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Guardian: Music file sharing to be offered legally

Online music fans will for the first time be able to legally share tracks by big names such as Oasis, Beyonce, David Bowie and Elvis Presley after the artists' record label signed a ground-breaking deal with a new internet service provider.

In what some see as signalling a dramatic shift in the way consumers buy music, the provider, Playlouder, has licensed acts from SonyBMG, the world's second largest record label, and is confident that the other two big record labels, Universal and EMI, will follow suit...

Because there will be no restrictions on the format in which the traded music is encoded, users will be free to transfer songs to any type of digital music player, including the market leading Apple iPod, or burn them to CD...

Because all Playlouder subscribers will share tracks over its own network Mr Hitchman said that the company could track the files and, through digital fingerprinting technology, make sure that record companies were remunerated accordingly from money set aside from Playlouder's revenues each month.

I find this newspaper report to be very weird if it is entirely accurate. I cannot see how this service can function in the way it is intended if users truly are allowed to trade files in any format without restrictions. If true then a typical music track could be digitised and formatted in many different formats at various different bitrates and shared over the network, yet through digital fingerprinting the service is able to ascertain what music track it is and pass on appropriate payment to the copyright owners.

Such a file could even be concealed through a steganographic type application to resemble some other file such as a movie file of a home video that has no licensing problems as the user is freely allowed to share what they themselves have created.

Furthermore record corporations seem to be heavily in favour of DRM technologies in order to add restrictions to prevent piracy their willingless to license their music to Playlouder without the DRM technologies would seem to me to be counterproductive to their aims. Any non-DRM file that is legally shared using this service can in the future be illegally shared in the way that current legally downloaded files from services such as iTunes cannot.

But then again they may have read Chris Anderson's fascinating piece on the economics of "piracy" and whether a little piracy can actually allow for more net revenues to vendors. Via BoingBoing and Waxy.

Labels: copyright

BBC News: Pope warns against 'DIY' religion

Pope Benedict XVI has warned of the dangers of secularism and of "do it yourself" religion, as his visit to his native Germany draws to a close.

It has been true for many years that more people visit one of the various DIY superstores that flourish in this country on a Sunday than visit church. Finally it seems that the Catholic church has decided to attack their opponents in the battle for the Sabbath. Down with the false gods of flat-pack furniture, water features and neutral shades of paint, do not get drawn into this false religion of DIY.

"Like any red-blooded, masculine man of the male gender, I love PVC weaponry. You should too. If the concept of heading down to Home Depot and transforming $100 worth of random pipe bits into a killing machine doesn’t appeal to you, you’re a frikkin' pansy. For those of you who laugh at hypersonic shards of plastic puncturing your spleen, here’s a look at how I’ve kept myself busy for the past week: building a PVC-pipe flamethrower."

Found at Metafilter. I'm so gonna build me one of these babies. BWA-HA-HA-HA

Recreation of the music video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon Of Choice starring Christopher Walken using stick figures.

Ways in which Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games will change the world forever, whether you like it or not.

f you don't know what an "MMORPG" is, don't worry. It's a geek term, like "e-mail" used to be a geek term. For now let's just say it's the most instantly gripping, involving and demanding entertainment technology ever invented. The addiction rate appears to be about twice that of crack Cocaine. There are 10 million MMORPG users in the world and their population is doubling every two years.

They could be right you know. My existence online is now more real than offline, or at least more people know me by the name electricinca than by my given name.

It has come to the attention of many people that the books 1984 has been erroneously misshelved under fiction in literally hundreds of bookstores across the world. The Ministry of Reshelving aims to reshelf said item under it's correct classification of current affairs, not only that but they intend to do it gratis and without bothering the storeowners who clearly have more important things to be doing.

I think that this is a noble cause that I shall sign up to.

Documents relating to the investigation into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by officers of the Metrolpolitan Police have been leaked and dispute the story of events we had previously been led to believe. It is claimed that Mr de Menezes:

· was never properly identified because a police officer was relieving himself at the very moment he was leaving his home;

· was unaware he was being followed;

· was not wearing a heavy padded jacket or belt as reports at the time suggested;

· never ran from the police;

· and did not jump the ticket barrier.

I wrote earlier that there must have been a clear breakdown in communiaction for him to have been misidentified as a terrorist suspect and this seems to have been the case. In addition the shoot-to-kill policy may have been misinterpreted by the officers on the ground as this clearly was not a case of requiring a last resort measure if he had been restrained prior to being shot.

It is perhaps due to this apparent gross mishandling of the situation that the Metropolitan Police did nothing to correct the misinformation that was widely reported following this tragic incident. The Guardian reports that the Police are under pressure over Menezes leak.

Oy you with the dirty mind it ain't what you think it is.

This blog is the chronicle of my experiences with Grandma, the video-game playing queen of her age-bracket and weight class. She will beat any PS2, XBox, GameCube, etc., console game put in front of her, just like she always has. Her favorite game of all time was Final Fantasy VII, her current task is reaching 100% in tour mode of Outlaw Golf 2. These are her stories. She is absolutely real. She lives in Cleveland.

