You have to love the guys who run The Pirate Bay (or hate them a lot, depending on what you have at stake). Whether they’re bold-facedly advertising The Simpsons Movie available for download on its first day in theatres or trying to start their own country where file-sharing is legal, they tend to grab the bull by the prairie oysters. Well, those smug assholes have done it again. Or at least they’re about to have done it again.

Let’s back up. About three weeks ago, the well-publicized Pirate Bay trial reached a verdict requiring the management of The Pirate Bay to pay a fine of 30-million SEK. The money was to be paid to Danowsky & Partners Advokatbyrå, the small law firm representing the IFPI in the recent trial. Of course, Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm and his three co-pirates, relaxed comfortably atop their beanbag chair-sized testicles, had no intentions of paying the fine.

Their current plan is to enact what is now being called a "Distributed Denial of Dollars" (or DDo$) attack. It is basically an adaptation of the DDoS attack, a technique by which a number of internet users intentionally overload a server in order to make it inaccessible to its intended users. In this case, The Pirate Bay is asking users to make tiny donations of 1 SEK (approx. 0.13 USD) to the bank account in which the 30 million SEK is meant to be deposited.

Here’s how it works: The first 1000 transfers made to the account cost nothing to Danowsky. Any further transfers, however, will cause the bank to charge Danowsky with a fee of 2 SEK. This means that any donations (beyond the first 1000) of 1 SEK will end up costing Danowsky 1 SEK. Bear in mind that The Pirate Bay has about 3.6 million users.

As Danowsky is a small firm that handles all transactions by hand, this attack will probably end up wasting a lot of their time. And time is money. So it will end up wasting some of their money, and then a lot of their money. Now, unless Danowsky is so overwhelmed that they have to close their doors, this still does not explain how Svartholm and his mates will avoid paying their fine. But as the old pirate saying goes, "If ye be drownin, ’tis best that the last bit of ya ter be seen be yer sinkin’ middle finger."

This bit of news, ladies and gentlemen, involves a few stories from the distant past. Way back in 1997, cigarette companies became subject to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement 97, which made it illegal for cartoon characters and other such fictional likenesses to be used in tobacco ads. Skip to 2007, when Camel Cigarettes, owned by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco company, decided it would be a great idea to do an advertising spread in Rolling Stone called “The Indie Rock Universe.” The ad featured cartoon drawings of the names of bands like Sonic Youth, Fugazi, Xiu Xiu, and Fucked Up, totaling 186 artists. Did Camel ask these bands if they could use their names in the ad? Nope. A class-action lawsuit was filed against R.J. Reynolds, Rolling Stone, and the Wenner Media Group by all artists pictured, which you can read about in this excellent post from our very own Hanky Panky.

While the class-action suit has not yet reached an agreement, other cases have: the lawsuits filed by nine state attorneys, which claimed that R.J. Reynolds acted against the aforementioned Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement by creating cartoon-like depictions of band names in a cigarette ad, which is exactly what the agreement is supposed to prevent. According to The Daily Swarm (via Pitchfork), the ruling was made by a Philadelphia judge, who must have had the strange sensation of shooting fish in a barrel. Now, R.J. Reynolds must "either run a ’youth oriented anti-smoking advertisement’ in the magazine in the next year or pay a sanction of more than $300,000." Ironic, but somehow satisfactory.

Given the fact that intellectual property rights laws are pretty much designed for this sort of thing, I think we can be confident that the slandered bands will be compensated as well. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Who fucks with Ian MacKaye!?

A long time ago, in a universe far far away, an unwritten truce was made. The record labels, young and untested, decided to turn a blind eye to the profit potential of performance royalty payments from an equally nascent form of media, radio, to allow both of them to grow out of a relationship of mutual reliance. This was about 70 to 80 years ago, when the first radio music broadcasts occured, and when jazz was actually popular. Not that there’s anything wrong with jazz, unless it’s from Utah.

