U2’s Bono calls for control over internet downloads, says on his guest column at NYTimes.

I fail to understand how this can be done though. He mentions child pornography as being combated successfully by law enforcements, but thing is, child pornography is less widespread than… mp3s. And it’s ALL illegal, while not all mp3s are illegal. It would cost an arm and a leg to get officers tracking down every possible mp3 on the internet, since it’s not just bittorrent we’re talking about, but also a lot of “music blogs” that link to illegal files, and PR/artist/label/music magazines that link to LEGAL files. So how do you know which ones are illegal and which ones are promos/freebies? The only ways to really regulate the situation fast-enough, and cheaply-enough, are two:

1. Make ALL downloaded media file formats illegal. No exceptions. This of course is not a very practical or even constitutional solution.
2. Require that all WMA/AAC/MP3s files are digitally signed. Not DRM’ed, but signed with a license. It’s the only way to easily find out via a ‘crawler’ utility that FBI could build if an offered mp3 is a promotional free-as-in-beer file, or an illegally uploaded one.

And this would create massive problems to indie and Creative Commons artists, because it would make every artist a registered provider. Given that most of them can’t even complete their mp3 tags properly on their free promo mp3s before uploading on their server, I fail to see how the same people would be able to properly get a license to give out mp3s. Such a measure won’t only make users outlaws, but some of the artists as well! In other words, such measures for file distributions would have the exact opposite effect of what that Bono claims to “the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales“.

The music magazines will also be hit with the problem because they won’t be able to give out mp3s as easily anymore. Which would mean less exposure to the artists. I mean, I spent most of my holidays tracking down legal mp3 promos. I added 2.7 GBs of legal mp3s in my music collection the past 10 days, and I found some really good artists this way that I actually later bought their full albums or more mp3s from them. Under a new regime, downloading mp3 promos would be an ordeal, and an added risk. The magazines wouldn’t bother, the users wouldn’t bother. Too much trouble about nothing. Who’d pay the price for it? The indie artists.

The major labels and artists won’t be hit much from it, since they almost never give out free promos anyway! If such a law ever passes, it will be a massive kick in the nuts for the indie industry and Creative Commons artists, because the promos or freebies are the only way for these artists to be heard. In fact, according to reports, the average indie artist is making increasingly more money these days rather than back in 2000 — despite the rampant piracy that’s going on in the last 10 years. Obviously, restricting the media transmission will bring the world back to a pre-internet era, where the major labels have the upper hand again, because they would be controlling the internet too, in addition to TV and radio, while the indie artists will be dying of hunger.

Not to mention that wild rumor that’s going around for a while now that RIAA is preparing an international copyright treaty where people would be questioned on the airports about where they got their music files from. Think of having to give out your iPod to a special machine during security checking to check for all the embedded licenses. What would happen on the older files that have no licenses? CD-rips? Not to mention that going through 120 GB of data is enough to make you miss your plane too (these hard drives are dead-slow). Sure, this is just a rumor for now, but there’s no smoke without a fire. This is why I _always_ update the “comments” tag of all legal mp3s I download with the URLs I downloaded them from, to prove that it was from either an artist/label/PR site, or a well-respected music magazine. Might prove me wise in a few years time.

And if airport checks might never realize, house-to-house checks might. I trust RIAA to lobby for things like that. Just like you get your door knocked in UK by officers to check for your TV license, there’s no reason why an officer wouldn’t knock your door to check for your mp3s on your computer, if such a law passes. I trust that if they find “what seems to be illegal” mp3s on your drive they won’t charge you with thousands of dollars per song, but certainly $100 or so. There would be enough volume to pay for these officers, and RIAA, and the government. Who loses again? All the citizens, artists and not.

Sure, this sounds like a “police state” to you, that “will never happen”. But if you had a time machine and you could transport yourself back to 1920s, and you mentioned to the people of that era that by 1980 everyone would need a license to have chickens in their garden, they would laugh at you and tell you that you’re fucking crazy. Sorry guys, but that’s how most political shifts happen in a capitalistic environment. Slowly, but surely, usually induced by lobbying. It’s never a swift change, it’s always done gradually.

