Slashdot Mirror

Well, they don't really rank above or below each other, but Trekkies are indeed slightly below comic book fans on the chart.

But, your argument breaks down if we are talking about geeks who read superhero comics. Are we?

Instead of a Donation button (link to pdf!) on my website, I prefer the Brunching Shuttlecocks' system: The Oral Sex Donation System.

Instead of a Donation button (link to pdf!) on my website, I prefer the Brunching Shuttlecocks' system: The Oral Sex Donation System.

Funny too. Give it a try: http://www.brunching.com/toys/mrtname.html

don't feel guilty if you don't know what to do with your life
the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives
some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't

Agreed. There's a perfectly good place for non-geeky (e.g. not sci-fi / fantasy / AntiTrust) already. And they have a far superior command of the english language.

Do I want to know what people think of Orange County? Yes! But is it News for Nerds, or Stuff That Matters? No.

and let's not forget the Prostitute Apes!

Lore Sjöberg's article on video-game consoles says it best. Give it a read. ;)

Actually, the correct formula for determining whether a Star Trek movie is good or bad was flushed out by Brunching Shuttlecocks in their review of Insurrection. Obviously, it's too long to repost here, but is highly accurate (or at least will at least make you smile).

That theory has already been explored.

Most of the content on the Web is not worth paying for. But there is some that is. For example, I would be willing to pay between $5 and $15 per week for a news source that covered politics, science, technology, and other serious news with the kind of depth and professionalism that serious newspapers used to be famous for (before tabloid journalism began to creep into even the most respected of papers). I would pay a few dollars a month for The Register, if they would stop running ads and use some of the money to hire a proofreader. I would pay a dollar or two a month for some clever humour and satire, like the Brunching Shuttlecocks. Hell, I would even pay a few bucks for Slashdot.

A penny per page, any page, is flawed because it encourages lots of content as opposed to a manageable amount of high-quality content. It would encourage spamming the Web with lots and lots of interesting-sounding but cheaply assembled documents under as many different aliases and domains as possible (to thwart the eventual domain filtering that would take place). The result would be an even smaller signal to noise ration, something that is already well out of hand.

I said that I would be willing to pay for content. But, currently, there isn't a payment system that offers me the things I need in order to feel comfortable doing so: simplicity, anonymity, privacy, security, and limited liability. Credit cards are bad because they provide none of these. In particular, I'm not going to hand over my credit card and personal information to someone when I cannot in turn verify with any certainty who that someone really is. Debit systems are better, but still suffer most of these limitations.

Cash payments have the advantage of being completely anonymous and they limit your liability to exactly what you pay. A no-questions, no-refunds transaction is fine when dealing with small amounts of cash. But even here, the Web presents new problems. If I have a bad experience with a real-life small-time merchant, I can fairly easily take my business elsewhere. The ratio of respectable businesses to shysters operating out of the backw of their trucks is reasonably high. On the Web, it's harder to tell the shysters from legitimate small-time operators without trying and possibly getting burned in the process. And it's hard to tell if the site you're visiting today is operated by the same shyster who sold you crappy content yesterday at a different site.

Established, respected sites that can easily be traced to established, respected proprietors could get away with charging for content--if they offer something better than what is being offered for free. They can get away with either accepting online payments or the traditional paper invoice method. For less well-known sites, the ability to charge for content will probably have to wait for the arrival of the Web equivalent of cash, and some sort of reasonably strong identification scheme to establish who is behind the Web site you're offerint to pay for.

Ok. I wouldn't say sexy. How about "non-off-putting" computers. I like the idea of a decent looking computer in about the same way that I like the idea of visiting the real world for entertainment, and cracking jokes that don't involve references to decade old obscure console games. Maybe that doesn't make me a real geek.

ObFunny: Brunching Shuttlecocks has a great spoof of the decon gel.

BTW, will crew members always decontamination in pairs?

-B

I don't think the tiny fraction of people blocking banner ads has a significant impact on whether banner ads are working or not. A more important factor is that after a while, everyone just starts to tune them out. The Brunching Shuttlecocks humor site used to make the link to the current day's article be in the form of a banner-sized graphic. It literally took me *months* to notice it, because my brain is totally wired to ignore graphics of that shape at the top of web pages. And I don't think I'm alone, because as you can see from the site, they've change to a larger, more square graphic.

Moral of the story: human brains are good at filtering out junk. The only way they're going to get us to pay attention to ads is either 1) make us have to look at them for thirty seconds before continuing, 2) start asking quizzes about ad content before displaying real content, or 3) make them actually interesting, helpful, and naturally engaging (hah!).

yes. Brunching Shuttlecocks

Fight fire with fire

AlpineR

Looks like Brunching missed the ball on this one.

(I'm not a karma whore; i'm already at 50.)

