Shiny new post on a shiny new host, and something that’s been in my torrent download queue for ages – the film Steal This Film II – a great freely downloadable documentary about file sharing, information sharing in cultures (like teaching) and the social and legal issues within and looking at past technologies like the printing press and how a ‘pirate culture’ helped the French Revolution along.

It’s made by and for the people on the side of angels ie. the pirates so you won’t get a totally ‘balanced view’ (which usually means one biased to the mainstream media and corporates) but the MPAA and heads of Hollywood do get their say and their arguments countered. The strongest impression you get from this is how this struggle of information freedom and ‘piracy’ has been going on a very long time and is constantly on going; how the real fear of the major corporates is probably that the audience becomes the creators and cuts them totally out of the loop, and that the file sharing wars are pretty much lost despite setbacks after this film was made (Pirate Bay and the like).

It’s also much better than Steal This Film I which was a bit of a mish-mash (and out of focus in parts – ouch). Apparently they are expanding both bits into a full film, and then going for a release, which I’m hoping is still officially torrented, unlike RiP: A Remix Manifesto‘ which although very professional looking and interesting sadly seems to be going through the age-old Hollywood distributor/release model – requires different release dates for different world areas (apparently I can’t download it cos I’m ‘not in the US’ – DOH – no release dates for the UK either). Given the subject of that film, it is rather ironic – it may be about remix or online culture in the 21st century but that particular medium is most definitely not the message. Maybe it’s because the film is evolving they’re not officially torrenting it (someone else has put up an unnofficial torrent).

Anyway it has Girl Talk in it, in fact so much the whole film is basically a Girl Talk promo, and y’all know how I feel about him. The Brazil bits showing baile funk are really good, and Cory and Lessig are always brilliant, but it pretty much covers the same areas as Steal This Film I and II, but with more flashy animations/production.

It does have this great funny remix at the end pulled from YouTube seemingly uncredited, but I recognised the Eclectic Method logo:

For those wanting to get into the issues around musical remix/cutup I’d rather recommend Sonic Outlaws by Craig Baldwin, which was created about 15 years earlier and covers the same ground sans some of the later ‘Napster/bittorrent’ stuff covered in STF, some of the footage by/of Negativland is used in ‘RiP’! At the very least you then won’t need to look at a naked Greg Gillis…:-P

Anyway I think the model of Steal This Film and Sita Sings the Blues is the future though, torrenting your movie and letting the world see it in a donation model if they like it, or buying copies if they want them. To trot out my old phrase, they get it. They really do. Go support them.

There was an era in the mid to late 80’s where videos weren’t cheap. So when rave and hiphouse/hiphop came along they needed something for MTV and Top of the Pops etc – so enter the stand in front of a screen video, usually with graphics ‘genlocked’ (aka ‘keyed’) ie. placed digitally behind them, or stock video, even more cheaply projected behind them…and loads of silly dancing. Like this (Keith Haring a B movie inspired):

Other ones include A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray, which owes rather a lot to Len Lye’s Colour Box, uses computer animation and projection, and suddenly I feel an unusual desire for Sanatogen, not MDMA:

Neneh Cherry might be more famous now for cookery programmes, but in 1987 she was standing in front of a screen with some very embarassing earrings. Am I bovvered?
Pointless fact: it was produced by Tim Simenon, aka Bomb the Bass hence the reference to Tim and Timmy, you might hear from that person shortly…

Obviously one of the problems was the complete anonymity of the dance music at the time – few vocals, no ’stars’, just rhythm. What to do? Well what about constructor worker garb, ripped video game graphics, weird building shots (cos it’s house! geddit?) and dodgy mosaic effect (cos it’s the nu digital age, right?). Erm…

ACCCIEEEDDD! Certain Residents inspiration to this one – the tune was banned in the UK so never shown fully:

And as rave took over, the videos got cheaper and more like Amiga demos, which is funny because they were probably produced on the Amiga:

And FSOL aka Stakker Humanoid were making their own 3D videos (Amiga probably too ) which seem very ahead of their time:

And apparently you should move your body over glowing radioactive lava fields:

and some actually became soundtracks for Amiga games:

Also pop got in the act twith bigger crowds but basically the same idea (1990)

As an aside, it’s interesting because I remember seeing videos by Cerith Wyn Evans using these overlay techniques from the early 80’s, and of course one of Leigh Bowery’s videos which was shot purely in a video booth at the Tropicana in London using the same idea…sadly neither are on YouTube but I’ve had a lot of fun looking at video of Leigh, he was a lovely man.

