You might have noticed the little Electronic Frontier Foundation and Open Rights Group banners that have been at the bottom right of this blog for years…why do I support them? Well for one, although I’m not in the States I support the EFF because currently they are fighting for you and I to be able to do video mashups and post them legally to sites like YouTube without getting those infantile (as Lessig pointed out in my last post they do treat you like you’re in school, the Myspace ‘copyright quiz’ is even more offensive) DMCAs.

Also I support them because they are fighting the likes of Apple and co. who are creating anti-competitive closed systems and thus being usually bad for the consumer (AppleVangelists and ‘Geniuses’ should read their rather damning revelation of the AppStore legals that Apple doesn’t want you to see – All Your Appz Belong To Uzz indeed) and fighting DMCA and ACTA which is probably behind the evil Digital Economy Bill, and fighting for free speech and net neutrality online.

Open Rights Group does a similar job but with a UK/European stance – there are things EFF can’t/won’t touch that are specifically UK (the aforementioned DEBill for example, ORG has been campaigning about that). It’s a double handed attack, because what may go down in the US could pop up here, and vice versa. They also cover CCTV and ID card and other security worries where technology is possibly going to infringe on civil liberties and privacy – things that are more specific to the UK.

Pirate Party is also getting bigger here in the UK, I’m a member there too, although not been as involved as I’d like.

So whether you’re a mashup DJ, video remixer, developer, interactive artist, musician, web designer or just concerned about security and the (mis)use of technology and laws around it, I strongly recommend punting some money and support over to EFF and ORG, amongst many others…because they really are fighting for the digital freedoms you currently enjoy.

/soapbox out.

EDIT! 18 videos in under 7 minutes from Tim Baker on Vimeo.

Ian Fondue’s legendary mashup gets a video from Instamatic (ie, me!) 18 videos in 7 minutes, in a tribute to those 80′s edit videos, Max Headroom and the like…it’s got blipverts and internal references/in jokes in it, a la Alan Moore. Blink and you’ll miss them!

Tried also to show that most videos are essentially the same, and what may seem random is in fact rather ordered.

Big thanks goes to Ian Fondue for such a great mashup – a staple of my sets, my Mashup of the Year (2008?) and long-deserving a decent video. I hope y’all enjoy.

Features:

Bodyrox ft Luciana – Yeah Yeah
Obie Trice – Got Some Teeth
Dr Dre – Forgot About Dre
No Doubt – Hella Good
Justin Timberlake – Sexy Back
D12 – Purple Pills
Lady Sovereign – Love Me or Hate Me
Missy Eliott – Work It
Black Eye Peas – My Humps
Dizzee Rascal – Stand up Tall
KRS1 – Sound of the Police
Reel2Reel – I like to Move It
Kylie – Slow
Kelis – Milkshake
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five -  The Message
Madison Avenue – Don’t Call me Baby
Diana Ross – Upside Down
J-kwon – Tipsy

And a few other stealth bits

Now also at other good outlets: YouTube (who is on Ultra Records? It got Content ID’d by them, thankfully still there although blocked in some countries, grr) and Myspace so there is NO excuse if you are Vimeo-phobic.

You can also download an iPod-friendly file here or it’s in the feed so if you’re subscribed you might have it already. (It’s a .m4v file, which is basically a .mp4 that Apple strangely decided to invent it’s own suffix for – beats me. If you have probs try Quicktime/iTunes or renaming the suffix to .mp4 and playing in a far better player such as VLC).

Finally created a downloadable/iPod version* for my Warm Heart of Africa video/remix. Download, enjoy etc.

*it’s .m4v which is basically a .mp4 with Apple’s wanky new suffix added. Dunno why they do this, but if you have probs try renaming it with the .mp4 suffix. A decent player such as VLC should play it, and Quicktime if you must

One thing that irks me about Apple (only one thing? everyone cries, well the ones reading my blogs anyways!) is that they like to be portrayed as the victim, the lone tiny company against a world of big blue corporates. Especially when journalists cover news stories about Apple.

Well I have news for you – Apple is a large corporate, iPod one of the world’s biggest products, and iTunes is probably the biggest music store in the world – selling billions of tracks a year. So I when I hear the news that poor Apple can’t continue the iTunes Store for want of a dime – well 6 cents – I call BULLSHIT on that. But it’s interesting that quite a lot of the media and blogosphere has followed the David vs Goliath on this, but sadly the wrong Goliath.

