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Movie links: Netflix kills DVDs, more copyright trolls, 32% of US adults...

  It seems the obvious holds true, and Netflix directly affected DVD sales. Meanwhile, some blatant copyright trolls (this one is worth reading for a most satisfying legal smackdown) are trying to hit...

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Links: AirPod woes, MegaUpload 2.0 delayed by dodginess, classic anti-piracy...

  Hold off on Apple’s AirPods, they’re still getting the bugs out: now, reports of disconnections during calls. (The previous delay was so they could make both earpieces receive sound at the same time....

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Links: Buy from Bandcamp on Friday, why Hollywood is(n’t) doomed, US pirate...

  Spend all your money at Bandcamp tomorrow — they’re donating their entire 15% share from each sale to the ACLU, in honour of the spray-tan horror. Start at the bands and labels donating their 85%...

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Links: pop star tech gurus, Denuvo hacks itself, don’t play DRMed content in...

  The hilarious and bumbling side-careers of pop stars who pretend to be tech gurus, renting celebrity gloss to failing companies. And then never speaking of this again. “Less than a month after Keys...

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Internet backbone Cogent blocks Pirate Bay; network admins concerned by fallout.

Hollywood has wanted to break the internet for the past couple of decades, and may have found a sufficiently stupid and/or easily-intimidated collaborator. Internet backbone provider Cogent is...

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Industry links: Facebook, video, Cogent Pirate Bay block, CMJ charts dead,...

  Facebook, desperate to satisfy noisy investors, has a look to see if dividing the music industry up with Google and Apple might make a quid. After Cogent puts in the most hamfisted Pirate Bay block...

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Industry links: Spotify playlist SEO, SoundCloud financial woes, Cogent update.

  CDBaby on how to build a Spotify playlist that shows up in searches. Maybe. SoundCloud has a problem: it’s haemorrhaging money, and the model “charge people who have more then three hours of stuff...

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Links: World’s dumbest terrorist, procedural music, bogus DMCAs, the...

  That time the world’s dumbest terrorist blew up the Rolling Stones’ equipment Procedural music generation. And a blog post from the creator explaining what he’s doing here. Machines spamming each...

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Links: The public domain in comic form, Max Martin, Raspberry Pi tube sound.

  From the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at the Duke University School of Law: Theft: A History Of Music. (Download, 263 pages.) Max Martin’s second interview in two decades. This is from a...

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Links: VPN survey, a generated music startup, Metal Machine Music for Lou’s...

  For when you need to hoist the Jolly Roger browse with privacy: TorrentFreak’s 2017 VPN survey. Amper is a technology startup to sell procedurally generated music. (They use “artificial intelligence”...

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Legal links: copyright trolls’ comeuppance, the iTunes Terms and Conditions...

  Prenda Law was one of the most egregious copyright trolls in the business, sending out bogus legal threats for a few thousand dollars to all and sundry. They finally pissed off every judge, and the...

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Links: Cogent overblocking again; 3800 pirate sites blocked in UK; blockchain!

  Cogent have yet another hamfisted block of claimed pirate sites in place, with collateral damage certain. If you’re on one of the crappy ISPs in the UK, there’s about 3800 sites blocked as pirates...

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Links: The history of records, copyright troll woes, Chuck Berry in space,...

  An Ode to the Fuel of the Wheels of Steel. A potted history of mechanical methods of sound recording. Pictured above: a Stroh violin, with the body replaced with a horn so that strings could be heard...

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Links: Portuguese DRM bypass law, majors and streaming money, personal...

  Portugal passes a bill to allow bypassing DRM for educational or scientific purposes or private copying. I am shocked, shocked to hear (archive) that majors might be using obscurantism to keep the...

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Musical user interfaces, copyright companies being themselves, the worst of...

  A project to come up with better music creation interfaces. “Which one of these is hardware, and which is software?” What would music software look like if you weren’t starting from an imitation...

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Links: uTorrent, bogus RightsCorp DMCA notices, International 8-Track Day.

  The next version of uTorrent is going to run in your browser. Anti-pirate legal resource sites are getting bogus DMCA notices from RightsCorp, because their whole business model is number of takedown...

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Links: Audible now DRM-free, the Great Vinyl Scam, no pirate website blocks...

  It looks like Audible has quietly dropped the DRM on at least some book files. Now just straight-up 32kbps MP3s of 22kHz mono audio. (Though others I’ve examined appear to be a mangled AAC that VLC...

