The fight against piracy isn't so much a fight for royalties as it is a fight to control information.
Showing posts with label Piracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Piracy. Show all posts
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Consuming Music In Australia
Australia can be a really isolated place at times. Media has for a long time tricked us into thinking otherwise, and especially the internet has given us the illusion that we are not as isolated as the physical reality would suggest it should seem.
Yet the reality is that while we have this interconnected infrastructure, the boundaries still exist. And as the internet has matured, so too has the capacity to put those boundaries back in. I used to stream full episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert Report through their website, then it got restricted so I could only see the clips. Now I can't see it at all - and they were an anomaly in that there was once a point I could actually watch it!
Trying to find digital music similarly has this problems. If there are MP3s at all, they are usually through iTunes or Amazon.com. The former will double the price upon seeing you are Australian while the latter will let you get to the point of buying then politely inform you that they can sell only in the United States! I'm trying to pay for music, but they won't let me!
In trying to keep up with modern music, I'm often finding myself on the basis of recommendations or good reviews trying to hunt down a legal copy. If I'm lucky they have a bandcamp, where I can buy it without much hassle. But usually the music can only be bought in CD form and almost always accompanied by huge shipping fees. I understand that shipping isn't going to be a charity, but the geography does play a role.
Take the new Paradise Lost CD. To pre-order it from the label, the CD costs $10, while there's $9 for shipping. I'd be more than happy to give the label (preferably the band, but one step at a time) $10 for the album, but I can't do that without paying almost that much again for distribution. Meanwhile I don't think I'd have any problems finding that album illegally. So it goes.
I wish this was the exception rather than the norm. When I ordered the new Opeth CD last year, delivery was the bulk of the cost - I threw in a shirt to try to at least shift that balance a little. Just today I was checking up the new Adrenaline Mob CD where the delivery was higher than the cost of the CD. When delivery was included, it was usually an extra $5 to get something internationally. The only store that didn't seem to charge extra (perhaps delivery costs are hidden based on I.P.) was ProMedia.
This is trying to catalogue some of the frustrations I have had in trying to be a legitimate consumer of music. I don't blame any record label for their delivery costs, nor particularly do I blame them for the lack of decent digital sales. It might just not be viable except through Amazon or iTunes. And there are no-doubt leftover remnants of a once-viable business model that don't fit at all well with the new way the internet connects us.
It is a frustration, however, that Napster was well over a decade ago and there's still only a half-arsed attempt to shift towards digital sales. Perhaps Australia isn't enough of a market to warrant consideration (though enough of one to crack down on piracy), but what good is putting up digital barriers based on geography to restrict when the technology it's in response to doesn't?
Yet the reality is that while we have this interconnected infrastructure, the boundaries still exist. And as the internet has matured, so too has the capacity to put those boundaries back in. I used to stream full episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert Report through their website, then it got restricted so I could only see the clips. Now I can't see it at all - and they were an anomaly in that there was once a point I could actually watch it!
Trying to find digital music similarly has this problems. If there are MP3s at all, they are usually through iTunes or Amazon.com. The former will double the price upon seeing you are Australian while the latter will let you get to the point of buying then politely inform you that they can sell only in the United States! I'm trying to pay for music, but they won't let me!
In trying to keep up with modern music, I'm often finding myself on the basis of recommendations or good reviews trying to hunt down a legal copy. If I'm lucky they have a bandcamp, where I can buy it without much hassle. But usually the music can only be bought in CD form and almost always accompanied by huge shipping fees. I understand that shipping isn't going to be a charity, but the geography does play a role.
Take the new Paradise Lost CD. To pre-order it from the label, the CD costs $10, while there's $9 for shipping. I'd be more than happy to give the label (preferably the band, but one step at a time) $10 for the album, but I can't do that without paying almost that much again for distribution. Meanwhile I don't think I'd have any problems finding that album illegally. So it goes.
I wish this was the exception rather than the norm. When I ordered the new Opeth CD last year, delivery was the bulk of the cost - I threw in a shirt to try to at least shift that balance a little. Just today I was checking up the new Adrenaline Mob CD where the delivery was higher than the cost of the CD. When delivery was included, it was usually an extra $5 to get something internationally. The only store that didn't seem to charge extra (perhaps delivery costs are hidden based on I.P.) was ProMedia.
This is trying to catalogue some of the frustrations I have had in trying to be a legitimate consumer of music. I don't blame any record label for their delivery costs, nor particularly do I blame them for the lack of decent digital sales. It might just not be viable except through Amazon or iTunes. And there are no-doubt leftover remnants of a once-viable business model that don't fit at all well with the new way the internet connects us.
