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Current News ArchiveThis list of articles is in reverse chronological order (newest at the top). ASCAP's War on Content CreatorsJuly 25, 2010 -- I'm an ASCAP member. Last week, in one of their regular e-mails, came some ridiculous drivel from Paul Williams, as he promotes a fight against Creative Commons, EFF, Public Knowledge and anyone else opposed to the current copyright regime. (More...) Sound Strike Boycotts ArizonaJuly 22, 2010 -- Yesterday, Rage Against the Machine and other artists stepped up to promote an organization called "Sound Strike," the purpose of which is to encourage other acts to boycott performing in Arizona due to our racist anti-immigration law. Could,be a coincidence, but Elton John postponed a Tucson concert last night due to "food poisoning." Normally, the idea of not performing in Arizona would be a problem, since that's where I live and I would like to perform once in a while. However, with Carl in Connecticut, we don't have a lot of gigs lined up right now, I'm still re-working the next album anyway and, to use my favorite derogatory phrase from the 70's, the law does blow dead bears. So, even from where I sit, which is close enough to Mexico (within 25 miles) that the most visible law enforcement is the Border Patrol, the Sound Strike is something that the state deserves. Of course, to really hurt the conservative faction, they're gonna have to get the country stars to sign up for this, too. But the Mariachi bands ought to get a free pass on this one. Stupid Is As Stupid DoesJuly 13, 2010 -- If you agree with me that the RIAA has its head up its ass, you're gonna love this one. In 2008, the RIAA spent more than $16 million on legal fees (attorneys). All of this legal muscle helped them extort, er, collect a grand total of $391,000 from the evil college students that still listen to RIAA music. The best part is that this was a much higher return on investment than 2007 or 2006. Ray Beckerman at Recording Industry vs the People has all the numbers. With that kind of money, you'd think they could afford to go find some talent. Maybe someone that can sing without Autotune or resorting to lip-syncing at live shows. Catching Up on the NewsJuly 9, 2010 -- Okay, I've had an Internet connection for a week now, finally caught up with my e-mail, made a good start on the story of my cross-country trip, but I haven't talked about news yet. The four most significant topics I've seen so far are Sony v. Tenenbaum, Viacom v YouTube, the FBI's retarded approach to copyright, and ASCAP's new insane plan. More... Teaching the Teachers About CopyrightMay 28, 2010 -- The RIAA's education program seems to have missed Tempe, Arizona schools. While it is extremely hypocritical for me to turn someone in to the RIAA for copyright infringement, I am not only inclined, but eager, to make an exception in the case of Laird Elementary School, 1500 N Scovel St, Tempe, AZ 85281. (More...) A Trio of Terrible TalesMay 24, 2010 -- LimeWire is begging the RIAA for a second chance, Apple is getting sued by the RIAA lawyers at the DOJ for not kissing the industry's ass, and Obama is sending troops to Arizona to "protect" us from Mexicans fleeing their decaying country. (More...) Ireland is First European Country to Kiss RIAA AssMay 24, 2010 -- Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing reports that "Eircom, Ireland's largest ISP, has decided to snuffle up to the entertainment industry's hindquarters and become the first European ISP to actively practice '3 strikes': if you are accused (without proof) of three acts of copyright infringement, they will take away Internet access from your entire household for a year." No proof required, just an accusation. So, unlike the U.S., where we can at least publicly humiliate them for trying to sue dead people, children and the homeless, if IRMA (the Irish RIAA) decides your dead grandma is downloading rap music, you lose the internet and there's nothing you can do about it. Bonus features -- Without annoying legal procedures, the response of the accused does not become public record. Plus, they've been taken off the net, so no one on it will hear them complain. ROTFLMAO -- RIAA Lawsuit Campaign Was PR EffortMay 18, 2010 -- David Kravetz at Wired has a nice little chart and a few interesting factoids which illustrate just how badly the RIAA was abusing the court system as it played "Hunt the Pirate." Too bad he didn't overlay sales (or shipments). And this: "The RIAA - representing the world's big four music companies, Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music - has said its lawsuits were largely a public relations effort, aimed at striking fear into the hearts of would-be downloaders." A public relations effort? That's funny as hell. If you think about the meeting where they came up with this genius plan, the jokes write themselves. "Striking fear into the hearts..."