P.S. I would have called it Send in the Clones

The Self-Made Critic over at brunching.com seems share my taste in movies, so I listen to him. He also doesn't have a big enough readership to be worth bribing.

Having said that, the day I see "3 3/4 Babylons!" on a movie poster is the day I stop reading his reviews.
--

The Self-Made Critic over at brunching.com seems share my taste in movies, so I listen to him. He also doesn't have a big enough readership to be worth bribing.

Having said that, the day I see "3 3/4 Babylons!" on a movie poster is the day I stop reading his reviews.
--

...is the Self-Made Critic also a figment of someone's imagination?

--

Of course, it will make a lot more sense if you are familar all things Shuttlecocky and especially SMC's inimitable style.

It's one of SMC's better works and kicks the pants off of anything Katz has ever done

Do you self a favor: hop on over to The Brunching Shuttlecocks and visit the Self-Made Critics review of Memento.

Of course, it will make a lot more sense if you are familar all things Shuttlecocky and especially SMC's inimitable style.

It's one of SMC's better works and kicks the pants off of anything Katz has ever done

Do you self a favor: hop on over to The Brunching Shuttlecocks and visit the Self-Made Critics review of Memento.

My vote for the most violent movie has to be Starship Troopers. To steal a line from the Self-Made Critic, in the book, the bugs have guns. In the movie, they can only slice the bejeezus out of you. There are more gore-filled, screaming, slashing, bloody, horrific deaths happening right on screen, in front of you, and in more amazing detail than in any other movie that I've ever seen.

While I don't agree that the government (or any other agency) should decide what we, as adults, are allowed to watch. However, I just ask that you think before exposing your children to these movies. A three-year-old that sees a giant bug hacking a girl who looks like his babysitter into tiny bits is going to become a quivering, crying, snot-gushing puddle of screaming fear.

In my opinion, Starship Troopers is a pathetic adaptation of a very good book with liberal servings of intestines, brains, limbs, and a side order of blood tacked on (Hmm... sounds like a haggis and black pudding), I still enjoy occasionally turning off my higher brain functions and feeding the primal bloodlust (if only by proxy). I only ask that parents remember that sometimes there are some very good reasons that a movie is rated R.

Back home, many an RPS legend has been born out of Roshambo Rampage.
--

Back home, many an RPS legend has been born out of Roshambo Rampage.
--

Maybe they passed it through the Brunching Shuttlecocks sarcasticizer

Regarding scare quotes: check this out.

• B.A.D. Ads
• the original Banner Town
• An inspired bannertown fan
• Banner ad-nauseam
• Wallo's

Seriously though, have a thorough read through the Banner Ad Software Sellers sites to see how these companies' software works. From there, reverse eng a business model that you think is fair AND makes money for the banner-ad company, and then chose a firm who matches that business model.

Having taken a quick look at your site, you might also want to think of other ideas based on your rather specialised audience, like getting a CD shop interested maybe, with weekly specials?

Ralf

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

The solution of "tugging" the asteroid out of earth's way is one solution, but I like the solution posed by Brunching Shuttlecocks, which is to get everyone in China to jump up simultaneously, thus moving earth's orbit out of the asteroids way. Hell, it's just as realistic as the movie...

A Brief Conversation with NASA's Mars Program.

My point was that Metallica gave up almost all control over what I do with my copy of the CD once I've bought it.

Somewhere there's a line between wrong (making copies and selling them) and right (making an archival copy), with a whole 16-bit gray scale that includes:

making a copy for the car;
making a copy for my wife's car (thanks, Orrin);
giving the copy I had in my car to a friend;
making a copy for a friend;
making copies for 20 friends and
making copies for 20 million friends.

Maybe we need to ask the Brunching Shuttlecocks to do a Good or Bad poll to find the line.

--

My point was that Metallica gave up almost all control over what I do with my copy of the CD once I've bought it.

Somewhere there's a line between wrong (making copies and selling them) and right (making an archival copy), with a whole 16-bit gray scale that includes:

making a copy for the car;
making a copy for my wife's car (thanks, Orrin);
giving the copy I had in my car to a friend;
making a copy for a friend;
making copies for 20 friends and
making copies for 20 million friends.

Maybe we need to ask the Brunching Shuttlecocks to do a Good or Bad poll to find the line.

--

But what the heck!
the Brunching Shuttlecocks know what's up.
-J

--

--

"Why"

Monopolies, computers, software
Why God, Why?
Computers, court cases, Microsoft
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this black horror?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of Microsoft
Like a George Orwell character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Websites, monopolies, IT companies
Why God, Why?
Microsoft, IT companies, software
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this black disaster that is my life?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of Microsoft
Like a George Orwell character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

What have I done to deserve this black misery?
Surrounded on all sides with the Hell of Microsoft
Like a George Orwell character, I'm wordy and alone
Why God, Why?

Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?
Why God, Why?


(Make your own at http://www.brunching.com/toys/t oy-alanislyrics.html - I did it, jabber!)

The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk

Excellent article.

I think they might be on to something. When Anakin turns to the darkside, there must be some sign to prove his loyalty. I would expect that this would be killing off a fellow Jedi. Since we know he doesn't kill Obi Wan, that leaves either Amigdala, or a Jedi to be identified (or revealed) in Episode II.

Having Jar-Jar fulfill that role will make everyone happy since Jar-Jar fans will get to see his character progress and become integral to the story line, and Jar-Jar haters (myself included) will get to see him die a horrible, bloody death.

By the way, the article also has a link to the Jar-Jar == Boba Fett theory.

Networked R-P-S is available here

thank you.

--Fesh

Require Flash 4 to view....

...have done it again. Check out today's Brunching Shuttlecocks feature, Microsoft: The Verdict. Funny, funny stuff.

--

Here courtesy of Brunching Shuttlecocks.

This item appeared yesterday on the frequently-linked-to Brunching Shuttlecocks:

Napster of Puppets

This item appeared yesterday on the frequently-linked-to Brunching Shuttlecocks:

Napster of Puppets

Check it out!

Disclaimer: there are well over 1000 comments in this thread. This one will necessarily be to some degree redundant. I apologize in advance, and will do my best to say things that are worth repeating anyway.

. . . I would say that I'm quite, I'd say, more than surprised, I'm quite stunned at the lack of communication and input from the record company. Obviously, you know, with record companies we never really usually depend much on what they have to offer in terms of creative things, but I am stunned at the low volume of support from the record company, both publically and privately.

I am too. One would think that the record company would jump to protect their investment. Unless, of course, they understand better than Lars that MP3/Napster is something they can't fight.

I mean, obviously, Peter and Cliff, our two managers -- they're our closest advisors -- we have been, they've been advising us for 18 years now. Our managers are basically the fifth and the sixth members of the band. They're a total partnership. We view both of them as equal. And they're equally involved in this.

. . . we don't take anything from anybody. We take advice from our two managers, but ultimately we override them a lot.

These two comments paint their managers in very different lights, I think. In the first, they're friends; in the second, merely advisors. After reading the first quote, I was surprised to hear the phrase "We take advice from our two managers," because I would have thought that those managers would be part of "we".

. . . when it comes to my relationship with the Internet and with my comptuer, the fact is that we don't spend a lot of time together.

I would never fault Lars for not using the web, or for not being a geek. These things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I think it's important to note that Lars admits here to not being well-versed in computers or the internet. He is attacking something about which he is not adequately educated, and I think it shows. He and the band, and their lawyer too, would do well to familiarize themselves with the structure of Napster, the nature of the internet, and the concept of filesharing before they make themselves look foolish in court.

. . . when somebody fucks with what we do, we go after them.

What are they, a street gang? Never mind, that's not important. What's important is that it is Metallica themselves who are setting up the Us vs. Them dichotomy of this debate. People don't trade Metallica MP3s because they hate Metallica, they do it because they like Metallica. These people consider themselves fans, and if the band has not already alienated these fans by getting them banned from Napster, they will surely do so by insisting that they [the fans] are trying to "fuck with" them [the band].

You don't sit down and sort of try and sort of justify yourself, well, 'Maybe our time and energy would be better spent thinking about something a year or two from now.'

Why not? Everyone else in the music industry seems to be doing precisely that. (Or hiding their heads in the sand, I guess.) It is astounding to me that a band with as long a history as Metallica might not have extensive experience with either planning for the future, or adapting to the present. MP3 will force the industry to develop a radically new way of doing business, but there's no reason Metallica shouldn't be blazing that trail.

We really felt that it was time for somebody, an artist, with a potential of a public platform, to get involved with this.

I do applaud Metallica for using their fame to draw attention to an issue they believe in. At least they were at the head of some parade, even if it had to be a misguided one.

Now, are we aware of the Gnutellas and all these other things? Of course we are, but you can only take it one step at a time. And I believe, and the people that we talk to about this, we believe, that the minute some of these companies become active, when they basically come to a point that they become fully funcitonal, we believe that there will be technology and a way to go after them in the way they can invent this technology and make it untraceable. We believe that as quickly as they can make it untraceable we believe that you can find a way to fuck with it . . .

I believe it will be very difficult for Metallica to "fuck with" Gnutella. First of all, the last I heard -- and someone please correct me about this if I'm wrong -- Gnutella wasn't even supposed to be released. Its own developer doesn't support it (and barely acknowledges it). Who is Metallica going to sue to stop Gnutella? It's pirated music being transferred via pirated software. And even if I'm wrong about this, or if it changes, it's the concept that's important, not the implementation. Like CmdrTaco said, "Yeah, we should definitely ban peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet, and NFS pisses me off, too." If we can't use Napster or Gnutella, we'll use DCC. Or FTP. Or HTTP. Or we'll invent a new protocol.

