I'll master your stuff, if you want, because you're another mp3 musician like I am. I don't have that much reinassance-like music to demo for you but "Tiger" off the 'anima' album includes synthesized piano that sounds better than soundfonts. I'm a High End audio guy using a lot of homebrew analog equipment for this sort of thing, I could certainly do just as good a job on organ music- if you want to do a bit of networking, drop me an email and we'll talk about it. I won't charge you anything because it's easy for me to do- let's work together and get some great music out there- while we still can:P
No, the labels literally destroy your musical history, they don't simply neglect to back it up. They want to make room for Britney Spears tapes or Spice Girls or Hanson, and they order rooms of old tapes to be literally destroyed, and do not allow the tapes to be bought or salvaged. This has been a particular scandal when it involves stuff like old jazz tapes. I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. They have the tapes _destroyed_, it's not a question of neglect.
"McCartnety, Metallica, Dre all OWN their record labels!"
Actually what you are seeing is: McCartney, Metallica, Dre all own VANITY IMPRINTS on existing major labels which are really calling the shots. There are virtually no real indie labels left anymore- they are greatly outnumbered by vanity imprints and faux indies. I agree that they are businessmen, but they certainly do not own labels- they own decorations and a special name to put on major label releases for the purpose of giving the releases a cachet of small private-label flavor. It's down to about 5 huge conglomerates (4?) by now, with all the formerly major labels (Virgin, EMI/Harvest, Rough Trade, you name it) subsidiaries of one of the conglomerates. There is no 'industry' in the normal sense of the word. It's essentially one very large machine with many different colored stickers to stick on the product. That, not Metallica or Dre, is what's suing. Lars and Dre are simply showing unusual willingness to be their master's lackeys.
Uh. Possibly it would do you good to get more of an insider perspective:) the fact is, artists are completely censored and owned like chattels by the record companies. One rapper said "If you don't own your masters, your masters own you" which is pithy and absolutely correct. As for censorship, of course artists are censored- it even goes to extremes as ludicrous as this: Nirvana, at the height of their popularity, were not allowed to use their own mix for In Utero. The company compelled them to have it be remixed by some guy the record company brought in for a more 'commercial' sound. That's beyond opinion censorship- that's veto power over their _art_, and they had to suck it up and deal (of course, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, suggesting that just _maybe_ this was too much for the label to ask, to dick with his art giving him no option but to comply)
There's an argument for intellectual property, but the music industry is Not It. I, as a musician who's done some homework, would have to basically support anything that acts to cut down the music industry and lessen their power. They _are_ as bad as Microsoft in their own sphere, and you need to talk to some insiders and get an idea how bad things are before you let them off the hook. An outsider might find "MS and Apple's sole ability to play DVDs on a home computer" as justifiable as you find the music industry's status quo- does that make them an authority on it? I would suggest that with the DVDs, you've done the homework and know better than they do what's at stake. I'm suggesting that Napster is an indirect and ass-backwards attack on something that desperately needs to be cut down to size.
Damn straight! I am a musician *points to URL above- look! music!* and I have other skills. Some of them, like sound engineering (I can do killer production) are related skills, but they are still other skills. I see _no_ freaking reason why, just because I can sit around on my ass and *gasp!* write a good song or make my guitar gently weep, this entitles me to have random people throw money at me. It is NOBODY's obligation to support my art- I am _grateful_ and pleased when people do. And they do- some days I have over 150 songs downloaded from my site- I've sold a CD that was all available on mp3 separately, which is another example of someone being awesome and supportive (and getting a handy CD for real cheap, with a cool-looking cover:) )
If I can do that, then other people can do it, to the extent of their general musical wonderfulness. Currently I'm at the 100-150 songs a day level when things are going well, and I'll sell a CD from time to time. If I make even better music, this will improve. Will it escalate madly and make me filthy rich? I would ask where is the justification for _anybody_ to become that kind of rich just for making cool-sounding noises. I think the natural level for this is more in line with, say, a really good tailor, or a weaver of beautiful scarves. Once you've done music for the love of it for 15 years or more, you end up pretty capable of pleasing _somebody_ whatever your style is- and that is the natural outcome of loving and practicing music.
I _so_ agree with roamer. Let the musicians starve! I am, and you know, it doesn't hurt _that_ badly:) and I'm apparently freer to pursue _my_ idea of what Music should be, than the major label whores. Somehow I think I am better off...
"With each project, we go through a grueling creative process to achieve music that we feel is representative of Metallica at that very moment in our lives," said Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich in a press release.
Oh, isn't that _special_. I'm told their recent albums suck and are really weak and lame compared to when they were hungrier. Don't talk to me about grueling creative process:P want to talk grueling? I'm reading this after pulling an all-nighter 12-hour-continuous composing session on the techno album I'm producing- an album which pushes a lot of limits such as tonalities and metrical forms. I have to stay up because I'm heading to the bank to deposit all the change in my pocket after blowing my checkbook to a shriveled heap paying for unexpected rip fees on promotional posters for my released album, "anima". And what does Lars want to do to help out? He wants to take mp3 away from me, to poison the well. Granted, my life would be simpler right now if I did _not_ have access to worldwide media (through of course the obligatory link to my music, which kicks butt in many ways), and it would be easier on me if I had no hope of being a working musician after the open-source independent coder model. Do I thank him for attempting to simplify my life by limiting my horizons? I don't f**king think so.
He's _coasting_. Grueling creative process, hell. Grueling creative process, Lars, is when you're running low on food and you're sick and you're exhausted but you keep going anyway because there is this thing programmers know about called Deep Hack Mode, and DIY musicians know about this as well, know that the journey is the goal.
Plus, I hear that Metallica's recent albums are caving in to commercial expectations and are soft and inoffensive compared to their earlier, hungrier stuff, so it annoys me to see him talking in grandiose terms of their Creativity and Where Metallica Is At That Very Moment In Their Lives. Spare me- if they are becoming old and stale who cares if it's depicted honestly in their music? If I said the piece I just uploaded was Where I Am At At This Very Moment In My Life, they'd put me away;) it's crazy music, pushes boundaries real hard- uses fiendish polyrhythms and has a midsection where the whole track simply goes insane with schizophrenic counterpoint for a little while. I _like_ music like that and will never get it from the mainstream industry again- the days when they'd release, say, Beefheart's "The Spotlight Kid" with 'Click Clack' doing that, are gone. But that daring is alive because suck it up and deal, I am going to do what _I_ like to hear and mp3 lets me get it heard. I'll fight for that as long as I have breath in my body.
Only one link today- I'm exhausted, disenchanted, people are _still_ behaving like the mainstream industry needs protecting and coddling (I'd sooner cuddle a cobra) and I have no energy to beg after the all-nighter. Much deep thanks to the Slashdotter who apparently bought my CD for $5.99- I love you man (or woman as the case may be) and would love to know who you were, thank you more personally. I thank everyone who's helped me out with downloads and things- it does matter- did you know musicians fight amongst themselves begging each other for a simple download? That's how tough it is to get indie credibility after decades of industry brainwashing. The site (mp3.com), run by mad Michael, is thinking of putting 'pay for play' income on each artist's page, and many people are flipping out, saying "If my fans see that I only made 12 cents that day, they'll leave and not listen to me anymore!" If that _is_ true, it's sad- and incredibly, horribly wrong. Personally, I don't mind that being posted about me because I don't pretend to be anything other than I am- underground, outmarketed, and I need help. But now I'm tired, f**k it, moderate this down into oblivion because I don't count and am not a REAL musician, don't go visit that page in the one link I habitually gave, whatever.
I'm still going to make music anyway. This time in history may just quietly close down and music will never have a freedom movement like programming had with Linux- maybe the RIAA will win and I'll be back to copying off cassette tapes for friends (assuming that is still allowed! The physical media could simply be unavailable to consumers, eventually). But I will still make music anyway- I did it for almost 20 years, secluded in my room with nobody listening, and I can go back to that if that 'broadcasting', mp3 and do-it-yourself and embattled websites- gets turned OFF. And it won't be because I didn't kick up a fuss- it will be from people trying to protect what they see as the music aristocracy, Prince Lars and his creative sensitiveness. *gag* funny, I could have sworn I didn't get any sleep and so this couldn't be a nightmare, could it?
Not again? As if Metallica wasn't enough. You know, I love and hate these stories...
I love them because I am _smack_ in the middle of the topic: I'm a musician, working hard and putting out a lot of innovative, professional, well-produced music, all on mp3 and in fact on mp3.com.
I hate them because no matter how strident I get, no matter how I rant and make people sick of hearing from me like a guitar toting RMS (;) ) there is always another person sounding off the same old lines: "mp3 is illegal because", "mp3 hurts artists", and now there's some "it won't last because eventually they'll just make mp3 illegal" and people are giving up on it, saying "we'll just use mp4 or something!"
No no nooooo! It may not be all that great a format, but the reason we have digital music so ubitiquously is that CD audio (also not that great a format) proliferated and was not constantly being 'upgraded'! Data formats are not _fashion_. There's an archival value to them and the last thing you want is to be churning them like fscking Excel binaryformats. Yes, CD Audio is lame, yes mp3 is lamer and lossy, but it's all relative- many Philips cassettes are lamer still, and those were an accepted format! mp3 needs to look forward to a life as long as CD audio. It's right at the quality point where it's a good general purpose format- and we've not even begun to see its potential. I have a fancy JPEG plugin I use on images- cost me a fair bit but it optimises Huffman coding and does other tricky hacks and the quality of its output rivals the average JPEG encoder at _half_ the file size. It's that good- and the same thing can be done with mp3, I'm sure of it. 128K will end up sounding a lot like 256K in a couple years... if the format is not killed through neglect.