It is a frustration, however, that Napster was well over a decade ago and there's still only a half-arsed attempt to shift towards digital sales. Perhaps Australia isn't enough of a market to warrant consideration (though enough of one to crack down on piracy), but what good is putting up digital barriers based on geography to restrict when the technology it's in response to doesn't?
Monday, 21 February 2011
Morning Scepticism: Culture Business
Cultural identity can be so often wrapped up in expressions of art. To be part of a culture is to partake in it, so to be deprived of what is considered essential to that norm would be an undesirable state. And thankfully there are those who have made a business out of it, in exchange for a few shiny units of prosperity the cultural norm can be bought. Yet we can obtain these cultural norms without paying. Because the act of sharing these cultural norms and participating in experience isn't in the transaction of obtaining it, the mode of delivery becomes somewhat irrelevant. This is the trouble of putting a price tag on a cultural commodity, the relationship we have with culture doesn't fit the model that it is sold to us with.
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Morning Scepticism: Art
In combating piracy, I think part of the problem is that its a fight against human nature. To put a price tag on culture is just antithetical to its proliferation. Something that is freely shared has instead a limitation based on affluence and willingness to trade that affluence for the admission of a shared experience. When the same technology that enables the ability mass=produce art also just as easily allows the subversion of it, the containment strategy of fighting piracy is fighting a losing battle.
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Reading Your Mail
The case involving copyright infringement and iiNet will be worth following to see what the outcome will be. We are now in a digital age and digital economy, any sense of ownership of information is quickly fading with the ease of use of replicating technology. The same convenience that allows these companies and individuals to make a greater profit also relinquishes control of the source material.
What to do to stop copyright infringement in the digital age is no easy solution. Copy protection (especially in the case of games) only draws ire from the consumer, suing is bad publicity and not a way to coerce behaviour. As I've discussed before, while they are by no means perfect, products such as Steam or Netflix show that there are ways to run a viable business in this digital age.
In this case, there seems to be an implicit consequence of such behaviour. Now our internet traffic is being screened for any illegal material. By creating a download culture, we have lost our privacy. So while the net can be used for personal and intimate communication, we have given an excuse for corporations and government to look at the information coming in.
This should be very concerning. Consider the same situation only with physical means of distribution, that the post office should check what the contents of someone's mail every time they suspected it could be copyrighted or illegal material. I'm guessing that very few would be okay with such a practice in place.
This tactic is not really going to work without bringing in draconian measures, by making the potential consequences overtake the convenience of piracy. It's worth noting that even given such consequences for drug posession / use that a large portion of the population still chooses to use illicit substances. Does that mean that everyone should be forced to have police search their house in order to eradicate the problem?
In practice the two examples are unfeasable. It would take so much more resource power than it is worth. The digital age however removes that barrier - what can be checked can be done so without anything more than software. Like the information itself being easy to copy, so can anything you do on the internet.
Questions of practicality aside, what ethical considerations do we have when considering the question of allowing individuals to be free on the internet? In the same sense that I would feel uneasy about having my mail read or police searching my house, I feel uneasy about governments and corporations scanning the information flowing to my computer.
The response which seems to follow is that if you had nothing to hide then it wouldn't be a problem. But that misses what the objection is to. I don't want others going through my things regardless of whether there is something to hide. The fact that I don't have drugs in my house does not mean that it's okay for police to search my house for drugs.
The technology has the potential for Orwellian surveillance, so legislation needs to be put in place not to monitor but to protect the infrastructure from being used in such a way. As for illegal downloads, surely it's coming to the point where the focus should be on being innovative with the technology as opposed to trying to protect an archaic means of distribution.
It will take a new generation of businessmen to maximise the potential of the technology, it might mean a shift in what products make money and what it means to be a consumer, but these things will sort themselves out with time. The potential revenue loss gives them no more rights to check the internet than book companies have to monitor any interactions to make sure people aren't lending copyrighted books to others.
What to do to stop copyright infringement in the digital age is no easy solution. Copy protection (especially in the case of games) only draws ire from the consumer, suing is bad publicity and not a way to coerce behaviour. As I've discussed before, while they are by no means perfect, products such as Steam or Netflix show that there are ways to run a viable business in this digital age.
In this case, there seems to be an implicit consequence of such behaviour. Now our internet traffic is being screened for any illegal material. By creating a download culture, we have lost our privacy. So while the net can be used for personal and intimate communication, we have given an excuse for corporations and government to look at the information coming in.
This should be very concerning. Consider the same situation only with physical means of distribution, that the post office should check what the contents of someone's mail every time they suspected it could be copyrighted or illegal material. I'm guessing that very few would be okay with such a practice in place.
