what happens if SOPA passes?

tbh i think i've proceeded on the fantasy that all the blogs/torrent sites offering FREE! COPIES! OF! NEW! ADELE! ALBUM! were going to get shut down, but the parts of the interwebs that helped me access, say, congolese music from the 1950s or some obscure soviet silent film with custom subtitles would be left alone. but that's probably a fantasy. and i guess it just points up my shortsightedness that this stuff is only now starting to anger me. interwebs RIP 2012?

i mean some of those torrent sites have been incredibly professionally helpful to me.

Why are you downloading Congolese music? You should be at Best Buy, they have a World Music section you know.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519%2BJcgNEvL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

music from all over the world!

ha i actually went into a best buy a few weeks ago to get an ethernet cable and wandered over to the "music section" (i use that term lightly, it was slightly smaller than my bedroom). they had a few racks of "rock/pop" and about half a rack of "other," which included maybe 20-30 "world music" CDs, all of them atrocious. very dispiriting. the dvd/blu-ray section was still reasonably robust.

by "reasonably robust" i mean: they had a bunch of criterions, at least. so you can buy seijun suzuki at a best buy, for now anyway.

i think they have this one

http://image.lyricspond.com/image/a/artist-andrea-bocelli/album-the-best-of-andrea-bocelli-vivere/cd-cover.jpg

that's some well-groomed stubble.

http://i.imgur.com/YderI.jpg

xxxposts Best Buy's selection was never the best, but they've thinned it out over the last few years to where it's extremely streamlined and contains fewer releases by fewer artists. in most cases, they carry just the last 1-2 releases by an artist.

they care more about sales to digital products (legit ones like Napster etc)

when I worked there, their rap section was way better, unfortunately at a time when I was in my rap-rockism phase :/

Yeah, what I do kind of miss about some of the Best Buys is that it seemed like store to store there was a noticeable difference in who was doing the buying/ordering. I mean, I used to work near a Best Buy that always carried a pretty impressive selection of metal for a big-box chain store, you could reliably find anything on Relapse, Candlelight, Peaceville, Metal Blade, and not just the big profile releases. Of course, its now just like all the rest and an aisle and a half of top 40 and whatever the most recent release is and greatest hits collection for legacy artists.

in the mid-90s best buy had a music selection to rival any of the indie stores I went to. i can remember it being the only place i could find uncle tupelo's albums early albums circa 1994.

yeah, that's true -- one more reason it was dispiriting to see what was left of their music section.

in the 90s best buy used CDs as loss leaders and they were, for a time anyway, priced very cheap. i remember when those byrds reissues came out in 96/97 and i got them all for like $5.99-$6.99 ea.

some time around the turn of the century, the prices began to shoot back up.

in the mid-90s best buy had a music selection to rival any of the indie stores I went to.

^ this. I bought a bunch of Sun Ra CDs at Best Buy in 1995. These days, you're lucky to find an ineptly-chosen Coltrane compilation.

Jump Aboard the Jazz Train!
Music for Good Times by Classic Musician Jon Coltrain

best buy will not exist in 5 years fwiw

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/mega-man-the-bizarre-rise-and-sudden-downfall-of-kim-dotcom.ars

Woke up to a bunch of copyright infringement notices on my youtube account, for a pair of 30-second clips of super rare Japanese music videos I've never seen in full. I had to sit through a pretty condescending video called 'Copyright School' where this cartoon is filming a movie with his iphone, then filming his friend's band, then performing a cover song of his friend's band, all of which are no-nos.

I deleted all my videos that feature major label music, but I'm pretty nervous, cos I have a conceptual cover band and it looks like I might have to remove those videos too. I haven't taken them down yet because they really are vastly different from the original songs and I was under the impression cover recordings are still OK on youtube. Not the case anymore?

The shitty thing is all that rare Japanese stuff (live & promotional videos by Cornelius, Takako Minekawa, Pate, Kahimi Karie) is completely unavailable in any commercial form in the good old U.S.A. And of course I haven't made any money off it.

Wow, thats crazy Adam.

I guess a good tip for now is don't label anything "Space Shower TV".

I had to sit through a pretty condescending video called 'Copyright School' where this cartoon is filming a movie with his iphone, then filming his friend's band, then performing a cover song of his friend's band, all of which are no-nos.

wait, really? I mean I get the first one but the second two, huh? (I guess if the friend's band was signed to a major, but this is why majors suck)

pretty nuts about the youtube stuff, adam. is youtube changing its policy or do you think the copyright holder actually reported your videos? isn't that what has to happen for youtube to remove stuff, or am i mistaken.

Yeah it was probably the copyright holders, but now if I get a single notification my account will be removed completely. I'm not saying that stuff wasn't infringing, but yeah I guess I need to go to Best Buy and purchase those Cornelius World Tour 1995/Takako Minekawa Live at NHK 1997/rare Trattoria videos DVD compilations.

They didn't really mention major labels at all, but I think it's implied, cos they are the ones who would issue a takedown.

