Sunset Rubdown Tour with Nothing Clever Tacked On

By Nobodaddy on 05-20-2009

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what Danger Mouse often lacks in his half-assed, undercooked, soft-boiled, or hit-or-miss collaborations (Cee-lo, Beck Hansen, The Black Keys, and Mark Linkous have suspiciously all cut better records before the “Grey Album Guy” stepped in to add his... signature sound... of... what, exactly? More vintage drums, I think.), he more than makes up for with his awesomely crass, anti-industry skullduggery! Besides, when you think about it, it’s really the “Shock-And-Awe” factor that Mr. Mouse is going for with these “unique artist pairings,” and this same “bitch, what’s my name!?” vibe is what gives him the cred as he needs to write the next chapter in the choose-your-own-adventure novel that is 21st century music distribution, once again flaunting the fact that it's the fans, not record labels like EMI, who have the upper hand in the digital age.

See, Danger Mouse has been working on a collection called Dark Night of the Soul, an album-length piece of music by Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, and a host of guest vocalists, along with a collection of original David Lynch photography inspired by and based on the music. Sweet, right? (2009 is, after all, the year of the comp, so I’d say his timing is right on.) Well, apparently, relations with EMI on the project have, um, broken down like a James Brown middle-8, and the long and short of it is that EMI is kinda sorta refusing to release the music. Now, if you’re Danger Mouse, the guy who’s literally FAMOUS for being a copyright-law flaunting, industry decrying, music pirate, what DO you do, I wonder?

No brainer, you release the photographs, which provide a visual narrative for the music, compiled in a limited-edition, hand-numbered 100+ page book; and you package that with, yup, a blank, recordable CD-R. All copies will be clearly labeled: "For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will." And I’m sure I don’t need to mention that the music leaked on P2P networks over two weeks ago and is currently available as an on-demand from NPR. Sha-booz-baz! Take that, EMI!

But wait! “Sounds Illegal,” you say? Well, if EMI owns the copyright to the sound recordings that make up Dark Night (which, come on now, it probably does, being a Major Label and all), then yes, this could perhaps be construed as “inducing” copyright infringement. But as EFF has pointed out, there’s an interesting little wrinkle in copyright law that might-could step in and work to Danger Mouse’s (and our) favor -- if the blank CD-R is a royalty-paid "music CD-R," then the copies made by fans (whether made from NPR or P2P) would be legal under 17 U.S.C. 1008, which provides that no infringement lawsuit may be "based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of [a digital audio recording] medium for making digital musical recordings." Digital audio recording medium (DARM) is defined to include "music CD-Rs" on which a royalty is paid to copyright owners.

Damn, Danger Mouse! That’s some Legally Blond shit, right there.

By Nat Towsen on 05-19-2009

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."