Tag Archives: Music

100th Post!

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This is my 100th post (on this part of my site… there are another 80 images in the visual gallery and half a dozen articles in the written gallery as well). Woo! I actually feel like I’m starting to have a real quantity of content (well, I didn’t say it was thought provoking, witty, or even interesting content).

I have about 5 gigabytes of music on my laptop. 99% of it is rips of my CDs, and the other 1% is freebies downloaded off sites like MP3.com et cetera. (Take that, RIAA! Gestapo Fuckers.) It being autumn, a time I find particularly useful as a period of careful introspection and personal assessment, I’ve been going through my music collection. I’m up to “K.” K as in King Crimson, one of my all time favorite bands. My entire King Crimson collection is on my computer, which means that this particular section is going to take quite some time to complete… not that I mind, not in the least.

The listing starts with Cirkus, a delightful collection of live performances of some of their best songs. It’s broken up into new (neon heat disease) and old (fractured), and is just freakin’ cool. For those who haven’t listened to King Crimson (you poor souls), let me give you a brief summary: King Crimson started back in 1968, and released their first album, In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969. While they have certainly grown and evolved musically since then, in many ways In the Court of the Crimson King is still one of their best works. It is certainly indicative of that era of the band (they have gone through several incarnations). After releasing several more albums, and touring extensively, becoming well known as a masterful experimental group (well, well-known to musicians, anyway), they broke up. They re-formed later, in a different configuration, and continued to create excellent music that pushed boundaries as to what people were doing with music. Their style (if you could call it just one) is uniquely their own, exhibiting a diverse range of influences and originality, combined into a kind of music that by its very nature evolves every time you listen to it.
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Copyright Wake-up Call

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I just had an interesting conversation with some folks on IRC. (I know, shocking, eh?) While reaffirming that it IS in fact a vast wasteland, it was interesting to see what sort of misconceptions are out there about copyright law.

First off, everyone hates the RIAA, myself included. Their behavior is reminiscient of the Gestapo of Nazi Germany, and they need to be stopped. Their reactionary behavior simply feeds the fire, and exacerbates the problem.

Next, many of these “pirates” believe themselves to be safe by being in another country. To quote some, “Thats why I love living in Canada. Downloading music here is legal … see in canada we pay a tax on all music anyway … and the RIAA has no jurasdiction here” and “[copyright] can be international only if the country accepts it, and very few do. Thats why they can’t do shit to people in canada denmark finland and the like.”

Let’s not forget this concept that the RIAA is snooping everyone’s computers, so if you don’t keep pirated music on it, they can’t see it. “If I burn my mp3s to a cd, they can’t trace it!”
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