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Warner does a deal with YouTube. The record industry is outraged!

  Warner has signed a completely expected deal with YouTube, because they do great business with each other and fully wish to continue. The music industry is hilariously outraged that Warner did the...

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Links: Blockchain BitTorrent, Kim Dotcom movie, my Blockchain book interview.

  BitTorrent, right, but with blockchains in. BitTorrent’s inventor Bram Cohen thinks doing his own version of Bitcoin will make him rich too the world better in some way. The technical difference is...

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Copyright troll links: Norway, Rightscorp, Perfect 10, police investigating...

  There’s a lot of money in trying for a few hundred quid out of home Internet users. Well, sometimes. Norwegian ISP lands win over copyright troll Excipio — if they want violators’ personal details,...

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Your cyberpunk present: DRMed pets in Second Life starve after corporate battle.

  No, really: DRMed pets in Second Life starve after a corporate battle. (Yeah, Second Life is still around.) In an unlimited world of plenty, the very first thing is to recreate scarcity so you can...

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Followups: Facebook dumps virtual reality, Spotify eats Niland, Denuvo still...

  Virtual reality is still rubbish no customer actually wants: Facebook shuts down Oculus Story Studios. Mind you it’s still material for venture capitalists, who are showering Improbable with money....

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Links: Wikipedia supports fair use, film archiving, the joys of the B-side.

  As I noted previously, it turns out that the Wikipedia community has some opinions on copyright law. “It took until 2006 to legalise taping a TV show on a video cassette recorder in Australia.”...

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Copyright trolls: Malibu media, Prenda, time-travellers, the MAFIAA and how...

  Porn studio Malibu Media’s habit of filing hundreds of cases then dropping them because their IP geolocation is so bad has annoyed the judge. William Alsup (pictured), long the bane of dodgy...

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Links: Denuvo suck and are thieves, Andrew Hickey’s Beach Boys books, Jimmy...

  How bad is Denuvo’s anti-piracy DRM for games? So bad it was cracked in a week on RimE — no DRM people have interest in breaking cannot be broken, because you cannot give someone a lock and the key...

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Links: AIR Studios Montserrat, Carl Bernstein the pop critic, net neutrality...

  AIR Studios, Montserrat, the source of many a classic album, is rotting away on the volcano-blighted island. Before he took down Nixon, Carl Bernstein was an acerbic ’60s pop critic. No Internet, No...

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Links: Jennifer Lynch photo archive, DMCA spambots, everyone hates...

  The preservation of culture calls! Jennifer Finch of L7 always took a camera with her, as a young punk and on tour. And she’s got a metric shitload of material that needs scanning and preserving. Her...

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Links: FACT using Grenfell Tower for marketing, notice-and-stay-down,...

  Yes, yes, a lot of people burned to death a couple of days ago, but that’s a perfect opportunity for FACT and The Sun to run some Kodi-fighting churnalism asking WHAT ABOUT COPYRIGHT?? Software...

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Links: Spotify payola, cheap Apple Music, bogus Disney takedowns, music...

  Spotify really is a replacement for radio: it now offers payola. Sorry, “sponsored plays.” (After past success for this approach.) You’ll soon be able to opt out … if you’re on a paid tier. Probably...

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Links: FACT publicity for Kodi; more bogus DMCAs; Pere Ubu.

  FACT works its arse off to publicise Kodi boxes. Or so you’d think from the effects. Game music composer’s DMCA blitz is an excellent example of why we need effective perjury penalties for malicious...

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Links: The failed hi-res audio of the 1990s, the risks of piracy, Simon...

  The failed hi-res audio formats of the 1990s, and why their creators should have known they’d fail: they forgot that convenience wins every time. Just how risky is Internet piracy? Rather less risky...

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High seas links: trolling the trolls who troll.

  “Guys, guys!” the State Department says to the MPAA and RIAA, “let’s start a fake Twitter feud dropping Benjamin Franklin’s name! I’m sure there’s nobody who’s read a history book about what Franklin...

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Links: Venue archaeology, winning fair use on YouTube, M’era Luna, I wrote a...

  Did you ever wonder what was under the Fly By Night Club in Fremantle? You can fight a DMCA on YouTube and win, even quoting others’ videos. Collected videos from the M’era Luna industrial festival....

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Links: Hollywood blames Rotten Tomatoes, EU members vs EU filtering, blockchain.