And finally, the other problem of file-signing is technological innovation. If the governments of the world require all AAC, WMA and MP3 files to be digitally signed, then it might make it illegal to use a different file format, simply because the government won’t have ways to check licenses on newer media formats. And if not illegal, certainly a trouble-making experience. So basically, the media formats would be a “locked” affair, since no one would want to jump to another format, from fear of what might happen to them. This would kill R&D on audio and video formats. This is how technological innovation dies. With fucked up laws and regulations like the ones Bono aspires to.

So, my dear Bono, as South Park so elegantly put it, your ideas are the biggest pieces of crap in the world. Well, either yours, or the RIAA/UMG prick who wrote that article for you.

Animal Collective are a highly-experimental electro-rock band from Baltimore. This year, they made the No1 (or the top-5) on most music blog lists for “album of the year”. Online critics seem to love them, and they are the de-facto hipster band. Whatever Iron Maiden were for the metal-heads in the ’80s, Animal Collective are today for the hipster sub-[non]culture. This band has fanatics, not fans.

There is a place for experimental music in the world. But having blogs and magazines putting that kind of music in front of other, actually accessible music is beyond me. The AC music is nonsensical, random, songs never really develop, there are no hooks whatsoever, no real melodies, it’s unstructured, lyrics are difficult to understand, and it overall sounds like some kids are playing with their Casio keyboards they got as Christmas presents. Worst of all, blogs try to present AC as something they’re not: accessible.

In many ways, the whole situation reminds me of the Gentoo Linux sub-culture a few years ago: they will go around telling everyone how great Linux is, and especially how great Gentoo Linux is. And when someone would call them out for their elitist point of view, suggesting people move to an OS that simply is impossible to workaround properly, they’d attack you and tell you what a pedestrian PC user you are. Same with AC, if you tell these brainless hipsters that the bulk of AC’s music sucks, they’d tell you that “you don’t know music”, or that “you’re old”.

Having said that, I do like a few of their songs. “Grass” has 4 stars in my iTunes library, and “My Girls” & “Summertime Clothes” have 3. But all the rest ranges from 1/5 to 2/5, meaning “terrible”. The bulk of their music is simply un-listenable, no matter how many times I listened to it. I did try to get into it because I thought I was actually missing something. But I don’t think I’m missing anything. It’s just annoying noise, from a band that the idiots at Pitchfork (both the editors and their readers) have made-up and idolized. Apparently, there are a lot of other people online who have expressed the same dismay as I have: the best write-up I found is this one, and here are a few more: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Under the exact same rejecting umbrella I also put the Dirty Projectors (DP), and Grizzly Bear (GB). In fact, I hate Dirty Projectors even more than Animal Collective, but at least they’re not making No1 on all these lists (they do make top-10 though), and AC & GB have managed to write a few good songs. Dirty Projectors have NONE. The XX are bullshitting us too this year with the same bass riff on all their songs.

I have to admit that I bought Fever Ray’s album after reading about it at Pitchfork. I DID NOT like the music much after I previewed it on iTunes, but what makes the music bearable are her music videos which are way better than the music, but thankfully they go well together. But listening to her music alone I feel that I wasted $10. Anyways, still better than AC, GB, or DP.

Make no mistake, I like experimental bands. I like Cloud Cult, HEALTH and a few more. What I don’t like is “music” that I just can’t hold on to. I don’t like random shit. I have to have a point where the track grabs me and doesn’t change out of the blue in a state that I don’t recognize it anymore. Music for me is something that makes me feel good, that makes me feel high without having to take drugs. Unfortunately, according to some people online, in order to appreciate AC’s music you have to TAKE drugs, not the other way around. See, there’s a difference between pushing the envelope on existing conventions, and tearing down all conventions and sounding like the music was written by a non-human alien creature that has a completely different understanding of music or culture. And honestly, I don’t think that AC’s Baltimore is that different.

For me, the best album of the year was Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zero’s “Up from Below”. But I like stuff like Lady Gaga too. And of course, Blitzen Trapper. And Phoenix. Maylene & The Sons of Disaster. And why not, P!nk. In other words, I like everything from rock, to hard rock, to alt, to folk, and to mainstream pop. And good experimental stuff too. Just not too disconnected stuff that sound like I would be able to write myself in just under an hour by using a fucking Macbook.

In conclusion, I think people just take music magazines’ word too seriously and don’t think for themselves. I’m a stubborn person, and I don’t trust others easily. I definitely don’t trust Pitchfork, which seems to have its own agenda (but that’s another matter).

