Earth: Mostly Harmless

Appropriate This Movie When Technology Permits

The awesomely-named League of Noble Peers has released the second part of the Steal This Film project. It’s superbly well-researched, intelligent and insightful.

Get it here via BitTorrent. If your machine will handle it, get the 720p HD version - it looks great.

If you missed the previous installment (watch here on Google video), here’s a quick catch-up. The League of Noble Peers, an anonymous collective of likeminded copyleft people in continental Europe released the first part in August 2006. This part concentrated on the raid on The Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracker by Svenska Antipiratbyrån, the Swedish anti-piracy bureau. It also traced the evolution of new distribution mechanisms and the development of the new copy-culture, taking examples from Brazil, the United States, Russia and Africa.

The second part looks at the historical evolution of copyright, and speculates on its future (to sum up: “doomed”). The production values are much better, and they make really nice use of archive clips and bespoke animations (*LOVE* the rabbits bit…).

They’re both very nice pieces of film-making. And the League claims that those who donate US$15 or more towards the production costs of the next instalment will receive a ‘mystery gift pack’…

The opening screen is a nice touch:

Enjoy.

Chuck Norris on Chuck Norris Facts

It’s remarkable that some of his own aphorisms are as ridiculous as the meme facts. In his own inimitable words:

Alleged Chuck Norris Fact: “Chuck Norris’ tears can cure cancer. Too bad he never cries. Ever.”

There was a man whose tears could cure cancer or any other disease, including the real cause of all diseases – sin. His blood did. His name was Jesus, not Chuck Norris.

Indeed, Chuck. Indeed. It’s their fault.

And now, he sues Penguin.

Via MetaFilter

Movable Type - open source version now available

Just a note to point out that Six Apart has released an open-source version of Moveable Type. It’s a free download, and is released under the GNU GPL version 2 license. Get it while it’s hot.

Ramblings on music distribution

This is a bit of a brain-fart, but I’ve wanted to make some observations about digital content distribution for some time - particularly music, but I think what I have to say applies to most other digital commodities. Please note that IANAL (I am not a lawyer) and IANAE (I am not an economist), so I might be talking out of my rear end, so to speak.

In an online marketplace where ‘pirate’ and ‘genuine’ copies are available, the fundamental difference between the two methods of acquisition is that people do not pay for the ‘pirate’ copies, but pay for the genuine ones.

People have both options, to varying degrees. iTunes is easy to use, but BitTorrent clients are getting better all the time in terms of usability. Clearly, a lot of people both ‘buy’ and pirate, but let’s maintain the distinction for the purposes of this discussion.

Continue reading Ramblings on music distribution…