Tangled up in Purple » music

Linkeracy 25 September 2009

nix — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:10:27 +0000

Remembering Sir Howard Morrison who died in his sleep this week. My ex-mother-in-law maintained that he and John Rowles were relatives of the family. Fairly tenuous relationships but who was I to argue with a magnificent old kuia?

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Speaking of Kiwi Culture, said ex-mother-in-law’s eldest child was Pixie Wiliams who was the vocalist on New Zealand’s first ever ‘pop song‘ Blue Smoke. I took this photo of Ben with his Aunt’s record on a visit to Te Papa a couple of years ago.

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The Creative Freedom Foundation has had lots to talk about this week. Earlier it was the way that school students have been fed one side of the copyright debate. By the end of the week they were looking more deeply at some of the Public Library copyright tensions.

Steal This Comic

nix — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:58:27 +0000

… you can’t win either way … Steal This Comic from xkcd

Format Shifting

nix — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 23:21:49 +0000

Eight days since I last posted. I wish that I could say that I have been doing exciting, worthy things but sadly, no. it’s milestone and variation time here in ICT-PD-land and it’s all been about collating and compiling and putting it all together.

This morning’s Sunday Star Times had a spend-up-before -Christmas glossy about some of the exciting new technologies available to consumers at the moment. Apart from giving some computer buying advice that was well out of date (60-80GB hard drive anyone?), the mag had some information about digital audio and video players – MP3 players to most of us.

To most people, you buy your iPod / MP3 player and copy your CDs onto the large empty space. Then you copy all of your friends’ CDs. At some point, people over 40 contemplate copying their entire vinyl collection to their computers and iPods. Most give up when they remember they haven’t got a turntable or find out what a new needle costs.

The problem is that under existing New Zealand law it’s illegal to copy your CDs onto the music player that you just (legally) bought. I’m often asked in professional development sessions about how to do this and teachers are incredulous when I explain what the law says and talk about the implications. Then they’ll ask about downloading music. When I point them to Coketunes or Ampifier they look at me even more incredulously – music is supposed to be free right?

One evening last week I took a cruise around the web and found myself at Sarah McLachlan’s website. I discovered that she had a new album out and decided to listen to a few tracks. I liked what I heard so headed to a couple of NZ sites to see if I could get the CD. $50 to bring it in. I headed back to Sarah’s own site and disovered that I could downlaod the entire album for $9.99 – Canadian dollars of course. Furthermore,

“All audio downloads are available in the popular MP3 format, encoded at 192kbps. The files are not encrypted with digital rights management or copy protection software. Offering this format puts no obstacles in the way of you enjoying your music on your computer, transferring it to your media player, or burning it to CD. This format puts an amount of trust in you to obey copyright laws and not share your files. ” link

Of course I paid my money and downloaded the MP3s. I have the songs on my computer and will pop them onto my MP3 palyer for when I’m away from my computer.

I like this trusted copyright model. The artist (label?) has entrusted me with the right to play her music as and when I choose. I’m perfectly happy to comply with the request to keep the files to myself. Ten bucks Canadian – less than $14 in our currency. What could be better?

Could musicians and their labels in New Zealand do a similar thing? Of course they could. Would New Zealand consumers respect the model? With realistic pricing models like this one and with more information I think that they world. Someone just has to make a start.

A New Voice

nix — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:41:11 +0000

A group of Canadian musicians has got together to voice their opposition to the copyright controls that they say have been imposed upon them and their fans by large multi-national recording companies.

The musicians, with Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne and Sarah McLachlan amongst their more famous names, are calling on their government to support them in their desire to clear up some of the issues around the copyright of their music. They say,

Until now, a group of multinational record labels has done most of the talking about what Canadian artists need out of copyright. Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies, but let’s be clear: lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels’ control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels’ foreign parent companies.

The artists are working with three guiding principles:

1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical

2. Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive

3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

Watch this space.

I always did like Sarah McLachlan.

Link: Boing Boing

Linkfest

nix — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:22:29 +0000

I’m in the middle of a site tidy up and so I am in a posting mood. Long may it last.

Podz has a great tutorial for getting WordPress on a USB memory stick. I can verify that this does actually work and is a handy way of demonstrating how WordPress works. Get the tutorial here – not forgetting all of Podz’ other great helpfiles.

According to ZDNet, Google are planning their own version of GDrive. The idea originated when GMail (Google) decided to offer 1 gigabyte of storage to their email account holders. A clever programmer designed a Windows extension to allow people to use their GMail storage space as a virtual storage drive. Now it looks like Google are going to offer the facility albeit in some cases as a paid service. It’s interesting to note that a similar service is being offered by Box.net.

Fix those annoying Firefox memory leak issues.

A map of ships in the world’s oceans.

A UK investigation over pricefixing in the music downloading business. Not something we need to worry about here as there isn’t that much choice at the moment. A report from Wired Magazine.

Back to tidying up my site.