It's true, what Lars says, that as quick as hackers can find some way to facilitate the flow of MP3s, "The Man" can find some way to block it. But the cycle doesn't end there -- the hackers circumvent the block, the Man blocks the circumvention, etc. Where does it end? With the simple fact that, because of the way computers have been built from the early days, it is effectively impossible to prevent a string of bits from being copied.

So it's sort of like -- the thing about this sort of mob mentality, what we call the 'Internet Extremists,' it's all kind of cute -- 'Yeah, we want to fuck with the system,' 'Yeah, we have a right to get everything for free.' But I believe that if you have the energy and the resources to chase 'em -- and that's one thing we have is a lot of energy and a lot of resources . . .

Why doesn't he just walk around wearing a t-shirt that says "I Am The Man"? He dismisses the notion of rebellion as "cute" and brags about his vast supply of resources (read: money). I think this is a very damaging thing for Lars to have said, though I must admit I'm glad he's said it. It certainly does suggest that Metallica is firmly entrenched in the corporate world.

So of course there will be at some point -- we are not stupid, of course we realize the future of getting music from Metlalica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet.

This, on the other hand, is encouraging. It suggests that Metallica haven't doomed themselves to being legacy artists.

That ultimately is what the biggest beef about this whole thing [is], is that Napster could have so easily avoided this whole thing. It's like, OK, 'It's January, my name is Napster, or I'm Sean, or whoever the CEO was at the time, we have this service, we would like to know if you are interested in being part of it.' If we'd said Yes, then there's no issue, if we'd said No, then this whole thing would have never -- it's really what this is about, it's what this whole thing ultimately comes down to, you know.

This is plainly ridiculous. Either Lars simply does not understand how Napster works, or he is being deliberately silly in the middle of making what should be a critical argument to his side of the story. Napster never asked a single band if they wanted to be a part of their service. Likewise, Napster has never made available a single work belonging to a single band via their service. The service they are providing is not, as Lars seems to imply, to the bands. They are providing a service to their users, a service that allows them to transmit files of certain types across the internet. (Never mind Gnutella, which permits sharing of any file, period.) It is the users who share the files, and if anyone should have asked Metallica first, it's the users. I have said elsewhere that Metallica was right to finger individual users, if they feel they must persist in this attack, and I stand by that statement. (Actually, it was Dr. Dre to whom I was referring, but it's the same idea.)

Unfortunately, it seems that this comment is only a perpetuation of the consistent misunderstanding of the way Napster works that Metallica, Dr. Dre, and their attorney Howard King have shown since we first heard King say "Tha t [Napster's offer to ban usernames who were identified as sharing Metallica/Dre songs illegally] was not a satisfactory response. That was a comical response." Metallica, Dre, and King do not know how Napster works, and apparently, they do not care to find out. Worse, they do not seem to think they will need to.

It's sort of like, you know what, fair enough, I can certainly respect and I would certainly somewhat agree with the fact that paying 16 bucks for a CD is probably, you know, pushing too much. But, it's the marketplace that dictates that, not me.

Quite right. And this is what scares people who make money off of music. One of the rarer moments in the history of capitalism is upon us: for once, the consumers are going to tell the producers how the industry will be run. People are not willing to pay $16+ for a CD. In fact, people don't necessarily want the entire CD, and they may not be willing to pay a cent. The marketplace is speaking, and it's saying, music should be free. No one has told Metallica not to charge money for their music. But MP3 listeners worldwide are telling Metallica that they're not going to pay it. Is this frightening? Should this worry us? Only if we're the sort of people who think that music is created to earn the artist money. But if we believe that music is art created for art's sake . . . .

Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change, ok? It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months.

. . . look, our record sales have gone up in the last three weeks, OK?

You heard it directly from Lars, folks: the amount of money currently being lost due to MP3 trading "is really pocket change". And now he suddenly starts thinking about the future. Convenient.

Well, 1st of all, you have to remember that you're talking to somebody who advocates bootlegging, who has alwyas been pro-bootlegging. We have always let fans tape our shows, we've always had a thing for bootlegging live materials, for special appearances, for that type of stuff. Knock yourselves out, bootleg the fuck out of it, we don't give.

The bottom line is the size of it. The size of it and the quality of it. . . . So it's the quality, the quality and the scale.

So is it okay to make and trade MP3s of bootlegs?

I can't help feeling that this is a bit hypocritical. Metallica insists that their crusade is about principles, not money, but then say that it's okay if your illegal copying only costs them a little bit of money, but not if it costs them a lot.

