Month: April 2004

I, for one, am not surprised that the RIAA is going back on it’s word to “protect” users that have admitted to copyright infringement. The eligiabilty requirements for entering into the clean slate program with the RIAA were:

1. You delete or destroy all copyrighted sound recordings that you or others illegally downloaded to your computer(s) or devices (including all storage and portable devices) using a P2P Network, and all copies you have of those files in any format (including CD-R).

2. In the future you do not illegally download copyrighted sound recordings using a P2P Network, you do not allow others to illegally download copyrighted sound recordings to your computer(s), you do not make copies of any such downloaded files in any format, and you do not “share” (that is, upload/distribute) such files on P2P Networks.

3. As of the date your Clean Slate Program Affidavit is received, you have not been sued for copyright infringement by an RIAA member company for the activities that are covered by this Clean Slate Program and RIAA has not begun to investigate you by requesting from an Internet Service Provider (“ISP”), by subpoena or otherwise, identifying information about you.

4. Any downloading or file-distribution that you engaged in was done on a noncommercial basis. Individuals who undertook these activities for commercial purposes or for payment are not eligible for this Clean Slate Program.

Then through another 4 steps involving signatures in front of a notary public and mailing away the Clean Slate Program Affidavit, you’ll be all signed up.

However, for you suckers out there that actually deleted your MP3 collections, you will be sad to learn that:

The RIAA has finally seen the light with regard to its “Clean Slate” program, which offered false amnesty, or shamnesty, to people who admitted to file sharing. Citing the success of its “education” campaign, the group has abruptly cancelled the program.

“Clean Slate” promised that in exchange for a confession, you could gain meaningful protection from lawsuits for copyright infringement. In fact, the program left you vulnerable to lawsuits by record companies and music publishers, as well as bands like Metallica that retain independent control of music rights.

Eric Parke, represented by Ira Rothken, brought suit, charging fraudulent business practices — and here, perhaps, we can glean the true reason for the RIAA’s change of heart. Its attorneys announced during a recent court proceeding that the group had discontinued “Clean Slate” — and that therefore the case was moot. The announcement took Mr. Parke, his attorney and the judge by surprise.

When music is outlawed, only outlaws will have music. When will music distributors learn that people like downloading music? It’s not so much the price as it is the convience. We will pay a reasonable price but please give users a chance.

While researching a paper for school I came across a Creative Commons post that lets you know there is a contest that may end up winning you a car.

Cool: David Bowie has just launched a new mash-up contest. There’s a new ad campaign for Audi cars that features two of Bowie’s songs mashed-up. They’ve decided to throw a mash-up contest to capitalize on this, awarding a new car to the best song that uses samples from his new album and any older Bowie song. Voting on entries starts this weekend and the contest ends next month so get your turntables cranking.

Mash-ups are hybrid songs that generally feature one artist’s vocal track (or a cappella) electronically grafted to the instrumental track from a different artist’s performance of a different song. Digital pitch-shifting and time-stretching ensure that both artists are performing in the same key and at the same tempo; the trick is to find two songs with similar harmonic structures, although their styles may be wildly varying. In this case David Bowie is being mashed with his own music, but in some cases the brave listener can find some really far out mashes.

Julian Dibbell’s goal simply stated was that “On April 15, 2004, I will truthfully report to the IRS that my primary source of income is the sale of imaginary goods — and that I earn more from it, on a monthly basis, than I have ever earned as a professional writer.” April 15th has come and gone and Julian disappointedly admits, “the numbers are in. And as predicted, they are short of the mark. Six hundred and eighty-three dollars short, to be precise.”

I’ve been following Julian Dibbell’s Playmoney blog for the last 6 months after I found a link to his site about PayPal’s policy on the nature of the intangible. Since then I’ve kept up with his current posts and read a little out of the archives.

Some of my favorite posts are:

The one about Michael Slavin and how he played a counter-strike nonstop for nine days.

The one about a professional Ultima Online cheater and the clarifying post that followed.

The time Julian almost got scammed out of all the money in his PayPal account (even if it was only $121).

I really liked his post about the ethics of selling stolen virtual goods. In the game, learning to be a good thief is a skill. So the question is, is buying items from someone using that skill and then selling the “stolen merchandise” for cold hard US cash morally wrong?

The break-down of how much money he’s actually making per hour. Would you believe it’s $85 / hour?

All in all, Julian not only entertains but informs. Oh and when he’s not playing video games and blogging about it, he’s also a pretty damn good writer. His “Rape in Cyberspace” article was required reading in my Seminar for New Media class.

Update: Wired Magazine has a few words to say about Julian’s endeavour, and here are his own concluding thoughts.

This article backs up what I have felt happening throughout my life. I don’t know if others experience this, but often times when I get an “Aha!” feeling from certain types of art or when I think of something particularly clever I can actually feel the right side of my brain react and send shivers over the rest of my brain and to the rest of my body. Now they have electromagnetic pictures to show what is happening, at least in the brain.

Production Management is done. It was the class that has been giving me the most stress this semester that’s for sure. The prof. put our website online and it’s live at http://www.lethbridgehouse.net. Some of the navigation is tricky at best and downright confusing at other times as well some works are better than others, nonetheless here it is in all its craptacular glory. For my part, I helped make the 3D driving game.

I just got my phone bill and despite my efforts to reduce the amount of long distance I’ve been using I realized why the bill has been so high lately. On September 4th somebody, either myself or someone pretending to be me, signed up for a $23.95 long distance plan from Telus. The reason I am so angry about this is that I use the Yak Alternative Long distance service, that is I dial 1015945 before all of my calls so that I only get charged $.05 a minute no matter when I call or where ever I call in North America. Since I was paying for a Telus plan anyway it would have been cheaper had I not used the Yak thing at all! That’s eight months of careless bill paying and I imagine about eight months worth of wasted $23.95’s. I’m 99.999% sure I wasn’t the guy that signed up for that plan. Needless to say I’m pretty pissed off. I wonder if Telus recorded that conversation because I would like to have the voice of that person identified, then brutally punished to the fullest extent of the law. I hope it wasn’t me.

I have a fixed mortgage so it doesn’t affect me personally but apparently every time the Toronto Maple Leafs do well, the interest rate in Canada goes up.

Again via Plastic QL:

A BMO economist has found some uncanny correlation between the success of the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Bank of Canada interest rate policy.

Via Plastic Quicklink:

Does anyone see anything strange about the first stop on Vanilla Ice’s new massive five city tour? Those of you unfamiliar with the proud history of Gallaudet University can click on their web page.

Have you ever been splashed by a car while riding your bike or walking out in rainy weather? I hope you didn’t do what this guy did, slashing some 2000 tires as pay-back. He’ll be cooling his heels in jail for the next 16 months.

Recorder Stephen Lennard said: “In December last year, motivated by frustration and anger at what you considered to be the inconsiderate manner of motorists as experienced by you as a cyclist and a pedestrian, you embarked on your astonishing and extraordinary campaign.

The New York Times writes about the dangers of careless blogging. Maybe that’s why lately I’ve been refraining from writing too much about my everyday life. Then again maybe I just don’t get out much and therefore don’t have much to write about – no I like that first reason better.