I'm going to ask something from my fellow slashdotters (yah, you knew this was coming, hear me out): please go grab all the songs of mine that you can, at www.mp3.com/ChrisJ, and put them on Napster. OK? Please, as many of you as possible, do this. I do get a few nano-cents from each download but they do not charge _you_, and of course I get nothing from napster exchanges. But I have the capacity as the copyright holder and owner of my songs _and_ the mechanical recordings of them, to _permit_ such exchanges- and I think this is important, because all this noise is how mp3s and napster are all illegal and piracy and theft and a lot of bullshit like that, and I would really like to be able to prove beyond a doubt that the format and even Napster serve _some_ valid purpose, and again I OWN my music and I AM ALLOWED to permit people to trade it on napster! Dammit, it makes me angry to see corporate whores 'protecting my interests as an artist' by stomping on MY listeners or potential listeners and also cutting off MY access to media! It just really makes me angry, OK? They are NOT helping me by doing this, don't be confused about that. I am outright saying I _want_ my music distributed freely over the net and Napster, that I _want_ it to be like instant radio which is entirely promotional in nature and has no relation to micropayments and 'security' and crap like that, that I see tremendous utility in this and that I also have personal feelings of wanting to be ALLOWED to give my music to a person I haven't even met who happens to not have money for it right at the moment (I can sympathise- I myself am living on ramen and spaghettios this week), and... I don't have a RIGHT to take that position?
It's my damn music, not theirs. They have no right to restrict what I may do with it! _I_ am the creator here and owe them nothing.
I don't appreciate this 'to protect the artists' slant, especially when people unwittingly buy into it... the fact is, I am dead serious about trying to build a music/sound engineering career based on these new modes of distribution. I have done my homework, huge amounts of it, and frankly the existing industry is the most horribly harmful thing you could imagine- pretend it's like all software companies are divisions of Microsoft, and they control all commercial software of all types so you can't program unless you cut a deal with them on their terms. They own basically everything and have controlling interest in everything else and are very prone to stuff like looking at your work and then cutting you dead and paying somebody to knock off your program and saying 'see you in court'. It's like a music version of that, and keeps getting worse, until if you don't know the score you wouldn't believe it. I just can't go along with this at all- and it is these people who are trying to kill the new distribution model that _I_ could use to not need them!
So... when I say go grab all the songs at www.mp3.com/ChrisJ and put them on napster, when I point at the CDs I have up there (which are produced via some neat press-to-order tech mp3.com's invented) and beg people to buy them in support of what I am trying to do here... that is coming from someone who feels, very deeply, that all that could be TAKEN AWAY. Maybe sooner than you think! And maybe you won't give a rat's ass about some bozo musician in Vermont no longer having access to a format (mp3) and a dotcom (mp3.com) that will print up his CDs on an as-needed basis for only nonexclusive rights to the music... but I have to take it more seriously. If this was happening to programmers, slashdot would be up in arms- why does it seem debatable if it happens to musicians? It's the equivalent of programmers having to go to say Microsoft to be 'authorised' to practice their craft professionally. "Oh, you must not be a _real_ programmer, otherwise Microsoft would want to hire you, so therefore it's OK to get rid of gzip- only criminals use it and I heard there are viruses that are transported in gzipped form! Better get rid of tar too while we're at it. Then we can license RPM so that only authorised people are allowed to use it..."
furrfu, another huge rant. I'm sorry:) I swear, I meant to only write a bit. Please, while I still have an mp3.com that will press up CDs for me and give me half, BUY one- please, while I still have an mp3 format that I'm allowed to distribute my own music over the net with, USE it and listen to my stuff and (I hope!) enjoy it and share it with your friends? If that doesn't seem like enough you are _free_ to go buy another CD of mine to make up for the napsterring, I wouldn't dream of stopping you. But I simply cannot go along with coercion, so the end result might be that I am just plain silenced, the format I use stifled or co-opted, the site I distribute from killed through lawsuits (some of which are arguably valid- but they have every right to redistribute _my_ music and in fact they pay me small amounts to do so).
airwindows.com _is_ registered under Network Solutions, from two years ago.
After the story I read in which the guy tried to change to another registrar and NS closed his account and promptly sold his domain to somebody else before the other registrar could plug it in, I had no stomach for doing anything other than paying them off and praying they wouldn't botch _that_ up. I'm nervous because I paid them by check when they're expecting web-credit-card payments! It's pretty sad when you can't trust the buggers to be paid off and do NOTHING... we'll see. I hope other people are ready to put some heat on them. I don't feel comfortable trifling with them because of how badly they could hose me. Color me extorted;P
I'm going to want a Voodoo5 for just this reason- I have a voodoo2 too!;) PCI version will be available, and it will allow me to stick with my old machine (a Powermac, btw) and enjoy FSAA which I really like the idea of. I'm not a FPS guy, I'm an 'X-Plane' fan;) plus, even with FSAA it should give a moderate speed increase on the voodoo2 which has only (*sigh* 'only') 12 megs:)
Enlightened self-interest is grand, but unfortunately it only exists in E.E. 'Doc' Smith space opera novels and some old Heinlein:)
The natural state of things for large groups of people (whether political parties or corporations) is _unenlightened_ or raw self-interest, and in fact as we all know perfectly well, for corporations enlightened self-interest is against the law- they have 'fiduciary duty' to cut straight to the richest vein of self-interest and to hell with enlightenment. This, for entities (corporations) that already will have a strong bias towards cruder self-interest in the first place.
This is where you and where Randroids err most grieviously- you, and they, make fine noises about enlightened self-interest, but the rules end up being made by mobs, and there's nothing enlightened about that!
The only purpose of government is to cope with the problems of faction- which is why we in the US are a republic and why we're set up a certain way (re-read Federalist #10 pleeease). Nothing in the ESRian randite mondo-libertarian approach makes the slightest effort to cope with this- instead it's assumed that the biggest factions will be the most enlightened, or something. Huh? I'm not sure how anybody would draw _that_ conclusion, but it seems central to the uber-techno-libertarian theme, and this is such a disturbingly strange conclusion that it makes me glad we do have a government that can block these loonies from gaining power:)
How many of you _really_ think that technically trained computer geeks are a superior race _better_ qualified to judge things and make decisions than any other faction? I keep getting this sense of "Down with government- _our_ way should rule, and we will be in control!" from the technolibertarians. It is not a little frightening... unless, I suppose, you believe we are a superior race:P
There are some drawbacks (so IE is now obligatory, eh? So Office gets to be its own monopoly? So the Windows dynasty isn't directly touched at all?) but this is still the best move, realistically.
Office and Applications would no longer be in as deeply ambiguous a position as they currently are, regarding Mac versions. They are used as pawns and there are actually good people involved in the work, but there is a constant undertone of either pressuring people to Windows, or making MacOS more like Windows- most notably in the reliance on 'self-repairing' software, which is a damned fragile hack and assumes the vendor is the one who arranges things on your computer.
OS/Windows would presumably have access to programming tools, and the obvious move for them would be to 'dump' programming tools and porting aids on non-Windows developers. Linux toolkits that crosscompile to Windows, Mac version of VB, whatever. They'll also continue to raise havoc in other ways- again this is a 'realistic' option in that there's no way to make them nice or positive and whatever is done with Microsoft it _will_ continue to be vicious for the foreseeable future.
It's nice to see "Microsoft stock plummets, analysts downgrade Microsoft". That is the only thing that, in the long run, will moderate its essential viciousness. In order for Microsoft to stop being vicious, it needs to _fail_ for a while and learn a measure of humility like almost any other business in the world. Economically they are like haughty, mercurial gods- the collapse of their bloated valuation, the decay of the Microsoft-worship of recent years is the most important outcome, and it _can't_ be court ordered. It happens as people begin to consider the idea of an actual _market_ existing for a change. Gasp, office applications not from Microsoft? That can't happen! Well, yes it can. Gasp, non-MS OSes? That too, and they could be supported by the old familiar Office you've gotten so used to. And that's how it goes...
Since I mentioned 'I get half' when talking about the mp3.com stuff I thought people might want to know if I am richer than they are, considering that the music is available free. I've sold two CDs through mp3.com, and get 'payback for playback' from the downloads if they are big enough (the downloader is not billed, apparently the site fundraises for the purpose of making micropayments to artists). I've made $21.89 so far on downloads, and $5.99 through album sales, for a total of $27.88, all without once withholding free downloads of my mp3s from anyone who lives on ramen and has no money for a CD.
_I_ am also currently living on ramen and can't afford a CD- a radio station DJ in the UK asked me to send him my CD and I couldn't because I can't afford to buy my own CD, might be able to next month tho:) so, if any of you had a particular liking for starving artists, at the moment I literally am calculating how best to ration my food for the next week:) I don't need food care packages (if I run out of coca-cola I may reconsider!;) ) but this is just to say that YES I need the support, that's why I post these things. I'm not Lars Ulrich or any other sort of rich, and I do live what I believe- and you know, I do pretty good music really, and if any of you cable modem guys could hit me with some downloads or those of you who cashed out on the tech stock bubble could pick up some of my CDs, it would help me out a huge amount. I _do_ need the support, I admit it. I try not to be too noisy about it but I do need the support. But I won't email anybody spam to get it;) rather starve!
I know that I use spamcop and go after spammers- but at the same time I'm placed in the other position. I am a musician- I'm up against the major labels and the incredible inertia of the existing music industry in which only bands selling their CDs for $17 and seeing none of it but nevertheless _suing_ redistributors "matter". I'm trying to really _run_ with basically the open source model as applied to music- and the problem is always networking.
And of course I never spam- I am incredibly hesitant to even use email to try to set up a relationship with a person related to what I'm doing with music or sound engineering. I wrote CmdrTaco- once- asking if he wanted me to record some special Geeks In Space music and sounds to _give_ him in hopes I might get a mention. Never heard back, never tried again- I'm deathly afraid of being thought of as spamming.
Yet you HAVE to market- you HAVE to network, or you're dead- and my awareness of how bad spam is tends to have a profound effect on the way I network. It's like it is forcing me to evolve laborious ways of dealing with it- ways that might be the only good ways of coping with needing to market in a world where connectivity is so vast that 'spam' can mean almost anything.
