I knew It! The Bee Gees ARE Satanic!

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How else can you explain how groovy they are?  It turns out that before they were giving us all Saturday Night Fever, the Gibb brothers were a heavy metal band called the British Ghouls.  They put out an album called Satanic Royalty in 1964, covering topics such as satanism, Nazis, and zombies.

I’ll never be able to listen to “Staying Alive” the same again.

For more information, see this page:

http://www.bnrmetal.com/v2/bandpage.php?ID=BG

(and FYI – check out the date the above page was created. I just found it now and had to post it because I thought it was hilarious).

More on the Digital Piracy Controversy

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I’ve been writing other places about all of the controversy surrounding digital file sharing.
For the record, I don’t think that it is right to steal music or movies or anything else in the long run online. I do think that it should be legal to be able to sample or preview something before you buy it, even though in most cases this is lumped in with piracy, so it still has to be avoided. I also think we need to deal with things like out of print titles in the debate. Like, re-issue them or release them for free online and stop complaining about it. But, I’ll just link to my other posts on these issues.:

EduGeek Journal post on “The Great Copy Protection Debate”

This post comments on an ongoing debate on the New York Times website about copy protection. It’s an interesting read on two sides of the issue. I became really fed up with the way on side was presenting their take, so I commented on the issue with some more thoughts. My comment is number 3 (posted at 2:27 pm on January 16, 2008) at the bottom of this page:

Bits Debate: Mixing It Up Over Remixes and Fair Use

Getting Really High on Rock Music

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Just to show you how far technology is going. I read a while back that blogging from the top of Mt. Everest was getting to be cliché because so many people can do that now. Now, apparently, there was even a concert up there. Mike Peters of The Alarm, Glen Tilbrook of Squeeze, Slim Jim Phantom of The Stray Cats and others who have survived cancer ascended Mt. Everest and gave a concert for the Love Hope Foundation. The travel diary, along with a video and images, can be seen here:

http://lovehopestrength.com/everest/day-sixteen/

The Showdown Rocks Your Face Off!

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Most of you know I am a metal head. So, if you aren’t… you might not care about this post. I just discovered a great metal band (new to me): The Showdown!

http://www.myspace.com/theshowdown

Their first album wasn’t that great. For their second album, they changed styles a little – probably influenced by Maylene & The Sons of Disaster (another great band). They stopped screaming so much, added some southern rock influences in the mix, and BAM! Hi-Voltage Heavy Metal Advisory. And they are currently on the OzzFest tour – they are that good.

Downloading Music

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I attended the “Downloading Music and Movies – Can They Sue Me?” session at the Tech Fair this week. Although I think most of the session focused on students, I did realize some interesting things.

One is that I think music consumers and the record industry basically have differing views of what they think someone is buying when they purchase media like a CD. For the average consumer, we tend to see the actually music playing through the air as the end product. So, if our friends borrow our CD, they are borrowing the music and not the CD. If I have a co-worker that borrows a CD every once and a while, who kind of likes the CD but not enough to buy it, I might think I could save them the trouble by letting them copy the disc on to their computer. If I see the music as being the end product, and someone could just as easily walk to my office and borrow the CD, that person having a copy on his/her computer is not a big problem. They are not ever going to buy it, and they aren’t going to listen to it more just because they have a copy of it.

Record companies see the actual disc, or the music mp3 file, as the end product. Therefore, if you copy that, you are creating two separate copies of the end product.

I get that, and always have, so that’s why I don’t make copies. The law says the music is for my own personal use, and I can make copies of it for personal use (like ripping a copy of the CD I own to my work computer to listen to as I work). But, if it is only for personal use – is it then illegal to let someone else borrow the real CD? Even if they don’t make an illegal copy? Sounds like it is (which is crazy)

Here’s my question. I love music. I own hundreds of CDs. But I have also cost the record industry hundreds of dollars, because a majority of the money that I spend on music goes to eBay sellers and used CD stores. Some informal polls have shown that most people’s music buying habits did not decrease once they started downloading music (in terms of how much they spend on CDs). The downloading is just on top of their music buying habits. Some of them even report spending more. What has happened is two things. One, as prices go up, people have reported buying less CDs. A few years ago, especially with a sale, they could purchase two CDs with $20-25. Today – they can probably only get 1. The second trend was that more and more people are buying CDs used. That same $20-25 can get you up to 15 CDs if you wait long enough. I just won 8 CDs from eBay for 25 cents. The shipping was $13, but that’s still less than $2 per CD.

