Bmg Member Music
You may be saying to yourself "Self, I didn't even realize that this club was still around!" --or-- "People still buy CDs?!?" --or-- "What's that?" But still, this is an inevitable passing, and I feel somewhat nostalgic about it. At one time I had a Columbia House membership AND BMG membership, all inn an effort to hoard as many mainstream CDs as possible. If anyone remembers the history of these clubs, at one time they truly served a great purpose: to get music to as many people as possible. You may not believe this if you were born in the last 15-25 years, but at one time there was NO INTERNET. and many smaller towns didn't have any way for a music fan to score the latest B-52's album. Radio played 40 crappy songs over and over. Enter these clubs. All of a sudden, some kid in rural Iowa (or in my case, central Illinois) could have a big cardboard box of free music delivered to his or her door, whatever sounded interesting to him/her.
Actually I had these memberships, and you could get more free CDs if you signed up a friend. So I also had a membership at work. At my grandma's house. At my girlfriend's house. Fulfill your membership, cancel, wait for the "We want you back" cards, "We'll give you more free CDs if you come back" mailer, sign back up, start the game all over again. It's called working the system, folks. Hell, I'm surprised I did not personally run these companies out of business.
But I am truly grateful for the clubs. Many times when ordering my 15 free CDs I only wanted a couple of the ones listed, and then I would try a bunch more, based on title, something I had read about, or a cool cover. This was the way I experienced Hank Williams, George Jones, the Allman Brothers, and many, many more for the first time. I wasn't hearing many of the artists I tried on the radio, or on MTV (once it was on the air). Each release, when it was good, was a kaleidoscope of sound that surprised and delighted. And if it sucked, eh. It was practically free. I remember wondering how many others even knew about some of these bands, as crazy as it sounds.
BMG, Columbia House, I salute you. Your time has passed, but once upon a time you were like an Amish Internet to me, a cornucopia of unknown thrills. Rather than mourn your passing, I delight in the memories you gave me.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an old Tom Waits "Heart of Saturday Night" CD to play. An old friend sent it to me, even though I had never heard it before, and all it cost me was $3.95 shipping and handling.
p2pnet news view P2P:- The RIAA may have had its teeth blunted, but its memory lives on.
In this, the second of our month-by-month roundups of important events from the year before, the RIAA’s power and relevance continued to slide and for me, the one of the most most striking stories came in an email from an RIAA victim — a student — who said she was going to kill herself because she’d heard from someone at an (the?) RIAA extortion settlement centre categorically promising her she’d be taken to court unless she came up with more than $9,000 to buy the RIAA off.
She said she was already up to her neck in debt because of school loans and had absolutely no way of finding that kind of money, or anything like it, that she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t study, couldn’t live a normal life because of the worry.
The story was ignored by the mainstream media.
The Big 4 has spent millions of dollars on a PR blitz which turned a handful of subpoenas into non-existent court cases in which thousands of Americans were terrorised by the RIAA.
Before I’d even heard of it my friend, Bill Evans (right), had started a site purpose-designed for people who, even back in 2001, were sick and tired of being cheated, on the one hand, and being called criminals and thieves, on the other, by the very organisations which depended on them for their existence.
He told them what to do about it.
Boycott Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG.
“I personally would like to thank the RIAA for their continuing ‘Copyright Holy War’,” said Bill who, tragically, killed himself last year. Overlawyered had quoted Bill in 2006. “When I founded Boycott-riaa.com [...] I swore to not buy RIAA members music,” he said, going on >>>
Being a music fan who always has something playing in the background, I thought this would be difficult. However I soon discovered there is a wealth of independent music out there every bit as good, if not better, Less expensive, and the money goes to the musicians, not an international conglomerate.
Thank you RIAA for turning me on to independent music.
Unfortunately, Bill ran out of money and had to sell the site, which is now a pale shadow of what it used to be. But his idea hasn’t faded.
