Rednex loves the pirate bay??

Yes it's true. I can't believe such a piece of news snuck by me last month, but I haven't been using torrents for a long time now. (No - not even legal ones)

Why DRM Doesn't Work

DRM never works.

When I say "DRM doesn't work" but piracy does, this is because the goal set in mind is reading the book, or giving people access to content. DRM is a built-in bug, defective by design. Computers are bad enough without intentionally making them worse. Their function is not to control people but to empower them.

At the same time, this is not an endorsement of piracy, but a demand for DRM-free commercial products.

Pirate vs Pay (for movies)

Wow. Just wow. I just had to share this one:


More and more, we're seeing that the pirated versions of products are better. This is sometimes because they involve actual improvements like Final Fantasy VII; Ultima Edition but often it's simply because they don't carry DRM technology and other unwanted locks, such as the "no skip" advertisements. Even Disney's "FastPlay" which supposedly "puts you in control of your viewing preferences" doesn't really compare to the total, immediate access to the content you actually wanted when you paid your money that a pirated version will provide. If it wasn't for such locks in the first place, technologies like FastPlay would not be needed. I think it inappropriate to even call it a technology - it's the option to partially disable an unwanted technology, which isn't a real innovation. The content industry, rather than adapting to new market conditions, has been trying to sell us bugs as features. I don't see how this can possibly succeed, simply from a practical standpoint.

YouTube takedown of DJ Nerd42 mashups

I am a non-commercial mashup artist whose videos are being pulled down from YouTube. This is with zero interaction with either YouTube staff or content owners. Now I've got "two strikes" against my account, both of which are total BS.

"Strike 1":

Fort Minor's "Remember the Name" was released under a Creative Commons license, and I created a remix of it that got pulled down from YouTube, apparently because the VIDEO of the song isn't covered by the liscense, only the audio is. I didn't know this, but my YouTube account has a "strike" now because of it anyway. This is the only message I got:

Content owner: WMG Type: Visual content
Removed video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41k-7VAn114
Reuploaded (without video) URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gScf3ZzYMSk
Project web site: http://nerd42.net/chronotied/

"Strike 2":

tobyMac is a Christian music artist originally made famous for his work with DC Talk. His recent single "City On Our Knees" came with an instrumental which I combined with a freely available acapella by another Christian artist (Eli & the Grouch's "All In") to create the audio-only mashup "A City All In." I don't understand why tobyMac would release the instrumental and the other artist would release the acapella if no one is allowed to do anything with them. This doesn't seem like very Christian behavior to me!!

Content owner: EMI Type: Audio content
Removed video URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVoyj26I2r4
Original track: http://editthis.info/wiki42/A_City_All_In

I could file a counter-notice but I'm hesitant to associate my real name with my YouTube alias for fear of getting sued. I'd only do such a thing if I knew I had money for a legal defense, which I don't as I'm a broke college student. But I think both of these takedowns are examples of extreme behavior both on the part of YouTube and the labels.

If my YouTube account gets suspended, I don't care. I am not going to let this affect either my music or my efforts to continue promoting my music. But it will make it more difficult to get my tracks out to more people and to stream them easily.