So back to the question again, the 'commodity' really becomes about it being traded around illegally, and rather than the art that it is.

Is Lars trying to say that art isn't art if there's not a price tag attached? If someone doesn't receive compensation for it? Art is art because it has an effect on the audience. And I'm talking about an effect aside from the removal of $16 from the audience's wallets. Art's effect on the audience, 99% of the time, has little or nothing to do with how it got to the audience, or whether the audience had to pay for it.

Napster has the right to exist. I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it.

This is a reasonable request, made to the wrong people. As Lars has already demonstrated he doesn't know, Napster is not responsible for the contents of their users' hard drives. This appeal ought to be made to the users.

. . . you have to remember that statistically, for every one band that you hear about, for every one band that a record company helps make successful, they lose their fucking shirt on the nine other ones you never hear about . . .

. . . which wouldn't happen if music were traded without restriction or cost. There would be no need for record labels, and thus the only money lost when a band failed to achieve its goals would be whatever money its members had contributed themselves.

But record companies will never be completely extinct, for one reason and one reason only, that there will always be a need to develop younger artists, and record companies will always be able to play a big part of that, because this whole thing about "I'm a young band, I'm an upstart band, I'm going to put my music on Napster, and then I'm going to become successful?" Fantasy. The only way you you will become successful is by having a publicity and promotion campaign behind you that elevates what you're doing above what your competition is doing.

This is not even true in the current music industry, where bands like Fugazi, a dedicated anti-commercial act, can do their own marketing and achieve a level of popularity that longevity that rivals many corporate-sponsored acts. But if the current music industry is rendered obsolete, and consumers go back to trusting their own personal tastes to decide what music they'll listen to, instead of advertisements, radio and TV, then not only will this scenrio Lars rejects be possible, it might be the only way to succeed as a musician.

It's very very simple. One of the -- when we monitored Napster for 48 hours three weekends ago, we came up with the 1.4 million downloads of Metallica music, there was one, one downloading -- one! of an unsigned artist the whole time.

Inconceivable. There is not a snowball's chance in hell that, in a 48-hour stretch, only a mere one out of the millions of songs transferred via Napster was written by an unsigned artist. I don't know what caused Lars (or NetPD) to make this massive error in calculation, but it is statistically as near to impossible as you could hope to get.

As for those 1.4 million downloads, here is a short list of things Metallica does not know about them:

• Metallica does not know whether or not the files were actually transferred, unless they downloaded them themselves, or shared them and watched them being uploaded. All they could know is how many were publicly available for downloading. To know how many actual downloads there were, they would have to monitor a host-to-host transmission as a third party, which is eavesdropping, and is illegal.
• Metallica does not know whether or not the files that purported to be MP3s of their music were actually MP3 files. They could just as easily have been empty files carrying the name of a Metallica song and a .mp3 extension.
• Even if they were MP3 files, Metallica does not know whether they were their MP3 files. Renaming another band's song would be child's play. The disk space required even to download and listen to a sufficiently large sample of 1.4 million MP3s is a lot more than Lars has on that computer he never uses. The task itself would be mind-numbing and eventually downright infuriating; I can't imagine anyone having the patience to do it.
• Metallica also does not know how many of those transfers were between two users who already owned the albums, and thus had legitimate rights to own copies of the songs. Doubtless these users account for a significant percentage of the 30,000 who challenged the ban Napster placed on them at Metallica's request.

You can sit there and talk about how this is great for up and coming artists or for unsigned bands, but a big counterargument that nobody gets is, me and you could form a band together, and we could like, make a demo and then we could put it up on Napster. Who is going to give a fuck? Nobody's going to care, because they don't know anything about what sets my and your band out from the gardener and the guy who cleans my pool's band. The record companies will never be extinct, because there will always be a need down at that level.

More bragging about how rich he is. In regards to this assertion, read The Brunching Shuttlecocks' An Open Letter From Metallica, which dispatches the notion better than I could, and more humorously too.

I believe ultimately -- and this is sort of what I was talking about before -- that the hardest thing about this is to try and come up with a system where it becomes an individual's right to choose how he will want to partake in this sort of stuff through the Internet. That's the hardest thing because it becomes very difficult, it's very difficult to generalize, like I said before. It's not fair to sit there and say, 'Napster can't exist,' because there are people who would like to use it. And it's not fair to sit there and say 'It has to exist and you have to be part of it,' for the people who don't want to use it.

This is a very good point, and an insightful one as well. Lars is right, this will be a very difficult problem, and in fact, I'm not sure I want to see how it gets solved. It also addresses a more important issue: the question of how to ensure that authors retain copyrights to their work, and how to ensure they're properly credited for it.

We believe based on the people we hired that we're probably not more than a year away from where you can basically download Mission Impossible 2 the same day that it opens in the theatre . . .

