Author.create.art

For the PeerCast team, they see their goal as advancing the technology of online music distribution, in lieu of the music industry's reluctance to do so. "We're based in Japan. The Japanese tend to embrace new technology rather than hiding from it like the music and movie conglomerates have done in the West," says Goddard. "We have to find a better way to publish music. At the moment the people who control that appear to have no incentive to move forward. So if they can't, then the rest of us are going to have to do it for them."

Now, if someone could just get Doc to fix his weblog so his RSS feed didn't repost every article, every time, in one long, continuous post.

Meanwhile the Great Workaround continues. Dig
Internet Radio the P2P way, by Howard Wen. And thanks to Hanan for the link. [ Source: Doc Searls Weblog]

Transparency in the Music Industry

1:22:27 PM

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When the Nazis or the Soviets launched brainwashing campaigns labeled as education we called them propaganda or human rights violations -- here we just call them advertising.

Artists join industry campaign against music piracy. SiliconValley.com Sep 26 2002 0:41AM ET
[...]The music industry is launching a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to combat Internet music piracy by appealing directly to fans to stop stealing.[...]
[...]Hilary Rosen, head of the Recording Industry Association of America, said the education campaign is part of a multifaceted strategy that includes combating file-swapping services in court; supporting paid alternatives such as pressplay, MusicNet and Rhapsody; and lobbying for new laws.[...]
[...]The print and television ads starting today enlist nearly 90 recording artists and songwriters -- including such superstars as Eminem, Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Luciano Pavarotti and Brian Wilson -- who say illicit Internet downloads threaten the livelihood of everyone in the industry, from artists to record-store clerks.[...]
[...]"What we're doing is we are robbing our cultural past and we're destroying our cultural future," said David Benjamin, Universal Music Group's senior vice president of anti-piracy.[...]
[ Source: Moreover - IP and patents news]

The new laws we need to be lobbying for are those that will force full disclosure by any industry that wishes to mandate personal behavior. Before we let the RIAA and MPAA into our living rooms to run our lives, let's get a peek into their bedrooms and see just how much money really goes to the artists, just how much do the execs rake off, and just what sorts of practices do BMI and ASCAP use.

If you want to stand up in public and claim to be the Good Guys, stopping those who would rob our culture and destroy our future, you should have the fortitude to prove your motivations, your actions, and your vision are superior to the alternatives.

Intel Irony

11:48:42 AM

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Am I the only who's noticed that the Intel ads during NFL games show a young (patently criminal, moral-free, music-stealing, property-thieving, convicted-by-default, social anarchist) computer user burning his own CDs? And all while Intel's management crawls in bed with Hollywood to make sure such activity is impossible. Isn't that just a bit disingenuous?

WSJ. Wired. The music industry is set to launch an ad campaign against P2P file sharing. "People going into computers"??
Ms. Spears, for example, is quoted in the ad saying: "Would you go into a CD store and steal a CD? It's the same thing: People going into the computers and logging on and stealing our music."
[ Source: John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Macintosh System Tracker

10:45:47 AM

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Many (ok, many, many, many) years ago when I ran large Mac-based prepress facilities for a living we had to keep track of all the software on each station. Maybe my fogged, aging memory is playing tricks on me, but I'm sure we did not do this by hand. I seem to remember there being some sort of SystemInfo thing that would read the system configuration and software installations and provide a printable listing.

I can't find anything like this now. It can't be that hard to do and I'm sure someone has a tool for it -- I've just overlooked it.

Anyone who has a lead on something like this please drop me a line. (I know. I have to get the comment thing re-enabled here.)