OK I tend not to write too much on the DRM wars sensing I’m probably preaching to the perverted, but occasionally I come across something which is such a good example of why DRM is wrong I have to post it – this is one such occasion (Yahoo is taking it’s DRM servers offline)

How ANYONE can say this is good for consumers, I don’t know – along with the (failed) MSN attempt to do same – shitting on legitimate users is not going to make ‘home taping’ less attractive and supporting artists which supposedly was the goal of DRM (actually it wasn’t, the music industry’s goal like the MPAA was a licensing model where you endlessly re-sell the same old shit back to the consumer as it ‘expires’ – like some sleazy slum landlord, a leasing model). So basically those who bought legal Yahoo music now have less than someone buying a CD or downloading illegally. Nice.

Especially ironic when Yahoo suggest using one of the old DRM workarounds (burning to CD) teaching all these people how to avoid DRM lossily -great work Yahoo! You’re doing the best to promote piracy and our goals – for that I salute you!

Come to P2P and torrent children, ignore your nasty corporate overlords…

Testing my new camera I give a tour of NoNo Towers, as it is known.

Interestingly I found a VCR recorder – a good Sony in the street today. If it works, esp. with SVHS (likely with one of these NICAM 4-head jobbies), I’ll be able to digitise my earlier vids.

MP4 now available here…

Gradually getting back into video and uploading some of my degree/personal video work.

(Excerpts from) The Milk Lab Tapes 1995 (remixed 2002)
(NSFW, contains super8 of birth and a rather charming 1950s porn lady, quite quaint really…)

Milk Laboratory was an experimental music night – well not that experimental, we’d play Aphex Twin, LFO, Throbbing Gristle, Air Liquide – industrial and dark ambient. I did the visuals, using found video, adverts, stuff I’d shot around Sheffield, and remixing Super8 that a friend had collected and was doing loops from. I also used to shoot a lot of video from buses – my degree show was shot in the bus station – and super8 shot on the moors (which will be another film/post) and upside down reverse video shots – literally I took VHS tape and respliced it upside down so the helical scanning drum would read  correctly yet backwards – and it worked! I loved the way the colours reversed and the image broke up.

Posted it here because a) it contains some music I’ve not released yet – from 1992-95 it contains the pieces under my Reality Engine moniker – you might be surprised from my pop mashups where my history lies, in more extreme noisetronica/experimental cutup work, that would be more akin to Merzbow, Zorn and Burroughs than Soundhog or Go Home Productions!

• ‘Killed or Murdered (Headcleaner mix)’ (the WW Catholic Radio sampling one, with feedback through an effects unit)
• ‘Test Broadcast’ which I did for a film in my second year (and yes that is me on vocals)
• ‘Semi Automatic (Headcleaner mix)’ which was a cutup I did on the Amiga, again with feedback, and the track I was working on for my degree installation -
  
• ‘Counter Surveillance Program’ which included loads of mobile phone scans. The rest of the tracks are bits from the N.E.M.C.

You can find part two here – both p1 and 2 were the ‘remix’ re-edit I did in 2002 from the 15 minute original,  taking out the boring morphs and really dodgy stuff. Yes there was dodgier stuff!

And here’s a video I did of people smashing up televisions. Yes as you will see in future posts I liked to destroy things, including intentionally glitching video:

Beggar’s dog – Hoboken (LOC)

I usually cover copyright issues of a different nature; ones regarding audio. But as a keen photographer and designer I love images, and know how hard it is, or was, to find open source images. One big addition to this is Flickr Commons – several big museums and collections have gotten together with Flickr to share imagery that has no copyright, old photographs or has governmental uses like the legendary FSA and wartime images. The collections are good – from Smithsonian who started this, to Library of Congress, George Eastman House, Bibliothèque de Toulouse and so on.

Sadly I’m surprised (although not shocked having dealt with these organisations via John) that there are no British museums or collections yet taking part. Certainly governmental ‘public’ works has a different stance here – Crown copyright vs the US model where if public money is used it rightly stays in public domain – and a non-sharing approach with British galleries and museums means yet again America and Europe lead the way in copyright advances and public amenity. Sigh. I hope that changes – because I know the likes of the V&A, British Museum, British Library, The Hulton/Picture Post archive and the Tates have amazing treasures to share.

Will we ever be allowed to, though?

Paris Exposition: ship, Paris, France, 1900

Testing the new Live Writer on this blog, works well and gives you a preview of the page.

Spooky for a Microsoft product this actually works! For some reason it posts twice though – editing is OK but a new post gets 2 of them with the same name – WTF?

Just tried this on XP – works fine, must be a Vista bug. I highly recommend Live Writer if you want a blog writing client, if like me the FF3 bugs are annoying you or want to post the same thing into multiple blogs (doesn’t have the Group Posting option like BlogJet, but you can switch accounts and repost easily).