Another example of how much Lars hasn't bothered to find out. This is, of course, more or less possible today, though with the problem that a two-hour movie will generally be a much larger file than a five-minute song.

I guess that's all I have. I'm sure it's plenty. There was other stuff I wanted to respond to, but I can't remember what it was, and damned if I didn't waste enough time writing this already. I guess it's obvious where my sympathies lie.

Disclaimer: there are well over 1000 comments in this thread. This one will necessarily be to some degree redundant. I apologize in advance, and will do my best to say things that are worth repeating anyway.

. . . I would say that I'm quite, I'd say, more than surprised, I'm quite stunned at the lack of communication and input from the record company. Obviously, you know, with record companies we never really usually depend much on what they have to offer in terms of creative things, but I am stunned at the low volume of support from the record company, both publically and privately.

I am too. One would think that the record company would jump to protect their investment. Unless, of course, they understand better than Lars that MP3/Napster is something they can't fight.

I mean, obviously, Peter and Cliff, our two managers -- they're our closest advisors -- we have been, they've been advising us for 18 years now. Our managers are basically the fifth and the sixth members of the band. They're a total partnership. We view both of them as equal. And they're equally involved in this.

. . . we don't take anything from anybody. We take advice from our two managers, but ultimately we override them a lot.

These two comments paint their managers in very different lights, I think. In the first, they're friends; in the second, merely advisors. After reading the first quote, I was surprised to hear the phrase "We take advice from our two managers," because I would have thought that those managers would be part of "we".

. . . when it comes to my relationship with the Internet and with my comptuer, the fact is that we don't spend a lot of time together.

I would never fault Lars for not using the web, or for not being a geek. These things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I think it's important to note that Lars admits here to not being well-versed in computers or the internet. He is attacking something about which he is not adequately educated, and I think it shows. He and the band, and their lawyer too, would do well to familiarize themselves with the structure of Napster, the nature of the internet, and the concept of filesharing before they make themselves look foolish in court.

. . . when somebody fucks with what we do, we go after them.

What are they, a street gang? Never mind, that's not important. What's important is that it is Metallica themselves who are setting up the Us vs. Them dichotomy of this debate. People don't trade Metallica MP3s because they hate Metallica, they do it because they like Metallica. These people consider themselves fans, and if the band has not already alienated these fans by getting them banned from Napster, they will surely do so by insisting that they [the fans] are trying to "fuck with" them [the band].

You don't sit down and sort of try and sort of justify yourself, well, 'Maybe our time and energy would be better spent thinking about something a year or two from now.'

Why not? Everyone else in the music industry seems to be doing precisely that. (Or hiding their heads in the sand, I guess.) It is astounding to me that a band with as long a history as Metallica might not have extensive experience with either planning for the future, or adapting to the present. MP3 will force the industry to develop a radically new way of doing business, but there's no reason Metallica shouldn't be blazing that trail.

We really felt that it was time for somebody, an artist, with a potential of a public platform, to get involved with this.

I do applaud Metallica for using their fame to draw attention to an issue they believe in. At least they were at the head of some parade, even if it had to be a misguided one.

Now, are we aware of the Gnutellas and all these other things? Of course we are, but you can only take it one step at a time. And I believe, and the people that we talk to about this, we believe, that the minute some of these companies become active, when they basically come to a point that they become fully funcitonal, we believe that there will be technology and a way to go after them in the way they can invent this technology and make it untraceable. We believe that as quickly as they can make it untraceable we believe that you can find a way to fuck with it . . .

I believe it will be very difficult for Metallica to "fuck with" Gnutella. First of all, the last I heard -- and someone please correct me about this if I'm wrong -- Gnutella wasn't even supposed to be released. Its own developer doesn't support it (and barely acknowledges it). Who is Metallica going to sue to stop Gnutella? It's pirated music being transferred via pirated software. And even if I'm wrong about this, or if it changes, it's the concept that's important, not the implementation. Like CmdrTaco said, "Yeah, we should definitely ban peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet, and NFS pisses me off, too." If we can't use Napster or Gnutella, we'll use DCC. Or FTP. Or HTTP. Or we'll invent a new protocol.

It's true, what Lars says, that as quick as hackers can find some way to facilitate the flow of MP3s, "The Man" can find some way to block it. But the cycle doesn't end there -- the hackers circumvent the block, the Man blocks the circumvention, etc. Where does it end? With the simple fact that, because of the way computers have been built from the early days, it is effectively impossible to prevent a string of bits from being copied.

So it's sort of like -- the thing about this sort of mob mentality, what we call the 'Internet Extremists,' it's all kind of cute -- 'Yeah, we want to fuck with the system,' 'Yeah, we have a right to get everything for free.' But I believe that if you have the energy and the resources to chase 'em -- and that's one thing we have is a lot of energy and a lot of resources . . .