Makes interesting reading, I wish I had a gran like her.

Labels: Games

Congratulations to Ricky Ponting for a truly admirable performance if even if did rob England of what could have been a good victory in the Third Test match.

Very frustrating to be only one wicket from victory but I suppose the Aussies must have felt the same after the second test ending only a few runs from victory themselves, although they were lucky to get that close in the first place.

So all square and all to play for in the final two matches. The Ashes really is turning out to be all that I had hoped.

Labels: Sport

Spaceworms is an incredibly annoying Flash game that following a little success at evading the dots will have you hooked.

Labels: Games

Best night of television in months, not only did Channel 4 screen the first two episodes of Lost but that vile little creature Craig was evicted from the Big Brother house and my fellow geek Eugene won £50 000.

I was hoping Craig would be evicted especially following this.

But the bitchy hairdresser is also sure who he doesn't want to see succeeding: "The one person I don't want to win is Eugene...that would destroy me. I'd be really upset and I don't think that would be fair. I'd rather Makosi than him."

Plus there was what was a most unusual move by Big Brother who called a housemate to the diary room who was then offered the proposition of either taking half the prize money right then or not and allowing the final prize to be doubled for whoever the eventual winner would be. Eugene offered to go and given the choice decided to take the money. Good choice. Perfect result all round.

Plus the beginning of Lost was brilliant and engrossing. Many mysteries including a Polar bear on a Pacific island and a repeating message in French which is calculated to have been playing for 16 years. The first revelation of the series is that Kate is the prisoner that was being returned to the United States, but why is yet to come.

My god did I underestimate the batting prowess of the Australian bowlers. What was a healthy margin of over 100 runs for England to bowl out the last couple of players was soon whittled down by Warne and Lee until bizarrely Warne trod on his own wicket and then Lee and Kasprowicz.

But England maintained the pressure right to the knife edge conclusion that saw Harmison bowl a delivery that Kasprowicz edged into the diving hands of Geraint Jones to give England a thrilling victory.

Probably the best match of cricket that I can recall ever seeing, I'm still buzzing from the exhilaration.

Labels: Sport

Cotton Candy Machine Day!

Using all the money you've saved from not drinking, you bought a cotton candy machine for your wife.

"Can you believe that last year I wasn't able to buy this for you because I was spending so much money on alcohol," you'll say to her.

She'll nod. "You really did waste a lot of money on alcohol," she'll say.

Flop onto the couch and tell her that no matter how hard you try to make amends, she won't cut you any slack. "You make me wonder why I stopped at all!" say.

"I'm sorry," she'll say. "I really love the cotton candy machine. I'm so proud of you."

Say, "Too late!" and start drinking again. Beginning tonight, disappear for four days, leaving her with nothing to warm up to at night but a contraption that spits out edible fur. See how she likes that!

This is probably my favourite day of the month. My favourite day last year was Talk To The Girl On The Raft Day!

Thanks to the awesome efforts of Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff England look set for a brilliant victory over the Aussies to level the cricket series.

Scoring 68 in the first innings and taking 3 for 52 and then a wonderful second innings score of 73 (including a six that damn near went out of the ground) and then taking another 3 wickets so far Flintoff is a sure thing for man of the match.

Damn great match all round with outstanding performances by players of both teams, I'm sure we'll be seeing a lot more of Warne's dismissal of Strauss in the future a truly bloody unplayable ball.

Warne could still save the match but it would require a superhuman effort as they still trail by over 100 runs and the other tail-enders really aren't capable of much more than staying in.

Labels: Sport

Rick Lieder is a photographer who does amongst a wide variety of different subjects amazing macro photographs of insects in their natural habitats.

He has now decided to sell as limited editions a number of these insect photographs, payments via PayPal.

As I didn't win the lottery on Wednesday I guess I'll have to put a great deal of effort into making my new business succeed so that I'm able to afford a print of the above photograph.

Neil Gaiman's lastest book Anansi Boys is due to published as an unabridged audiobook (narrated by Lenny Henry) soon and will be available not only on Audio CD but also in MP3 format on CD.

I've just found out that the two different versions of the two different audio editions are already up at Amazon. The CD version comes on 15 CDs. The MP3 version comes on two CDs.

I've been lobbying for an MP3 version of books for years -- Harper Audio hesitated for a long time because they were worried about people buying them and then complaining that they didn't play on their CD players (a not unreasonable concern).

I'd be interested in how successful a venture it is to publish audiobooks as MP3s on CD as I'm currently investigating doing the same with a number of public domain works.

Many of the downloadable audiobooks from Audible are now unabridged MP3 versions so there clearly is some kind of market for them. Perhaps I should do a premium podcast audiobook instead or in addition.

There is also an MP3 version of Gaiman's American Gods due to be published soon.

Labels: books

If I win the lottery in the midweek draw tomorrow I am going to buy The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection (That's 1802 books), and Beki will eat her hat.

Perhaps this is the answer

Unfortunately it wouldn't work for my dog related problem. The little old one named Jasper is not only deaf and half blind he is also now apparently incontinent and has pissed on my bed. The little bastard.