Just think for yourselves.

Update: An analysis of why I don’t like AnCo, DP, and GB. Explains a few things about my likes and dislikes.

So many rumors about the Apple iSlate touchscreen tablet lately. I thought about it tonight, and I believe that the only way to make the default input method acceptable in such a large device (in landscape mode) is to create something like the following image (excuse the bad graphics please):

For the vertical mode the device might just have the right size to type with both thumbs without having to break the virtual keyboard in two. However, the “right size” can never be as good as adjusting the size of the virtual keyboard, since all people are different.

A great music video, shot with a naked Canon HV40. The director sent me an email saying “I agree with you, 35mm adapter is a useless thing, I sold it“. That’s right, it’s all about knowing how to shoot properly. The editing is particularly great on the video too.

Developers often over-develop. A grand example for this are the various twitter widgets available presently for Android. They take a lot of space, and they show new tweets, plus they let you update your status. While this might sound to you like a good minimum functionality being offered, it’s in fact over the top.

Except the fact that they take lots of space on the desktop (usually 1/2 of the allowed desktop), showing new tweets by having to press the “next/previous” buttons to scroll in them, and then pressing two-three more clicks to update the status, it makes the whole thing *redundant*. It only takes a SINGLE click (via bookmark desktop link) to load the brand new (and very functional) mobile page of Twitter, which has full functionality, fits more posts per page, and it provides an input box right on the top of the page.

The HTC Hero widget is a bit better than the rest of the Android Twitter widgets since it allows for flicking through the tweets instead of previous/next buttons (they wrote their own code obviously, since Android doesn’t have flicking widget API support), but it still doesn’t offer @ mentions or DM info, it’s very slow to refresh for some reason after I request it to (it takes up to 1 minute here!), it doesn’t use the whole desktop full screen (so there’s lost real screen estate, limiting the amount of posts you can read on a single view), and besides, it’s only available on HTC Sense phones only.

HTC Hero’s huge, slow, and cumbersome Twitter widget:

Screenshot by MobilitySite

To make the long story short, all these people who have developed these complicated and convoluted twitter (and facebook) widgets, are on the wrong usability-wise. I’m sure consumers THINK that this is the functionality they want on their desktop, but in reality, it makes their workflow more difficult than it has to be. Android allows to put bookmark links on the desktop, so all they have to do is add the link to the Twitter’s mobile page. This is a way-faster and more efficient workflow than using twitter via a widget!

Make no mistake, I do want a Twitter widget, but this has to act ONLY as a (1×1 icon sized) notification widget, not as a full-featured client. Sure, Android already has a drop-down notification system, but a widget is more visual, and requires fewer clicks/flicks to get to. Here’s a rough idea of what I’m envisioning:

I can pay $100 (via Paypal) to any Android developer who can implement this (which is of course a symbolic amount rather than covering the true cost). It shouldn’t be ultra-difficult to develop it, it’s definitely much simpler than the rest of the Twitter widgets out there. Here are some pointers of how I wish this to be implemented:

1. Make the widget vector-based (or whatever scalable format Android supports). Basically, design the background graphic, the font size, and the font-spacing in a way that scales well from a 2.8″ 320×240 screen to a 4″+ 1280×720 screen.

2. Clicking the widget loads a pre-selected third party client. The settings of the widget should be a separate app appearing in the main Applications list. The UI for the prefs should look like the main settings of Android (various options on a black background). A few other widget developers that I know have taken this approach too rather than loading the prefs from within the widget itself (especially since we’re dealing with a 1×1-sized widget).

3. The prefs panel should include the following options one way or another:
a. Username/Pass login & logout buttons (secure login please)
b. Update interval
– 15 minutes
– 30 minutes
– 1 hour (default, less than that has battery life impact)
– 2 hours
– 8 hours
– 24 hours
c. Preferred client (to load on click)
– mobile.twitter.com web site (default)
– Twidroid or Twidroid PRO (if installed)
– Seesmic (if installed)
– TwitterRide (if installed)
– Twit2go (if installed)
– Twoid (if installed)
– Twitta (if installed)
– m.twitter.com web site (older, WAP site)
d. Refresh (forces a refresh, restarts the update countdown clock)
e. Reset tweets to 0 (in case we already read the tweets elsewhere)
f. About info

4. When you click the widget to load the preferred client, the widget’s timeline/mentions/DMs go down to 0, and the refresh countdown clock restarts.