Why doesn't he just walk around wearing a t-shirt that says "I Am The Man"? He dismisses the notion of rebellion as "cute" and brags about his vast supply of resources (read: money). I think this is a very damaging thing for Lars to have said, though I must admit I'm glad he's said it. It certainly does suggest that Metallica is firmly entrenched in the corporate world.

So of course there will be at some point -- we are not stupid, of course we realize the future of getting music from Metlalica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet.

This, on the other hand, is encouraging. It suggests that Metallica haven't doomed themselves to being legacy artists.

That ultimately is what the biggest beef about this whole thing [is], is that Napster could have so easily avoided this whole thing. It's like, OK, 'It's January, my name is Napster, or I'm Sean, or whoever the CEO was at the time, we have this service, we would like to know if you are interested in being part of it.' If we'd said Yes, then there's no issue, if we'd said No, then this whole thing would have never -- it's really what this is about, it's what this whole thing ultimately comes down to, you know.

This is plainly ridiculous. Either Lars simply does not understand how Napster works, or he is being deliberately silly in the middle of making what should be a critical argument to his side of the story. Napster never asked a single band if they wanted to be a part of their service. Likewise, Napster has never made available a single work belonging to a single band via their service. The service they are providing is not, as Lars seems to imply, to the bands. They are providing a service to their users, a service that allows them to transmit files of certain types across the internet. (Never mind Gnutella, which permits sharing of any file, period.) It is the users who share the files, and if anyone should have asked Metallica first, it's the users. I have said elsewhere that Metallica was right to finger individual users, if they feel they must persist in this attack, and I stand by that statement. (Actually, it was Dr. Dre to whom I was referring, but it's the same idea.)

Unfortunately, it seems that this comment is only a perpetuation of the consistent misunderstanding of the way Napster works that Metallica, Dr. Dre, and their attorney Howard King have shown since we first heard King say "Tha t [Napster's offer to ban usernames who were identified as sharing Metallica/Dre songs illegally] was not a satisfactory response. That was a comical response." Metallica, Dre, and King do not know how Napster works, and apparently, they do not care to find out. Worse, they do not seem to think they will need to.

It's sort of like, you know what, fair enough, I can certainly respect and I would certainly somewhat agree with the fact that paying 16 bucks for a CD is probably, you know, pushing too much. But, it's the marketplace that dictates that, not me.

Quite right. And this is what scares people who make money off of music. One of the rarer moments in the history of capitalism is upon us: for once, the consumers are going to tell the producers how the industry will be run. People are not willing to pay $16+ for a CD. In fact, people don't necessarily want the entire CD, and they may not be willing to pay a cent. The marketplace is speaking, and it's saying, music should be free. No one has told Metallica not to charge money for their music. But MP3 listeners worldwide are telling Metallica that they're not going to pay it. Is this frightening? Should this worry us? Only if we're the sort of people who think that music is created to earn the artist money. But if we believe that music is art created for art's sake . . . .

Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change, ok? It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months.

. . . look, our record sales have gone up in the last three weeks, OK?

You heard it directly from Lars, folks: the amount of money currently being lost due to MP3 trading "is really pocket change". And now he suddenly starts thinking about the future. Convenient.

Well, 1st of all, you have to remember that you're talking to somebody who advocates bootlegging, who has alwyas been pro-bootlegging. We have always let fans tape our shows, we've always had a thing for bootlegging live materials, for special appearances, for that type of stuff. Knock yourselves out, bootleg the fuck out of it, we don't give.

The bottom line is the size of it. The size of it and the quality of it. . . . So it's the quality, the quality and the scale.

So is it okay to make and trade MP3s of bootlegs?

I can't help feeling that this is a bit hypocritical. Metallica insists that their crusade is about principles, not money, but then say that it's okay if your illegal copying only costs them a little bit of money, but not if it costs them a lot.

So back to the question again, the 'commodity' really becomes about it being traded around illegally, and rather than the art that it is.

Is Lars trying to say that art isn't art if there's not a price tag attached? If someone doesn't receive compensation for it? Art is art because it has an effect on the audience. And I'm talking about an effect aside from the removal of $16 from the audience's wallets. Art's effect on the audience, 99% of the time, has little or nothing to do with how it got to the audience, or whether the audience had to pay for it.

Napster has the right to exist. I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it.

This is a reasonable request, made to the wrong people. As Lars has already demonstrated he doesn't know, Napster is not responsible for the contents of their users' hard drives. This appeal ought to be made to the users.

. . . you have to remember that statistically, for every one band that you hear about, for every one band that a record company helps make successful, they lose their fucking shirt on the nine other ones you never hear about . . .

. . . which wouldn't happen if music were traded without restriction or cost. There would be no need for record labels, and thus the only money lost when a band failed to achieve its goals would be whatever money its members had contributed themselves.

