Trent Reznor FTW!

The new Nine Inch Nails album, “The Slip,” is now available as a free download from the band’s website.

Trent Reznor deserves some sort of reward.  I don’t know what kind of reward.  It should somehow communicate both how ridiculously productive and embarrassingly generous he’s been so far this year.

For anyone here who doesn’t know a lot about marketing, there’s a concept called “reciprocity” (or something like that).  It basically means that if you give someone something for free and they like it, they’ll generally want to give you something back.  Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails both used this concept (to great success) when they released their last respective albums.  In this case, if you download “The Slip,” you’re given the opportunity to “pass it on,” emailing a download link to friends.  So not only are they taking advantage of reciprocity (letting people know that they’ll still be able to buy the CD in a few months), but they’re also taking advantage of the Internet’s “viral” capability – spreading the word about their album the same way people send out those stupid emails with pictures of cats and pointless petitions and stories about Jesus (send this to 10 friends in 10 minutes or a puppy will die).

I think we’re finally seeing a band trying to take full advantage of what the internet does best… and I love it!

RIAA and MPAA Send Out a Slew of “Graduation Gifts”

I just read this article about a recent spike in RIAA and MPAA copyright infringement notices being sent to universities (particularly in the midwest).

This news corresponds to the following mass email sent out by the DIrector of Security Services and Information Privacy at the University of Illinois just last week:

The end of every academic year can be hectic with finals, graduation, moving out and wrapping up loose ends before leaving campus for break. Copyright holders are also staying busy by using this time to put in extra effort to track down people that are illegally sharing and downloading files online. At the end of every semester, groups like the RIAA dramatically increase the number of copyright notifications that they send to the campus to investigate. In the past few days the security office has received more copyright infringement notices than it received in the previous year. Clearly, the RIAA is watching the University of Illinois network closely right now.

If you are caught downloading or sharing files illegally, not only do you face the very real possibility of being sued for thousands of dollars this summer by groups like the RIAA, but your connection to the campus network will be immediately shut off. Access may not be restored until a formal disciplinary process has been completed. Take a moment to think about your finals study schedule and think if you can afford in these final weeks to lose your ability to access your email, Illinois Compass and even your ability to surf the web.

Music and videos can be obtained at no or low-cost and legally at sites such as Ruckus and iTunes. Please use these or similar services instead of limewire, bit torrent or other peer to peer programs.

Who knows what kind of game the RIAA and MPAA are trying to play? I find it extremely disturbing that they are not only focusing their attention on universities, but that they are apparently sending out falsified information. I can only hope that the fact that many of these notices are turning out to be false will somehow undermine their efforts in the long run.

All I can say is, “Bravo, you fucking fascists.” What better way to congratulate students for their hard work and perseverance in making it through another school year than to slap them with potential lawsuits.

Billy Bragg Says His Piece about Royalties

I found this op-ed piece by Billy Bragg (musician) today while perusing the intarwebs. I think that he makes several very interesting but contradictory points regarding free culture that I would like to contextualize with my own previously stated ideas.

First off, I want to assert that when I talk about “free culture” I don’t mean free in a monetary sense – I mean freedom from corporate control and regulation. Corporations use the laws of supply and demand to attempt to determine the maximum amount of money anyone would be willing to pay for a specific item, then charge the same price for all similar items. The problem is that cultural objects (art, music, etc.) do not have intrinsic value – their value is determined by the response of the culture in which they are created. The value of an object is established by how much people are willing to sacrifice in order to enjoy it. That value can also be perpetuated by the opinions of well-respected people (we generally call them critics) who share those opinions with the public. In the end, the value of a particular cultural object is determined on an individual level: if you are not willing to pay $18 for the newest album by Mr. Bragg, then you don’t have to. Your refusal to buy something indicates your opinion on the value of that object. Perhaps several months later you find the same album in a used CD bin for $5, and you buy it. Once again, your decision has communicated your personal opinion on the value of that cultural object.

As Bragg points out in his op-ed, technology is not just something that has the capacity to free culture, it also has the capacity to be exploited by corporations who are smart enough not to fight it (I’m looking at you RIAA and MPAA!). The point at which I disagree with him is in regards to his comparison between radio and a band’s music appearing on a social networking site. Radio is an inherently selective medium, but social networking sites are not. If a band’s music is played regularly on the radio, it can be almost guaranteed that their song will be heard by a relatively large number of people. If a band starts a Myspace page, there’s no guarantee anyone will even look at it!

The fact is, a large part of the Internet economy works on a sort of networking “barter system.” In other words, if someone has a social networking site that has x number of users in its network, the value of that site is based on the network. Individuals and artists have the opportunity to take advantage of that network by adding themselves to it, thereby increasing the value of the network for everyone and allowing the owner of the site to rake in more ad revenue and potentially sell the site for an exorbitant amount of money. Essentially, by being part of a social network, you make use of a particular service that someone else (advertisers) pay for. I think this formula becomes problematic when people let the sites fall into corporate control (it’s like local store owners happily selling their businesses to Wal-mart so that a new “superstore” can be built), but on the other hand, I can’t really blame someone for accepting millions of dollars for something that probably didn’t take them that long to make in the first place (relatively speaking)! Based on the article, it seems that this is more the problem that Bragg is decrying, and I agree with him ideologically; however, I disagree with his statement that the owner of the networking site he mentions owes the artists a cut of what he made off of the site. It’s a nice thought, but the problem is that every user of a social networking site is like a customer. Even bands (I should probably clarify by saying “good” bands) are customers who are making use of the site’s network. If someone sells their business in the physical world (vs. online), do their customers get a cut of the profit?