DON’T buy anything from any of the companies linked to, or associated with, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) or Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US).
Here’s The Compleate RIAA Boycott list …
Also check out riaaradar.com — “The RIAA Radar is a tool that music consumers can use to easily and instantly distinguish whether an album was released by a member of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).”
___________________________
1 Bell Canada? Rogers? Telus? Go to hell! “If you’re signed on with Bell-Sympatico and you’ve been unsuccessfully trying to coax a little more speed out of your suddenly sluggish computer; or, if you’ve been calling Bell-Sympatico support only to be told it`s not them, it’s you – it isn’t you,” said Ottawa Gal in 2007. Because, “Bell-Sympatico is now following the Rogers lead. It’s traffic shaping and throttling.” It was the first story on a scandal which eventually became a major issue and which, thanks to shameless stonewalling on the part of the CRTC, which is supposed to be adjudicating, has yet to be resolved. And now another scandal is breaking. Bell Canada figures it has a license to mint money and as part of the process, is forcefully penetrating its customers at both ends by double dipping their accounts, Ottawa Gal has just revealed. She goes into chapter and verse in a post which sparked a number of comments, including one from Jen, a law student, who writes: “We’re studying this since some of us were given desist notices and we find Bell and other internet providers have broken so many laws we don’t have enough of us to compile them all.”
2 To Big 4 record labels – ‘Bring back the single!’. ‘Other potential tactics’.
2 Google – slashed, but not dotted The world nearly came to an end on Saturday. Google went down for about 15 minutes.
3 Ex-Vivendi boss Jean-Marie Messier walks Jean-Marie Messier is a happy man. So is Warner Music’s Edgard Bronfman jnr. Both were under suspicion in an insider trading scandal which once rocked France. Messier, also known as J6M, once ran France’s Vivendi Universal SA, the largest member of the Big 4 Organised Music gang, the others being EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG. “Vivendi … staggered back from bankruptcy after ex-chairman Jean-Marie Messier`s spending excesses brought it close to ruin,” said a 2004 p2pnet story, going on: “At one point, French prosecutors were examining whether or not Vivendi deliberately misled investors while it was being run by Messier, who himself faced possible class-actions in the US. “It was also under criminal investigation in the US.” Now, French prosecutors investigating alleged insider trading at Vivendi Universal have decided there’s no case against Jean-Marie Messier, says Reuters. “The prosecutors will recommend that charges be dropped against Messier and all others who were under suspicion, including Warner Music Group Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr,” it says.
3 Sony lawyer who ‘misspoke’ joins RIAA Jennifer Pariser, the daughter of a judge who, according to RIAA truth adjustment specialist Cary Sherman ”misspoke” during the first Capitol Records v. Thomas trial a little more than a year ago, must nonetheless have impressed him. She’s been hired by the RIAA …
4 The RIAA: family devastation specialists Meet Brittany Kruger.She says she’s a junior at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. But she’s not, says the RIAA. She’s a hard-core criminal and a thief, a massive online distributor of copyrighted music who steals from the mullti-billion-dollar corporate record industry. Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) say they’re decent and hard-pressed companies struggling desperately against the “devastation” caused by criminals and thieves who steal music online. Thieves like Britanny. They say they’re “forced” to “educate” kids as young as 10 about the evils of copyright infringement, all the while threatening them with court cases as they extort cash payments through specious “settlement centres”. However, the only people to be devastated are the families who are pilloried, humiliated, victimised, by the corporate music industry and their various ‘trade’ organisations such as the RIAA, run by ex-politico Mitch Bainwol and corporate lawyer Cary Sherman.
