and who wants it more and who is glib and who is the biggest BSer . . . It is quite unsettling as an artist. The music that I make is a collage medium. The music industry and the legal profession need to update the way they think about samples. The way it's done now, lawyers still pretend like it's some great infringement -- an affront to everything musical, which we all know is not the case. Sampling has been around long enough. There are many classic songs that everyone loves that are made from samples. So to try to pretend that it's some sort of "How dare they!" is just silly.

Check it out. Good discussion on how he feels about downloading verses bootlegging, and why one is okay but the other, making money off artists without paying them, is not okay.

DJ Shadow Samples...

He talks about how hard it was to clear rights for his work in an interview with David Krinsky/Rolling Stone:

Clearing samples is always difficult and interesting and time consuming and frustrating. It really shows you that the legal profession is really just who talks the best talk and who fights the best fight. It's just all semantics and who wants it more and who is glib and who is the biggest BSer . . . It is quite unsettling as an artist. The music that I make is a collage medium. The music industry and the legal profession need to update the way they think about samples. The way it's done now, lawyers still pretend like it's some great infringement -- an affront to everything musical, which we all know is not the case. Sampling has been around long enough. There are many classic songs that everyone loves that are made from samples. So to try to pretend that it's some sort of "How dare they!" is just silly.

Check it out. Good discussion on how he feels about downloading verses bootlegging, and why one is okay but the other, making money off artists without paying them, is not okay.

Copyright Resources

From Ricci Street. And specifically stuff on the Napster case.

Copyright Resources

From Ricci Street. And specifically stuff on the Napster case.

Copyright Resources

From Ricci Street. And specifically stuff on the Napster case.

Algebra, Say Courtney, Will Save Us

"The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid" says our lady of perpetual responsibility, who goes all napstery on us with Courney Does the Math.

Algebra, Say Courtney, Will Save Us

"The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid" says our lady of perpetual responsibility, who goes all napstery on us with Courney Does the Math.

Algebra, Say Courtney, Will Save Us

"The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid" says our lady of perpetual responsibility, who goes all napstery on us with Courney Does the Math.

OD2 Opens the Gates to Music

On Demand Distribution, Peter Gabriel's two year old venture, recently did a did a one day/500 free download promotion for people from Ireland/England. Testing the waters on digital distribution, I see.

OD2 Opens the Gates to Music

On Demand Distribution, Peter Gabriel's two year old venture, recently did a did a one day/500 free download promotion for people from Ireland/England. Testing the waters on digital distribution, I see.

OD2 Opens the Gates to Music

On Demand Distribution, Peter Gabriel's two year old venture, recently did a did a one day/500 free download promotion for people from Ireland/England. Testing the waters on digital distribution, I see.