Some people have speculated that the decline in CD sales is actually due more to eBay and used CD outlets than illegal downloading. Just look at the music section of eBay any day. Thousands of cheap CDs are sold every day. I don’t understand why the music industry isn’t going after any of that. If you have to pay around $20 for the legal right to play a new CD for your personal use, then why would it be legal to pay $2 for the same rights? This is just one area where the laws don’t make sense.

Record Companies are Pathetic

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Yep – you read that right – records companies are pathetic: sad, petty, and useless. A recent case involving a lawsuit against an online file sharer shows just how slimey they are. The jury found in favor of the company (which they should have, the person was obviously guilty) – and then called for $9,250 in damages for each of the 24 songs involved in the trial. (!)

Am I the only one in the world that finds this to be abusive? $9,000 for one song – that on average was maybe shared with possibly a 100 people, causing about A $100-200 loss to the record company (depending on how much you think individual songs are worth. If you know anything about the recording industry, you know that most big record companies only spend an average of about 25 cents per song for a moderately successful song). Charging someone that much for sharing a song online is like finding someone guilty for murder and then declaring that every person in the United States with the same last name as the killer to be executed.

Here’s the kicker – the record companies never had to prove that the songs were actually downloaded by someone else. Just offering them online was enough to gain this verdict. So – they only had proof that she cost the record company maybe $30-40 – and they got $222,000 in damages!

I won’t accuse anyone of wrong doing (*cough* bribery *cough* payoff *cough* *cough*), but something stinks here.

I’m not in favor of stealing music or illegally downloading songs – but if the record company accepts this obviously unfair verdict – they are nothing but scumbags. And for any artists that stand with the big record companies in this decision – I will no longer be buying your CDs. Or your junk merchandise.

Record companies – WAKE UP! YOU are the ones that have caused illegal file sharing to become such a huge problem. You’ve done everything you can to steal money from us and the bands you sign – eventually there had to be a backlash. Do you really think we were happy going out to buy a CD of cool song that were heard on the radio just to find out that one song was the only good song on a CD full of junk? Do you think were happy when we invested a ton of money into a record or tape collection, only to have you roll out CDs and expect us to re-buy all the music that we already owned? Did you really think we were going to fall for that again for all the new “better-than-CD” options you’ve tried to roll out since then? Did you really think we ignored all of those expose TV shows that showed how CDs now don’t cost you any more than tapes to produce, but you still keep charging more? Did you really think we’ve ignored all of the artist interviews through the years about how they were ripped off by you?

What New Shows Am I Interested In This Season?

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To be honest – none. Sure, there are some interesting ones out there. But I probably won’t watch any of them. Why? Because they will probably get canceled.

I’m wondering how long it will be before the TV watching public begins to just stop investing in any new shows with me. Think of the shows that showed promise, or drew a fan base, such as Firefly, that were given bad promotion, and then canceled before given a chance to gain viewers. Sure, you have shows like Jericho that can come back from the dead – but that’s only one so far. So many shows are now trying to latch on to the Lost or Heroes formula: long, complicated plots that span entire series (or at least entire seasons) with intrigue and mystery. The problem is: you dig in, invest in the show, and then it bites the dust. I’m just going to sit back and wait to see if anything makes it to season 2. Then rent the DVDs for season 1.

This is really just the problem with the entertainment industry in general. No investment in anything if it’s not a hit right off the bat. And not to mention over-saturation. there are just too many movies, TV shows, CDs, games, etc pushed out every week. I remember recently that Bono said there may never again be another U2. Not because no one can ever be as good as them – it’s just that the record companies are not supporting and developing bands enough to allow for them to grow into another U2. I think that can be said in all sectors of the entertainment industry: companies are too caught up with getting the next biggest thing out there yesterday.