4 Obama hires another RIAA lawyer Things just got a lot worse over in Obamaland. Or better, if you happen to be Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US). Regular readers will remember the name Donald Verrilli (right). He’s a Jenner and Block employee named by the Hollywood Reporter as one of the top 100 ‘Power Lawyers’ in the entertainment industry, bragged J&B. In Excess Copyright, Canadian copyright lawyer Howard Knopf notes Verrilli “fought and won the Grokster case for the music industry in the US Supreme Court”. He also fought and lost the Jammie Thomas case, the only one of the thousands of RIAA allegations of “illegal file sharing” (there is no such crime) to have made it into a civil courtroom, and which is slated for retrial. And now Verrilli has been named associate deputy attorney general …
6 Springsteen angry over Ticketmaster rip-off The Boss is angry twice over with Ticketmaster. The biggie ticket seller and Live Nation are close to a merger, says the Wall Street Journal. It would mean a consolidation of, “two of the most powerful forces in the music industry under one roof,” it says. Can you say monopoly? Bruce Springsteen says he’s angry over the possible marriage, and also because some of his fans were sent to TicketsNow.com, a Ticketmaster resale site, where tickets for one of his shows were being sold at well over the odds. Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff described the rip-off as “inadvertent”.
6 Good vibrations concert for deaf people Now this is cool. And useful. And, well, great! It’s a concert for deaf people, or people with serious hearing problems. And people interested in leading edge music technology. And it’s a(nother) Canadian first.
9 Ruckus bites the dust In yet another blow to the corporate music industry, Ruckus, know by some as Fuckus, the RIAA-touted ‘independent’ corporate music service designed to shoehorn ‘product’ into American schools, is no more. Visitors to the site now see the graphic on the right, and Michael Castello, director of student initiatives, Student Government Association, and USMSC representative at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, wonders if p2pnet readers might have a few ideas for a replacement. Telling p2pnet about the happy event, “Ruckus music is shutting down for good (along with its DRM servers),” he says. “What’s particularly interesting about this one is that they inked deals with taxpayer-funded university systems, like the University System of Maryland, to unilaterally promote their service. “Basically, we as students paid for it whether we liked it or not.”
9 RIAA v Jammie Thomas now May 11 “Isn’t it unusual to schedule a settlement conference for 2 days? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.” So says Recording Industry vs The People’s Ray Beckerman on the news that the now famous RIAA re-trial of a single mother, Jammie Thomas, against the corporate music industry, has been adjourned until May 11. Michael Davis, the judge who heard the case the case, admitted he’d made a serious mistake in law and eventually scheduled a new trial for March 9. Jammie had been ordered to find almost a quarter of a million dollars in damages. Now the parties have been ordered to attend a settlement conference March 30 and 31, says Beckerman …
9 Tenenbaum team’s ‘collaborative lawyering’ Brittany Kruger is the newest member of a small group of three people who’ve been attacked by a vicious extortion organisation acting on behalf of a MAFIA-like gang with four members. The three are accused of being criminals and thieves whose activities have cost thousands of workers their jobs, according to RIAA spinster Cara Duckworth. The second victim, whose case is showing Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG up for what they are – venal music companies with nothing but contempt for the people who keep them in business – is Jammie Thomas, the single mum ordered to pay close to a quarter of a million dollars to the Big 4. Her case has now been set for May 11 after the judge who made it admitted he’d made a serious error in law. The third is Joel Tenebaum, a Boston student who’s lucky enough to have student lawyers, led by Harvard professor Charles Nesson, behind him. The team has already made its mark and now it’s come up with a novel idea to encourage “Collaborative Lawyering“. The idea is to get anyone who’s interested to submit suggestions.
10 Ticketmaster sued for scalping in Canada. $533.65 vs $133.00.
10 Rightsholder: someone who has you by the balls Rights can’t be granted. That’s why they’re called ‘rights’ and not ‘privileges’. Right? In fact, a ‘rightsholder’ is a euphemism for someone who’s privileged with the suspension of your rights and the commercial exploitation thereof, as in ‘testiclesholder,’ says Crosbie Fitch. Put another way, it’s not their goolies they’ve been granted a grip on, but yours, he says, going on his Digital Productions blog …
11 Canadian sentenced to beheading reprieved A Canadian student sentenced to death by beheading in Saudi Arabaia has been reprieved, says the Canwest News Service. Mohamed Kohail from Montreal was condemned for killing a 19-year-old Syrian man in January, 2007, in Jeddah, says the story.