I respect Billy Bragg as a musician and gladly support his art, but there’s an inherent contradiction in his statements: he plays the morality card in reference to Bebo.com sharing profits with musicians on the site (a blatantly socialist statement), while taking a very capitalist stance regarding music. He fails to consider the fact that Bebo.com is someone else’s “intellectual property.” If it is morally right for the owners of Bebo.com to share the wealth when they capitalize on their intellectual property, then shouldn’t the same be true for artists? If, as I stated before, the value of art is external and culturally-based, don’t popular musicians owe their critics, their fans, and anyone else who supports them for helping establish the value of their art?

There’s a lot to think about here, and I’d of course be interested in hearing how Mr. Bragg would respond. In the meantime, I will side with him in encouraging people to spend some money and support independent artists. Go to an art show, go to a local performance (play, concert, dance), go to an art theater, buy an independently published album or film, donate to the open-source movement, etc. Remember that your decision to consume these things helps to establish their cultural value.

ADDENDUM: I just wanted to add one more quick thought.  If you consider the nature of new media, royalties are actually extremely difficult to assess.  The idea of paying an artist royalties every time her/his music is played publicly worked well because media was difficult to duplicate.  Now, not only is media infinitely duplicable, but it is also possible to have thousands of people streaming the same audio file at once.  This makes the whole idea of royalty-based pay more and more implausible.  This is part of the problem with the current state of the music industry – their entire economic system has been undercut by the technological advances over the last decade.  Rather than fighting to maintain the viability of a pay system that has become outdated, artists should be striving for something new to match the needs of the culture.  As I’ve stated before, artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Chuck D, etc. have all made positive moves in this direction.  This is what the industry needs to focus on; and by industry, I don’t mean conglomerate corporations – I mean the artists.

Cool Things I Know About Urine

Yes, I do now know things about urine. Cool things. Over the last couple of days I’ve had a blog comment “discussion” about how urine is both popular among chemists and people who dye fabric by hand due to its various wonderful chemical properties as well as its low cost and availability.

Apparently, it’s also drinkable, if you’re in a truly desperate situation.

Oh, and you most likely drank some the last time you went swimming. A wonderful thought, considering I just came back from the pool!

Speaking of the pool, I made it to 850 yds in 30 min today, beating my previous record. I also got up to a grand total of 1000 yds in only 35 min. I’m going to have to push for 1200 yds next time.

On another note, Nine Inch Nails has released a new instrumental album via the intarwebs: Ghosts I-IV. The full album (about 2 hrs of musick) is available for paid download on their website with CDs available for pre-order; however, the big news is that they also officially released Ghosts I (the first quarter of the album) as a torrent download on The Pirate Bay. For anyone familiar with the ongoing media war being waged on the digital frontier, The Pirate Bay has long been one of the biggest thorns in the side of conglomerate pigs like the RIAA and the MPAA. Currently, The Pirate Bay is under investigation due to pressure by these organizations, but the site hasn’t been shut down yet.

By officially releasing an album on a website like The Pirate Bay, NIN is making a pretty clear statement about where they stand on this front. A few years back, Trent Reznor also released the song “The Hand that Feeds” from “With Teeth” in multi-track Garageband format, allowing the public to remix his song however they saw fit. For this release, he’s going to make mixable versions of all of the tracks available (for a fee, according to his website). As far as I know, this hasn’t caused Trent to lose any money – quite the opposite, I’m sure, since cutting out the record labels (who usually take an exorbitant cut of album profits) allows him to pocket a higher percentage per album/download sold.

Personally, I have tons of respect for this kind of DIY ethic. Radiohead got a lot of positive media for releasing “In Rainbows” last year on a “pay whatever you feel like” basis. A couple of years back, Wired Magazine released an album featuring several artists who were releasing their music using the Creative Commons copyright (including The Rapture, Le Tigre, Thievery Corporation, Spoon, and others). Other artists who have previously showed similar foresight include The Smashing Pumpkins (who released their last album before their breakup as a free download) and Chuck D (who has vocally supported the file sharing movement since the late 90s through media appearances, court testimony, and his website Rapstation.com).

As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that our culture needs to discard old-fashioned ideas about “intellectual property.” Personally, I think that we could be on the verge of a sort of renaissance in which collaboration and group authorship become the norm. Open source software is probably one of the biggest pieces of evidence that I can point to in support of this claim, but I think that the same sort of thing can happen in the arts and in entertainment. People are starting to discover that they don’t need bloated corporations to help them create and distribute their work. The ready availability of production software and access to the Internet now serve those needs.

Of course, the conglomerates still have power – they have lots of politicians in their pockets, and they’re trying to enact laws to stave off their inevitable obsolescence. A couple of things to pay attention to in the political arena are the federal “pirate” laws, that would make downloading and distributing copyrighted material a federal offense, and the current debate over ISPs being allowed to limit bandwidth allocation to P2P file sharing services.

Show your support for the file sharing revolution and go download Ghosts I from The Pirate Bay – I’ve been listening to it as I’ve been typing, and it’s a solid bit of electronica. If you want II-IV, you may have to wait awhile as NIN had to temporarily disable the download site due to overwhelming amounts of traffic, but based on what I’ve heard so far it’ll be worth the wait (and $5).

[UPDATE: I finally was able to download Ghosts I-IV in its entirety. It's basically an electronic/instrumental concept album with each track corresponding to an image. I've been a fan of NIN for awhile, but this is some amazing work right here!]