? Of who? Seven-year-olds? Dead people and college kids? The true hardcore "pirates" -- the ones they should be looking for -- are exactly the type of people most likely to laugh in their face than be stricken with fear. Just a little less successful than the "war on drugs," the attempt to litigate peer-to-peer out of existence missed the target completely by chasing kids not even old enough to vote instead of hunting for the roots. I thought the RIAA was running a misguided legal attempt to extend and enforce copyright protection. If it was a PR effort, the RIAA intentionally overtaxed the court system for the purpose of publicity. Just another in a long, long list of lies. There's a commonly held belief that the reason musicians need a big record label is for the marketing and PR. The legal "shotgun and sledgehammer" approach was their idea of an effective public relations campaign. They liked it so much they kept it going for years. Just think what they can do for you. Texas School Board Rewriting HistoryMay 18, 2010 -- "We had to go back and make some corrections." Yeah. Otherwise, how would you know that separation of church and state is a myth? Or that what we used to call slavery was really just the "Atlantic triangular trade"? I'll bet you never even considered the influence of Moses on the U.S. Constitution or that the McCarthy hearings were justified. Isaac Newton? Fuggitaboutit. Military weaponry is what science should be about. Seems like it takes a pretty large pile of arrogance and a shortage of brain function to just rewrite history because it didn't happen the way you want it to read. It requires believing that the rest of the country is stupid enough to buy into it this load of bullshit. Most states rely on textbooks written to meet the requirements of Texas' curriculum, so you don't have to live there for the delusional idiots on their school board to fuck up your kid. Concert Experience Found LackingMay 15, 2010 -- Interesting article at the Miami Herald by Joe Cardona, titled, "They don't make concerts like they used to." Kind of general, and I would have liked to see it a little longer and more detailed, but still worth a read. Boycotting the BoycottersMay 15, 2010 -- In an effort to make sure the world understands just how hard and how often they are willing to push the "Stupid" button, Arizona's Tea Party members have decided that the correct response to being boycotted by major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego is to skip Disneyland this summer. That'll teach 'em. The money quote -- "I think it's an intimidation tactic that has caught on and people think if they make enough noise and have big enough tantrum, then they'll get their way." The quiz (answer within linked article) -- Who said it?
I'm surprised they would even consider going to Disneyland in the first place. It's so... multicultural. How do they even get through the parking lot without giving in to their "patriotic" urge to demand that foreigners show their "papers"? The last time I was at Disneyland, we rode the tram with a Japanese family who spoke broken English. Not aware of our true patriotic duty at the time, we (myself and my family) started up a conversation, told jokes, laughed and made friends. I thought it was pretty incredible to meet someone from the other side of the world and befriend them in mere minutes. Silly me. And in the park, my child had already gained a new friend whose family was from India or Pakistan (living in L.A.) because an employee with a broom and dustpan was canvassing the area and they both started singing the "Clean Up" song from Barney. They wrote to each other for almost a year. The point is that for the rest of us, it might be a good time to go. Even if there aren't enough of them to shorten the lines very much, the Happiest Place on Earth cannot help but to be more happy without them and the anger they so proudly carry for anything which does not meet their narrow(minded), hypocritical guidelines. -- GZ Follow-up -- May 16 -- Meanwhile, the governor decides to create a task force to figure out how to convince people to come to Arizona. Hmmm... How about repeal the law that everyone is boycotting us over? No, that won't even be on the list. Terra Firma Saves EMI -- For NowMay 15, 2010 -- They couldn't raise enough from outside investors to keep EMI afloat. They couldn't sell it off to Warner, Universal or Sony. So Terra Firma was forced to dump more money into the record label to keep Citigroup from repossessing it. Now they just have to figure out how to repay the £3.1 billion ($4.6 billion) loan. They've got until 2015. Citigroup may still get it in the long run. More at the New York Times. Audio Mixing Perspectives -- An OpinionMay 15, 2010 -- Since some readers have found my digital recording/mixing techniques from Hurricane Alley's Category One to be interesting, I thought I'd discuss the evolution of my personal approach as I've been working on Category Two. (More...) Arizona Adds Another Racist LawMay 13, 2010 -- You'd think that the fallout from Arizona's recently passed immigration law would make our crack team of legislators think twice before passing another stupid law aimed primarily at Mexicans. You'd be wrong. They did it again. (More...) LimeWire Gets Legal SmackdownMay 12, 2010 -- Limewire's owners took a hit in court today, with a judge deciding they were guilty of everything under the sun, possibly including High School Musical. I read the full court decision, but some of it seems like it came from an alternate universe. It starts out talking about the 13 major record labels, but we all know that there are only four and one of them will most likely cease to exist on Friday. These 13 major labels release "the vast majority" of recorded music in the U.S, according to the