  Hollywood blames Rotten Tomatoes for their bad summer takings, much like that breathalyser made you have that tenth pint. Yes, people finding out how awful their movies were must be the problem....

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Links: MP3, the Pirate Bay mines you, album download code design.

  MP3 isn’t “dead” — MP3 is now freed! (Though Ogg and Opus are always higher-quality if you have control over things.) I am shocked, shocked to learn that an organisation of the highest ethics of...

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Links: Constance Demby, UK copyright trolls’ multiple extortions, The Return...

  Constance Demby’s Space Bass. This thing sounds AMAZING. UK copyright trolls try extorting people multiple times. Richard Metzger at Dangerous Minds pens a paean to the deeply underappreciated and...

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Links: Piracy doesn’t affect sales, DC hardcore, Bowie and Cale, early...

  The EU buried its own study showing that pirate downloads have almost no effect on sales. The DC hardcore punk scene of the ’80s in photos. David Bowie and John Cale, jamming in 1978 while off their...

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DRM is still rubbish: Denuvo broken in hours, Ultra-HD ripped, get-iplayer.

  Denuvo DRM on Total Warhammer 2 is broken in hours, and the same for FIFA 18. 4K resolution Ultra-High-Definition Blu-Ray discs are now rippable. As a proud TV licence fee payer who is most pleased...

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Links: DAF, getting your US copyrights back, where the streaming money goes.

  DAF have a new box set out, Das Ist DAF, covering their early years. Here’s a really good interview with them, from the Quietus. Larry Lessig notes that Creative Commons and the Authors Alliance have...

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Links: Simon Draper, music industry sexism, US piracy site bans, punk rock...

  Richard Branson is the famous name, but it was Simon Draper who shaped Virgin’s A&R in the ’70s and ’80s. It’ll be no news to anyone in music that music is much of a sexual exploitation engine as...

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Music blogger links: just do it, how to do it, how not to make a bad review...

  Start a damn fanzine music blog. Or you could write for this one, even. Top 10 Tips for Aspiring Music Bloggers. Here’s mine: 1. There’s no money in this. 2. The worst metal bands in your inbox,...

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Links: Denuvo still trash, copyright works, Margaret Thatcher on punk, Sun Ra.

  Denuvo is still inept trash, in case you were wondering. Crack time is now down to a day. Evil Within 2 dumped it before launch. “Let’s be honest. Pirates absolutely need a nemesis like Denuvo....

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Links: Women’s pop canon, YouTube extortions, photographers win, Put Blood In...

  Should women make their own pop music canon? Hell yeah, why not. Using YouTube takedowns for blatant extortion. Another reason why there needs to be effective penalties for DMCA abuse. Copyright can...

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Links: “Content Creators Coalition” shoots self in foot, make a film for...

  The “Content Creators Coalition” is otherwise known as the major record labels. They hate YouTube more than anything and want a regime where takedowns are dealt with swiftly, there’s...

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Links: Sex Pistols, Peter Hook, Martin Hannett, Lee Ranaldo, how music feels,...

  John Lydon and Glen Matlock go track by track through Never Mind The Bollocks. Peter Hook on Martin Hannett. Music is of course about everything as well as the sounds. Measuring how people experience...

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Links: Frank Zappa ad jingles, runout grooves, AACS keys leaked, old Severed...

  Frank Zappa’s short career in advertising jingles — for cough drops and … electric razors. With Linda Ronstadt. Another article on runout groove messages that starts at George “Porky” Peckham, as is...

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Links: Spotify windowing, Spotify and The Pirate Bay, industry shows piracy...

  The majors finally have windowing on Spotify — where an album isn’t available on the free tier until it’s been on the paid tier for a while. So how’s it working out? Rammstein’s live album Paris was...

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Links: World In Motion, pirates, kids listen to Swans, Irmin Schmidt.

  The story of “World in Motion” by New Order, from the football side. The music industry keeps finding, over and over, that pirates are already their most enthusiastic paying customers, unless they’re...

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Links: Spotify metadata, VU meters, songwriting camps, Disney defends fair...

  I was pretty sure someone at Spotify would read my whinge. They’re now promising to fix the data themselves, not just trust the record companies to do it for them. The early history of Smash Hits...

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Links: EBM is trendy, managing the Rolling Stones, Swiss modernist post punk,...

  EBM is apparently the fashionable thing in dance music this year, or maybe next year. Maybe this will translate to sales outside Germany! Futurepop, let alone VNV Nation, doesn’t get a mention....

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