You, reading this (whoever you are) did not 'ask' to hear from me. Nobody solicited my comment on the slashdot comments page. Yet, the purpose of the thing is for me to cover Natalie Portman with hot gr^H^H^H^H^H^H to make insightful comments;)
As such, I find that I wait eagerly, hoping to see mp3 related Slashdot articles- because when there is one, I become relevant to the discussion, and I'm telling you, Slashdot is a powerful resource- anybody would want to have their product or service 'slashdotted' (even a free one) but the thing is, Slashdotters are so aware and even touchy about being exploited that you can't bullshit- when I get a chance, I take an _hour_ to type up the best statement of where I'm at on the subject. I put more effort into it than some article authors- I have _been_ a Slashdot article authors- I basically show my respect for the community by proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am listening, am part of the community, am in a two-way communication rather than just blathering at people. Sometimes I try to sneak in geek creds and screw up- I mistook "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" for "Cryptonomicon":)
Because of paying attention to this, I can even make a post that says "BUY MY ALBUM!" all over it in boldface all caps as an intentional parody of desperate hype- because the post _was_ a plea for help getting more respect and credibility for indie mp3-reliant artists, and thus it was on topic. (Yes, that link is real and so is the plea- see how this works? Meta-hype, but honestly I am not fooling about wishing people to buy my nice $5.99 CDs, but here I am talking _about_ the approaches I have to take to be certain I am not doing any variation on spamming)
And because I am willing to be part of the discussion and talk about what I've needed to do in order to take responsibility, I can finish up my comment by just saying a little about where I'm at today- in a way it is on a personal note, but the comment is not ONLY about the personal note, it is entering the discussion about 'legitimate spam' and then allowing my 'legitimate' needs/concerns to be mentioned. Those needs are as follows- BUY MY ALBUM! AHAHAHAHAHAH! *g* No, seriously... well, sure I'd like to see that happen but that's not where I put my priorities. I put giving people free downloads higher on the priority list because I am trying to prove that you _can_ succeed by applying the opensource model to music- and so, there is this specific song that I desperately want to kick ass on the mp3.com charts. That song is "Fire Dragon", which you can download directly from that link without even having to log into anything or leave the slashdot page, and it's 4.7 megs, techno with an extremely high quality production (geek cred again- I physically built equipment to get the drums equalised so that the bassdrum is heavily subsonic and the snare barks really loud:) ) and is actually in 7/4 time, sort of geek techno that is slightly too intellectually demanding for the mainstream music industry:) I'm currently downloading another mp3.com artist friend's entire page for a second time because I like his music and am trying to help him in the charts- he is corruptdata.
Exposure is life- and spam is worthy of the most horrible punishments, so somebody like me has a lot of work to do in order to promote. Basically I have to _be_ part of the community and be actively a part of the discussion while still trying to stand up for the things I do that I am passionate about and desperately want to tell people about:) it can feel like revolution, this being-a-mp3-artist, what with the incredible forces trying to destroy my best hope of distribution for my ART. What if they get mp3s themselves banned or made illegal somewhere? That would be restraint of trade against me, and nobody really considers that! So I keep trying to push it, trying to do this 'popularity', 'promotion' thing _knowing_ that if I manage to get that 5 minutes of fame, I will have a lot to say about the RIAA and the industry and lots of links to raise people's awareness about the abuses of the industry, and that not every mp3-using musician will be so motivated to make such statements.
And at the same time I work just as hard to avoid even the appearance of spam, and have put a lot of effort into trying to educate other net-musicians about why spam is bad and why it makes you vulnerable to losing your account clicky clicky;) So it's not so much a 'balance' in the sense of 'doing the right amount of spam': it's a question of finding out "When is promotion NOT spam?", realising the answer is "When it is part of a desirable dialogue", and taking the EFFORT, far more effort than it takes to talk and not listen, to be in such a dialogue and include the things that I care so much about, instead of spamming them.
I could have posted just URLS to my stuff here and it would have taken a lot less time, and still to some extent met _my_ needs- but that to my mind would have been spam, because I would not have been listening or being part of the discussion at all. Maybe the fact that I put promo links alone will make some people feel this is still spam- I don't know. I only know that this post of mine is the best analysis I can do of what is spam and what is legitimate- and to me, it's all about whether the communication is two-way. I'll of course be reading all the followups if any, because I _do_ read Slashdot, it's not a pose or drive-by spamming of mp3 links. I think that's key- if every spammer took half an hour to talk with you about what _you_ were talking about and open a dialogue in which they could also mention their wares- there would be no spammers.
Because what defines a spammer, in some way, is that they completely are not interested in YOU at all and are not listening at all and are entering no sort of dialogue at all. In a way, though I tolerate the ones who spend their _own_ money to do that (like flyer-printers, postal mail promo), even those are not the wave of the future, because it is meaningless- you can't distinguish yourself from anybody else that way, and there's so much noise that it all becomes meaningless. That is not only pollution, it is also _useless_...
I really hope I do better than that. Slashdotters know me, periodically get tired of me ranting about mp3 and moderate me down to make me shut up for a bit, they can get my personal email and look at my user page and go to airwindows.com and download all the XPMs and tiles they want to prove that I make stuff for Linux- or look at the GPLed software I wrote to prove that I am a free software author (if not a good one:) ) and basically, I don't need to work too hard to seem like not an intruder. I "live here" as much as any slashdot reader.
So if people like the idea of that kind of community or _want_ to have one of their own kicking ass on mp3.com and giving press conferences slamming hell out of the abuses of the RIAA and the industry- they can stop buying Metallica CDs for a minute, and come up with $5.99 to buy one of my albums or simply take some of their time to download my latest song. You wouldn't believe how helpful that can be- even a mere download, like what you would do on Napster that arguably hurts an artist, is a huge help to an independent mp3.com artist, and even if the album is only $5.99 I see more from it than the major label artists get per album (I get half) and the system for making them is really cool! You get the CD in like two-three days- it's completely press-to-order, they are geared to printing one copy of a CD and its cover to order, something that was never technically possible before! Plus I do cool covers;) so really, you have no idea just how helpful this support would be _and_ it's damn competitive with major label ripoff!:)
Whoa, got a little enthusiastic there;) I'll stop before I go farther offtopic. The topic _is_ 'spam vs. promotion'. I think I just got carried away in the direction of promotion... if I only talked about that it _would_ be sort of 'essence of spam'. Thankfully, mostly I didn't:)
Re:I just chipped in $27, how about you?
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Pay Lars
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These are very nice sentiments. Now- please allow _me_ to give you a copy of my latest track ("Fire Dragon", a neat innovative techno piece in 7/4 time with loads of attitude). OK? It's tempting to throw every link I can at you, because of the enthusiasm you show for supporting people like me- if you want them I posted the "Screw Lars- pay us!" post above this one- but it goes both ways. I want to let you have this music (so new it didn't exist at all yesterday- the net is cool, instant distribution, you get my music _as_ it's being produced instead of waiting on the machine to digest it), and I want you to have this free as MY gift to you. You can't even pay for it yet, don't try! The CD isn't done! So I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy it all the more knowing the artist is personally giving it to you in appreciation of your great supportive attitude:) (this goes for anyone being supportive- giving money to 'paylars.com' is _not_ a requirement tho:) why not just give the money to _non_ majorlabel artists?)
Why on earth would you spend even _more_ money making donations to Metallica? They already _have_ channels in place to be paid- buy their CDs. It's that simple.
What about the rest of us?
There's this assumption that only major label acts count, that the rest of us are geeky guitar player or ReBirth-diddling dirtbags who don't _deserve_ to be popular. This, in the face of legis lation that rapes musician's interests even worse than usual- now musicians will be pressured into contracts that sign away their music FOREVER to the label. Is that fair? Is that right? If Metallica are part of that system do they deserve sympathy? Certainly. Do they deserve for people to support it just because Metallica are associated with it? Well....
Meanwhile, I for one am feeling much like the Linux camp in "Cryptonomicon"- the guys with the free tanks that get 60 mpg and go 120 mph with air conditioning and cruise control and fuzzy dice. I go "Please, download my music! I've been playing and composing for more than fifteen years and my heart and soul is in the work, plus I build my own equipment and share my information and ideas freely with others and offer to help people get samples off my tapes if they want any!" and then what?
I'll tell you what- then I post in Slashdot threads, because I love Slashdot and this musician is user #580... there are lots of musicians who read Slashdot. There are lots of _listeners_ who read Slashdot. Yet, I won't bother even asking if I can get a feature on the way I am trying to bring free-software principles into music, because it'd be 'promotion'- but Lars Ulrich GETS THE FEATURE on Slashdot, and the 'Pay Lars' site GETS the hits- why? Because they are 'newsworthy'! Because they are MAINSTREAM and joking about how some website wants to pay them is considered more important than my sweat and blood and heart and soul. It's a question of numbers. How are you going to stop the mainstream industry from smothering you if you just feed it every chance you get? Even bad attention is attention!
TO HELL WITH THAT. I may not be able to get a Slashdot feature- I _wrote_ a Slashdot feature and am friendly with roblimo, but I am just too close to this one- maybe the mainstream media still makes a sick joke of journalistic objectivity but _I_ take it seriously enough that I won't try to 'sneak in' promotion in the guise of an article, even a good passionate persuasive one. Somebody should write that article, though. How many Slashdot articles have given hits to Metallica, the RIAA and their supporters, and how many have supported the musical equivalent of free software and Linux- the artists out there trying to use mp3 for good, inventing a whole new marketplace dynamic based on what free _software_ has taught us? Are we to be totally ignored, do you _really_ want to just only support the major labels here?
And meanwhile- heck with being shy, Metallica is not shy, the RIAA are not shy, and I for one am getting steamrollered. BUY MY ALBUM. Yes, I know that every song on it (actually I have _five_ albums up at mp3.com) is downloadable at no cost- I'm doing that on purpose, dammit! It's important to me that I give freely- I also share my production tips and technical tricks with musicians on the mp3.com boards quite freely. BUY MY ALBUM anyway. There are several to choose from, my favorite is 'anima' a set of rock instrumentals based on animal themes, some are really damn good music. You can hear them all you want, totally free, with my blessing- download them from that page and there's no strings attached and I'm not _forcing_ you to do anything. I'm asking, like someone who has just seen yet another Metallica publicity-boosting article even here on Slashdot where I go to get away from that crap, to BUY MY ALBUM. The Metallica is what, $14? $17? MY ALBUMS are all $5.99- if they'd let me set the price lower, I would! And I'm _still_ getting 50% of that, more per album than Metallica will ever see. Buy the damn things! Argh! *g*
Not only that, if you go here like I am piteously begging you to do- you can download, again free with my total blessing, the first track on another killer album I'm putting together- a groundbreaking techno album so new I don't even have a cover for it or a CD of it yet! The sound rivals or kicks the ass of any major label release in this genre, especially bass-wise, and the music is TOO INNOVATIVE for the labels to cope with- the whole album is techno in unusual time signatures! "Fire Dragon", the first track to be created (not 'released'- when I do 'em you get 'em that day!) is in 7/4 time! It still dances, but this stuff is too innovative for anything but FREE MUSIC as we indie artists are doing it. You'll never see anything this fresh on a major label! They're even kicking Clive Davis out of Arista so they can get safer and more corporate!