This tactic is not really going to work without bringing in draconian measures, by making the potential consequences overtake the convenience of piracy. It's worth noting that even given such consequences for drug posession / use that a large portion of the population still chooses to use illicit substances. Does that mean that everyone should be forced to have police search their house in order to eradicate the problem?
In practice the two examples are unfeasable. It would take so much more resource power than it is worth. The digital age however removes that barrier - what can be checked can be done so without anything more than software. Like the information itself being easy to copy, so can anything you do on the internet.
Questions of practicality aside, what ethical considerations do we have when considering the question of allowing individuals to be free on the internet? In the same sense that I would feel uneasy about having my mail read or police searching my house, I feel uneasy about governments and corporations scanning the information flowing to my computer.
The response which seems to follow is that if you had nothing to hide then it wouldn't be a problem. But that misses what the objection is to. I don't want others going through my things regardless of whether there is something to hide. The fact that I don't have drugs in my house does not mean that it's okay for police to search my house for drugs.
The technology has the potential for Orwellian surveillance, so legislation needs to be put in place not to monitor but to protect the infrastructure from being used in such a way. As for illegal downloads, surely it's coming to the point where the focus should be on being innovative with the technology as opposed to trying to protect an archaic means of distribution.
It will take a new generation of businessmen to maximise the potential of the technology, it might mean a shift in what products make money and what it means to be a consumer, but these things will sort themselves out with time. The potential revenue loss gives them no more rights to check the internet than book companies have to monitor any interactions to make sure people aren't lending copyrighted books to others.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
The Death of PC Gaming
As GTA IV rushes off the shelves and onto the 7th generation consoles, the hype surrounding the game fills me with a sense of lament. The once great fortress for hardcore gaming that is the Personal Computer is now nothing more than a slowly decaying ruin inhabited by the few who hold the delusion that someone will gallantly ride in and save the day. That's not to say that hardcore gaming is completely dead, but as consoles catch up to the technology that has long kept the PC gaming market viable the platform is growing more and more irrelevant. It's become a system dominated by World of Warcraft and The Sims where piracy and extreme copy protection are making the system less and less favourable for users and developers alike.
A brief history of gaming
To understand the situation now, it's important to understand the difference in the life cycles of PCs and consoles and how each intertwines with development and sales. For an in-depth look at the history of games and gaming there is always Wikipedia. If I tried to explain it in my own words, I'd just muddle it up, leave out vital details and possibly push false information. Instead I'm just going to focus on the technology vs marketplace battle which to me is very indicative of why the battle has gone the way it did.
The console is on an approximately 5 year lifecycle; when it comes out it's the latest greatest thing, from there it takes about 12 months to build up a decent gaming library. For the next year or so it features it's best sales, then it starts to taper off by which time the hardware is becoming redundant and a new console needs to come in it's place and start all over again. The PC is a much more incremental process, when a new piece of hardware comes out, it doesn't require buying a complete new system. Likewise the software that games are built on stays the same. With computers, you don't build to hardware, you build to software. With Microsoft having the effectual monopoly on home computing, it does add the stability the computer needs to foster a development environment.
For the most part, the PC market has been the centre of innovation in gaming. Partly this has been driven by the nature of early development. Games were small and could be made by small teams or even garage developers. An incremental system is perfect for this kind of development environment. At the same time, the console market was primarily a way to bring arcade games into the home. The divergence in the style of games is quite clear at this point. Consoles and arcade games were at best joystick / pad + buttons while the computer had the keyboard / mouse combo. Just the speed and complexity that the mouse allowed for gaming brought complexity to the likes never seen. Without the mouse, the RTS would still be turn-based. The First Person Shooter genre would not be where it is now, nor would RPGs. Though it's interesting how the RPG genre developed on both console and PC resulting in two very different ways to do the genre.
The Playstation for me was the console that changed everything. It had targeted the audience that PC games and packaged it up in something affordable. Sony in their first foray into the gaming market killed Sega and seriously dented Nintendo. Though the PC market still survived thanks to the 3DFX and NVidia providing a graphics arms race, while gaming took on a new dimension with the internet providing a new multiplayer experience. While the incremental PC system kept ahead of it's console counterparts, the software libraries and convenience meant an ever-growing market. And with the onset of the PS2 and X-Box finally there was a large enough market share worth going after for non-Japanese developers. The advantages of developing for a market like that are well worth the switch in a field where only 10% of games make a profit and most companies go bankrupt after one game. It's a cut-throat multi-billion dollar industry, risk management comes into play. The problem of piracy on the PC makes the platform a higher risk, as does programming software to work on an almost infinite combination of hardware configurations as opposed to the one.
