Uh, did I promise to buy somebody a copy of the freely-downloadable Harvey Danger album? I think I did and now I can’t remember to whom.
I’m not very good at this fighting the man thing.
Category: Copyright Reform
All the news is old news, all the news is bad news
Sony has resorted to the tactics of virus writers to stop people from listening to music. Paris is burning with frustration from the bottom up, and the response from the top is “zero tolerance.” And we, the United States–without public approval, without accountability, without even visibility–have been literally putting our prisoners in the gulag.
When I put on Facebook that my music preference was “whatever you liked two years ago,” I wasn’t kidding. I finally bothered to count this morning and noticed that “Hey Ya” is in 22/24 time. And I’m getting really into the original Extraordinary Machine, the unreleased Fiona Apple album that leaked onto the interweb and got everybody all hot and bothered in 2003. Now the album has been retooled and actually released, and I’m just starting to listen to the stuff I ripped off Maria’s pirated CD that she got from Graham.
Expect a lot of stories that sound like Fiona Apple in a week or so, when I cycle through my current buffer. The buffer is why yesterday’s and next Wednesday’s stories are about outer space, because last week I was getting really into Firefly (on which I was a little behind–it came out in 2002).
In other stuff about music, I can’t stand Harvey Danger, so I’m upset that I have to buy their album. Values versus taste! Does anybody want a Harvey Danger album for a Christmas present?
Wow, Kelly Link’s first story collection is out there for free under a CC license! That’s only served to guarantee I’ll buy a print copy. And Small Beer Press, by which she’s published and which she helps run, is working on adding ebooks sans DRM. Man!
Kind of getting a hero-worship thing for Kelly Link.
Hollywood Drama
“‘Deuce Bigalow’ is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.”
The DB:EG-related spat between Rob Schneider and critic Patrick Goldstein, as summed up in Ebert’s review, is attracting more attention than the movie itself. Thank heaven this thing will be protected by ironclad copyright for the next one hundred and twenty years! We wouldn’t want pirates to steal it and make all that creativity worthless!
Read the review. The smackdown at the end will make your eyes water.
Grokster comes down tomorrow morning. Today morning, actually.
Not that this is the end any which way. But there are a whole lot of breaths holding, tonight, out here in the electric dark.
I am an elitist asshole
I want a t-shirt that says
FIGHT THE
MIDDLEMAN
You won’t be able to read this without an LJ account and a membership in Anti-Afflatus, but the mighty Riana has posted a brilliant sequel to Asuka.
Lessig and company have been saying this for so long people have forgotten about it, but this is exactly why it’s good to let go of the protection and restriction of full copyright: if you let people use your cool stuff without begging and paying and declaring intent, there will be more cool stuff than there was before.
How long until
- A Netflix for books?
- An iTunes for TV show episodes?
Well, presumably until the relevant copyright cartel fights it for a decade, screaming that it will be the death of them, then eventually gets beaten into submission and makes twice as much money from the new model. As usual.