Subject URL: Fairtunes

I like Fairtunes (see links on left). It's a simple idea. They collect money for musicians from fans, they write out a cheque and they send it direct to the artist, bypassing the record company. The reasons for sending the cash don't really matter but the site was originally set up as a way for fans who are feeling guilty for downloading their fav band's latest album to compensate the artist for it.

Interesting notes from the article :

• The site makes it's money by keeping donations for four months and keeping the interest.
• "Because the economics of the music business is so bad for musicians, you don't have to send more than a dollar before you have compensated them fairly for downloading an entire album."

I don't know about the second point... could the musician have recorded an album without the record company financing it? If they don't sell any albums will the record company pay them to record another? Will the band/musician make enough from pure donations of $1 a CD to live on and continue to record music?

Still, as a way to send money to your favourite band, it rocks. But you could probably track the band members down personally yourself if you cared that much. But hey, why bother when Fairtunes will do it for you? Ha!

Subject URL: Texta and gaffa tape

Sony's new anti-CD-ripping technology, as used on such popular CDs as Celine Dion, is easily stopped by scrubbing out the extra rubbish track with a black felt tip pen. (thank's Damien)

At least, that's what I've been reading (saw it in MX yesterday too I think). I'd like to believe it's Sony propaganda to get the evil pirates to ruin their Celine CDs before they spread to others.

Subject URL: Analog vs. Digital Piracy

An important explaination of the difference between piracy online, offline, digital and analog and more fuel for the record-companies-have-no-idea fire. (via I forgot)

It's stupid to just blame the net for all of this... it's the combination of technologies; the ability to digitally copy a CD, the ability to convert that audio into a lossy but good quality format (MP3), cheap internet access for the masses, peer-to-peer sharing.

Any one of those technologies could have been missing and we'd still be having this "piracy explosion" problem. If everyone had highspeed internet we wouldn't have needed MP3, we'd be trading WAVs. I know people who used to download whole CDs on WAVs before there was MP3.

Before Napster etc. there was (and still is) FTP, ICQ, IRC, HTTP, Email. I receieved early real audio copies of Faith No More's "Album Of The Year" a week or so early way back in 1997.

Even without the ability to perfectly rip digital audio from a CD people would still copy a CD to the computer via the analog output. CD ripping just makes it easier, quicker. You can copy a whole CD in a tiny amount of time it takes to play it.

What am I trying to say here? Nothing really. Read the article, it's much more interesting than me.