5. If there’s a Twitter API that tells you when was the last time Twitter was accessed with any client, take that into account when downloading & counting the widget’s new tweets.

6. The widget should be free to download via Market worldwide, and open source (same license as Android itself). The widget should not ask for more system permissions than it actually needs to operate. Host it at Google’s code depot, and make an effort to get it included by default on Android by following their code guidelines (it’s a long shot, but you never know).

7. Keep it lean. You don’t need to download the actual messages for example, only get the unread numbers. Test well for memory leaks, crashes, CPU/battery probs, or breakage with new Android/Twitter API versions. Be responsive to bug reports. No new functionality is needed, except maybe adding new twitter clients in the supported list. Only do that for major & popular apps, so the app might not need updating more than once or twice a year overall after it’s deemed “stable” — which is a pretty good deal maintenance-wise.

So, any takers? Please email me if you’re interested, before you start working on it.

Update: Android developer Stu King will start working on it Jan 1st. Thanks!

I shot an interview video yesterday at the Dolores Park for the Bay Area’s new band sensation, Silver Swans, and The OWL Magazine. You can read the accompanying article at the OWL here. Camera info below.

This was my first video with the Canon 5D MkII, even if I had the camera for a while now. It came out good, even if I shot everything in “auto” (hence the small aperture under the harsh light, and no shallow DoF). The handheld park shots were shot with the Canon SX200 IS.

The interesting thing was that SX200 IS’ “flat” look was flatter than 5D’s. Even with me shooting flat with the 5D, Cineform removing some additional contrast, I still had to bring contrast to -12 to get the flat look of SX200’s (which is the look I want, and the look that RED One & film cameras have too). This is something for Canon to fix IMO. The “flat” look of the 5D/7D is not as flat as it should have been. The $300 Canon SX200 IS can look less video-y than these multi-thousand dollar cameras.

I found two interesting comments on Slashdot about the Vimeo/EMI situation.

The first comment, by Bedroll:

“As the trend towards Internet Television strengthens the monopolies of the content industry weaken. Quality user generated content is a direct competitor to professionally generated content. The content industry has a long history of using the legal system to ensure that they squash the competition.”

The second comment, by Tepples, brushes off on the fact that many musical compositions are similar, even if not on purpose, and so even by using royalty-free music, ASCAP could fight a potential free media revolution:

“[...] ASCAP will be able to dig up something non-free that was written in the past 95 years and happens to sound like the freely-licensed music, making the free license invalid.”

And this is so true: this year alone there were 100,000 album releases. About 1 million songs. Per year. Which makes it utterly impossible to not be songs out there with the same riffs/melodies. Which makes every musician, or user, potentially liable, especially when the copyright has been extended so far back.

What really made me cry last night though (for real), was reading an excerpt from Larry Lessig’s “Free Culture” book. Please do a search on this page, and start reading from the point that reads “Edwin Howard Armstrong is one of America’s forgotten inventor geniuses“, up to “then stepped out of a thirteenth story window to his death“. This bit shows how new things are shot down by established corporations, and how they use the lawmaking system and the government to do their bidding, and then passing their doings as “normal”. It’s a very good parallelism example for the internet age.

Oh, and I really dislike it when people say “but, that’s the law”, when that copyright law was lobbied by corporations, so it’s not how that law should have been in the first place. The law is the law, and I always try to not break it, but at some point you gotta open your eyes too. Otherwise, you allow the system to fuck you in the ass. And if you don’t have respect for yourself today and you allow the fucking to take place, at least have respect for the children of tomorrow, and fight for a more fair law.

I don’t feel safe even using Creative Commons music anymore for my video projects. There’s nothing stopping ASCAP suing me for a CC song that has a melody similar to a 1960s song that I never heard before. And in this country, everyone is suing every one else for no reason most of the time. Too many lawyers probably, gotta do something with ‘em.

I personally feel very pressured in the last few months, on all fronts. From the various creepy small laws that I read on the news (“shave your lawn or go to jail” type of crap), to FTC’s new blogging rules, to warrant-less wiretapping, to religious nuts, the never-ending wars, to the continuous stifling of culture and art. I feel that previously established liberties are now getting repressed, one at a time, slowly but surely. And in my own country, Greece, things are getting worse too.

