Slashdot Mirror

This was covered on The Swindle, uhmm...2 weeks ago. At that time, a whopping 60 dollars had been donated.

I wish Fairtunes the best of luck, tho. I put my money where my mouth is.

Read all about the Open Audio Licence being developed at The Swindle. It is loosely based on the ideas behind the GPL and proposes to make any music released under it into community property. This is not only a statement of the ideals of the musicians involved but also a method of protecting the music by stating that any project which uses an OALed piece must also be released under the OAL. If this sounds interesting to you please come, read more, submit thoughts and help us make it real. Oh yeah, and if you know Courtney Love tell her to read it too.

This would indeed be very clever of the Offspring if it were there intent. But I don't believe that it is. See http://www.offspring.com/napster.html for clarification on the band's stance on MP3/Napster. Relevant excerpt:

The Offspring view MP3 technology and programs such as Napster as being a vital and necessary means to promote music and foster better relationships with our fans.

I've already mentioned this elsewhere, but it bears repeating. The Offspring, being a punk band, are part of a long tradition of anti-corporation, anti-government, pro-public, and hyperpolitical musicians. Despite the fact that they haven't really lived up to this since Smash, and despite their move to a major label, I'm not surprised to see them supporting grassroots music distribution. They owe their longevity to it. I applaud them for doing what they feel (and I agree) is the right thing, and in such an ingenious manner.

Dude, the issue here is simple. I'd agree with Lars if he was going after the right person/group. A person who creates anything of value, be it art, code, Jolt, should have the right to hawk it on the Internet at their terms. Lars/Metallica (where's the rest of the band in all these interviews, eh?) and Dre are pissed, and for good reason, that the Masters of un-released music was made available to the World! However, their beef should be with the lowlife scum who brought out these "work's in progess." And Eminems (or however th f*** he spells it) comment last night on "Grand Theft Audio" about kickin Napster's ass should be more (effectively) directed at the asshole who leaked his sh*t.

What Lars et al and Dre are asking is for file-sharing to be deemed illegal, because someone _may_ use it to trade music/art/computer games illegally. Sun, Novell, Micro$oft provide file-sharing services. That could/would put us all out of business. No more Sun, Novell, Microsoft, IBM, blah, blah, blah. What else are you going to do with a computer if you can't share information? Piracy _WILL_NOT_ isn't going to stop based on a new lawsuit; duh. Suing Napster is like suing Novell; Novell doesn't know what I use my servers for and they shouldn't be responsible if I use them for an illegal purpose. That's _MY_ responsibilty; _I_ am the one taking the risk.

Anyway, Metallica and every other band in the industry need to get their proverbial heads out of their asses because the RIAA and the labels are about to stick it to 'em some more. Remember the article about the new law screwing Artists out of their copyrights? Check these links out, as I cannot remember if we saw a posting on slash originally...

http://www.theswindle.com /article.php3?sid=20000510085939
http://wallofsound.go.c om/news/stories/donhenley050900.html

Tell everyone you know. I am actually surprised no question was posted to Lars about this news.

my 0.02
Bob

..just isn't complete without at least one mention of the legendary cubicle prank.

Not to reply to my own message, but hundreds of people apparently agreed with me that my admiteddly offtopic posting of the "work for hire" bill scam that is now before the Senate demanded more information - and I just did the research. And the results are VERY scary. Seems the record biz/RIAA have bought a VERY offtopic, VERY sweeping little amendment to an otherwise completely unrelated bill - regarding satellite signal retransmission. See my latest report for more.

As someone tracking this story very closely on my own site, I can tell you that a popular item of discussion in this whole sorry state of affairs centers around the all-important question:

What EXACTLY is the "secret recipe" used by NetPD to determine someone is a "MEtallica Pirate"? And, seeing definite vagueness regarding the TOS of the Napster agreement with regards to bannable activity, what's going to happen when a group amoung these 300,000 ex-fans decides, instead of simply recreating Napster accounts, decides to challenge Napster's assertion that they were actually in posession of Metallica tracks? This is just a sordid state of affairs.

OFFTOPIC, and I apologize, but if you want to get even more pissed off at the music business then read this article reporting on a bill before the US House Of Reps. that would declare ALL published artistic musical work "work for hire". This is a VERY, VERY bad thing, arguably just as bad as the War on MP3 - but it's NOT BEING COVERED IN THE MEDIA. Yet.

I felt the need to express my outrage at the whole sad Metallica situation myself. Sad, really.

here's my mirror

Hell, I just got bought out by AOL-Time-Warner. Woohoo.

Just thought I'd share this photo of what happened to one of my co-workers last week. We're a pretty cruel bunch, and simple pranks just don't cut it in my office.

I'm only slightly skeeved that I covered this story, flaming editorial and all, days ago and got nary a visitor ...heh.

Whenever a long dominant beast is finally bested by a larger beast, it will fight and fuss until it is silenced. The corporate beast which is (MPAA/RIAA/ABC/NBC/CBS/MTV/takeyourpick) is steeped in deep, deep denial of the future, of bandwidth and access to the media they have dominated so well for the last 30 years. Of course they will file frivolous, arrogant, amazingly void lawsuits against small, weak people (in the financial sense). The best way to make this quick and (relatively) painless is to expeditite the death of the behemoth. There are 2 ways to do this, and they must be done in tandem to be effective: 1) Openly defy their illegal assertions as much and in the most high-profile way possible. 2) Get the word out to anyone who will listen. The Swindle