You can even get "Fire Dragon" direct from here and not even visit the page- here is a link to download the mp3 file without even leaving Slashdot. It's only 4.7 megs, even if you're not into fierce innovative techno please give me just the seconds or minutes to download the song anyhow? You might like it, and as an indie musician I really could use the support.:)
And _while_ I'm at it, I want to mention some really nice people- a sort of coalition of artists (of which I'm one) gathering together to try and promote their work in the face of this horrible indifference and in spite of how much more power the major labels have- Liquid Dreams Records. I am just one of _lots_ of neat independent bands working together on this, and we deserve the page-visit and listen! Trust me that there's a lot of wonderful stuff... one of my favorites was corruptdata, who does neat fierce electronica that I kept listening to over and over and over:) please, go hunt down the free indie artists and talk about us and support us! Do you _want_ to be listening to nothing but re-releases of Metallica for the rest of your lives? (besides which, depending on their contract they might not even own their music at all)
They said "I ain't gonna play Sun City"- now it's time to say "I ain't gonna waste my time talking about major labels!" To hell with 'em! Please help us real artists- and not 'help us to get signed' either, hell with that, it's too horribly corrupt, help us establish a new industry, one that is decentralised like Linux! Because you know what?
WE OWN OUR MUSIC. We are _allowed_ to use mp3. And we're doing just that- HELP us.
Uh- is this a joke? "A new way of life, firmly based on the Objectivist principles of Ayn Rand will be established whereby the great men and women, the industrialists, will be those who rule for us"? It shall be the privilege of those in power to be allowed 'thought'?
*g* check the quality of your crack, man, I think someone is cutting it with rat poison, Drano, and ergot fungus;)
Sorry. The links are actually a "will click on links" list. This should explain why you get more and more spam:P
My favorite local used bookstore is ALREADY dead
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I don't think this has much to do with e-books. In fact, e-books could be what steps in to replace the local bookstore. My favorite local bookstore wasn't killed by free online content. It was killed by Barnes+Noble, basically. They seized the distribution channels (relevant concept ALERT!) and jacked prices on him until he was working 7 days a week and still not clearing rent. I'd worry more about that than about e-books.
Re:There are other costs than moving bits
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RMS On eBooks
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Are you kidding? Literature may not be anywhere near as totally corrupt as the _music_ industry, but it's still 99.999% 'keep your day job' territory. What gives you the idea that many authors are able to live full time on the royalties, of all things, of their books? There are a fair number of authors who are able to live on writing, but you know how they do that? WORK. Writing article after article, book after book, going after the surprisingly lucrative field of Commercial Writing (_somebody_ has to write the words in those corporate quarterly glossy reports, and they'd damn well better be able to spell;) )
It's crazy to try and protect what isn't there. Writers who live on their writing have to work like anybody else, and do- and the interesting thing is, if you assume the writer is doing new articles and commercial work etc etc a lot, the argument for intellectual property loses a _lot_ of its force. There _is_ no case for living on royalties as a writer (or a musician). Maybe Steven King manages it, but if you ask any professional they will tell you that you gotta work, keep submitting. You NEVER sit back and live on royalties. Plus, the sort of person who wants to live on royalties will never be in a position to get them as you have to START OFF with a whole bunch of hard work.
Sorry- I don't think your argument works at all. If everyone starts making ebooks and duping them endlessly it might inspire more of a market for the written word, at which point WORKING writers might actually find themselves doing better because they are not living off royalties, they are working. Ever heard the phrase 'first serial rights'? Ponder the nature of the word 'first' there, and why it is worth money for a thing that will end up copied widely and freely.:)
The whole valuation thing is ESR's trip
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You know, there's a whole side of the 'Open Source Movement' for whom all this really is irrelevant, no matter what anyone might say. The 'gnuuuu-linux' folks, Stallmanites, RMS. Not everybody ran out and madly started buying stock and waving their tails at IBM in a seductive manner. It's easy to forget that after the days of massive IPOs and stuff- it looked at first glance like those people were right in some way, like they were really onto something.
Well... do you know why my GPLed code still has the same value it had back when linux/gpl/opensource was IPO heaven? I'll tell you why- because I'm perhaps a bit strange and that concept, that the stuff I _shared_ had a speculative value, never even 'computed' for me. It's a big nil pointer for me, because to me the value of the stuff I share _is_ that sharing, is the RELATIONSHIPS I create by doing so. _that_ is where the value is and that is where Linux started and why it will always have a core value that can't be swept away...
I've built a recording studio (obHype: mp3.com/ChrisJ) and several times now, I've offered to help out CmdrTaco and the whole Geeks In Space crowd, which would be fun and not too hard for me to do. And you know, from the viewpoint of a linux-stock millionare, I can see how the help of some dude in Vermont building equipment with a soldering iron and wirestrippers might seem nice but pointless- more fun to buy your own! Bigger mixers, more tracks, etc etc etc since money flows like water!
Well- he ain't a linux stock millionare anymore. I'm not sure how many of the Slashdot people's plans are still feasible- but _I'm_ still there, offering to help. What I offered never had anything to do with money and demands nothing from Taco and company but sharing- let me help out, let's play, let's see what we can do.
Look around- there are a _lot_ of Linux things that are utterly unaffected by the crash. People trying to 'rub it in' about the obliteration of those wild valuations? It's like they're speaking a different language- and they always were. ESR may be shocked or hurt by all this, because it hits him where he lives- he always bought heavily into wanting Linux legitimised by business and valuation. Some of us always resisted this pressure to redefine the value in money and profit terms. Now maybe it'll be easier to make the point that Linux is not a phenomenon based on money.
*g* anybody considered the idea that if there _is_ another Great Depression and everybody's reduced to living off pentium IIs and such (;) ), they won't be able to afford The Microsoft Tax, and will _have_ to turn to Linux and proliferate it, not because it is a lottery ticket to wealth, but because it is free?
The trouble is, the standard for honesty from Microsoft is _so_ low, and their manipulativeness _so_ high, that it almost forces one to become completely paranoid just to not be completely taken advantage of. These are the same people who faked video evidence in the antitrust case. When they say "There's no backdoor!" who, reasonably, can accept that on good faith without questioning it? When a third party (notably NT Bugtraq) says "There's no backdoor!", is it really unthinkable to consider if they were paid or coerced to say that? I know that's a hell of an accusation, but so is "Microsoft probably _faked_ that video evidence!", and of course that's ridiculous, they would never fake evidence in their own antitrust case- and yet, THEY DID THAT.
Is "Microsoft faked evidence!" still paranoid when it is true?
Is "They are lying, and the 'backdoor' was/is there on purpose in case Microsoft felt a need someday to use it" equally paranoid? In many ways it's a far more plausible claim than the faking of evidence- it's a power issue and easy for them to do and you could easily see them claiming that they _had_ to put in such backdoors in order to compete by being able to damage or alter the PCs used by competing firms, or perhaps tamper with government evidence stored on Windows PCs connected to the net, if that was necessary.
When a company begins to _live_ the reductio ad absurdum of a Randite wet dream, who can see it and recognize it for what it is? There are times when the normal expectations aren't describing what you're seeing. The only options are to refuse to see anything at all, or to try and make sense of the matter even when it seems crazy. Microsoft would never fabricate evidence for the courts of the United States, no, no! They _respect_ the law. It's paranoid to think that they would intentionally try to sabotage the justice system of this country that they are so proud of exemplifying! *enter David Boies, with a magnifying glass*
Basically, it is possible that Metallica does not own its own songs- making their pleas for respect for their artistic work kind of ironic. I realise it might come as a bit of a shock to consider that record industry contracts are being changed to alter them so that, rather than the company owning your artistic creations for thirty-five years outright, the company owns your artistic creations FOREVER. That's exclusive ownership, you don't get a say. Did you know of this? Does Metallica know of this? Does Metallica have a provision in their contract stating their albums are work for hire due to the involvement of engineers and producers and such? If so, and this law-change would appear to be retroactive and apply to existing 'work-for-hire' contracts, Metallica does not own any of their music- they'd own nothing and are also probably barred from producing work other than for the company that will wholly own anything they produce. If anyone can check on this it would be very interesting...
I own my mp3.com stuff. Their contract gives them nonexclusive rights, so they also get carte blanche to do what they wish with the stuff I give them, which I'm happy with, but it does not sign over ownership of the music or the mechanical recordings to the company- which I am still more happy about. Try that with a record company contract. There is a very good chance that Metallica are goddamn slaves and don't even realise it. Ask them about their contract! But don't be too hard on them as they had damn-all chance to negotiate even a word of it, with 20 million other bands clamoring to be exploited.
I'm not at all sure there is morality to be had in defending the record companies the way things are going. The concept of civil disobedience seems more and more relevant...
FWIW, I don't have that nice fat corporate support, but for Metallica fans being upset, I do have a Metal song which I mp3ed and put on the web. It's off an album of animal themes which covers amazingly different genres, and the Metal song is the theme for "Wolf". It includes some gabba hardcore elements but mostly just brutal drumming, bass and guitar playing, and a solo that is viciously atonal and makes no concessions to human notions of harmony:)
Please PUT this on Napster, if possible with a name or metadata like "Wolf (on napster by personal request of the artist Chris Johnson!)". I'm on a Mac so I can't make spammy filenames like that:) and napster doesn't actually help me at all because people downloading stuff off mp3.com directly helps me- but that doesn't matter because I want to help _Napster_. If someone could do that, or could do that with all my stuff both there and at mp3.com/RFW, that's over 170 megs of mp3s that are specifically on Napster by personal request of the artist. It may hurt my chart rankings over at mp3.com if nobody ever has to go there again (;) ) but I don't care. I _really_ would like to personally ask that stuff of mine be put on Napster so that I can say "Hey- I am a musician and I _want_ Napster! I _asked_ for my stuff to be there. Are you trying to cut off my avenue of distribution?" and have that be a SERIOUS ARGUMENT. Nobody has a right to cut off my avenues of LEGAL distribution just because the medium is being used for other purposes.