11 P2P and File Sharing 101 This article is designed to be informative (biased opinion included ) and educational for anyone thinking about file sharing, but who’s unsure, scared, or has no clue how to go about it ’safely’.But first, let’s get some basic terminology down, and debunk any propaganda you may have read. P2P by definition is the ability of one computer to connect to another across the internet. Similar protocols such as networking are examples of computer connectivity. If you have more than one computer at home and they all connect via one device (router/hub) to the internet, then you have what’s known as distributive networking. If you do your job on a computer with others, then you have a distributive network. This debunks the MAFIAA gospel that only one computer can be connected to the internet at any given time. If you have ever ‘RDS’ed (Remote Desktop) to another computer, then you’ve experienced a peer to peer protocol. If you have IM (Instant Messaging), and it has file transfer abilities, once again, you’ve experienced a P2P protocol.
11 Reading aloud is illegal! [...] “One of the most interesting new features in Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-reader is the text-to-speech function built into the device,” says Fast Company. “It’s a primitive bed-time story reader, and while it won’t match, say, HAL 9000 for elegance in pronunciation, it’s a handy feature if you’re in a situation where hearing your book is preferable to reading the text.” The Author’s Guild, however, reckons the Kindle 2’s speech system illegal …
12 The Pirate Bay trial live via Twitter. Online coverage.
12 Tasers can kill, RCMP admits. Deadly ’stun guns’.
12 Facebook paid ConnectU trio $65 million In 2003 Mark Zuckerberg was hired by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, co-founders of one-time social network ConnectU, to do a bit of coding for them on their then Harvard Connection … ‘Facebook paid the founders of ConnectU $65 million to settle lawsuits accusing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for the wildly successful social-networking Web site …
13 Qtrax is back (cough, cough). ‘Same, clunky player’.
13 RIAA: still harassing Tanya Andersen Andersen is internationally famous. BusinessWeek recently wrote about her in a major story, and she’s been featured by on- and offline print and electronic media around the world. But she wishes that wasn’t the case. Because Tanya’s notoriety stems from the fact she’s a single mother on a medical disability pension who, with her lawyer, Lory Lybeck, took on Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA. And won.
13 Not-So-Golden-Oldies score copyright win You’d think rock ancients such as Paul McCartney, Cliff Richard (right), U2, Yoko Ono [Yoko Ono?], Barry Gibb, Petula Clark and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa [?] already have enough cash stashed away to keep themselves, their children, their children’s children, their children’s children’s children’s, and so on, in luxury. But No. The greedy sods want more. They were among 4,500 artists who last year signed a newspaper advertisement demanding the UK government extend the copyright in sound recordings to 95 years and now they’re, “celebrating a major victory” because a European Parliament committee says it’s OK to boost it to 95 years, says Times Online.
14 Dianne Feinstein, MPAA / RIAA representative Hardly was the blood dry on the Obama presidential inauguration documents when the news came that RIAA and other vested interest lawyers are to run the US Department of Justice. Now hard-core corporate entertainment industry stalwart Dianne Feinstein (see if you can guess which one she is) is trying to piggyback vested RIAA and MPAA interests on Barack Obama’s $838 billion economic stimulus package. And she’s using that tried and trusted favourite ‘kiddie porn’ as the means. You know how it goes. But hang on! Wasn’t there’s something about lobbyists being reined in with Obama in office? No worries, though. Feinstein isn’t a lobbyist. She’s an elected US senator and can therefore have only the interests of the people who put her into office at heart. So that’s okay, then.
16 Delete your file share apps RIGHT NOW ! A Chicago student threatened to kill herself after being terrorised by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA as part of their sue ‘em all marketing campaign .
