Monday, January 27, 2003

In Stunted Streams, Dean Landsman points to two stories on WFUV's struggle to keep its streams on the Web, given the still-insane royalty regime imposed on webcasters last year. This is awful. I've been too busy in January to listen to the WFUV webcast of Idiot's Delight, so I hadn't realized that the DMCA had forced Vin Scelsa to remove his show from the webcase and archives. Congress, in the pay of the recording industry, perpretated a major act of cultural vandalism. One that is also economically stupid. Idiot's Delight was heard online by thousands. I can think of some ten CDs I bought after hearing them played by Vin on a few of the shows. Multiply that by the number of frustrated net listeners of WFUV and many other small non-commercial stations. The recording industry doesn't deserve to live. I hereby decide to buy no more music from the majors until they start respecting the customer. 10:08:42 AM