In the mid to late 90s, consumer electronics were still reasonably expensive so it made sense that the market would be dominated by those looking towards an all-in-one machine which a computer would fit the bill. Now as the price has dropped, the silicon boom has meant that we can afford purpose specific devices. The power and range of hi-definition entertainment equipment combined with wireless LAN and broadband really harbours the lounge rather than a desk as the prime candidate for entertainment. The new consoles offer the best of both worlds; a globally connected device that also allows for social multiplayer action.
Piracy vs protection
I was browsing one of my favourite webcomics this morning and came across this article. It somewhat shocked me to see the extent of copy protection, but really it shouldn't. Sure it's extreme and for the most part impractical, but it's really not much more than the Half-life 2 or Bioshock protection. When Half-life 2 came out, I did the right thing and bought it. From the time I first tried to install the game to the point where I could play it was well over 3 hours. Over 3 hours for a legally bought game! It's getting beyond a joke just how restricting and invasive copy protection is. Only the really extreme measures are effective, and the regular methods only serve to hurt legitimate consumers.
Yes, piracy is a problem for game developers. Though as I asserted with the music industry, the days where we have high-speed broadband lend itself towards a global distribution system over the internet. We get shafted here in Australia in terms of game prices. What retails for $100 AUD retails for $50 USD despite a strong exchange rate. I didn't rate Steam when it first came out, but now I can see it's appeal. When I can buy games for $50 USD and they are downloaded onto my computer ready to play, why should I go out and spend $100 to support the dying retail chains that put such a huge mark-up on the price? is it really worth that extra $40 to have a physical copy any more? Consoles themselves are still geared to that centralised distribution system by selling games on physical media. Though I feel this generation of consoles will be the last to operate that way, given XBox Live and the Wii Virtual Console are showing that digital distribution is achievable on consoles.
To me invasive copy protection is one of the worst things the industry can do. Checking for unique cd keys is one thing, installing rootkits on the users system is another. Having to disable virtual drives, making sure a game can't be duplicated, surely these methods contravene fair use policies. At a time where it's far more convenient to play off backups and virtual drives, copy protection becomes more and more restrictive on the ability to do so. Note that it's not stopping piracy, just do a search on bit torrent for any game you can think of. Massive global copying is still happening, just like it's happening for albums. And there is a consumer backlash against companies that use more extreme methods to stop piracy, so there should be. Because it is contributing to the downfall of the medium that so many of us still choose to game on.
The future?
There's just so much to cover with this topic, and there have been so many angles I've wanted to push but not had time for. But I'm sure that over the next few months as I get back into casual game development, my interest will be sparked enough to lay forth all the issues I deem noteworthy. As much as my pessimism rang out in the above prose, I'll say now that PC gaming will never die completely. There is too much of a base following for it to completely die. Some genres like Real Time Strategy is far too complex to be streamlined effectively on a console, and the market for fast and complex First Person Shooters will always be there. MMORPG's like World of Warcraft thrive because of the social atmosphere they provide, something a keyboard is geared towards. Not to mention that most developers are PC gamers who love to play on the platform just as much as their target audience.
There will be gaming on this platform while there are still those to support it, though the model for "epic" games should continue in it's "console release followed belatedly by a PC release" as has been the case since the turn of the decade. I lament the shift away from the PC as a preferred platform, but for all the reasons specified above and more, I understand why it has to be this way. All I can do is sit back and watch as it changes in a metaphorical arms race that will largely focus on giving the consumer what it wants. But I fear that it will be like TV in that eventually most games will be made for the lowest common denominator as gaming becomes more and more socially mainstream.
A brief history of gaming
To understand the situation now, it's important to understand the difference in the life cycles of PCs and consoles and how each intertwines with development and sales. For an in-depth look at the history of games and gaming there is always Wikipedia. If I tried to explain it in my own words, I'd just muddle it up, leave out vital details and possibly push false information. Instead I'm just going to focus on the technology vs marketplace battle which to me is very indicative of why the battle has gone the way it did.
The console is on an approximately 5 year lifecycle; when it comes out it's the latest greatest thing, from there it takes about 12 months to build up a decent gaming library. For the next year or so it features it's best sales, then it starts to taper off by which time the hardware is becoming redundant and a new console needs to come in it's place and start all over again. The PC is a much more incremental process, when a new piece of hardware comes out, it doesn't require buying a complete new system. Likewise the software that games are built on stays the same. With computers, you don't build to hardware, you build to software. With Microsoft having the effectual monopoly on home computing, it does add the stability the computer needs to foster a development environment.