What I can gather is that unlike how it’s being presented, Apple is playing it’s strong-arm tactics again – those with long memories will remember that for many months after the launch of iTunes Uk/Europe top seling acts such as White Stripes and Prodigy were not on iTunes. This is because Beggars Group, which XL Records is a part, couldn’t come to an agreement with Apple, with Apple paying the indie group less than the Big 4 major record companies in iTunes in the US….now being the world’s biggest go-to online store wields a lot of clout; and surprise surprise again comes out the petulant child in Apple wanting to take away their toys.

What actually is happening? Well no it’s not big industry fat-cats, it’s not greedy record companies, it’s the royalty collecting agency National Music Publishers Agency (kind of like the RIAA of publishers, but I think less evil unless you had a guitar tab site, then they are) wanting to increase the online royalty payments for it’s members – the members are publishing agencies. Now explaining the arcane publishing system for a Sun reader is not easy, or even you, the more intelligent Radio Clash reader, but I’ll try.

When a track is written and released it has mechanical copyrights (rights) – ie. the right to create CDs/vinyl etc – and publishing rights – the right to literally print the score of the work, if the act/artist has a publishing deal (most do, it’s like Music 101 before even getting a record deal). The publishing rights are important because through ‘publishing’ a work then other artists can cover it, and the songwriter can earn royalties such as those from covers, sale of tracks and sale of sheet music – which tends to be an important and steady source of income for most groups or artists, if they write their own material. So publishing companies sort out the legal stuff and the reclaimation of those royalties, when a track is sold.

So what’s happening here is the NMPA is asking for more money, now when iTunes Music Store started they worked out a deal based on the 1997 deal for CDs (11 years ago!) and it not being a big industry then, everyone complied…now iTunes MS is so massive, it’s probably fair that the songwriters should get the same for selling a CD than selling online, which both are being renegotiated now (and probably brought in line with each other).

So rather than ‘Apple gets shafted by EVIL RECORD COMPANIES!’ it’s actually more like ‘Apple refuses to give songwriters (you know, the ones that create the songs you listen to?) more money’. And we are talking an increase from 9 cents to 15 cents here – tbh if Apple’s profit margin is only 6 cents a track as the retailer, then I’d be very worried for Apple as a business (typically a physical record store takes 50% or more of the price of a CD, so I doubt Apple is taking less than that – with less physical overheads (shops, stores, staff) -EDIT: actually apparently Apple takes 29 cents per track – a third – with 61 cents being the record company according to the Guardian article linked above…)

So who then is being greedy here?

It sure as hell isn’t the songwriters, I mean if they were attacking the record companies I’d say be my guest, but publishers and songwriters seems a really small (but probably more bullyable) target.

Maybe the ‘Brick’ is to throw through the windows of the NMPA?

UPDATE: Sadly the Copyright Judges caved and backed down. it’s not usual I’m for ‘industry’ getting more money, but if it’s the songwriters benefiting and not some A&R wanker, or record company exec, then hell yeah. They write the music I love.

Hey iPhone users – would you want to download podcasts via an app on your iPhone?

Well Apple Computer Says No. (via podcasting news)

It’s not like you’d want to download podcasts via the device directly, I mean it’s not a device with WiFi or HDSPA is it? Oh, wait…;-)

OK I’ve had my difficulties with Apple in the past*, that aside as a podcaster this does boggle the mind…I would like people to download my podcasts from wherever they are, whatever device they are on, and iPhone app to do that can do nothing but good (rather than those spammy Facebook-style one-podcast-only apps which annoy me, as of course only pro or semi pro podcasts can afford to develop those).

I suspect maybe Apple is launching their own app to do this…stopping all rival apps is not really beyond Apple with their history.

Really I’m starting to wonder if Apple really cares about podcasting at all…it seems to be sidelined you know?

* full disclosure: Radio Clash was banned or unable to get my feed onto iTunes for 2 years, with no explaination, part of the reason we never had the big ‘spike’ of listenership others had – so I have experienced being outside that particular ‘wall’ – it’s not nice. I hope Apple sees sense about this app.