TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

AT&T Protest Graphic for your blog, website, whatever

AT&T is stumbling through the Internet age with a stunning lack of foresight: in support of their TV offering, and to make friends with Hollywood, they’ve agreed to work towards actively scanning all AT&T network traffic for copywritten material.

I’m not going to go into the details. CenterNetworks, Uneasy Silence, Dave Winer, Techcrunch, Ars Technica, AllThingsDigital, and others have covered it exhaustively already.

I will, however, contribute a protest button/graphic/badge. Right-click & Save As, and deploy on your blog/website/tshirt/etc as you see fit. Link it back to whatever post, petition, goatse picture, or whatever you choose. Please don’t hotlink. Its a friendly png of 14kb in size, with a popular pop-culture reference to make it extra topical.

UPDATE: I took it down until I can figure out if the AT&T corporate logo can be used for critical purposes under the “fair use” clause without first seeking permission. I am a legal chicken-shit, yes.

UPDATE 2: What do you say - would it be covered under nominative use?

UPDATE 3: Removed literal trademark elements while retaining visual cues and tagline syntax. Should be legal, IMHO.

at&t, att, business models, censorship, copyright, copywrite, mpaa, protest, RIAA, security techmeme

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Return of the Friday Listening Post: Girl Talk

EDIT: Girl Talk is playing in Winnipeg, June 28th at the Pyramid.

The Friday Listening Post is back after a several week hiatus due to business and busy-ness.

Anyway straight to it: Girl Talk. Mashup artist. Awesome, pop-ish, hip-hop that blends in a tonne of Adam Freedland breakbeat style jamming - generally fantastic, energetic, listenable, danceable, fun - and full of no-doubt non-compliant, un-licensed, fairuse, screw-the-RIAA samples. Big hat tip to Gitta B. for pointing me to GT - thanks, dude!

There’s two MP3’s floating for free: Bounce That and Hold Up. Download and enjoy! Each is full of awesome moments - like when Hold Up breaks into Weezer at 2:30 — killer. This makes me want to clubbing, which I haven’t done for like 5 years.

Girl Talk has three albums: Night Ripper, Unstoppable, and Secret Diary. Each is available for purchase through the deliciously seditious sounding IllegalArt Web Store.

fair use, fairuse, fridaylistening, girl talk, girltalk, mashup, mashups, nightripper, RIAA techfold

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Amazon to Go DRM Free… the Myth of the Information Wants to be Free Wonderland

By cosmic coincidence, while I was writing about terminally sketchy MPFree.com this AM, Amazon went and announced the forthcoming opening of their own DRM-free music store.

1. Amazon claims 12,000 labels have signed up to sell MP3’s, including EMI - interesting that APPL didn’t lock EMI to an exclusive.
2. Bezos summed up the value proposition: Amazon customers will know that their music will play anywhere without any difficulty.
3. The EMI CEO suggests that DRM-free will still be a “premium” offering - expecting slight price bump and higher quality, as per iTunes.

Analysis

Amazon lends credibility to the charge begun by Steve Jobs. The proof will be in the profits, however: regardless of how many names are behind the DRM-free agenda, the labels will need to see increased sales volume, increased margins, and increased profit to make it stick; anything less than the volume/margin/profit trinity will send them scurrying away again to try and come up with another way to make it happen.

Whether there is another way is debateable, of course, but that doesn’t matter to the industry execs - its the ability to put out shareholder-pleasing press releases about new bound-to-be-profitable technologies & business models that keep them motivated.

One unfortunate thing is that “DRM-free” has been elevated to a near-mythical ideal where gleeful customers shovel cash voluntarily at labels in a magical “information wants to be free but I respect artists” wonderland - will such a place exist? Only time will tell. The pessimist in me says no; how many people out there downloaded MP3’s from P2P services and then went to buy the CD out of respect to the artist? Zero. Respect for artists is balanced out against the ridiculuous wealth flaunted by upper echelon musicians - would the average consumer feel too bad keeping a few cents out of U2 or Madonna’s pockets? No. Do many people have artistic “respect” for Britney Spears? The “struggling-to-break-through” artists will be the most marginalized financially, but will enjoy the promotional boost of unfettered distribution….

…of course, struggling artists have other, better means of self promotion these days than signing with labels anyway.

amazon, drm, itunes, labels, music RIAA

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