For the most part, the PC market has been the centre of innovation in gaming. Partly this has been driven by the nature of early development. Games were small and could be made by small teams or even garage developers. An incremental system is perfect for this kind of development environment. At the same time, the console market was primarily a way to bring arcade games into the home. The divergence in the style of games is quite clear at this point. Consoles and arcade games were at best joystick / pad + buttons while the computer had the keyboard / mouse combo. Just the speed and complexity that the mouse allowed for gaming brought complexity to the likes never seen. Without the mouse, the RTS would still be turn-based. The First Person Shooter genre would not be where it is now, nor would RPGs. Though it's interesting how the RPG genre developed on both console and PC resulting in two very different ways to do the genre.
The Playstation for me was the console that changed everything. It had targeted the audience that PC games and packaged it up in something affordable. Sony in their first foray into the gaming market killed Sega and seriously dented Nintendo. Though the PC market still survived thanks to the 3DFX and NVidia providing a graphics arms race, while gaming took on a new dimension with the internet providing a new multiplayer experience. While the incremental PC system kept ahead of it's console counterparts, the software libraries and convenience meant an ever-growing market. And with the onset of the PS2 and X-Box finally there was a large enough market share worth going after for non-Japanese developers. The advantages of developing for a market like that are well worth the switch in a field where only 10% of games make a profit and most companies go bankrupt after one game. It's a cut-throat multi-billion dollar industry, risk management comes into play. The problem of piracy on the PC makes the platform a higher risk, as does programming software to work on an almost infinite combination of hardware configurations as opposed to the one.
In the mid to late 90s, consumer electronics were still reasonably expensive so it made sense that the market would be dominated by those looking towards an all-in-one machine which a computer would fit the bill. Now as the price has dropped, the silicon boom has meant that we can afford purpose specific devices. The power and range of hi-definition entertainment equipment combined with wireless LAN and broadband really harbours the lounge rather than a desk as the prime candidate for entertainment. The new consoles offer the best of both worlds; a globally connected device that also allows for social multiplayer action.
Piracy vs protection
I was browsing one of my favourite webcomics this morning and came across this article. It somewhat shocked me to see the extent of copy protection, but really it shouldn't. Sure it's extreme and for the most part impractical, but it's really not much more than the Half-life 2 or Bioshock protection. When Half-life 2 came out, I did the right thing and bought it. From the time I first tried to install the game to the point where I could play it was well over 3 hours. Over 3 hours for a legally bought game! It's getting beyond a joke just how restricting and invasive copy protection is. Only the really extreme measures are effective, and the regular methods only serve to hurt legitimate consumers.
Yes, piracy is a problem for game developers. Though as I asserted with the music industry, the days where we have high-speed broadband lend itself towards a global distribution system over the internet. We get shafted here in Australia in terms of game prices. What retails for $100 AUD retails for $50 USD despite a strong exchange rate. I didn't rate Steam when it first came out, but now I can see it's appeal. When I can buy games for $50 USD and they are downloaded onto my computer ready to play, why should I go out and spend $100 to support the dying retail chains that put such a huge mark-up on the price? is it really worth that extra $40 to have a physical copy any more? Consoles themselves are still geared to that centralised distribution system by selling games on physical media. Though I feel this generation of consoles will be the last to operate that way, given XBox Live and the Wii Virtual Console are showing that digital distribution is achievable on consoles.
To me invasive copy protection is one of the worst things the industry can do. Checking for unique cd keys is one thing, installing rootkits on the users system is another. Having to disable virtual drives, making sure a game can't be duplicated, surely these methods contravene fair use policies. At a time where it's far more convenient to play off backups and virtual drives, copy protection becomes more and more restrictive on the ability to do so. Note that it's not stopping piracy, just do a search on bit torrent for any game you can think of. Massive global copying is still happening, just like it's happening for albums. And there is a consumer backlash against companies that use more extreme methods to stop piracy, so there should be. Because it is contributing to the downfall of the medium that so many of us still choose to game on.
The future?
There's just so much to cover with this topic, and there have been so many angles I've wanted to push but not had time for. But I'm sure that over the next few months as I get back into casual game development, my interest will be sparked enough to lay forth all the issues I deem noteworthy. As much as my pessimism rang out in the above prose, I'll say now that PC gaming will never die completely. There is too much of a base following for it to completely die. Some genres like Real Time Strategy is far too complex to be streamlined effectively on a console, and the market for fast and complex First Person Shooters will always be there. MMORPG's like World of Warcraft thrive because of the social atmosphere they provide, something a keyboard is geared towards. Not to mention that most developers are PC gamers who love to play on the platform just as much as their target audience.
There will be gaming on this platform while there are still those to support it, though the model for "epic" games should continue in it's "console release followed belatedly by a PC release" as has been the case since the turn of the decade. I lament the shift away from the PC as a preferred platform, but for all the reasons specified above and more, I understand why it has to be this way. All I can do is sit back and watch as it changes in a metaphorical arms race that will largely focus on giving the consumer what it wants. But I fear that it will be like TV in that eventually most games will be made for the lowest common denominator as gaming becomes more and more socially mainstream.