So _please_ would someone grab all my stuff and put it on Napster? Hell, if it helps I'll ask somebody in writing. Does anybody know if it might help for me to ask someone in writing, just to authoritatively establish that at least one working artist legally and legitimately WANTS their stuff on Napster and requested that it be there? It seems to me that could help blow a hole in the "It's just plain illegal!" concept. It's just a tool...
It forces me to look at my assumptions, and this casts some light on the matter. Anyone who has read my essays section at airwindows.com knows I've acutely distrusted Microsoft for _years_, and in fact written things that at the time could have seemed paranoid until Microsoft went and made all of it a reality.
This is why I am NOT SURPRISED that Microsoft would put in a really _dumb_ and arrogant backdoor key to their software and maintain it through ALL LEVELS of code checking, on purpose- presumably not because they were really actively planning to be able to break into their own customers' computers anytime they wanted, but 'just in case' they might want or need to do that sometime! I fail to see any other possible reason for this. Conceding that they are not the Illuminati or competing with the NSA- the only possible conclusion is that right to the highest levels, Microsoft wanted to leave their options open about someday _becoming_ like that, and so hubris leads them to stick really _stupid_ backdoors in, correctly assuming that their customers would not figure even this out (it's been how many years to figure this one out?)
The thing is, I am not surprised, so I am startled and astonished when this is suddenly getting so much attention. To me it's just another Bugtraq 'issue' because I already _thought_ Microsoft wanted to supplant the government and lay the groundwork for surveilllance and remote control of its own customers. It's old news to me- though this feeling of mine was based on intuition, as I'll happily admit, so there was no real evidence, as I would also admit.
Now there is- it's a 'smoking gun' type of revelation- and while for me it's an 'Ah, I thought so', for many people it's like waking up and realising their mother is not their mother, like she is a bloodsucking Arcturan weasel in a cheap mask. I can sympathise with their shock to some extent even though I never had much patience with their pathetic trustingness in the first place. Sorry guys. New rules.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll master your stuff, if you want, because you're another mp3 musician like I am. I don't have that much reinassance-like music to demo for you but "Tiger" off the 'anima' album includes synthesized piano that sounds better than soundfonts. I'm a High End audio guy using a lot of homebrew analog equipment for this sort of thing, I could certainly do just as good a job on organ music- if you want to do a bit of networking, drop me an email and we'll talk about it. I won't charge you anything because it's easy for me to do- let's work together and get some great music out there- while we still can :P
No, the labels literally destroy your musical history, they don't simply neglect to back it up. They want to make room for Britney Spears tapes or Spice Girls or Hanson, and they order rooms of old tapes to be literally destroyed, and do not allow the tapes to be bought or salvaged. This has been a particular scandal when it involves stuff like old jazz tapes. I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. They have the tapes _destroyed_, it's not a question of neglect.
Actually what you are seeing is: McCartney, Metallica, Dre all own VANITY IMPRINTS on existing major labels which are really calling the shots. There are virtually no real indie labels left anymore- they are greatly outnumbered by vanity imprints and faux indies. I agree that they are businessmen, but they certainly do not own labels- they own decorations and a special name to put on major label releases for the purpose of giving the releases a cachet of small private-label flavor. It's down to about 5 huge conglomerates (4?) by now, with all the formerly major labels (Virgin, EMI/Harvest, Rough Trade, you name it) subsidiaries of one of the conglomerates. There is no 'industry' in the normal sense of the word. It's essentially one very large machine with many different colored stickers to stick on the product. That, not Metallica or Dre, is what's suing. Lars and Dre are simply showing unusual willingness to be their master's lackeys.
There's an argument for intellectual property, but the music industry is Not It. I, as a musician who's done some homework, would have to basically support anything that acts to cut down the music industry and lessen their power. They _are_ as bad as Microsoft in their own sphere, and you need to talk to some insiders and get an idea how bad things are before you let them off the hook. An outsider might find "MS and Apple's sole ability to play DVDs on a home computer" as justifiable as you find the music industry's status quo- does that make them an authority on it? I would suggest that with the DVDs, you've done the homework and know better than they do what's at stake. I'm suggesting that Napster is an indirect and ass-backwards attack on something that desperately needs to be cut down to size.
If I can do that, then other people can do it, to the extent of their general musical wonderfulness. Currently I'm at the 100-150 songs a day level when things are going well, and I'll sell a CD from time to time. If I make even better music, this will improve. Will it escalate madly and make me filthy rich? I would ask where is the justification for _anybody_ to become that kind of rich just for making cool-sounding noises. I think the natural level for this is more in line with, say, a really good tailor, or a weaver of beautiful scarves. Once you've done music for the love of it for 15 years or more, you end up pretty capable of pleasing _somebody_ whatever your style is- and that is the natural outcome of loving and practicing music.
I _so_ agree with roamer. Let the musicians starve! I am, and you know, it doesn't hurt _that_ badly :) and I'm apparently freer to pursue _my_ idea of what Music should be, than the major label whores. Somehow I think I am better off...
Oh, isn't that _special_. I'm told their recent albums suck and are really weak and lame compared to when they were hungrier. Don't talk to me about grueling creative process :P want to talk grueling? I'm reading this after pulling an all-nighter 12-hour-continuous composing session on the techno album I'm producing- an album which pushes a lot of limits such as tonalities and metrical forms. I have to stay up because I'm heading to the bank to deposit all the change in my pocket after blowing my checkbook to a shriveled heap paying for unexpected rip fees on promotional posters for my released album, "anima". And what does Lars want to do to help out? He wants to take mp3 away from me, to poison the well. Granted, my life would be simpler right now if I did _not_ have access to worldwide media (through of course the obligatory link to my music, which kicks butt in many ways), and it would be easier on me if I had no hope of being a working musician after the open-source independent coder model. Do I thank him for attempting to simplify my life by limiting my horizons? I don't f**king think so.
He's _coasting_. Grueling creative process, hell. Grueling creative process, Lars, is when you're running low on food and you're sick and you're exhausted but you keep going anyway because there is this thing programmers know about called Deep Hack Mode, and DIY musicians know about this as well, know that the journey is the goal.
Plus, I hear that Metallica's recent albums are caving in to commercial expectations and are soft and inoffensive compared to their earlier, hungrier stuff, so it annoys me to see him talking in grandiose terms of their Creativity and Where Metallica Is At That Very Moment In Their Lives. Spare me- if they are becoming old and stale who cares if it's depicted honestly in their music? If I said the piece I just uploaded was Where I Am At At This Very Moment In My Life, they'd put me away ;) it's crazy music, pushes boundaries real hard- uses fiendish polyrhythms and has a midsection where the whole track simply goes insane with schizophrenic counterpoint for a little while. I _like_ music like that and will never get it from the mainstream industry again- the days when they'd release, say, Beefheart's "The Spotlight Kid" with 'Click Clack' doing that, are gone. But that daring is alive because suck it up and deal, I am going to do what _I_ like to hear and mp3 lets me get it heard. I'll fight for that as long as I have breath in my body.
Only one link today- I'm exhausted, disenchanted, people are _still_ behaving like the mainstream industry needs protecting and coddling (I'd sooner cuddle a cobra) and I have no energy to beg after the all-nighter. Much deep thanks to the Slashdotter who apparently bought my CD for $5.99- I love you man (or woman as the case may be) and would love to know who you were, thank you more personally. I thank everyone who's helped me out with downloads and things- it does matter- did you know musicians fight amongst themselves begging each other for a simple download? That's how tough it is to get indie credibility after decades of industry brainwashing. The site (mp3.com), run by mad Michael, is thinking of putting 'pay for play' income on each artist's page, and many people are flipping out, saying "If my fans see that I only made 12 cents that day, they'll leave and not listen to me anymore!" If that _is_ true, it's sad- and incredibly, horribly wrong. Personally, I don't mind that being posted about me because I don't pretend to be anything other than I am- underground, outmarketed, and I need help. But now I'm tired, f**k it, moderate this down into oblivion because I don't count and am not a REAL musician, don't go visit that page in the one link I habitually gave, whatever.
I'm still going to make music anyway. This time in history may just quietly close down and music will never have a freedom movement like programming had with Linux- maybe the RIAA will win and I'll be back to copying off cassette tapes for friends (assuming that is still allowed! The physical media could simply be unavailable to consumers, eventually). But I will still make music anyway- I did it for almost 20 years, secluded in my room with nobody listening, and I can go back to that if that 'broadcasting', mp3 and do-it-yourself and embattled websites- gets turned OFF. And it won't be because I didn't kick up a fuss- it will be from people trying to protect what they see as the music aristocracy, Prince Lars and his creative sensitiveness. *gag* funny, I could have sworn I didn't get any sleep and so this couldn't be a nightmare, could it?
I love them because I am _smack_ in the middle of the topic: I'm a musician, working hard and putting out a lot of innovative, professional, well-produced music, all on mp3 and in fact on mp3.com.
I hate them because no matter how strident I get, no matter how I rant and make people sick of hearing from me like a guitar toting RMS ( ;) ) there is always another person sounding off the same old lines: "mp3 is illegal because", "mp3 hurts artists", and now there's some "it won't last because eventually they'll just make mp3 illegal" and people are giving up on it, saying "we'll just use mp4 or something!"
No no nooooo! It may not be all that great a format, but the reason we have digital music so ubitiquously is that CD audio (also not that great a format) proliferated and was not constantly being 'upgraded'! Data formats are not _fashion_. There's an archival value to them and the last thing you want is to be churning them like fscking Excel binaryformats. Yes, CD Audio is lame, yes mp3 is lamer and lossy, but it's all relative- many Philips cassettes are lamer still, and those were an accepted format! mp3 needs to look forward to a life as long as CD audio. It's right at the quality point where it's a good general purpose format- and we've not even begun to see its potential. I have a fancy JPEG plugin I use on images- cost me a fair bit but it optimises Huffman coding and does other tricky hacks and the quality of its output rivals the average JPEG encoder at _half_ the file size. It's that good- and the same thing can be done with mp3, I'm sure of it. 128K will end up sounding a lot like 256K in a couple years... if the format is not killed through neglect.