16 New RIAA child mind-rape package. Music Rules.
17 The Pirate Bay trial, live and online. Day One.
17 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Two. Distributed Hash Tables.
17 Doomed to ‘life without music’ says RIAA Are you ready for this? The “piracy of America’s creative genius by certain elements in other countries – particularly Internet-driven infringements – are [sic] drawing us towards life without music.”
18 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Three. ‘Small change’.
18 Canada – ’safe haven for Internet pirates’ Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and US president Barack Obama are scheduled for a sit-down tomorrow and according to the Toronto Star, with Obama will be, “a raft of his most powerful political deputies”. The pow-wow will kick off with a “15-minute one-on-one meeting,” then a “restricted” meeting with senior officials, followed by a working lunch with officials, says CTV. At the top of the agenda will be the worsening economic crisis and given that Hollywood and the Big 4 record labels claim world economies depend on them and their ‘product,’ will the double act of Tom Perrelli and Don Verrilli, two RIAA henchman who are now among those in charge of the US Department of Justice, be included in Obama’s entourage? And if they are, will Canada’s, “regrettable but well-deserved reputation as a safe haven for Internet pirates” be included in topics for discussion? According to entertainment industry’s International Intellectual Property Alliance(IIPA) ’special’ 301 ‘report,’ “A number of the world’s most notorious and prolific BitTorrent sites for online piracy are hosted or have operators based in Canada.”
18 Cocal Cola Super Bowl ad. Getting the message across.
18 Mother sues Scientology over son’s suicide. Kyle Thomas Brennan.
19 Davenport Lyons attacks Wikileaks. Extortion letter.
19 SOCAN wants bloggers regulated. ‘Constraints on Canadian sites’.
19 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Four. Neij’s turn.
20 Canada ‘weak in the knees’ over Obama Obama eats treats, leaves. And that about sums it up. It’s an Ottawa Citizen headline to its story on US president Barack Obama’s first official ‘international’ trip when he made it over the border to Canada, there to meet Canadian Conservative leader (and, incidentally, prime minister) Stephen Harper.
20 Responsible journalism defence in Canada?. Landmark case.
20 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Five. TPB advertising deals.
20 Man shoots TV It had to happen. “Alarm and confusion continues to spread across America as television sets go dark, depriving millions of people of their only source of communication with the outside world,” says a p2pnet post. That was because February 17, “was the official termination day for Americans with unauthorised TV sets which, without special gear, were doomed to crash, their signals vanishing down the analog hole.” A man angry about the shut-off of his cable TV service, “shot his television set Wednesday afternoon and then prompted a two-hour standoff with police before leaving his house and surrendering”…
21 ‘TechCrunch is full of shit’ – Last.fm. Or should that be Erick Schonfeld?
21 RIAA Music Rules – ’steaming pile of poo’. ‘Indoctrination, not propaganda’.
23 Lobbying under Barack Obama “Hi Jon,” says Media Guy in a Reader’s Write, “I’m pretty sure you’ll be interested in this for a follow on your other posts: http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/02/19/us-congressional-uspto-officials-see-geneva-policymaking-up-close/” to yesterday’s post urging Barack Obama not to work for the RIAA. The item cited is indeed interesting suggesting, as it does, that vested-interest taxpayer funded junkets have already begun under Obama. Says William New in Intellectual Property Watch, “A small group of United States congressional staff and officials from the Obama administration working on intellectual property issues were in Geneva this week to discuss IP policy with representatives of intergovernmental organisations and industry, according to sources.”