Saturday, 3 November 2007
The inevitable rise and liberation of legal MP3s
As us format elitists are seething about Radiohead only releasing their album in 160kbps, two major events have happened recently on this front. OiNK has been shut down, and Trent Reznor has made good on his word by helping Saul Williams release their collaboration on the Internet - in the format of choosing and for only $5 US (or free if you choose)
First off, a quick word about the Radiohead album. Yes I did purchase it, I paid 4 pounds ($10AUD), and I really did enjoy the album. Personally I think its their best since OK Computer. Though I am disappointed in the sense that I "bought" the album in such a low quality. 160kbps might have been okay back on dial-up days, but in the days of Cable and high-speed broadband, I don't get the logic behind it. Especially as the audience they are aiming at are those who can tell the difference and want something more... and this leads me directly to Oink
1. The OiNK Affair
This article sums it all up tbh, its a long but very engaging read, a rant that anyone would be proud of. Oink was great for someone like me, it allowed me to get music I wouldn't normally even dream of hearing at the format of my choosing, there are so many bands that because of OiNK I've gotten into then went and saw them live. Without it, I'm lost when people recommend me new stuff.
Its not that I want to rip artists off, I don't. Though I won't deny the convenience of it all. Every time I buy a CD these days, all I do is rip it and play it through my computer or MP3 device. MP3 may not have the sound quality of CD, but MP3s are far too damn convenient. I have a huge library available at a click of a mouse button. Compared to that CDs seem bulky, archaic devices whose only real purpose anymore seems to be for the car (and even then, MP3 players are fast becoming the standard) and as a collectors item. In a wireless media world, it seems such a waste to take up precious space with CD cases, where a HDD can store thousands upon thousands of albums and be conveniently accessed.
OiNK brought something to the music industry that companies have tried to suppress: choice. It wasn't a collection of overpriced shitty pop discs like most record stores, pretty much anything you wanted was there to grab. Albums that are out of print, rare and esoteric bands that it would cost more in shipping than the album itself to get here. It was all there and at a bitrate that does as much justice as possible to the original release. And the reason all this worked so well is that it was consumer driven - the music fans sharing music with other music fans, who wouldn't want to be a part of that. The product? great music. The currency? sharing with others. But somehow the anti-piracy groups thought people were making a profit out of it and shut it down. But in truth the people who make money out of file sharing are... THE ARTISTS!
That's right, the artists make money out of file sharing. Not directly of course, but as a result of increased concert ticket revenue and merchandise sales. The great thing about filesharing is that it has taken the focus away from creating CDs (then touring in support) back to the performance aspect. While it may not be ideal for the bands themselves, its a huge win for the music loving consumers. This year alone I have seen: Tool, Muse, The Killers, Isis, These Arms Are Snakes, NoFX, Mastodon, Slayer, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and many more. Most of which I would have never heard if I hadn't had people there to recommend me the music. And there are so many more like me that instead of paying $30 for an artist they haven't heard, they have downloaded the music, then gone and saw the band live and bought the CDs in the end.
Its the corporate entities that have built up their whole business model, the ones who are responsible for frivolous lawsuits against music fans, the ones who populate music stores with that shitty pop and generic metal, they are the ones who lose out. Their whole system is built around the CD. They have the artists tied to insane contracts. Its not about the music for them, its about the profit. And unless they understand the needs of the consumer and the artists and adapt to the global market brought on by the Internet, they will crash and burn... and I'm sure sue a few more music fans for several hundred thousand dollars in the process. Companies suing Youtube and Myspace because they are no longer in control of their product. The reason they aren't in control... CONSUMERS FINALLY HAVE A SAY
Thanks to this global distribution system, us in Australia are realising how much we are being ripped off. Our dollar is good, yet we pay $30 instead of $17 for CDs. We pay $100 instead of $50 for games. TV shows come out here months after they are screened in the US, sometimes put on at ungodly hours or aren't even shown on free-to-air TV. No wonder people in Australia feel cheated by the system. The system expects us to pay more and wait longer for a product thanks to this archaic distribution system. Well fuck that! This is the age of decentralised information. We get the news immediately, newspapers have had to adapt and move to posting articles online. As have magazines, they have become quite irrelevant with most of their content coming out online well before they are published and distributed. The system is moving forward. And now when we are all citizens of a global village, why the regional solutions still stay is beyond me. We didn't even get half of Grindhouse released here before the DVD came out in the US. No Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie period. Location shouldn't be a problem, and the Internet makes it more irrelevant as technology increases.
