NIN: The Right Idea

Instead of suing your fans for doing in the online world what they’ve been doing in the offline world for years, the music - and by extension, the entertainment - industries should be embracing P2P instead of extorting fans and (ab)using the legal system against them.

Those of you who remember NIN - Nine Inch Nails - will recall the band going independent much like Radiohead. As such, they’ve uploaded the first in a series of 4 LP’s ‘Ghosts 1′ to a selection of various BitTorrent sites. The release is under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license and as such is unbarred from being shared.

The official collection (vol 1 - 4) is available from the bands website for only $5 on all formats including FLAC. For $5? Bargain!

The band said:

“Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label,
we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the
four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent
is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in
finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting
them.

Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts
I-IV. Undoubtedly you’ll be able to find the complete collection
on the same torrent network you found this file”. They further
write in the release notes “But if you’re interested in the
release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the
complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of
DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5.”

[Via TorrentFreak]

Nine Inch Nails Uploads New Album on Torrent Sites | TorrentFreak

Intellectual Property a ‘Silly Euphemism’

Finally! Fina-f’king-ly! After years of campaigning against it, someone listens. Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing fame, writing in Thursday’s edition of the Guardian says:

“Intellectual property” is one of those ideologically loaded terms
that can cause an argument just by being uttered. The term wasn’t in
widespread use until the 1960s, when it was adopted by the World
Intellectual Property Organization, a trade body that later attained
exalted status as a UN agency.

WIPO’s case for using the term
is easy to understand: people who’ve “had their property stolen” are a
lot more sympathetic in the public imagination than “industrial
entities who’ve had the contours of their regulatory monopolies
violated”, the latter being the more common way of talking about
infringement until the ascendancy of “intellectual property” as a term
of art.

Does it matter what we call it? Property, after all, is a
useful, well-understood concept in law and custom, the kind of thing
that a punter can get his head around without too much thinking.

That’s
entirely true - and it’s exactly why the phrase “intellectual property”
is, at root, a dangerous euphemism that leads us to all sorts of faulty
reasoning about knowledge. Faulty ideas about knowledge are troublesome
at the best of times, but they’re deadly to any country trying to make
a transition to a “knowledge economy”.

Fundamentally, the stuff we call “intellectual property” is just knowledge
- ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases.
This stuff is similar to property in some ways: it can be valuable, and
sometimes you need to invest a lot of money and labour into its
development to realise that value.”

Property is an object that is physically manifested in shape or form. Not, some arcane abstract that is flawed both ideologically and fundamentally. It’s much easier (abusing the legal system) to take action - civil or criminal - against someone who has ‘infringed your intellectual property rights’ than someone who ‘violates the contours of a regulatory monopoly’.

An idea is not “exclusive” in the property sense, even less if you believe in the Morphic Resonance Theorum. Ideas propergate themselves and it’s is not impossible that someone in the world has the same idea as you.

He goes on:

“If you trespass on my flat, I can throw you out (exclude you from my
home). If you steal my car, I can take it back (exclude you from my
car). But once you know my song, once you read my book, once you see my
movie, it leaves my control. Short of a round of electroconvulsive
therapy, I can’t get you to un-know the sentences you’ve just read here.

If we’re going to achieve a lasting peace in the knowledge wars, it’s
time to set property aside, time to start recognising that knowledge -
valuable, precious, expensive knowledge - isn’t owned. Can’t be owned.
The state should regulate our relative interests in the ephemeral realm
of thought, but that regulation must be about knowledge, not a clumsy remake of the property system.”

The GNU/Linux Project has been able to propergate albeit with some support from vendors selling support (not the software) Red Hat, Linspire, Debian, Ubuntu etc….

The CreativeCommons Project is now gaining recognition with places like Flickr, Revver and Flixya embracing the new remix culture.

“Intellectual property” is a silly euphemism | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Video Wars: Open Standards vs Patents

Mozilla’s own Robert O’Callahan puts forward a good outline of the current state of online audio/video. Current we have the open standard Ogg formats for both as well as the ever popular XviD video and we also have the different (MP3, MPEG, WMV/A, DivX) off line audio/video codecs.

If the open web is to progress, then we need open standards, not just for the scripting of the pages we view but also the audio and video we watch and listen to.

DRM only exists to take away freedoms, not allow them. The same universal truth applies now as it did before DRM was an issue:

Anything that can be seen or heard can be copied

Well, I’m Back: Video Wars

Ubuntu Community Magazine

Full Circle Magazine is available from the Ubuntu community for download in PDF format under the Creative Commons licensing.

Full Circle Magazine

CNET: Webwares top 100 Web Apps

CNET is running their Webware 100, voting for the top 100 web apps, voting closes on June 11th and winners will be announced on June 18th. I know which of my favourite apps I’ve voted for

What are the best 100 Web 2.0 sites and services? We don’t know. But you do.

New Fan Film - T.o.a.P

Something a little off-topic for today. A new fan film is being produced and is slated for the 2008 release window.

T.o.a.P is a fan film being directed by Ad Caudle and the teaser trailer is available on Revver for all to see. As always the teaser is available under the Creative Commons license.

Link on Revver: Here

Update: Have embedded it here.

MozCC

Creative Commons having just released version 3.0 of their licenses have also updated their Mozilla Firefox add-on extension MozCC which examines meta-data embedded into the web page and displays any CC information about it.

The extension works for both Firefox 2.0 and the latest release of Songbird, the Mozilla Firefox-based wed media player.

MozCC | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

Version 3.0 of the Creative Commons Licensing Launched

Version 3.0 of the creative Commons Licenses has now officially been launched to much fanfare. Changes include a new ‘generic license’ or the unported license.

Other changes include harmonising the existing licenses with other jurisdictions as well fixing minor issues taking into account the concerns of the Debian and MIT licenses.

Version 3.0 Launched - Creative Commons

Songbird/Creative Commons Party

The Songbird and the Creative Commons parties are gathering together for a shin dig celebrating not only the Creative Common’s 4th birthday, but also a party for the people behind Songbird.

Map and directions are provided. Dammit, why do I have to live so far away :@

Party with the ‘Bird and Creative Commons | Songbirdnest.com

CC and Revver

Creative Commons and video sharing site Revver - the site where you’re shown a short ad at the end of the video and the revenue is split 50/50 with the videos creator and uses Creative Commons licenses - have teamed up with their new clip “Wanna Work Together?” as part of a fundrasing campaign

Revver is generously giving 100% of the revenue generated back to Creative Commons through the end of the CC campaign on December 31st 2006.

Support the Commons | Creative Commons