Anyway back to the (day)glowing outline 90’s – what’s interesting is that those with bigger budgets co-opted that ‘dance in front a screen’ style but maybe lost something of the original charm:

And then you have modern day, were the whole thing was co-opted by the new rave scene – such as the pisstaking Trashfashion:

and the MGMT Time to Pretend video which I refuse to link because they’ve obviously asked everyone who posted the video to disable embedding – they or their record company REALLY don’t understand new media and should be slapped. So there.

I’m sure about 3 people on the planet have had this problem but after nearly a year I GOT EMAIL ON MY p990i! Can’t they make it so you just press a button and it configures itself? We are in the 21st century people! Not got send with Gmail to work yet, despite what it says below, but download does work….anyone let me know if they got send to work.

Here are the bits of info I found copied in case they go away:

Gmail settings on the P990i

Just sucessfully set up gmail on the P990:

Get the base settings from gmail here.

Messenging > Settings > Email accounts
Add a new gmail.

Account name: Gmail
Your name: anything
Connection type: POP3
-Inbox-
Incoming Server: pop.gmail.com
Username: username@gmail.com
Password: your password
Download restrictions: anything
Receive using group: Preferred group (your working inet connection – wifi or gprs)
-Outbox-
Outgoing Server: smtp.googlemail.com
Use Smtp authentication
Use Inbox login details

Then under Advanced in the menu option:
-Incoming-
SSL
995
NO secure password authentication
-Outgoing-
SSL
465
Use MIME encoding

Away you go..

And for Dreamhosts, follow the guide for Unix Evolution – all the others are useless

Set it to IMAP. If you’re POP3 can’t really help you…

example.com is your domain name.

• Email Address: user@example.com (this tripped me up, all other email clients just need ‘user’)
• IMAP Server (Incoming): mail.example.com (port 143 has optional TLS encryption, or use port 993 with SSL encryption) – TRANSLATION: TLS – use port 143
  
• SMTP Server (Outgoing): mail.example.com:587 (port 587 has optional TLS encryption, or use port 465 for SSL encryption) TRANSLATION: TLS – use port 587
• User: user@example.com

A lot has been written about Radiohead’s ‘radical’ policy with ‘In Rainbows’ last year, letting the fans pay what they like. It seemed like a bold move at the time , if not original. Trent Reznor and others had done it first – but it was interesting because Radiohead were at the time such a big former major label industry mainstream band, as much as they like to pretend otherwise.

In fact, it turns out according to their record label’s Head of Business Affairs if the fans had paid too little they’d have pulled the plug well before that:

Instead Dyball points to the fact that the band and their management never announced a timeline for the pay-what-you-like experiment and were watching the average price daily with a view to potentially withdrawing it any moment should it drop too low. Dyball points out that the average price went down after the download moved from uberfans to less committed fans, as expected.

Maybe not so radical then? Really if you’re going to make bold artistic statements intending to be a radical shakeup of the music industry and put good faith of your fans to the fore, you don’t keep a hand on the ‘off’ switch. That suggests an insecure strategy, and could have backfired for Radiohead, instead they made more money than before…then signed back to another major label to release the album physically. And then pulled the free copies just before that was released.

One positive thing, like the examples of online books given away bumping sales of present and future hard copies, that the industry will take note and this will happen more often – embracing the ‘free’ and thinking long term about how people are exposed to music and trusting them more, rather than the siege mentality that has gone before.

Yet all this supports an arcane and overblown system that has resisted change by criminalising a victimless crime of downloading and going after 12 year old kids and people who didn’t even have a computer to download with! And with this new ISP law, I can see this getting quite ugly…

So remember: revolution this is not.

(xkcd)

Maybe it’s because of personal experience, and videos like this:

Yes they are really capturing criminals here…people breaking the law by sitting. That sitting is what terrists do. Sitting is UNamerican!!! Sitting is for pinko commie lefty fags.

Really, if the police, or the army, actually for once in their lives refused to hold up the people in power and do their dirty work for them, and fight for their and our rights as fellow workers against corrupt leaders then maybe, just maybe, the world would be a better place.

But they don’t. And thus uphold the status quo, which is what those in power want.

And please don’t tell me ‘I’ll be glad if you need them’ because yes I’ve been in that position. Were they anywhere to be seen, or for a long time? No. Did they solve anything? No. It was obvious that they don’t really care until you become a statistic, and then it is too late. So sadly at the point where they could prove to me, their employer (I pay their wages with my taxes), that they had some worth, they failed.

So when I see stuff like this I can’t counter it with a nice happy fluffy experience of them. They need to work on that…if they want a job when the revolution comes