So bring back Oink. Throw fees on it if need be to help pay the artists who have their music replicated. The consumers now know they can get something better than the shitty pop music that fills record stores, and they can get it so much more conveniently. Adapt or be destroyed.
2. The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of Niggy Tardust
Normally I'm not a fan of hip-hop, the genre shits me (for lack of a better word), especially the crap on the charts. Saul Williams is an exception to that. And with my all time favourite artist, Trent Reznor, at the helm I was very excited to get my hands on this release.
I've got to say almost everything about this release is great. Saul's lyrics and vocal style are sublime as usual and and the music fits almost perfectly in the background. There are times when the sound drifts towards that of NIN (especially the sounds of Year Zero), but mostly the Reznoreque elements are subtlety interlaced behind the main riffs. A good example is the piano on Convict Colony. There is a big "what the fuck" to the cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday. Not that it sounds terrible, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the album. The first half of the album overall is solid, though a bit unspectacular. Unfortunately some of the time it sounds like Saul is doing an impersonation of Trent when singing, though it's not surprising given the same thing happened on Year Zero. Niggy Tardust has vocals like this, though of the whole album it has my favourite lyrics.
The highlight track for me is WTF! As a song it just fits together so well, great lyrics, fitting music, catchy chorus, and the most complex song structurally on the album. Absolutely love the outro. As the album wears on, the tracks get more and more diverse. Scared Money has a very retro funk feel while Raw is, oddly as the title suggests, stripped back to the bare minimum that constitutes a song. Skin Of A Drum is at times an Industrial Music outcast yet still carries the human touch. The last 30 minutes is a journey through different moods, points and counterpoints, lyrical brilliance coupled with pronounced accompaniment. And it all finishes so strongly with The Ritual.
Its great to see an album that gets better at it goes on, most albums put the best tracks first then descend as more and more filler songs pad out what would have been a killer EP into an average LP. But as it is with almost every single NIN album, the strongest tracks are saved until the end. Albums like this are the reason to listen from start to finish, not to take each track individually but rate it as a whole. There must be a lot of hip hop producers out there right now listening to this and feeling quite green that an Industrial musician has managed to produce a hip hop album of this quality.
In the end, this album has showed the abilities and versatility of both Saul Williams And Trent Reznor. It makes me wonder how good the Zack De La Rocha / Trent Reznor album would have sounded. And like the Tapeworm project, I guess only a few people will ever know, though I have a faint glimmer of hope that NIN leaving Interscope will clear up the contractual problems and we'll see an Internet release. After all, there is a huge legion of fans who have showed they are willing to support Internet downloads... provided its not the terrible crap available on iTunes.
First off, a quick word about the Radiohead album. Yes I did purchase it, I paid 4 pounds ($10AUD), and I really did enjoy the album. Personally I think its their best since OK Computer. Though I am disappointed in the sense that I "bought" the album in such a low quality. 160kbps might have been okay back on dial-up days, but in the days of Cable and high-speed broadband, I don't get the logic behind it. Especially as the audience they are aiming at are those who can tell the difference and want something more... and this leads me directly to Oink
1. The OiNK Affair
This article sums it all up tbh, its a long but very engaging read, a rant that anyone would be proud of. Oink was great for someone like me, it allowed me to get music I wouldn't normally even dream of hearing at the format of my choosing, there are so many bands that because of OiNK I've gotten into then went and saw them live. Without it, I'm lost when people recommend me new stuff.
Its not that I want to rip artists off, I don't. Though I won't deny the convenience of it all. Every time I buy a CD these days, all I do is rip it and play it through my computer or MP3 device. MP3 may not have the sound quality of CD, but MP3s are far too damn convenient. I have a huge library available at a click of a mouse button. Compared to that CDs seem bulky, archaic devices whose only real purpose anymore seems to be for the car (and even then, MP3 players are fast becoming the standard) and as a collectors item. In a wireless media world, it seems such a waste to take up precious space with CD cases, where a HDD can store thousands upon thousands of albums and be conveniently accessed.
OiNK brought something to the music industry that companies have tried to suppress: choice. It wasn't a collection of overpriced shitty pop discs like most record stores, pretty much anything you wanted was there to grab. Albums that are out of print, rare and esoteric bands that it would cost more in shipping than the album itself to get here. It was all there and at a bitrate that does as much justice as possible to the original release. And the reason all this worked so well is that it was consumer driven - the music fans sharing music with other music fans, who wouldn't want to be a part of that. The product? great music. The currency? sharing with others. But somehow the anti-piracy groups thought people were making a profit out of it and shut it down. But in truth the people who make money out of file sharing are... THE ARTISTS!
