I’ve read a few stories about people who having been sued by the RIAA for downloading music have stood up and counter-sued or at least fought it in court; but this one looks like it could be one of the best. It looks like they’ve really put some thought (and legal council) into the issue and come up with some great countersuits.

It’s great to see people stand up against this, but again it’s such a shame that people have to fight the RIAA in this manner. Surely it would be better all-round to embrace the many great potentials that the web as a distribution channel presents?

Link from Boing Boing.

I’ve just read this great little interview with Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails). It doesn’t give much insight into his music and new album etc. but it’s another great slice of artist’s views on the music industry and the record labels continued resistance, and stupidity, to the changes in the way in which we consume music.

Last night I came home to an email from my friend Stuart with the subject line This is special.

The email simply contained 2 links to some videos on YouTube, which turned out to be (the cryptic YouTube URLs don’t reveal the contents beforehand) two videos of guitarist Andy McKee.
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Has Been implies failure, not so. - William Shatner, "Has Been", "Has Been" 2004

The William Shatner album Has Been was recommended to me by a work colleague earlier this year (but the album was released a couple of years ago) and I feel it’s about time to pass on this recommendation to anyone I can because it is simply fantastic.
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Today I’m proud to announce the launch of a site I have been working on for quite a while, so without further to do I introduce to you Ignite Image, web design for musicians.

IgniteImage.com is a website for my web design company Ignite Image, which specialises in creating stylish, modern, accessible, functional, professional, exciting and standards compliant websites for bands and musicians. I’m extremely proud of both the aims and objectives of this website and company and the website itself.
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Related Website: Domain Name

Really, 4.5 cents per 99 cent sale on iTunes, you really know how to treat your artists well. If you’re not crippling their meatspace releases with DRM then you’re applying the same (none existant) overhead charges to their digital downloads, from the suit filed by Sony artists:
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A recent addition to my blog rotation, Writers Block Live, is that a ex Apple employee. In a recent it was nice to hear the story of a meeting that took place during the development of iTunes with a record company president, Howie Klein, who actually understood the impact of MP3’s on the way music will be consumed.
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Other Websites: People Search at PeekYou — the free people search engine

This really starting to get silly, even though I think the logic behind the recent actions of the music industry is flawed, I do understand where that flawed logic comes from - trying to protect their bottom line from piracy.

However the latest round of actions is starting to take the biscuit.
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Links of Interest: Karaoke MP3 Sing with the stars!

I meant to link to this last week, but I’m glad other things got in the way as the article has progressed giving both sides of the story.

Pete at intermaweb.net posted a well referenced article entitled An Open Letter to the Hilltop Hoods after taking offence at some comments made on a DVD by the Australian Hip-Hop band Hilltop Hoods.
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I’ve been following the emerging stories about the Sony “rootkit” with quite a bit of interest. I’m not going to gather all the links together in this post as the Wired post Real Story of the Rogue Rootkit does a good job of that and explaining the issue overall.

This is the kind of thing that disgusts me with the current state of the entertainment industry and it’s attempts to protect their self-centered rights over anything else.