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Blog Torrent: Downhill Battle Interview
scubacuda writes "In this GrepLaw interview, Downhill
Battle's Nicholas Reville describes the success (and takedown) of SP2Torrent.com,
alternative ways to buy music, what indie musicians think about filesharing,
and real ways to counter threats to creativity and an open culture. Those excited
about the possibilities of Bittorrent
will especially appreciate Downhill Battle's Blog
Torrent, an easy-to-install program that will dramatically simplify the
creation, posting, and seeding of new torrents."
...BitTorrent is a boon for open source projects with large files. PostgreSQL, for example, publishes torrents of their releases and the the "PG Live" ISOs. On a much smaller scale, we've put up a torrent for the Ruby windows installer on RubyForge - it's only 11 MB, but even a small file like that is worth torrenting.
PLUG: Here's the beginnings of a Ruby BT library. Just parses the metainfo file for now, but it's a start...
The Army reading list
It's an established technology. That's good. What I'm looking for now is a push-based P2P system; one which allows you to subscribe for content and will then automatically download new content as it's propagated through the network. We've had stories on Slashdot before about sites' popular RSS feeds saturating bandwidth - well, this would be a perfect solution. Are there any plans to retrofit push functionality into BitTorrent to help alleviate the stress of releasing new content? BitTorrent doesn't gel with RSS at the moment because there's no way to automate serving and/or obtaining RSS files. It all has to be done manually, which is no better than just refreshing a web page.
It has saved me a lot of bandwidth, because now people are leaving their bittorrent clients open longer (due to the automated downloads leading them to passively leave their downloader open).
Here is a link: http://bigelow-springs.net/airamerica/
umm.. okay, here's my two pence.
We should start a govt run program, much like Social Security, only one that isn't a joke. It would work like this:
You're a musician- you get paid by the Artist Living Payment Option. A nationwide program that uses taxes and donations in order to merely pay for distribution, and pay royalties to the artists. Payments from ALPO would be contingent upon number of releases, how current last release, and popularity (based on distribution systems numbers). An algorithm would use these variables to give a somehwat fair distribution of monies alloted/gathered. Distribution? Anywhere wifi can be set up. Which is everywhere, now. Keyosks are set up to have a digital display of songs list.. you pick and choose like a juke box.. create your login name and password.. and log your computer, or wifi IPOD, or whatever to the system and download the songs for free. You want a CD or dont have a computer type thingy? Pay 5 bucks for the hard copy.
Kinda like shareware.. only I think the govt funding the arts a bit more would benefit the creativity of its future citizens (think children).
anyway..
it will never happen. All we'll get as musicians is alpo. Not ALPO.
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
It does have legitimate uses it's the fucking retards that insist on supporting the RIAA and their bullshit that keep them in business and in the news.
Fucking dump the RIAA and their music. Do not support iTMS, do not support music store sales of garbage CDs, and certainly do not support any radio station that plays their bullshit for money.
Support FREEDOM of music. FurthurNET and various other sources. You might be surprised who you see on that list...
Except that none of them had any right to do so. There is no such thing as "creating" anything from scratch, all of the jerks who believe in copyrights build upon the works of others. Scientists needs thousads of workers in the field who went before them to get to the point where they can formulate their theory. Musicians rip everything off from the ones who came before and thrive on small variations on those themes. Ditto for movies. Etc etc. I dont know when people will get it through their thick skulls that in order to "create" something, one draws upon of millennia of progress of human race and efforts of countless generations who went before. Those who claim they "own" their ideas are just selfish jerks, akin to bandits who go out and take over some land and then claim it to be "owned" by them. It wasnt theirs in the first place, they just happened to wander onto it and then proceeded to shoot anyone who came near.
This is where things need to progress in a different fasion. Rather then making money explicitly by allowing you to listen to music, they will need to/should offer services that make me WANT to purchase a CD or whatever, rather then downloading it.
I think Bon Jovi and his people had the idea with their last album that came out, you could use the unique code that came with it to get a discount on the current tour and merchandise... and something completely exclusive, but I cant remember what that was.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
A couple of things here.
You're giving the impression that much of western music was created "for the masses". Honestly, from the renaissance period forward most composers and musicians did work for pay. Bach would not have produced the body of work he did if he was not under the employ of the Catholic Church. The only major composer I can think of who produced a body of work without it being a source of income is an American, Charles Ives. (He was an insurance salesman, and none of his music was published until very late in his life.)
The real problem with what is happening with copyright law is that power is shifting away from the populace toward those controlling the content. Copyrighted works were INTENDED to pass to the public domain after a set time period so that the general public could fully benefit from those works. Unfortunately, the modern entertainment industry pressured the government to allow unlimited extensions of copyright. This allows a company to control it's works indefinitely.
IIRC, this started when Disney was about to lose "Steamboat Willie" to the public domain. Whats ironic is that by trying to protect it's intellectual property, they shot themselves in the foot. A vast majority of Disneys animated movies were adaptions of literary works that had entered public domain. By pushing legislation to keep IP out of public domain indefinately, there is no longer anything moving into the public domain that they can use for a project without compensating the copyright holders. They're running out of public domain material to adapt. (hence the new trend for excessive sequels they are now producing)
Copyight law was originally intended to protect the PUBLIC from content holders, not the other way around. Government has lost sight of that original intent.
Low quality? Fuck that. Hell, I'll go FLAC if someone wants it. I'm all for using the internet to promote. I think right now we have something like 10 songs available at various places. But, and this is the entire crux of my argument, it should be OUR choice to do that. I urge you, and everyone around here shooting their mouths off, to go and check out the sites of some WORKING, TOURING, bands. Most, if not all, have songs available. That's where the overwhelming majority of my MP3's come from.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
The original artists get no royalty from this music. Indeed, they're dead. So anyone can take this music and perform it, and sell it. Take an orchestra playing a complex symphony, for example. If you want the music to sound like the composer intended, you need excellent musicians, and a master conductor. The conductor is very important not the least because in many pieces of music, there are written notes left by the composer as to how things should sound, and most of the time these notes are single words (e.g. "soft").
Alright, so we have this whole crew assembled. Where will they play? Well, it depends on how you want it to sound, and how many friends you'll bring with you. We'll pick the bandshell.
Okay, now everything is prepared. Let's take a quick look at the bill, and the specific bill, while we wait:
Conductors usually don't perform every day. Neither do musicians, so their fees are adjusted for that. Musicians also have very expensive instruments that they need to make the music sound as best it can (for you, but they also *want* these instruments because they love music. Funny how that works). They also need to pay for the upkeep of these instruments. And they need really nice clothes for some reason.
Everything I've said here applies to the presentation of all music, and I didn't even go into recording or distribution.
It's not as though some evil person is making music cost money. If good vibes paid for studios, record pressing, server fees (for music distributed online) and advertising (including concerts), that would be great, but it doesnt. Every band needs to do all of that if they want to do music for a living. Who pays for that living?
The major record labels' stance is that they are there to do business, and they just happen to make music in the pursuit of earning money. Don't let that get you down, and even more importantly, don't let it affect your ability to be skeptical and inquisitive. If you don't keep an independent train of critical thought, you can get taken advantage of. Take Real for example. Real has attempted to rally the efforts of those in the tech crowd who are uninformed, to try to make themselves money they did not earn.
If you don't want to pay for music, don't listen to music.