I'm going to ask something from my fellow slashdotters (yah, you knew this was coming, hear me out): please go grab all the songs of mine that you can, at www.mp3.com/ChrisJ , and put them on Napster. OK? Please, as many of you as possible, do this. I do get a few nano-cents from each download but they do not charge _you_, and of course I get nothing from napster exchanges. But I have the capacity as the copyright holder and owner of my songs _and_ the mechanical recordings of them, to _permit_ such exchanges- and I think this is important, because all this noise is how mp3s and napster are all illegal and piracy and theft and a lot of bullshit like that, and I would really like to be able to prove beyond a doubt that the format and even Napster serve _some_ valid purpose, and again I OWN my music and I AM ALLOWED to permit people to trade it on napster! Dammit, it makes me angry to see corporate whores 'protecting my interests as an artist' by stomping on MY listeners or potential listeners and also cutting off MY access to media! It just really makes me angry, OK? They are NOT helping me by doing this, don't be confused about that. I am outright saying I _want_ my music distributed freely over the net and Napster, that I _want_ it to be like instant radio which is entirely promotional in nature and has no relation to micropayments and 'security' and crap like that, that I see tremendous utility in this and that I also have personal feelings of wanting to be ALLOWED to give my music to a person I haven't even met who happens to not have money for it right at the moment (I can sympathise- I myself am living on ramen and spaghettios this week), and... I don't have a RIGHT to take that position?
It's my damn music, not theirs. They have no right to restrict what I may do with it! _I_ am the creator here and owe them nothing.
I don't appreciate this 'to protect the artists' slant, especially when people unwittingly buy into it... the fact is, I am dead serious about trying to build a music/sound engineering career based on these new modes of distribution. I have done my homework, huge amounts of it, and frankly the existing industry is the most horribly harmful thing you could imagine- pretend it's like all software companies are divisions of Microsoft, and they control all commercial software of all types so you can't program unless you cut a deal with them on their terms. They own basically everything and have controlling interest in everything else and are very prone to stuff like looking at your work and then cutting you dead and paying somebody to knock off your program and saying 'see you in court'. It's like a music version of that, and keeps getting worse, until if you don't know the score you wouldn't believe it. I just can't go along with this at all- and it is these people who are trying to kill the new distribution model that _I_ could use to not need them!
Links:
Steve Albini: Some Of Your Friends Are Probably Already This Fucked
Bobby S. Fred: How The Game Works (Scam Indies)
This is serious.
So... when I say go grab all the songs at www.mp3.com/ChrisJ and put them on napster, when I point at the CDs I have up there (which are produced via some neat press-to-order tech mp3.com's invented) and beg people to buy them in support of what I am trying to do here... that is coming from someone who feels, very deeply, that all that could be TAKEN AWAY. Maybe sooner than you think! And maybe you won't give a rat's ass about some bozo musician in Vermont no longer having access to a format (mp3) and a dotcom (mp3.com) that will print up his CDs on an as-needed basis for only nonexclusive rights to the music... but I have to take it more seriously. If this was happening to programmers, slashdot would be up in arms- why does it seem debatable if it happens to musicians? It's the equivalent of programmers having to go to say Microsoft to be 'authorised' to practice their craft professionally. "Oh, you must not be a _real_ programmer, otherwise Microsoft would want to hire you, so therefore it's OK to get rid of gzip- only criminals use it and I heard there are viruses that are transported in gzipped form! Better get rid of tar too while we're at it. Then we can license RPM so that only authorised people are allowed to use it..."
furrfu, another huge rant. I'm sorry :) I swear, I meant to only write a bit. Please, while I still have an mp3.com that will press up CDs for me and give me half, BUY one- please, while I still have an mp3 format that I'm allowed to distribute my own music over the net with, USE it and listen to my stuff and (I hope!) enjoy it and share it with your friends? If that doesn't seem like enough you are _free_ to go buy another CD of mine to make up for the napsterring, I wouldn't dream of stopping you. But I simply cannot go along with coercion, so the end result might be that I am just plain silenced, the format I use stifled or co-opted, the site I distribute from killed through lawsuits (some of which are arguably valid- but they have every right to redistribute _my_ music and in fact they pay me small amounts to do so).
Please? Help me out. www.mp3.com/ChrisJ
After the story I read in which the guy tried to change to another registrar and NS closed his account and promptly sold his domain to somebody else before the other registrar could plug it in, I had no stomach for doing anything other than paying them off and praying they wouldn't botch _that_ up. I'm nervous because I paid them by check when they're expecting web-credit-card payments! It's pretty sad when you can't trust the buggers to be paid off and do NOTHING... we'll see. I hope other people are ready to put some heat on them. I don't feel comfortable trifling with them because of how badly they could hose me. Color me extorted ;P
I'm going to want a Voodoo5 for just this reason- I have a voodoo2 too! ;) PCI version will be available, and it will allow me to stick with my old machine (a Powermac, btw) and enjoy FSAA which I really like the idea of. I'm not a FPS guy, I'm an 'X-Plane' fan ;) plus, even with FSAA it should give a moderate speed increase on the voodoo2 which has only (*sigh* 'only') 12 megs :)
The natural state of things for large groups of people (whether political parties or corporations) is _unenlightened_ or raw self-interest, and in fact as we all know perfectly well, for corporations enlightened self-interest is against the law- they have 'fiduciary duty' to cut straight to the richest vein of self-interest and to hell with enlightenment. This, for entities (corporations) that already will have a strong bias towards cruder self-interest in the first place.
This is where you and where Randroids err most grieviously- you, and they, make fine noises about enlightened self-interest, but the rules end up being made by mobs, and there's nothing enlightened about that!
The only purpose of government is to cope with the problems of faction- which is why we in the US are a republic and why we're set up a certain way (re-read Federalist #10 pleeease). Nothing in the ESRian randite mondo-libertarian approach makes the slightest effort to cope with this- instead it's assumed that the biggest factions will be the most enlightened, or something. Huh? I'm not sure how anybody would draw _that_ conclusion, but it seems central to the uber-techno-libertarian theme, and this is such a disturbingly strange conclusion that it makes me glad we do have a government that can block these loonies from gaining power :)
How many of you _really_ think that technically trained computer geeks are a superior race _better_ qualified to judge things and make decisions than any other faction? I keep getting this sense of "Down with government- _our_ way should rule, and we will be in control!" from the technolibertarians. It is not a little frightening... unless, I suppose, you believe we are a superior race :P
Office and Applications would no longer be in as deeply ambiguous a position as they currently are, regarding Mac versions. They are used as pawns and there are actually good people involved in the work, but there is a constant undertone of either pressuring people to Windows, or making MacOS more like Windows- most notably in the reliance on 'self-repairing' software, which is a damned fragile hack and assumes the vendor is the one who arranges things on your computer.
OS/Windows would presumably have access to programming tools, and the obvious move for them would be to 'dump' programming tools and porting aids on non-Windows developers. Linux toolkits that crosscompile to Windows, Mac version of VB, whatever. They'll also continue to raise havoc in other ways- again this is a 'realistic' option in that there's no way to make them nice or positive and whatever is done with Microsoft it _will_ continue to be vicious for the foreseeable future.
It's nice to see "Microsoft stock plummets, analysts downgrade Microsoft". That is the only thing that, in the long run, will moderate its essential viciousness. In order for Microsoft to stop being vicious, it needs to _fail_ for a while and learn a measure of humility like almost any other business in the world. Economically they are like haughty, mercurial gods- the collapse of their bloated valuation, the decay of the Microsoft-worship of recent years is the most important outcome, and it _can't_ be court ordered. It happens as people begin to consider the idea of an actual _market_ existing for a change. Gasp, office applications not from Microsoft? That can't happen! Well, yes it can. Gasp, non-MS OSes? That too, and they could be supported by the old familiar Office you've gotten so used to. And that's how it goes...
_I_ am also currently living on ramen and can't afford a CD- a radio station DJ in the UK asked me to send him my CD and I couldn't because I can't afford to buy my own CD, might be able to next month tho :) so, if any of you had a particular liking for starving artists, at the moment I literally am calculating how best to ration my food for the next week :) I don't need food care packages (if I run out of coca-cola I may reconsider! ;) ) but this is just to say that YES I need the support, that's why I post these things. I'm not Lars Ulrich or any other sort of rich, and I do live what I believe- and you know, I do pretty good music really, and if any of you cable modem guys could hit me with some downloads or those of you who cashed out on the tech stock bubble could pick up some of my CDs, it would help me out a huge amount. I _do_ need the support, I admit it. I try not to be too noisy about it but I do need the support. But I won't email anybody spam to get it ;) rather starve!
And of course I never spam- I am incredibly hesitant to even use email to try to set up a relationship with a person related to what I'm doing with music or sound engineering. I wrote CmdrTaco- once- asking if he wanted me to record some special Geeks In Space music and sounds to _give_ him in hopes I might get a mention. Never heard back, never tried again- I'm deathly afraid of being thought of as spamming.
Yet you HAVE to market- you HAVE to network, or you're dead- and my awareness of how bad spam is tends to have a profound effect on the way I network. It's like it is forcing me to evolve laborious ways of dealing with it- ways that might be the only good ways of coping with needing to market in a world where connectivity is so vast that 'spam' can mean almost anything.