We fast-forward to now, and the record labels under the RIAA are running out of effective ways to recoup the loss of their primary source of income, and are now resorting to political means to do so. Their latest effort, one that was initially reported in December in the year-end piece The War on Copyright (TMT Feature), is the Performance Rights Act, which basically forces the equally declining radio industry to pay royalties to the labels to play their music. Ironic cross-industry secret: Most of these stations get their music from the labels for free to begin with. I’m surprised the labels don’t use that as a source of revenue.

The House edition of the act, H.R. 848, has passed the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on a vote of 21-9. All the Nays save one (Maxine Waters (D-CA)) were Republican, including Ranking members Lamar Smith of Texas and Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, according to FMQB. Its passing means that it will go to the House for an actual vote. While there are still a few hurdles before the act reaches the President’s desk, its passing means that it is one of the few bills that will likely reach the President’s desk in the first place. Its massive bipartisan support in both the House and Senate (bill S.379) will likely allow it to coast there.

What does it mean if it comes to pass? On the one hand, it will do some significant damage to commercial radio, forcing them to pay upwards in the hundreds of thousands to pay for royalties, and perhaps it will be a deserved beating. The majority of you readers likely do not even listen to commercial radio, due to its monotony, lack of original selection, and non-support for local artists. There are not many that will mourn if pop radio stations go the way that newspapers are going. On the other, this will likely damage college and independent radio stations just as much. While the amendments passed by Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) before the bill’s passing reduced the flat fees for radio stations making less than $500,000 in revenue, these fees can still be significantly damaging to radio stations that rely heavily on donations, especially in these trying times. Many of these stations will likely shutter in the few years after they are forced to start paying, if they can’t scale back their operations significantly. Further, royalties like these often do not end up in the majority of artists’ hands. And finally, the labels will only get a large amount of revenue in the short term, for as radio stations scale back and shutter, so too will the sources of royalty income.

In the end, it’s a no-win situation.

Oh fudge! A recent iPhone application designed to remotely control the Transmission BitTorrent client has been re-diddly-jected by the giant, disembodied, floating, translucent head that gate-keeps that good Apple App Store. The App Wizard told the meek little Midwestern developer (in a booming voice) that this type of application is often used to infringe copyrights and that Apple has therefore decided not to allow such software on the App store. Then a bunch of cool shock-and-awe pyrotechnics went off and shit.

The program in question, Drivetrain is an iPhone application used to remotely control the multi-platform Transmission BitTorrent client via an ordinary FM radio signal... I mean, the internet. According to its developer, Maza Digital, Drivetrain “provides all the details of the web interface in a native iPhone app that’s easy to use.” The corn-based developer submitted the old girl to Apple for approval way back in the halcyon days of April, and then also resubmitted ‘er after making a few small UI changes. But darned if they didn’t just receive an email in return saying that the review would take longer than expected, which was then followed up by a second email in which the Wizard rejected the application for inclusion in the App Store, telling Maza Digital, “we’ve reviewed Drivetrain and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.” Then he revved-up the fog machines some more.

“By now I am very disillusioned with the whole App Store process," Maza Digital told the website TorrentFreak in a torrential response, citing the old adage that people infringe copyright, not software. “[We] find it rather ridiculous that they have rejected an app that does not do anything that may be ‘often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights,’” they added. Of course, all BitTorrent clients are absolutely legal, and yes, Drivetrain is just an application to control a torrent client (and as such goes absolutely nowhere near any copyright infringing material); but nevertheless, the Wizard of Apple has still decided that everything BitTorrent-related is a no go for the App Store for the time being. Time for Plan B, Maza Digital: call Billy Mays.

I’m amazed how some companies are completely resistant to any kind of change or new practices in their field. Innovation never seems to come naturally to those executives, especially those in the music business who are intent on bludgeoning their way to victory in the war against filesharing.

