Us & them

Pink Floyd signed with EMI in 1967 and their contract “contained a clause to ‘preserve the artistic integrity of the albums.’” What does this mean forty years later? That you won’t be able to buy their concept albums a song at a time, which EMI wanted to offer via iTunes, Amazon and other music-buying sites.

As the BBC says: “The band largely avoided releasing singles during their career, instead preferring fans to listen to entire albums such as Dark Side of the Moon, which has sold more than 35 million copies around the world.”

The issue of selling individual tracks online has been a thorny one for many artists, who want their albums to be seen as complete works. Bands also receive less money if fans pick and choose tracks instead of buying a full suite of songs.

When I think of certain albums, I think of them as whole pieces, not as individual songs (Tommy, Abbey Road, Dark Side of The Moon, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Nebraska, American Idiot, etc.). For these, when I put them on, I play them straight through. Putting these albums on shuffle illustrates how essential song order and coherence are to the concept album (as well as the concept of “album”).

Of course I like buying songs a la carte and we own a lot of songs that we would never have purchased an album to get b/c the rest of the album is crap. I used to call it “single-filler” in the 80s when I judged whether it was worth my $8 to buy a whole album by whether it had at least three songs I liked on it or it was a Duran Duran album (talk about single-filler; yes Mr. LeBon, I’m looking at you).

In the case of concept albums though, if you spend the money to buy all of a concept album, you’re going to get your money’s worth in my experience. So as much as I enjoy freedom of choice and buying my music as I chose, I have zero problem with Pink Floyd’s concept here. And the choice remains to be able to purchase the music or not. It’s not as though the songs are unavailable for legal purchase. You just need to buy the album. Or don’t. Simple.

It makes me think of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (a remix work if ever there was one; would Campbell’s sue for trademark infringement today? In the 60s, they commissioned a canvas from Warhol). The work itself is 32 individual canvases. Each canvas is its own piece of art yet the concept calls for all of the canvases to be shown together. High art meets pop culture via concept. Mmm mmm good.

Somewhat OT: I’ve heard people ask who buys hard copy CDs anymore. I gave my husband Sweetheart of the Rodeo for Christmas, a kinda-sorta concept album in terms of genre/tone.

A bite of the apple

I just saw a new ad for iPhone. In the ad, a woman uses her iPhone to record her baby’s first steps and then share it with her family and friends:

So let me get this straight: her son learns to walk. She makes a video. She uses this great way to share that video with her family and friends.

Yet it’s implied in some quarters that my doing the exact same thing three years ago (sans iPhone) was some kind of plea of attention, a quest for fame or money, or that I had some other ulterior motive. Truthfully, this was what I did. Holden had learned to walk only days before. I happened to get him dancing on my Kodak Z740 camera (the focus is blown; we need to get a new camera) and I shared it the way I’d always shared videos: on YouTube. That’s all it was, all it ever was.

And now it’s become a story that we’ll get to tell the rest of our lives at birthday parties. It’ll be in my obituary. This simple little 29-second home movie of Holden happy to be mobile enough to race with his sister in the kitchen (something they do just about every night to this day). And now it has over a million hits.

Astounding.

And apparently Apple-icious as well.

One meellion

Sometime over the weekend, the video passed 1 million views.

“Undermining humanitarian efforts”

Source

The RIAA is claiming that P2P file sharers are “undermining” humanitarian efforts in Haiti. Now that’s quite a claim, and you would think the RIAA would have some evidence to back it up, but (of course), it doesn’t. It’s just making stuff up.

The claim is based on the fact that some musicians quickly put out a “Hope for Haiti Now” digital only album, with the proceeds going to help Haiti. It apparently did quite well, topping the Billboard sales charts. Considering there were tons of ways to donate to Haiti, this was basically a way to get some free music with your donation. Fair enough. But the RIAA noticed that the tracks also appeared on file sharing sites. This is hardly a surprise, nor is it meaningful. But, according to the RIAA’s interpretation, this somehow “undermines” humanitarian efforts.

MusicAlly saw the RIAA’s blog post, and figured it would check in to see just how much downloading was going on to undermine those Haitian humanitarian efforts… and discovered that very, very, very few people are downloading the album.

In other words, despite the claims of the RIAA, file sharers certainly weren’t “undermining” anything. They certainly weren’t particularly interested in downloading this album at all. Looks like the RIAA has been caught making up arguments that have no relation to fact, yet again.

Making up stuff? I can’t believe it.