You, reading this (whoever you are) did not 'ask' to hear from me. Nobody solicited my comment on the slashdot comments page. Yet, the purpose of the thing is for me to cover Natalie Portman with hot gr^H^H^H^H^H^H to make insightful comments ;)
As such, I find that I wait eagerly, hoping to see mp3 related Slashdot articles- because when there is one, I become relevant to the discussion, and I'm telling you, Slashdot is a powerful resource- anybody would want to have their product or service 'slashdotted' (even a free one) but the thing is, Slashdotters are so aware and even touchy about being exploited that you can't bullshit- when I get a chance, I take an _hour_ to type up the best statement of where I'm at on the subject. I put more effort into it than some article authors- I have _been_ a Slashdot article authors- I basically show my respect for the community by proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am listening, am part of the community, am in a two-way communication rather than just blathering at people. Sometimes I try to sneak in geek creds and screw up- I mistook "In The Beginning Was The Command Line" for "Cryptonomicon" :)
Because of paying attention to this, I can even make a post that says "BUY MY ALBUM!" all over it in boldface all caps as an intentional parody of desperate hype- because the post _was_ a plea for help getting more respect and credibility for indie mp3-reliant artists, and thus it was on topic. (Yes, that link is real and so is the plea- see how this works? Meta-hype, but honestly I am not fooling about wishing people to buy my nice $5.99 CDs, but here I am talking _about_ the approaches I have to take to be certain I am not doing any variation on spamming)
And because I am willing to be part of the discussion and talk about what I've needed to do in order to take responsibility, I can finish up my comment by just saying a little about where I'm at today- in a way it is on a personal note, but the comment is not ONLY about the personal note, it is entering the discussion about 'legitimate spam' and then allowing my 'legitimate' needs/concerns to be mentioned. Those needs are as follows- BUY MY ALBUM! AHAHAHAHAHAH! *g* No, seriously... well, sure I'd like to see that happen but that's not where I put my priorities. I put giving people free downloads higher on the priority list because I am trying to prove that you _can_ succeed by applying the opensource model to music- and so, there is this specific song that I desperately want to kick ass on the mp3.com charts. That song is "Fire Dragon", which you can download directly from that link without even having to log into anything or leave the slashdot page, and it's 4.7 megs, techno with an extremely high quality production (geek cred again- I physically built equipment to get the drums equalised so that the bassdrum is heavily subsonic and the snare barks really loud :) ) and is actually in 7/4 time, sort of geek techno that is slightly too intellectually demanding for the mainstream music industry :) I'm currently downloading another mp3.com artist friend's entire page for a second time because I like his music and am trying to help him in the charts- he is corruptdata .
Exposure is life- and spam is worthy of the most horrible punishments, so somebody like me has a lot of work to do in order to promote. Basically I have to _be_ part of the community and be actively a part of the discussion while still trying to stand up for the things I do that I am passionate about and desperately want to tell people about :) it can feel like revolution, this being-a-mp3-artist, what with the incredible forces trying to destroy my best hope of distribution for my ART. What if they get mp3s themselves banned or made illegal somewhere? That would be restraint of trade against me, and nobody really considers that! So I keep trying to push it, trying to do this 'popularity', 'promotion' thing _knowing_ that if I manage to get that 5 minutes of fame, I will have a lot to say about the RIAA and the industry and lots of links to raise people's awareness about the abuses of the industry, and that not every mp3-using musician will be so motivated to make such statements.
And at the same time I work just as hard to avoid even the appearance of spam, and have put a lot of effort into trying to educate other net-musicians about why spam is bad and why it makes you vulnerable to losing your account clicky clicky ;) So it's not so much a 'balance' in the sense of 'doing the right amount of spam': it's a question of finding out "When is promotion NOT spam?", realising the answer is "When it is part of a desirable dialogue", and taking the EFFORT, far more effort than it takes to talk and not listen, to be in such a dialogue and include the things that I care so much about, instead of spamming them.
I could have posted just URLS to my stuff here and it would have taken a lot less time, and still to some extent met _my_ needs- but that to my mind would have been spam, because I would not have been listening or being part of the discussion at all. Maybe the fact that I put promo links alone will make some people feel this is still spam- I don't know. I only know that this post of mine is the best analysis I can do of what is spam and what is legitimate- and to me, it's all about whether the communication is two-way. I'll of course be reading all the followups if any, because I _do_ read Slashdot, it's not a pose or drive-by spamming of mp3 links. I think that's key- if every spammer took half an hour to talk with you about what _you_ were talking about and open a dialogue in which they could also mention their wares- there would be no spammers.
Because what defines a spammer, in some way, is that they completely are not interested in YOU at all and are not listening at all and are entering no sort of dialogue at all. In a way, though I tolerate the ones who spend their _own_ money to do that (like flyer-printers, postal mail promo), even those are not the wave of the future, because it is meaningless- you can't distinguish yourself from anybody else that way, and there's so much noise that it all becomes meaningless. That is not only pollution, it is also _useless_...
I really hope I do better than that. Slashdotters know me, periodically get tired of me ranting about mp3 and moderate me down to make me shut up for a bit, they can get my personal email and look at my user page and go to airwindows.com and download all the XPMs and tiles they want to prove that I make stuff for Linux- or look at the GPLed software I wrote to prove that I am a free software author (if not a good one :) ) and basically, I don't need to work too hard to seem like not an intruder. I "live here" as much as any slashdot reader.
So if people like the idea of that kind of community or _want_ to have one of their own kicking ass on mp3.com and giving press conferences slamming hell out of the abuses of the RIAA and the industry- they can stop buying Metallica CDs for a minute, and come up with $5.99 to buy one of my albums or simply take some of their time to download my latest song. You wouldn't believe how helpful that can be- even a mere download, like what you would do on Napster that arguably hurts an artist, is a huge help to an independent mp3.com artist, and even if the album is only $5.99 I see more from it than the major label artists get per album (I get half) and the system for making them is really cool! You get the CD in like two-three days- it's completely press-to-order, they are geared to printing one copy of a CD and its cover to order, something that was never technically possible before! Plus I do cool covers ;) so really, you have no idea just how helpful this support would be _and_ it's damn competitive with major label ripoff! :)
Whoa, got a little enthusiastic there ;) I'll stop before I go farther offtopic. The topic _is_ 'spam vs. promotion'. I think I just got carried away in the direction of promotion... if I only talked about that it _would_ be sort of 'essence of spam'. Thankfully, mostly I didn't :)
*LOL* dude! That is _so_ wrong! shame on you! :)
These are very nice sentiments. Now- please allow _me_ to give you a copy of my latest track ("Fire Dragon", a neat innovative techno piece in 7/4 time with loads of attitude). OK? It's tempting to throw every link I can at you, because of the enthusiasm you show for supporting people like me- if you want them I posted the "Screw Lars- pay us!" post above this one- but it goes both ways. I want to let you have this music (so new it didn't exist at all yesterday- the net is cool, instant distribution, you get my music _as_ it's being produced instead of waiting on the machine to digest it), and I want you to have this free as MY gift to you. You can't even pay for it yet, don't try! The CD isn't done! So I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy it all the more knowing the artist is personally giving it to you in appreciation of your great supportive attitude :) (this goes for anyone being supportive- giving money to 'paylars.com' is _not_ a requirement tho :) why not just give the money to _non_ majorlabel artists?)
What about the rest of us?
There's this assumption that only major label acts count, that the rest of us are geeky guitar player or ReBirth-diddling dirtbags who don't _deserve_ to be popular. This, in the face of legis lation that rapes musician's interests even worse than usual- now musicians will be pressured into contracts that sign away their music FOREVER to the label. Is that fair? Is that right? If Metallica are part of that system do they deserve sympathy? Certainly. Do they deserve for people to support it just because Metallica are associated with it? Well....
Meanwhile, I for one am feeling much like the Linux camp in "Cryptonomicon"- the guys with the free tanks that get 60 mpg and go 120 mph with air conditioning and cruise control and fuzzy dice. I go "Please, download my music! I've been playing and composing for more than fifteen years and my heart and soul is in the work, plus I build my own equipment and share my information and ideas freely with others and offer to help people get samples off my tapes if they want any!" and then what?
I'll tell you what- then I post in Slashdot threads, because I love Slashdot and this musician is user #580... there are lots of musicians who read Slashdot. There are lots of _listeners_ who read Slashdot. Yet, I won't bother even asking if I can get a feature on the way I am trying to bring free-software principles into music, because it'd be 'promotion'- but Lars Ulrich GETS THE FEATURE on Slashdot, and the 'Pay Lars' site GETS the hits- why? Because they are 'newsworthy'! Because they are MAINSTREAM and joking about how some website wants to pay them is considered more important than my sweat and blood and heart and soul. It's a question of numbers. How are you going to stop the mainstream industry from smothering you if you just feed it every chance you get? Even bad attention is attention!
TO HELL WITH THAT. I may not be able to get a Slashdot feature- I _wrote_ a Slashdot feature and am friendly with roblimo, but I am just too close to this one- maybe the mainstream media still makes a sick joke of journalistic objectivity but _I_ take it seriously enough that I won't try to 'sneak in' promotion in the guise of an article, even a good passionate persuasive one. Somebody should write that article, though. How many Slashdot articles have given hits to Metallica, the RIAA and their supporters, and how many have supported the musical equivalent of free software and Linux- the artists out there trying to use mp3 for good, inventing a whole new marketplace dynamic based on what free _software_ has taught us? Are we to be totally ignored, do you _really_ want to just only support the major labels here?
And meanwhile- heck with being shy, Metallica is not shy, the RIAA are not shy, and I for one am getting steamrollered. BUY MY ALBUM . Yes, I know that every song on it (actually I have _five_ albums up at mp3.com) is downloadable at no cost- I'm doing that on purpose, dammit! It's important to me that I give freely- I also share my production tips and technical tricks with musicians on the mp3.com boards quite freely. BUY MY ALBUM anyway. There are several to choose from, my favorite is 'anima' a set of rock instrumentals based on animal themes, some are really damn good music. You can hear them all you want, totally free, with my blessing- download them from that page and there's no strings attached and I'm not _forcing_ you to do anything. I'm asking, like someone who has just seen yet another Metallica publicity-boosting article even here on Slashdot where I go to get away from that crap, to BUY MY ALBUM . The Metallica is what, $14? $17? MY ALBUMS are all $5.99- if they'd let me set the price lower, I would! And I'm _still_ getting 50% of that, more per album than Metallica will ever see. Buy the damn things! Argh! *g*
Not only that, if you go here like I am piteously begging you to do- you can download, again free with my total blessing, the first track on another killer album I'm putting together- a groundbreaking techno album so new I don't even have a cover for it or a CD of it yet! The sound rivals or kicks the ass of any major label release in this genre, especially bass-wise, and the music is TOO INNOVATIVE for the labels to cope with- the whole album is techno in unusual time signatures! "Fire Dragon" , the first track to be created (not 'released'- when I do 'em you get 'em that day!) is in 7/4 time! It still dances, but this stuff is too innovative for anything but FREE MUSIC as we indie artists are doing it. You'll never see anything this fresh on a major label! They're even kicking Clive Davis out of Arista so they can get safer and more corporate!