23 CRTC ‘ignored evidence’ in Bell throttling case: report. ‘Inaccurate facts’.
23 Probation only for Canadian camcorder Hollywood’s Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association is angry over a sentence imposed on an alleged camcording file sharer. Montrealer Louis Rene Hache, 23, is said to have recorded Dan in Real Life at a Guzzo theatre, said p2pnet. He was subsequently charged under the Criminal Code, facing one count of recording in a movie theatre, and one of recording in a movie theatre for commercial distribution. But the CMPDA isn’t upset over the injustice of it all. Rather, it was counting on him getting jail time. Instead, justice Lacerte Lamontagne sentenced him to 24 months’ probation and 120 hours of community service, says the MPAA clone …
24 Downloading OK, Norway minister tells IFPI Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) probably figured Norway’s BÃ¥rd Vegar Solhjell, minister for education, would roll right over when it [the IFPI] ordered the country’s largest internet provider Telenor to block Pirate Bay. But all it achieved was to encourage him to, “defend the principle of file sharing,” says The Guardian. “All previous technology advances have led to fears that the older format would die,” he blogged, adding: “But TV did not kill radio, the web did not kill the book, and the download is not going to kill music.”
24 We Like Skype, say Italian crooks Italian crooks are increasingly using VoIP to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts, says Direzione Nazionale Antimafia, the anti-Mafia office in Rome, quoted by the IDG News Service. “Police officers in Milan say organized crime, arms and drugs traffickers, and prostitution rings are turning to Skype and other systems of VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) telephony in order to frustrate investigators,” it says.
24 New twist in Tenenbaum v the RIAA. Judicial Conference resolution.
24 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Seven. Two-hour session.
24 P2P File Sharing 102: the REAL nitty gritty. To use and not to use.
25 Jackson Browne v John McCain copyright case. Set for April.
25 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Eight. ‘Impossible to compete with free’.
25 Barenaked Ladies Page quits the band. BNL BLOG IS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE That’s all you see when you head over to the Barenaked Ladies blog. And that’s because it’s lead singer and front man Steve Page (right) has quit. When Page was busted for possession of cocaine, “We are confident that our client, Stephen Page, will be completely exonerated,” CTV had Nettwerk Music boss Terry McBride, Page’s manager, saying. But McBride was wrong.
25 ‘Kindle Swindle’ and the Authors Guild Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights. That seems to be the bottom line bottomline in what’s being called the Kindle Swindle. The Kindle is a wireless, portable reading device, p2pnet reported in 2007. The newly released Kindle 2, however, handles text in and out.Vocally. And that’s a big problem, writes Roy Blount jr in a New York Times OpEd. He’s president of the Authors Guild, “whose mission is to sustain book-writing as a viable occupation”.
25 Eircom says it won’t block The Pirate Bay [ ... ] “Ireland’s largest ISP won’t block The Pirate Bay – the embattled BitTorrent search engine and tracker — absent a court order,the IDG News Service has a spokesman saying. “Eircom is aware of copyright infringement issues but will not block The Pirate Bay unless major record labels can obtain a court order requiring it and other ISPs (Internet service providers) to do so,” he said.
26 The Pirate Bay vs Them: Day Nine. ‘My God, everything!’.
26 Quebecor favours Canada 3 strikes policy Quebecor, which owns Quebec ISP Videotron, says CRTC network management policies should include the possibility of a Canadian three strikes model. “As noted yesterday, CIRPA believes that content blocking of P2P sites should be considered,” says Michael Geist, going on “while ISPs in countries such as New Zealand are pushing back against ‘graduated response’ policies that would create a three strikes and you’re out policy terminating subscribers based on unproven allegations of copyright infringement,” Quebecor argues in favour of certain instances of ISPs controlling content, including anti-spam or child pornography blocking. Moreover, he says, “it suggests that copyright policies that build upon the graduated response policies in other countries should be added to the list of content controls that benefit society.“The Quebecor submission achieves a remarkable combination – arguing against net neutrality and for a three strikes approach that would terminate its own subscribers,” he adds. “That any ISP could demonstrate such hostility toward its own customers provides a clear indicator of the utter lack of broadband competition in Canada and serves as a warning that the New Zealand fight could eventually make its way here.”