But record companies will never be completely extinct, for one reason and one reason only, that there will always be a need to develop younger artists, and record companies will always be able to play a big part of that, because this whole thing about "I'm a young band, I'm an upstart band, I'm going to put my music on Napster, and then I'm going to become successful?" Fantasy. The only way you you will become successful is by having a publicity and promotion campaign behind you that elevates what you're doing above what your competition is doing.

This is not even true in the current music industry, where bands like Fugazi, a dedicated anti-commercial act, can do their own marketing and achieve a level of popularity that longevity that rivals many corporate-sponsored acts. But if the current music industry is rendered obsolete, and consumers go back to trusting their own personal tastes to decide what music they'll listen to, instead of advertisements, radio and TV, then not only will this scenrio Lars rejects be possible, it might be the only way to succeed as a musician.

It's very very simple. One of the -- when we monitored Napster for 48 hours three weekends ago, we came up with the 1.4 million downloads of Metallica music, there was one, one downloading -- one! of an unsigned artist the whole time.

Inconceivable. There is not a snowball's chance in hell that, in a 48-hour stretch, only a mere one out of the millions of songs transferred via Napster was written by an unsigned artist. I don't know what caused Lars (or NetPD) to make this massive error in calculation, but it is statistically as near to impossible as you could hope to get.

As for those 1.4 million downloads, here is a short list of things Metallica does not know about them:

• Metallica does not know whether or not the files were actually transferred, unless they downloaded them themselves, or shared them and watched them being uploaded. All they could know is how many were publicly available for downloading. To know how many actual downloads there were, they would have to monitor a host-to-host transmission as a third party, which is eavesdropping, and is illegal.
• Metallica does not know whether or not the files that purported to be MP3s of their music were actually MP3 files. They could just as easily have been empty files carrying the name of a Metallica song and a .mp3 extension.
• Even if they were MP3 files, Metallica does not know whether they were their MP3 files. Renaming another band's song would be child's play. The disk space required even to download and listen to a sufficiently large sample of 1.4 million MP3s is a lot more than Lars has on that computer he never uses. The task itself would be mind-numbing and eventually downright infuriating; I can't imagine anyone having the patience to do it.
• Metallica also does not know how many of those transfers were between two users who already owned the albums, and thus had legitimate rights to own copies of the songs. Doubtless these users account for a significant percentage of the 30,000 who challenged the ban Napster placed on them at Metallica's request.

You can sit there and talk about how this is great for up and coming artists or for unsigned bands, but a big counterargument that nobody gets is, me and you could form a band together, and we could like, make a demo and then we could put it up on Napster. Who is going to give a fuck? Nobody's going to care, because they don't know anything about what sets my and your band out from the gardener and the guy who cleans my pool's band. The record companies will never be extinct, because there will always be a need down at that level.

More bragging about how rich he is. In regards to this assertion, read The Brunching Shuttlecocks' An Open Letter From Metallica, which dispatches the notion better than I could, and more humorously too.

I believe ultimately -- and this is sort of what I was talking about before -- that the hardest thing about this is to try and come up with a system where it becomes an individual's right to choose how he will want to partake in this sort of stuff through the Internet. That's the hardest thing because it becomes very difficult, it's very difficult to generalize, like I said before. It's not fair to sit there and say, 'Napster can't exist,' because there are people who would like to use it. And it's not fair to sit there and say 'It has to exist and you have to be part of it,' for the people who don't want to use it.

This is a very good point, and an insightful one as well. Lars is right, this will be a very difficult problem, and in fact, I'm not sure I want to see how it gets solved. It also addresses a more important issue: the question of how to ensure that authors retain copyrights to their work, and how to ensure they're properly credited for it.

We believe based on the people we hired that we're probably not more than a year away from where you can basically download Mission Impossible 2 the same day that it opens in the theatre . . .

Another example of how much Lars hasn't bothered to find out. This is, of course, more or less possible today, though with the problem that a two-hour movie will generally be a much larger file than a five-minute song.

I guess that's all I have. I'm sure it's plenty. There was other stuff I wanted to respond to, but I can't remember what it was, and damned if I didn't waste enough time writing this already. I guess it's obvious where my sympathies lie.

I was cruising Brunching Shuttlecocks yesterday and they have a massive amount of filters just like the dialectizer. It's not like there's a lack of these things, by respectable sites. Anyone know Brunching's legal and financial info? Could they fight back?

So, you decided to rip off this post from Brunching Shuttlecocks, huh? It was originally posted the week of March 20. How appropriate that this kind of stuff gets posted without credit on a story that has at least some content about copyrights.

Yeah, sure, information wants to be free yadda, yadd. But, if you're going to quote someone else, at least give them credit where credit is due. It's only fair.