/sarcasm

Taking sides over… wait for it…. emoticons

This time last year, I had no idea people made such a BFD about emoticons.

Check out these comments. I particularly like the input by Bob from Ohio, who thinks I “deserve[] to lose and pay much, much in the way of attorney fees” for using an emoticon in a private chat (while admitting “I don’t know anything about the merits” of the case).

BTW: I do not use dashes as a nose in my emoticons unless it’s this one, which I post here simply to annoy the anti-emoticon people:

Express yourself

Man sues for his right to free expression (i.e.: flip the bird)

“I would like to see a lot of people not living in fear. That’s way more important than seeing a whole bunch of fingers go in the air.”

Lenz V. Universal is not “over”

Just a point of clarification: My lawsuit is not “over,” despite what some bloggers and news outlets are saying.

The partial summary judgment allows me to seek damages against UMG and contains other points (I strongly suggest reading it). This article is very clear about some of the points of the PSJ.

Interviews, etc.

I wondered if there might be some renewed interest in my case following the partial summary judgment. When just a few articles popped up on Friday and over the weekend, I breathed a bit of a sigh of relief.

It’s not that I mind talking about my case. I enjoy talking about it and telling people “This happened to me. If it happens to you, here’s what you can do.” But contrary to some comments I see on news stories & blog entries, I do have a life. I crave calm and stability and some semblance of privacy. Anyone who knows me can tell you this. So it’s amusing to see myself accused of being a “famewhore” or of “using” Holden to “get famous.” I suppose in our celebrity-obsessed culture, people are prone to think that “fame” is everyone’s main motivation for doing anything that happens to cast a national (or international) spotlight. Personally, I don’t understand fame-seeking but I’m not against anyone who wants to go that route in life. Everyone has different needs and motivations and, well, whatever gets you through the night (thank you John Lennon).

I’m starting to get interest in interviews again, which I enjoy. The main reason is that I like to gather information about everything I can and have different kinds of experiences, mostly for the sake of having them but also because, as a writer, everything is material (thank you Garrison Keillor). So to see how a major network sets up an interview versus the local news channel, it simply interests me. At the same time, I’m thinking, “Well yes, I’d love to do an interview but we have a Girl Scouts outing that day. Sorry.” I do have priorities and I have turned down interview opportunities.

Plus the case isn’t over and I think a lot of people think that it is. So this is merely another point on the timeline. The last onslaught of interviews was in October of 2007. Yes, this case has been going on that long. In the video, he’s 13 months old and just started walking. When it was pulled, he was 18 months. Now he’s four and if it doesn’t involve trains or aliens, he’s just not interested.

I have two new articles to share today. This one made me smile:

What the music industry didn’t expect was that Lenz would fight back so rather than think “What is the PR value involved here?” it decided to fight dirty.

It tried a novel attack strategy. It said that even if the music was used legally, it was also infringing at the same time. Why? Well, because the song was copyrighted and owned by Universal. It tried to claim that its own DMCA notice was not legitimate. It attacked Lenz’s counsel, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for daring to help her to defend the case. Universal also said Lenz had “unclean hands” for making supposedly false allegations in her lawsuit.

US District Judge Jeremy Fogel finally had enough of the music industry’s bizarre antics and granted partial summary judgement. He didn’t award Lenz damages but has opened the way for her lawyers to get her attorneys’ fees from her initial case against the bogus takedown.

This article at Business Insider has some more information about what the PSJ means, for the sake of clarity.

BTW: See my “contact” page if you have an interview request. Please do not go through YouTube for an interview request.

ETA: This article at Citizen Media Law Project went live while I was writing this. CMLP is always worth a read.

Reuters article on partial summary judgment

This is the Reuters article that’s being quoted/printed everywhere from Yahoo to World News Australia (have I mentioned I love Australians lately?)

The case is important because it raises the question of whether a media company can be held liable for pursuing a takedown without a full consideration of fair use. The decision by the court last Thursday is very technical and examines damage claims under a statutory code that deals with liability when misrepresentations are made about infringing works online.

I also read a blog entry this weekend that implied my only “damage” was that I was “slightly annoyed” when my video was removed. That’s so…

Actually you know what it is? Slightly annoying. Yes. That’s “slightly annoying” on my “annoying” scale. Impinging my First Amendment rights, accusing me of being a copyright infringer… that’s somewhat higher on my “annoying” scale.

BTW: As I write this, the hit count on the video is 954,662 views. When it was flagged for removal, the views were 273. Astounding.