26 Sweden passes anti-P2P, anti-fileshare law With the trial targetting The Pirate Bay nearing its end, the Swedish division of the corporate movie and music industries has passed legislation designed to make it easier for the cartels to investigate suspected cases of illegal file sharing — even though there’s no such offence. “The vote came following a spirited debate between Sweden’s Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask (right), and detractors of the file sharing bill, which is based on the European Union’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED),” says The Local.
26 Australia censorship plans ’scuttled’ PLEASE, PLEASE let there be another planet out there where commonsense, honesty, decency and respect are the norm, and where corporations have been stripped of their ‘person’ status. And PLEASE tell us how to find it!Because things are really looking grim on Planet Earth where every day, more government-sanctioned corporate outrages occur. It’s a constant fight between the We, the People, and Them, the corrupt companies and their bought-and-paid-for politicians, who try to keep us in the dark, like mushrooms, feeding us bullshit. It’s tiring but, thanks to the Net and the fact People 2 People communications have taken over from the corporate media which used to be outsole sources of data and information, we’re making progress. In one of the latest wins, the Australian government’s efforts to censor the Net have effectively been scuttled, says the Sydney Morning Herald. And according to the story, it’s largely down to independent senator Nick Xenophon who joined the Greens and Opposition to block legislation required to get the scheme started.
26 Big 4 labels threaten small Irish ISPs Ireland’s largest ISP, eircom, feeling the wrath of the feral corporate music industry in its tireless fight to gain complete and total control of how, and by whom, music is distributed online, has undertaken to rat out its own users. Stomp Anyone Who Gets In The Way, is the official Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG stance in their bizarre war against their own customers. Eircom won’t block The Pirate Bay, absent a court order, the IDG News Service has a spokesman saying. But that still leaves companies such as Blacknight in the firing line. “I don’t want to get into the entire IRMA vs Eircom and IRMA vs ISPs debacle,” says the company’s Michele Neylon.
27 Google DoubleClick malicious ad warning “Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network has discovered that the eWeek.com Web site is serving malicious advertisements (malvertisements) to visitors,” it said. Advertising company Google is dangerous and not to be trusted: that we know. With that in kind, Google’s DoubleClick ad network was, “once again been caught distributing malicious banner displays, this time on the home page of eWeek,” as The Register put it. “Unsuspecting end users who browse the Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings-owned site were presented with malvertisements with invisible iframes that redirect them to attack websites, according to researchers at Websense,” it said.
27 Facebook: still trying to snow users. ‘Let down Guys – V. Let Down’.
27 Second Santangelo case settled – almost It looks as though Michelle and Bobby Santangelo are finally out from under. The two, together with their mother, were early victims of the twisted RIAA sue ‘em all fear campaign under which first the parent(s), in this case Patti, and then the children, are accused of being massive online distributors of copyrighted music so they can be publicly humiliated and embarrassed … Now, “the parties have reached a Settlement-in-Principle and the underlying work is being prepared the signature,” says a court document. “All aspects of the settlement are expected to be concluded and filed with the court by March 18, 2009.” Details haven’t been disclosed.
28 Lobbying: CRIA leads the way. But is it on the way out?
28 Patti Santangelo v RIAA: the path of courage Patti Santangelo is a wonderful person and I’m really glad for her and two of her five children, Michelle and Bobby, that the RIAA’s vicious war against them is now all-but over. They were the first family to really put up a fight against Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG and their RIAA and it could be said they paved the way for many, if not most, of other RIAA victims who, inspired by her example, decided they weren’t going to take it either. Tanya Andersen is now famous as the woman who took the RIAA on and won. And as she told me this morning, that might never have happened had it not been for Patti’s example. “Her case was the one that got me going,” Tanya said. “When the RIAA came after me, I didn’t know anything and it was only by reading about Patti that I was able to get any information. “She stood up against them and made other people understand they could do the same.”
Jon Newton – p2pnet
- p2pnet 2009 January roundup
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