court, but in the RIAA's "sample" of Limewire's content only 43.6% belonged to them. Sounds to me like the majority is more interested in something else, which might go a long way in explaining a lot of things, if there were room in a record exec's head to entertain a thought. And what will it change? Not a damn thing. They can eliminate every peer-to-peer service out there and that is simply not going to drive the public back to record stores. For one thing, the stores are gone. More significant is the fact that 90% (or more) of Americans weren't using using peer-to-peer in the first place. Suing Limewire out of existence doesn't create music that those people will want to buy. Sony Eyes EMI, Then Pretends They Didn'tMay 12, 2010 -- On Sunday, Sony Music CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz said that pursuing the acquisition of EMI was "not out of the question." This was reported by, well, everyone. Here are links to the UPI version and the Reuters version. On Monday, the story changed significantly, with a "source" offering the spurious logic that Schmidt-Holtz was not really talking about EMI when he was talking about EMI. Meanwhile, EMI is down to two days to fork up a pile of cash or be taken over by Citigroup. I'm rooting for Citigroup. Music Publishers Take Aim at Other FootMay 9, 2010 -- "I think it will be like shoplifting at stores, in that we're hoping to keep it manageable enough," said David Israelite. president of the National Music Publishers Association (at the New York Times). "It will always exist, just a matter to what degree." The aggregious theft he's talking about? Musicians finding lyrics to songs. What happens when a musician finds the lyrics? Theoretically, the publisher and songwriter might be deprived of less than five cents each at that moment. However, if the musician follows through, learns the song, and then performs it a few hundred times at venues which pay ASCAP and BMI royalties, the musician who grabbed the lyrics has more than repaid their 10-cent fee in royalties earned for the writer/publisher. If ASCAP and BMI never stop in to take note of it, well, that's not our problem. So while we're out making money for the publishers and songwriters every week, this Israelite jerk-off is calling us shoplifters. While this is nothing new, it still pisses me off every time. It's not like we don't have options. We could play the song and sing whatever is visible from the signs on the wall or the label from a bottle of Bud. We could do an instrumental version. We could just mangle the words and not really bother to care if they're right or not. Or we could listen more closely to the album a dozen times to try and figure out what the hell the drunken singer was saying (see "Innagaddadavida"). In reality, however, we probably won't do any of that. Speaking from experience, if I've been asked to do an indiscrenable cover song and I can't find lyrics, it goes back to the bottom of the list or we just find something else to play. How much does it pay the songwriter when we skip over them altogether? Has no one learned a damn thing from the complete disaster that is the RIAA? Not as far as I can tell. I'm just glad these guys aren't out there "helping" me. MPAA Will Soon Control Home RecordingMay 8, 2010 -- On Friday, the FCC granted "cable and satellite providers the power to block consumers from viewing just-released movies in an analog format." The film industry wants to offer movies to home viewers via on-demand services while the release is still playing in theatres. If you don't buy a new TV which allows them to control it, you just won't have access to the new movies. The whole story is at Wired, and my response was simple -- I'm sick and tired of being accused of being a thief by the entertainment industries. So I called my cable company on Friday and cancelled each and every movie channel I was subscribed to. This will save me $360 a year, which would have otherwise gone to the MPAA members, if they weren't such assholes. EMI Sues Citigroup For "Fraud and Lies"May 8, 2010 -- The UK's Telegraph reports, " The lawsuit charges the investment bank with alleged 'fraud' and specifically accuses senior Citi banker David Wormsley of lying about the presence of other buyers in the auction to bid up EMI's price in 2007. Terra Firma, which is run by Guy Hands, also accuses Citi of trying to drive EMI into bankruptcy in order to bring about a long-expected merger with rival Warner Music. "It emerged over the weekend that a leading Citi analyst in the US released a research note eight weeks ago stating that if the troubled music giant does not merge with US competitor Warner Music, then it may go bust. The note has been interpreted by observers as an attempt by Citi to destabilize the business." Fraud in the 2007 bids for EMI? Why did they wait until they were just days from bankruptcy to even bring this up? As for the research note, "if the troubled music giant does not merge with US competitor Warner Music, then it may go bust." As much as I dislike Warner Music, this seems to be a simple statement of fact. In fact, saying they "may" go bust was really a pretty generous statement, as it implies there's a chance EMI won't get repossessed in a week. EMI's lawsuit is asking for £2 billion (about $3 billion in U.S. currency). They owe Citigroup £3.2 billion (US $4.8 billion), so