Here we have an example of a fairly innocuous torrent indexer, Coda.fm, offering users the option of buying an album from Amazon after they’ve downloaded it for free. However, the bigwigs at Amazon seem to have decided that this would hurt their precious image amongst the almighty record labels and asked Coda.fm to remove the links from the site. As the Coda.fm founder says, “I can’t overstate enough the idiocy of said request: they’re actually telling us to stop helping them selling [sic] albums.”

Coda.fm reckon several hundred albums have been sold through their site, clearly showing that pirates are willing to pay for music. But of course the executives can’t possibly give any ground in the tireless war on music downloads.

Hail the conquering heroes! After battling the tower of Patricia Santangelo (age 46, and a mother of five who lives in the sinister town of Wappingers Falls, NY) for an earth age (a.k.a. four years) over illegal music downloads, the Fellowship of the Antipiracy Ring that is the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is finally returning home from Mount Doom, flying high on a $7,000 settlement’s worth of eagles’ wings!

If approved by a judge, the settlement would end at least three feature-length films’ worth of fighting between record companies and Santangelo, who was originally accused of illegally downloading and distributing music, though her side of the story is that she couldn’t have downloaded anything because she didn’t know how to, you know... download things. She was one of thousands of people sued in the RIAA’s “... And Justice for All” campaign, but she refused to settle. Instead, she took her case to national news outlets and, according to those highly romantic Associated Press writers, “became a heroine to supporters of online freedom.” An Internet campaign raised about $15,000 for her defense.

The industry eventually dropped its suit against the mother, masterfully and tactfully filing a new one instead, against two of her children, Michelle and Robert, who were 20 and 16 years old at the time. The new lawsuit said the children had downloaded and distributed more than 1,000 songs, including “MMMBop” by Hanson and “Beat It” by Michael Jackson. Ignoring their impeccable taste, the suit also claimed that Michelle had admitted piracy in a deposition and that Robert had been implicated by a family friend. Under the terms of the settlement, filed in court in White Plains late Friday, the Santangelos will pay $7,000, having paid half of that amount April 20 and scheduled to make six payments of $583.33 by October.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the Santangelos,” Cara Duckworth, a sad, sad spokeswoman for the RIAA, said. Asked how much had been spent to win the $7,000 settlement, and whether it was a victory, she said, “We don’t break out costs per case, and it’s not a question of it being ‘worth it’ or a ‘victory.’” Hey, yeah! So what if the same amount of money could have been raised from an RIAA Bake Sale? You can’t just go around doing business on the basis of whether or not the practices are financially “worth it.” Not in this economy! You’ve gotta factor "petty revenge" in, too.

Listen up you pretentious, liberal, plant-eating, TMT-reading Karl Marx fanboys. We’re getting fucking tired of your P2P downloading antics and your oh-so-principled stand for illegal filesharing. This is why it’s great to hear the Taiwanese have decided to take some action against your immoral brethren from across the Pacific Ocean.

An amendment passed in Taiwan’s legislature “allows rights holders to either claim their rights via judiciary proceedings, or else follow a ‘notice and takedown’ procedure to have copyright infringing content removed.” The law introduces a “three strikes” initiative that gives ISPs the power to constrain the internet access of left-wing thieves who download copyrighted content more than twice. The brave, China-bashing Taiwanese hope to reduce the number of court cases relating to illegal filesharing by allowing ISPs to warn users of their conduct, hoping that these benefit-scroungers will correct their own behavior.

Unsurprisingly, the liberal media in Taiwan started crying that the law would end up punishing people who had unwittingly downloaded copyrighted material. As Margaret Chen, deputy director general of Taiwan’s Intellectual Property Office says, "These people are doing something they shouldn’t be doing in the first place. Besides, there are lots of ways to restrict Internet access besides cutting it off entirely." Damn right!

Common Sense - 1
Pretentious, liberal, plant-eating, TMT-reading Karl Marx-fanboys - 0

Awkward, stuttering weathermen; sleazy, gambling-addicted co-hosts; and ditzy female call-screeners suffered a tremendous blow last week, as Clear Channel Communications, the largest owner of full-power AM, FM and shortwave radio stations in the country, cut 590 positions nationwide. The cut represents a 3% reduction of its December 2008 staffing level, and follow a January cut of 9% of its workforce.

