Another Great Music Lie Exposed

July 23, 2008 -- Every so often, someone throws a free concert in New York's Central Park and hundreds of thousands of people are reported to be in attendance. But you can't quite squeeze 50,000 into Central Park. (Read More)

Music and Economics

July 15, 2008 -- Peter Gabriel recently discussed the trend of people embracing music with depressing lyrics, providing the perfect opportunity to examine a paper from 1995 that accurately predicted the current state of the music industry, including the lack of creativity. (Read More)

Eliminating the Competition

July 8, 2008 -- I'm trying to imagine the reaction of Trent Reznor or Thom Yorke the first time their computer tells them that the ability to make a stereo mix has been disabled. Okay, the first thing they'd do is probably laugh. But after that... (Read More)

Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom

Re-Mastering Hayden's Wall

July 2, 2008 -- Having lost a hard drive back-up, I was forced to return to a second back-up set to retrieve the Hayden's Wall material. I opened up one of the sessions and instantly saw that I hadn't learned some of my best tricks when this CD was mastered, including how to make decent-sounding mp3s.

The cool thing about digital is that it's never too late to do it right.

For comparison purposes, I give you both versions of "Road to Nowhere." I think the difference may be enough to make remixing the entire thing worthwhile.

Road to Nowhere -- Original -- Remixed

RIAA's Argument Hits the Wall

June 30, 2008 -- With the presiding judge having independently decided that the RIAA's only victory was an "error of law," the RIAA counters with "No, it wasn't. And by the way, we don't think we need any evidence, either." (Read More)

Making Your Own Incentive

June 29, 2008 -- Last week, I put the music section of the site on "pause" while I tried to figure out something, anything, to solve the problem of how to squeeze a few bucks out of the audience without being all RIAA about it. Realizing that I'm certainly not the only independent musician with this dilemma, I've got an idea that seems easy enough to implement and should work for everyone from the kids down the street to Bruce Springsteen, without involving a record label, plastic discs, selling songs, lying or whining. (Read More)

Things That No Longer Exist

June 27, 2008 -- Recently, the Associated Press suffered some sort of brain aneurysm or a tumor or something that caused it to suddenly decide that linking to their stories or quoting from them comprised copyright infringement. Then their disease progressed to the delusionary state, prompting them to declare that the principle of fair use is limited to exactly four words. Just prior to this announcement, the guys over at TechCrunch made their own declaration -- The AP no longer exists.

I've got a whole list of things that don't exist, which includes pretty much every artist that the RIAA represents. (Read More)

Judge Awards Tanya Andersen $107,834

June 26, 2008 -- The RIAA's refusal to admit their mistake in suing Tanya Andersen for copyright infringement (despite a total lack of evidence), has resulted in a judge's decision awarding almost $108,000 to Andersen for attorney's fees. U.S. District Judge James A. Redden of Oregon wrote in his decision that awarding attorney's fees to the prevailing party is "the rule rather than the exception" under the Copyright Act, and such fees "should be awarded routinely."

Will this change the RIAA's practice of endless litigation to avoid admitting a mistake? Probably not. But the incentive to demand they try to prove it now has six digits to the left of the decimal point and "should be awarded routinely" if they can't.

Considering the success of the RIAA in this endeavor so far, if you receive a subpoena from them, you may have already won $100,000.

The details are here.

RIAA Claims Radio is Piracy

June 23, 2008 -- Once again failing to acknowledge any legal decisions which they do not agree with, the RIAA has decided to bring up the failed argument from 1922 that broadcasting music is some sort of piracy. (Read More)

MPAA Says Evidence Not Required

June 20, 2008 -- The MPAA, film's version of the RIAA, has finally crossed the thin grey line separating delusion from complete insanity today, as they suggested to a federal judge that "intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement," according to Wired's Threat Level blog.

The money quote comes from their lawyer, who wrote, "Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances."

Like when they have no evidence at all. Or when they sue the wrong person. Or when they simply start picking people randomly out of the phone book. To even suggest that courts should start handing out $150,000 fines with no evidence required to support the allegations is a more practical remedy than the old "innocent until proven guilty" perspective sounds bat-shiat crazy to me.

Clearly, they have departed from the realm of logical thought.

Welcome to Bizarro World

June 19, 2008 -- In the comic books of my youth, occasionally Superman would travel to Bizarro World, where nothing made sense, people did the opposite of what was normal behavior, and logic was a handicap. Bizarro Superman once characterized up his job as, "It am not easy." At the time, he was trying to put food on his family and had misunderestimated the effectification of his strategery. It seemed kind of silly back then. Now, I think I live there. (Read More)

More Photos

June 18, 2008 -- Today's offering: Edgar Winter.

RIAA 'Psychos' Try End Run Around Law

June 17, 2008 -- Step 1 -- Sue someone for "making available." Step 2 -- Drop case before judge can make a ruling. Step 3 -- Re-file same case listing "John Doe" as defendant. Rinse. Repeat.

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