even if EMI wins the lawsuit (not likely), they're still going to owe almost $2 billion. Suing Citigroup seems like the best way to guarantee that EMI gets absolutely no wiggle room whatsoever when time runs out next week. It's just going to piss them off. EMI's owners must realize that they're not going to meet their financial deadline anyway, but this still sounds like a pretty stupid move. Thanks to Jens G. for the heads-up on this one. EMI Is Running Out of TimeMay 5, 2010 -- The sand is rapidly running out of the hourglass for EMI. They have less than 10 days to "submit a 'compliance certificate' to Citigroup showing EMI can meet the terms of its £3.2 billion loan," according the the Times Online. That's $4.8 billion in U.S. dollars. If you read the complete article, as well as the related story about cutting hundreds from EMI's staff, it's easy to see the most likely outcome -- Citigroup is going to own EMI next week. I hope someone videotapes the day that Citgroup's accountants take over and take a look at the books, especially the ones which deal with royalties earned by the artists, who have been auditing EMI non-stop for 40 years. According to former AFTRA attorney Fred Wilhelms, in the entire industry, there have only ever been two audits which showed the artist had been paid what was due them. If bank accountants take over, they're going to quickly discover a huge mountain of debt that EMI has been hiding for decades simply by not acknowledging it exists. I'd advise having medical personnel available, just in case the shock is too much for them. YouTube's Effect on Peer-to-PeerApril 27, 2010 -- A couple of weeks ago my friend, Shmoo, e-mailed me a story idea -- "Video Killed the Radio Star = YouTube killed P2P popularity. Think... and then write something about it." I thought... but I really don't have any information from which to form an opinion. So I wrote to Eric Garland at BigChampagne.com, who actually knows something about this. I asked Eric for a general statement, with the question posed being whether YouTube has slowed down file sharing of music over the past five years or so. Here's what he had to say:
Thanks to Eric for his response; sorry to Shmoo because his theory didn't hold up. YouTube Users Get the Last Word on TakedownsApril 22, 2010 -- For more than a year, YouTube users have been posting parodies of the scene from Downfall where Hitler realizes that he's lost the war and throws a screaming fit. Recently, Constantin Film AG, the producers of Downfall, have started having those clips removed. In response, Plankhead has offered up a new parody of the parody -- "Hitler reacts to the Hitler parodies being removed from YouTube." Thanks to loyal reader Jeff Saxton for pointing this one out. Fun and Fumbling in the SunApril 21, 2010 -- Last weekend's performance had a high degree of difficulty and a couple of disasters, but we got through it. Plus, progress on the Category Two album, the upcoming Cara LaFemme CD, and a look at the suddenly uncertain future of the band. (More...) The Postman Always Rings Twice -- A WeekApril 10, 2010 -- The U.S. Postal Service is more than 225 years old. It seems to be the only government agency that consistently functions properly, and everyone benefits from it. But times are tough so we're going to have to cut back -- it's not turning a profit like the other government services do. (More...) Accidental WisdomApril 10, 2010 -- While the record labels are still blaming mp3s and iPods for their woes, the truth is that 90 percent of Americans (about 270 million people) do not participate in filesharing. So why can't they sell records to any of us, either? (More...) Indie Labels Singing RIAA's SongApril 8, 2010 -- Some independent labels and artists have the same attitude as the RIAA. They think the audience is stealing their stuff, refuse to acknowledge that downloading is perfectly legal, and either want to tax your Internet connection or block all mp3 traffic on the web. In other words, boycotting the dumbasses isn't as easy as just avoiding RIAA product. (More...) Court Says FCC Has No Power to Enforce Net NeutralityApril 6, 2010 -- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a 3-0 decision, ruled that the FCC lacked the authority to require Comcast, the nation's biggest broadband services provider, to treat all Internet traffic equally on its network. (Story at Washington Post) Follow-up -- April 7 -- Interesting discussion about this at Wired. Several people mention something called "competition" between broadband providers, which would assume that more than one company offers it in the same area. The only real choice I see in Phoenix is Cox, although Qwest offers DSL, which might work for you if you're close enough to the source. But it isn't really broadband. Whatever Doesn't Kill You...April 4, 2010 -- ...might not be finished trying yet. It was just a bug (spider?) bite. It got better. For a week. Then it got worse. The continuing saga of the making of Category Two. Don't worry, I'm not dead so it's still funny. (More...) 20,000 BitTorrent Users Sued in One LawsuitApril 1, 2010 -- Sadly, this is not an April Fool's joke. Or the actions of the MPAA. The upside is that they seem to be doing it wrong. (More...) The Mad Tea PartyMay 28, 2010 -- Lewis Carroll's Mad Hatter would feel quite at home at an American Tea Party today. (More...) |