That's right, the artists make money out of file sharing. Not directly of course, but as a result of increased concert ticket revenue and merchandise sales. The great thing about filesharing is that it has taken the focus away from creating CDs (then touring in support) back to the performance aspect. While it may not be ideal for the bands themselves, its a huge win for the music loving consumers. This year alone I have seen: Tool, Muse, The Killers, Isis, These Arms Are Snakes, NoFX, Mastodon, Slayer, The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and many more. Most of which I would have never heard if I hadn't had people there to recommend me the music. And there are so many more like me that instead of paying $30 for an artist they haven't heard, they have downloaded the music, then gone and saw the band live and bought the CDs in the end.
Its the corporate entities that have built up their whole business model, the ones who are responsible for frivolous lawsuits against music fans, the ones who populate music stores with that shitty pop and generic metal, they are the ones who lose out. Their whole system is built around the CD. They have the artists tied to insane contracts. Its not about the music for them, its about the profit. And unless they understand the needs of the consumer and the artists and adapt to the global market brought on by the Internet, they will crash and burn... and I'm sure sue a few more music fans for several hundred thousand dollars in the process. Companies suing Youtube and Myspace because they are no longer in control of their product. The reason they aren't in control... CONSUMERS FINALLY HAVE A SAY
Thanks to this global distribution system, us in Australia are realising how much we are being ripped off. Our dollar is good, yet we pay $30 instead of $17 for CDs. We pay $100 instead of $50 for games. TV shows come out here months after they are screened in the US, sometimes put on at ungodly hours or aren't even shown on free-to-air TV. No wonder people in Australia feel cheated by the system. The system expects us to pay more and wait longer for a product thanks to this archaic distribution system. Well fuck that! This is the age of decentralised information. We get the news immediately, newspapers have had to adapt and move to posting articles online. As have magazines, they have become quite irrelevant with most of their content coming out online well before they are published and distributed. The system is moving forward. And now when we are all citizens of a global village, why the regional solutions still stay is beyond me. We didn't even get half of Grindhouse released here before the DVD came out in the US. No Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie period. Location shouldn't be a problem, and the Internet makes it more irrelevant as technology increases.
So bring back Oink. Throw fees on it if need be to help pay the artists who have their music replicated. The consumers now know they can get something better than the shitty pop music that fills record stores, and they can get it so much more conveniently. Adapt or be destroyed.
2. The Inevitable Rise And Liberation Of Niggy Tardust
Normally I'm not a fan of hip-hop, the genre shits me (for lack of a better word), especially the crap on the charts. Saul Williams is an exception to that. And with my all time favourite artist, Trent Reznor, at the helm I was very excited to get my hands on this release.
I've got to say almost everything about this release is great. Saul's lyrics and vocal style are sublime as usual and and the music fits almost perfectly in the background. There are times when the sound drifts towards that of NIN (especially the sounds of Year Zero), but mostly the Reznoreque elements are subtlety interlaced behind the main riffs. A good example is the piano on Convict Colony. There is a big "what the fuck" to the cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday. Not that it sounds terrible, it just doesn't fit with the rest of the album. The first half of the album overall is solid, though a bit unspectacular. Unfortunately some of the time it sounds like Saul is doing an impersonation of Trent when singing, though it's not surprising given the same thing happened on Year Zero. Niggy Tardust has vocals like this, though of the whole album it has my favourite lyrics.
The highlight track for me is WTF! As a song it just fits together so well, great lyrics, fitting music, catchy chorus, and the most complex song structurally on the album. Absolutely love the outro. As the album wears on, the tracks get more and more diverse. Scared Money has a very retro funk feel while Raw is, oddly as the title suggests, stripped back to the bare minimum that constitutes a song. Skin Of A Drum is at times an Industrial Music outcast yet still carries the human touch. The last 30 minutes is a journey through different moods, points and counterpoints, lyrical brilliance coupled with pronounced accompaniment. And it all finishes so strongly with The Ritual.
Its great to see an album that gets better at it goes on, most albums put the best tracks first then descend as more and more filler songs pad out what would have been a killer EP into an average LP. But as it is with almost every single NIN album, the strongest tracks are saved until the end. Albums like this are the reason to listen from start to finish, not to take each track individually but rate it as a whole. There must be a lot of hip hop producers out there right now listening to this and feeling quite green that an Industrial musician has managed to produce a hip hop album of this quality.
In the end, this album has showed the abilities and versatility of both Saul Williams And Trent Reznor. It makes me wonder how good the Zack De La Rocha / Trent Reznor album would have sounded. And like the Tapeworm project, I guess only a few people will ever know, though I have a faint glimmer of hope that NIN leaving Interscope will clear up the contractual problems and we'll see an Internet release. After all, there is a huge legion of fans who have showed they are willing to support Internet downloads... provided its not the terrible crap available on iTunes.
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