Clear Channel stated the reason for the cuts are from the "highly challenging business environment." Although the cuts in January focused on the broadcaster’s sales force, these cuts are focused on operations, which includes everything from engineers to on-air staff. So while radio purists can take solace in the fact that the economy is also taking its hits at the big corporate baddies, the day is faster approaching that radio will be entirely overrun by robots playing Nickelback songs.

When I saw a Ben Folds deluxe vinyl on the shelves of Best Buy, I have to admit, I scoffed. “Who does Best Buy think it is?” I thought aimlessly as I went to look at a few vacuums.

But the New York Post reports that Best Buy, after recently experimenting with records in select stores, is thinking of expanding its vinyl section to all 1,020 locations, marking off eight square feet exclusively for records. And eight square feet is about 200 albums, which brings up another pressing (sorry) issue: Which artists are going to leap onto the 180-gram bandwagon? Because if I see a Lady Gaga vinyl on display, I will personally pry every game console off display and hurl it at someone’s face.

The reasoning behind the consideration is that while CD sales shrivel, vinyl sales — surprise, surprise — are actually doing a-okay and are profitable enough to outweigh their more expensive production costs. Quite frankly, I get the appeal, being somewhat of an audiophile and recently purchasing albums without even owning a proper player.

Anyway, the Post also disclosed that all the major record labels are flipping through their catalogs to remaster or re-release the good stuff. Just last year, EMI reached into its vaults and released albums like Radiohead’s OK Computer and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Meanwhile, Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea has been consistently selling well (TMT News). With enough time, Best Buy could become your main go-to for all those Prurient 7-inches you couldn’t even find on GEMM.

There’s never been any question: New York-based composer and minimalist pioneer Steve Reich is cooler than all of us. Always has been, always will be. I mean, think about it: who among us could get away with wearing that beat-up baseball cap around throughout the entirety of our professional lives and have it be attributed not to our unwillingness to cooperate with workplace standards, but rather to some eccentric outward symbol of our staggering/precocious/whimsical (at times) inward genius? Yeah, exactly. No one. (Face it, not even Ashton Kutcher is doing a good job wearing hats for a living anymore!)

But now, just in case there was any lingering doubt whatsoever, he’s gone and won the Pulitzer Prize for music this week, for his 2008 piece Double Sextet. A good deal (though not necessarily entirely) less sexual than it sounds, the work calls for two identical sextets of instruments — each made up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano — and can be performed in one of two ways: with 12 musicians, or, as in the case of its world premiere last May with the Eighth Blackbird ensemble, with six musicians playing against a recording of themselves. Mixing live music with recordings (or, heck, “sampling” in general) is nothing new to Reich though, who has spent his life plumbing the depths of the beauty that can be created with tape machines, loops, phasing, texture, and polyrhythms (sound familiar, Animal Collective fans?)

"It’s the idea of writing basically unison canons," a much-smarter-than-you-and-me Reich says of Double Sextet. "The same timbre playing against itself, so that when they intertwine, you don’t hear the individual voice; you hear the composite. Now, if you have several composites going on at the same time, you really get to an interesting situation, and that’s what’s going on in Double Sextet... I’m very glad that this particular piece got it, because I do think it’s one of the better pieces I’ve done in the past few years." Notice the “in the past few years” part. Yeah, ol’ boy could have won a dozen or so Pulitzers for a myriad of earlier badass and highly influential works, such as Music for 18 Musicians, Electric Counterpoint, Different Trains, Violin Phase, Clapping Music, and of course the loop-phase-masterworks It’s Gonna Rain and Come Out. Not familiar with these pieces yet? Well you’d best check them out before you go around issuing any declarations about how “groundbreaking” Merriweather Post Pavillion is.