I kind of feel like leaving civilization and go live in the mountains. With as little influence and dependence from the outside world as possible. Get a few goats, possibly a mule too, and give the rest of the world the finger. I just HATE the way this whole world is ran. I’m disappointed, and I see nothing good in it. The few good bits in it, are just that: too few. Too bad that JBQ doesn’t want to join me.

We’re audiophiles in this home. This year we spent about $1800 is music purchases. More than anyone we know.

About 40% of all the iTunes/CD purchases were for acts signed to major labels. The rest 60% was all indie.

I hereby make it my resolution for the new year to never buy RIAA/majors’ music ever again. Even if I like some of their songs so much that it makes me cry.

The last straw for all this was learning that EMI sued Vimeo the other day. They claim that Vimeo endorses users to lip dub and that this is copyright infringement. This whole thing is obviously a sham, and just pathetic. Even the Rolling Stone commented that this lawsuit comes out strangely after Vevo going live.

For some of the lip dub videos on Vimeo might be on the fence if they’re eligible under fair use or not, but some are so creative that no matter if a closed minded judge deem them in the future as non-fair use, in my mind they are. These videos do serve as a great advertisement for the labels, but they don’t see it this way.

Most of the music I bought this year it was because it was originally free out there. I downloaded the legally free mp3s, and if I liked what I heard, I’d go to iTunes to sample the rest of the band’s music. And if I liked what I heard, I bought the album. Many times I’ve heard a song on Youtube or Vimeo, asked what it was, and then bought it too (e.g. Feist’s “One Evening”). Instead, the majors (and RIAA), have become over-protective about the whole thing somehow, and they prefer to go to court. I really don’t see the point of all that.

Sometimes I wonder if what they’re trying to do is simply to have restrictions apply to ALL (including indie artists), just so THEY can promote their artists via TV/radio as they always have. You see, the internet PR companies have no power over TV/radio/mags, but they have the internet. The majors on the other hand, they are mighty-powerful on TV/radio/mags, but are only equal in the Internet PR game. If the majors can kill part of the internet hype machine by making video sites add more and more restrictions, then their songs will get more recognized/hyped via the traditional media rather than the Internet. So all these lawsuits against people, youtube, vimeo, might be just a strategic way to kill the indies! Destroy the competition by simply destroying THEIR TOOLS (aka the Internet way of doing things).

Rest assured, I’m not against the notion of copyright. What I’m against is the lawmaker’s abusing of that notion to make copyright laws worse and worse as the time goes by. Originally, copyright was meant to last 25 years. Now, with amendments on the law, we’re looking in to a century (in EU too). And the fair use allotments are simply too limited. They were written before the age of Youtube. Instead of the lawmakers taking these changes into mind to change the law, they make the law even more draconian, paying lip service to RIAA. The new international treaty that the media companies are cooking up for all countries is definitely not going to be pretty either.

As a media creator, I have already moved to Creative Commons for my music needs for 2 years now. I don’t touch non-CC music for my video projects.

As a media consumer, December 2009 is the time where I stop buying the major’s music. And if an indie label gets on the same tune as RIAA, I’d ban it too.

I ask all of you to think about this. If you read comments online, many say that “RIAA and the majors will fall soon”, but this is NOT TRUE. The only way to have them fall is if we don’t buy their products. These guys are not going anywhere if they still have money in their pockets.

The Gandhi way, is the ONLY way.

Update: An update to this article can be found here.

Discovering new artists has been my hobby this year — even replacing videography as my #1 interest. Here are the artists I discovered this year, and I believe that they are the best of the best newcomers. Regarding Blitzen Trapper and Portugal. The Man, I knew about them since 2007, but it was only this year that I actually got into them for good.

Find legal, free mp3s in the links provided.

[I like the three first just the same]

1. Blitzen Trapper
1. Cloud Cult
1. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

4. Paper Route
5. Malbec
6. Seabird
8. Living Things
9. Cage the Elephant
10. Portugal. The Man

Right now, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros are on a constant rotation. I try to get into other music in my 39 GB iTunes library, but I keep going back to them. Their album is one of the best in our decade, in my opinion.

My favorite song of theirs, the “Desert Song“, is one of my all time favorites too. Very avant-garde. The video too. If these guys had proper PR behind them, this song would have been a classic already.