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.

Snow snow go away come again another day, or preferably snow on all of the bankers, economists, capitalists, bus and train bosses and politicians in a large fuck-off snowdrift and we can go sledging over them, laughing.

First angry part of a 2-part podcast, apologies for the abrupt ending, the whole thing came to 2:45 so I split it.

Ice Ice baby, to go…oh actually not to go, can’t afford that. Do you do tap water? (66Mb, 79mins)

• Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains
• Cosmo vs Flapsandwich – GEORGE BUSH RIP
• Steinski – Is We Going Under?
• Public Enemy – Party For Your Right To Fight
• Silver Bullet – 20 Seconds To Comply (Final Conflict Mix)
• Steinski – Everything’s Disappeared
• The Coup – MindFuck (A New Creation)
• Royal Family And the Poor – Art On 45
• Dead Milkmen – Life Is Shit
• Elton John – I Think I’m Gonna Kill Myself
• Meshuggah – New Millenium Cyanide Christ
• Fucked Up – Twice Born
• Danny Byrd – From Bath With Love (feat. T-Lace)
• 23 Skidoo – Fire
• London Elektricity – Bare Religion
• The Knife – Forest Families
• The Wedding Present – Interstate 5 (Extended version)

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

Well the Socialist Worker Party’s comment form on the rose-tinted sweetness and light article about the festival isn’t working, so I’ll post this here:

“I was one of the people at the Love Music Hate Racism carnival, too young for the original Rock Against Racism but regard that concert with great respect.

Overall it was a great festival, but with a few major issues.

It’s a shame though that unlike the Pride events held at Victoria Park in the 90s there was fences and police everywhere, people confiscating or refusing entry to people with plastic water bottles (not just glass and alcohol) – but a really poor selection of alcohol inside.

But the biscuit was taken (away) by the police stopping the event – the aforementioned PCS tent. It wasn’t unsafe – in fact the tent was part empty – and people were just having a good time. I don’t expect the police at a political event to just shut the tent down at 5:20 for no explained reason – leaving DJ Hype and the poor MC to try and explain after getting us to step back, which we did. It was lucky that there wasn’t a riot…

Yes people had a great time, and it was the one part of the LMHR I felt racial and cultural divides breaking down with people dancing to everything to banghra to drum and bass – but I find it odd that the police would be in control of such an event, given the SWP/IS history. And as we left the organisers (not police) were rudely barking at people to move out of the way, but most of the problem was the ice cream van parked in front of the exit.

Also the irony of asking people to buy tshirts and bags to support the event. Capitalism anyone? Oh it’s ok to wear a tshirt if it has the right logo on it? Very dodgy.

So although I did have a good time, I did feel LMHR and SWP and the Unions involved were skating a very fine line -  I was left feeling disheartened rather than empowered, and felt that rather than talk to someone about it they’d rather sell me a tshirt.

So this is the revolution in action is it?”

I was talking about this with John (who is a member of the SWP, I am most definitely not although have leanings that way) – I think the festival compromised the SWP and LMHR and various groups involved.

They became the very things they railed against.