You can even get "Fire Dragon" direct from here and not even visit the page- here is a link to download the mp3 file without even leaving Slashdot. It's only 4.7 megs, even if you're not into fierce innovative techno please give me just the seconds or minutes to download the song anyhow? You might like it, and as an indie musician I really could use the support. :)
And _while_ I'm at it, I want to mention some really nice people- a sort of coalition of artists (of which I'm one) gathering together to try and promote their work in the face of this horrible indifference and in spite of how much more power the major labels have- Liquid Dreams Records . I am just one of _lots_ of neat independent bands working together on this, and we deserve the page-visit and listen! Trust me that there's a lot of wonderful stuff... one of my favorites was corruptdata , who does neat fierce electronica that I kept listening to over and over and over :) please, go hunt down the free indie artists and talk about us and support us! Do you _want_ to be listening to nothing but re-releases of Metallica for the rest of your lives? (besides which, depending on their contract they might not even own their music at all)
They said "I ain't gonna play Sun City"- now it's time to say "I ain't gonna waste my time talking about major labels!" To hell with 'em! Please help us real artists- and not 'help us to get signed' either, hell with that, it's too horribly corrupt, help us establish a new industry, one that is decentralised like Linux! Because you know what?
WE OWN OUR MUSIC. We are _allowed_ to use mp3. And we're doing just that- HELP us.
-chris
*g* check the quality of your crack, man, I think someone is cutting it with rat poison, Drano, and ergot fungus ;)
Sorry. The links are actually a "will click on links" list. This should explain why you get more and more spam :P
I don't think this has much to do with e-books. In fact, e-books could be what steps in to replace the local bookstore. My favorite local bookstore wasn't killed by free online content. It was killed by Barnes+Noble, basically. They seized the distribution channels (relevant concept ALERT!) and jacked prices on him until he was working 7 days a week and still not clearing rent. I'd worry more about that than about e-books.
It's crazy to try and protect what isn't there. Writers who live on their writing have to work like anybody else, and do- and the interesting thing is, if you assume the writer is doing new articles and commercial work etc etc a lot, the argument for intellectual property loses a _lot_ of its force. There _is_ no case for living on royalties as a writer (or a musician). Maybe Steven King manages it, but if you ask any professional they will tell you that you gotta work, keep submitting. You NEVER sit back and live on royalties. Plus, the sort of person who wants to live on royalties will never be in a position to get them as you have to START OFF with a whole bunch of hard work.
Sorry- I don't think your argument works at all. If everyone starts making ebooks and duping them endlessly it might inspire more of a market for the written word, at which point WORKING writers might actually find themselves doing better because they are not living off royalties, they are working. Ever heard the phrase 'first serial rights'? Ponder the nature of the word 'first' there, and why it is worth money for a thing that will end up copied widely and freely. :)
Well... do you know why my GPLed code still has the same value it had back when linux/gpl/opensource was IPO heaven? I'll tell you why- because I'm perhaps a bit strange and that concept, that the stuff I _shared_ had a speculative value, never even 'computed' for me. It's a big nil pointer for me, because to me the value of the stuff I share _is_ that sharing, is the RELATIONSHIPS I create by doing so. _that_ is where the value is and that is where Linux started and why it will always have a core value that can't be swept away...
I've built a recording studio (obHype: mp3.com/ChrisJ) and several times now, I've offered to help out CmdrTaco and the whole Geeks In Space crowd, which would be fun and not too hard for me to do. And you know, from the viewpoint of a linux-stock millionare, I can see how the help of some dude in Vermont building equipment with a soldering iron and wirestrippers might seem nice but pointless- more fun to buy your own! Bigger mixers, more tracks, etc etc etc since money flows like water!
Well- he ain't a linux stock millionare anymore. I'm not sure how many of the Slashdot people's plans are still feasible- but _I'm_ still there, offering to help. What I offered never had anything to do with money and demands nothing from Taco and company but sharing- let me help out, let's play, let's see what we can do.
Look around- there are a _lot_ of Linux things that are utterly unaffected by the crash. People trying to 'rub it in' about the obliteration of those wild valuations? It's like they're speaking a different language- and they always were. ESR may be shocked or hurt by all this, because it hits him where he lives- he always bought heavily into wanting Linux legitimised by business and valuation. Some of us always resisted this pressure to redefine the value in money and profit terms. Now maybe it'll be easier to make the point that Linux is not a phenomenon based on money.
*g* anybody considered the idea that if there _is_ another Great Depression and everybody's reduced to living off pentium IIs and such ( ;) ), they won't be able to afford The Microsoft Tax, and will _have_ to turn to Linux and proliferate it, not because it is a lottery ticket to wealth, but because it is free?
Is "Microsoft faked evidence!" still paranoid when it is true?
Is "They are lying, and the 'backdoor' was/is there on purpose in case Microsoft felt a need someday to use it" equally paranoid? In many ways it's a far more plausible claim than the faking of evidence- it's a power issue and easy for them to do and you could easily see them claiming that they _had_ to put in such backdoors in order to compete by being able to damage or alter the PCs used by competing firms, or perhaps tamper with government evidence stored on Windows PCs connected to the net, if that was necessary.
When a company begins to _live_ the reductio ad absurdum of a Randite wet dream, who can see it and recognize it for what it is? There are times when the normal expectations aren't describing what you're seeing. The only options are to refuse to see anything at all, or to try and make sense of the matter even when it seems crazy. Microsoft would never fabricate evidence for the courts of the United States, no, no! They _respect_ the law. It's paranoid to think that they would intentionally try to sabotage the justice system of this country that they are so proud of exemplifying! *enter David Boies, with a magnifying glass*
I think somebody needs to ask Metallica to review their contract. Do the words "work for hire" appear in it? Read this: http://www.livedaily.com/archive/2000/2k01/wk3/Ame ndmentToCopyrightActCo.html
Basically, it is possible that Metallica does not own its own songs- making their pleas for respect for their artistic work kind of ironic. I realise it might come as a bit of a shock to consider that record industry contracts are being changed to alter them so that, rather than the company owning your artistic creations for thirty-five years outright, the company owns your artistic creations FOREVER. That's exclusive ownership, you don't get a say. Did you know of this? Does Metallica know of this? Does Metallica have a provision in their contract stating their albums are work for hire due to the involvement of engineers and producers and such? If so, and this law-change would appear to be retroactive and apply to existing 'work-for-hire' contracts, Metallica does not own any of their music- they'd own nothing and are also probably barred from producing work other than for the company that will wholly own anything they produce. If anyone can check on this it would be very interesting...
I own my mp3.com stuff. Their contract gives them nonexclusive rights, so they also get carte blanche to do what they wish with the stuff I give them, which I'm happy with, but it does not sign over ownership of the music or the mechanical recordings to the company- which I am still more happy about. Try that with a record company contract. There is a very good chance that Metallica are goddamn slaves and don't even realise it. Ask them about their contract! But don't be too hard on them as they had damn-all chance to negotiate even a word of it, with 20 million other bands clamoring to be exploited.
I'm not at all sure there is morality to be had in defending the record companies the way things are going. The concept of civil disobedience seems more and more relevant...
"Wolf" www.mp3.com/ChrisJ
Please PUT this on Napster, if possible with a name or metadata like "Wolf (on napster by personal request of the artist Chris Johnson!)". I'm on a Mac so I can't make spammy filenames like that :) and napster doesn't actually help me at all because people downloading stuff off mp3.com directly helps me- but that doesn't matter because I want to help _Napster_. If someone could do that, or could do that with all my stuff both there and at mp3.com/RFW, that's over 170 megs of mp3s that are specifically on Napster by personal request of the artist. It may hurt my chart rankings over at mp3.com if nobody ever has to go there again ( ;) ) but I don't care. I _really_ would like to personally ask that stuff of mine be put on Napster so that I can say "Hey- I am a musician and I _want_ Napster! I _asked_ for my stuff to be there. Are you trying to cut off my avenue of distribution?" and have that be a SERIOUS ARGUMENT. Nobody has a right to cut off my avenues of LEGAL distribution just because the medium is being used for other purposes.
So _please_ would someone grab all my stuff and put it on Napster? Hell, if it helps I'll ask somebody in writing. Does anybody know if it might help for me to ask someone in writing, just to authoritatively establish that at least one working artist legally and legitimately WANTS their stuff on Napster and requested that it be there? It seems to me that could help blow a hole in the "It's just plain illegal!" concept. It's just a tool...
This is why I am NOT SURPRISED that Microsoft would put in a really _dumb_ and arrogant backdoor key to their software and maintain it through ALL LEVELS of code checking, on purpose- presumably not because they were really actively planning to be able to break into their own customers' computers anytime they wanted, but 'just in case' they might want or need to do that sometime! I fail to see any other possible reason for this. Conceding that they are not the Illuminati or competing with the NSA- the only possible conclusion is that right to the highest levels, Microsoft wanted to leave their options open about someday _becoming_ like that, and so hubris leads them to stick really _stupid_ backdoors in, correctly assuming that their customers would not figure even this out (it's been how many years to figure this one out?)
The thing is, I am not surprised, so I am startled and astonished when this is suddenly getting so much attention. To me it's just another Bugtraq 'issue' because I already _thought_ Microsoft wanted to supplant the government and lay the groundwork for surveilllance and remote control of its own customers. It's old news to me- though this feeling of mine was based on intuition, as I'll happily admit, so there was no real evidence, as I would also admit.
Now there is- it's a 'smoking gun' type of revelation- and while for me it's an 'Ah, I thought so', for many people it's like waking up and realising their mother is not their mother, like she is a bloodsucking Arcturan weasel in a cheap mask. I can sympathise with their shock to some extent even though I never had much patience with their pathetic trustingness in the first place. Sorry guys. New rules.