The Copyright School page had a test of 8 questions on the right that I had to answer correctly. One was "Which of the following is not covered by copyright law: Music, Films, People, TV shows"

Mostly I'm worried about my remixes and stuff. They went into Fair Use but at that point they put up this legal definition that was comically too big and confusing for the poor cartoon character that got his start by bootlegging theater movies.

it's crazy. if youtube took down everything that had copyright violations they'd have like 100 videos left.

all of those videos would be "Chocolate Rain" and "Charlie Bit My Finger"

the whole "copyright school" thing sounds like something from the Simpsons!

is the axe really coming down in youtubeworld too?

The funny thing is, the claim was presented by Space Shower TV and not the actual artists or their label.

I'm not really defending what I did, it was copyrighted material somewhere in the world. The problem is that I was not sent a warning or notice or asked to take it down before they labelled it infringing and added a strike to my account. They made it clear that one more accusation of infringement is all that's needed to shut down my account. Now if they copyright holders had sent me a message saying "Take this down or we will report it" I would have gladly done so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InzDjH1-9Ns

Yeah, it kinda is like something from the Simpsons.

http://dajaz1.com/2012/01/25/after-the-smoke-vs-yelawolf-part-2/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120127/09114517563/universal-music-claims-copyright-over-song-that-it-didnt-license-just-because-one-its-artists-rapped-to-it-leaked-track.shtml

1 - After The Smoke opens for Yelawolf, offers Yelawolf an instrumental to rap over
2 - Yelawolf makes a demo with it but passes on licensing it
3 - The demo leaks to youtube; ATS is upset but Yelawolf's crew apologizes saying 'leaks suck'
4 - Yelawolf's label Universal gets the ATS version of the song taken down for copyright infringement, YouTube refuses ATS' explanation

thank god VanityVEVO will still be on youtube

"YOU just copied someone else's CUNT tent"

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/31/where_does_the_anti_sopa_movement_go_next/singleton/

The James Boyle article he links to is incredibly inspiring, epiphanies per page

Wait is UMG asserting copyright over the ATS beat itself or just over the track with Yelawolf rapping over it?

Wait is UMG asserting copyright over the ATS beat itself or just over the track with Yelawolf rapping over it?

The beat itself iirc

oh nm it says that

probably just automated waveform detection. in a related case:

http://generationbass.com/2011/02/02/a-turk-and-a-killer-on-a-soundcloud/

1 - Gonjasufi & Gaslamp Killer put out an album with a lot of barely-altered loops from classic Turkish psychedelic rock
2 - Warp does not clear any samples, nor credit the originals
3 - Someone familiar with Turkish psyche uploads a mix with the originals to Soundcloud, beautiful & well researched
4 - The Gonjasufi version is so identical to the Erkin Koray original that it triggers the auto-waveform detection
5 - Warp serves Soundcloud with copyright infringement on their property

these people don't need any more power than they already have

holy shit ^

Hah I just did a search for one of my videos that was removed ("Count 2.6" by Pate) and found that nme.com had linked to it for some reason.

if that story about warp is true, i hope they get their fucking ass handed to them on a platter for that shit

Well its definitely true that Gonjasufi used a fuckload of barely tweaked samples without clearing or crediting any of them.

major labels are frequently guilty of publishing uncleared samples from indie labels / eastern pop; up until now, few minor labels are big enough to sue them. the new development is an internet environment that allows major labels to make the originals disappear. and they don't even mean to; it's an automated process -- based on the assumption that the major labels own whatever they say they do. so passing legislation that lets labels bypass the courts / government / any arbitration whatsoever seems like a really bad idea

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sopa-hollywood-gop-piracy-286648

not sure i buy the envisioned future of republicans as ip reformers, but it is sort of interesting

This is not about music but there's no better thread:

http://au.gamespot.com/news/ubisoft-drm-games-to-be-temporarily-unplayable-6349732

Publisher's antipiracy scheme will prevent customers from playing some of its Mac and PC games for an undetermined period of time during server transition starting February 7.

but the pirates wont have any downtime at all. Way to treat your paying customers.

Despite widespread opposition to SOPA from bloggers on the left, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sopa-hollywood-gop-piracy-286648

not sure i buy the envisioned future of republicans as ip reformers, but it is sort of interesting

― lag∞n, Friday, February 3, 2012 12:36 AM (19 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was fairly shocked when I read the 'for' and 'against' SOPA columns. For: Reid, Pelosi, Boxer, Franken, etc. etc. etc. -- Against: Bachmann, Paul, Issa, etc -- tea party central. Not mainstream republicans like Boehner but all the radical right who are ready to drum up self-righteous anger at the drop of a hat. So the article you posted actually seems to have it right: MPAA assumed Republican support and spent all their time courting / buying off the Democrats, and by the time they started publically reprimanding Democrats for not staying bought off, it had actually become a full on political win for the right

yeah ur right, i guess what i was taking issue w/is the idea that this is the beginning of a trend, cause you know theres nothing republicans love more than big business and the status quo

but i would love to be proven wrong!