Selection from "Free Culture"

(I of course enjoy the Pirates chapter, but feel like everyone and their mother would want to do the recording industry, so why not do the fleeing film makers and the creation of Hollywood?  That'd be fun too)

CHAPTER FOUR: “Pirates”

If “piracy” means using the creative property of others without their permission—if “if value, then right” is true—then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of “big media” today—film, records, radio, and cable TV—was born of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last generation’s pirates join this generation’s country club—until now.

Film

The film industry of Hollywood was built by fleeing pirates.1 Creators and directors migrated from the East Coast to California in the early twentieth century in part to escape controls that patents  granted the inventor of filmmaking, Thomas Edison. These controls were exercised through a  monopoly “trust,” the Motion Pictures Patents Company, and were based on Thomas Edison’s creative property—patents. Edison formed the MPPC to exercise the rights this creative property

gave him, and the MPPC was serious about the control it demanded. As one commentator tells one part of the story, 

A January 1909 deadline was set for all companies to comply with the license. By February, unlicensed outlaws, who referred to themselves as independents protested the trust and carried on

business without submitting to the Edison monopoly. In the summer of 1909 the independent movement was in full-swing, with producers and theater owners using illegal equipment and

imported film stock to create their own underground market. With the country experiencing a tremendous expansion in the number of nickelodeons, the Patents Company reacted to the independent movement by forming a strong-arm subsidiary known as the General Film Company to block the entry of non-licensed independents.With coercive tactics that have become legendary,

General Film confiscated unlicensed equipment, discontinued product supply to theaters which showed unlicensed films, and effectively monopolized distribution with the acquisition of all

U.S. film exchanges, except for the one owned by the independent William Fox who defied the Trust even after his license was revoked. The Napsters of those days, the “independents,” were companies like Fox. And no less than today, these independents were vigorously resisted.

“Shooting was disrupted by machinery stolen, and ‘accidents’ resulting in loss of negatives, equipment, buildings and sometimes life and limb frequently occurred.”3 That led the independents to flee the East Coast. California was remote enough from Edison’s reach that filmmakers

there could pirate his inventions without fear of the law.And the leaders of Hollywood filmmaking, Fox most prominently, did just that. Of course, California grew quickly, and the effective enforcement of federal law eventually spread west. But because patents grant the

patent holder a truly “limited” monopoly (just seventeen years at that time), by the time enough federal marshals appeared, the patents had expired. A new industry had been born, in part from the piracy of Edison’s creative property.

Mash-Ups

"Videotapez"
This is probably my favorite mash-up.  I had heard it before the class heard it at the end of the Rip!
The mixer is Amp Live mashing up Radiohead and Del the Funky Homosapien.  I can probably rap this entire song.


The Cure vs. Peter Bjorn and John - "Young Folks Love Cats"
Who doesn't like the cure?  Seriously.  And "Young Folks" was a sleeper hit on the interwebs in 2008.  So this is nothing but goodness.

2nd Web Assignment Revision + ScreenCast

The Hype Machine: Helping Me Pirate Music and Find New Artists Since 2005

                So long as you don’t go and tell the RIAA on me, I will admit here and now in this essay that I rarely purchase music anymore.  I am a digital pirate.  Scoff at the now tired and egotistical sounding nomenclature if you will, but it is true.  Roughly 80% of the music I “own” has been downloaded via the internet.  I am not doing anything as sinister as raping, pillaging, or contracting scurvy like your regular pirate does.  The worst thing I do is use torrents to get full albums.  So maybe “aggressive downloader” is a better title than Internet Highwayman.  When I am not downloading full length albums, however, I am surfing the internet for new music that tickles my fancy.  And, while these fancies often lead me to want to illegally download their albums, the tools I use to find new music are not by any means sinister programs.  What is my main weapon in this scouting process?  A little website called The Hype Machine.  

                The Hype Machine is a popular blog aggregator (an aggregator collects information from a set kind of website, for instance, blogs).  More specifically, The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator.  It searches all blogs on the internet for downloadable MP3 content and collects the information for you to view on its site.  The more a song or artist is blogged about on the web with a specific song of theirs, the more frequently they will appear on The Hype Machine, just like any search engine.  If you are interested in looking up a specific artist for upcoming album news or tour dates or even the rare cover song they have recorded, The Hype Machine can give you all of that and more through every single blogger that talks about it on the web.  Each search will provide you with all the resulted MP3s found and a play button beside each so you may listen to it as much as you like through the site.  Also, because the site searches for MP3s on blogs, each search result will give you a link to the specific blog that is hosting the MP3 for download more often than not.  There are also often links for Amazon and iTunes if you are an honest person.

                Now I know what you are thinking.  This doesn’t sound like the same kind of social media website as Facebook or Twitter.  And you are right.  It is not.  The interactions between users are much more subtle.  But they are there nonetheless.  Just like other sites, you can create a user account and favorite the songs you find while you search and explore new music or old music you have yet to find on the internet.  You can link up with another famous music website, last.fm, and whenever you listen to songs on The Hype Machine, just like when you listen to music on last.fm’s website or iTunes, it will “scrobble” that song onto your profile there.  Users can also explore The Hype Machine for the most “favorited” music in the past 3 days by other users.  This is the site’s own way of trending music just how Twitter trends topics.  It isn’t based on what is the most blogged about (which, can still affect the amount of people who select to “like” the song) but instead, it has a different purpose.  This is The Hype Machine helping spread new and popular music to other users across the web.  

                Think you know the most blogged about songs from 2009?  Or maybe you want to know what some of your favorite music blogs like Stereogum or I Guess I’m Floating thought were the best songs from last year?  The Hype Machine can help you there as well.  All of these different features to the website have one massive upside to them that protects The Hype Machine from the RIAA’s legal reach.  No matter what you click on at The Hype Machine, in the end you will end up at a blog with only one MP3 to download.  Very rarely will you find full-length albums available through the site.  There is no harm in hosting just one MP3 to your blog for download (or even one MP3 per post as many sites do).  

                In terms of Ethan Zuckerman’s “Cute Cat Theory” uniting activists with casual browsers, the players here are a bit different from activists and cute cat viewers.  Take for example, me – the proverbial internet downloader.  If I can find it online for free, I will do my best to make it mine.  I use Hype Machine to find new and upcoming music, but my main purpose for it is to scout blogs that can lead me to free albums.  Meanwhile, next to me is you, the casual music listener.  While I hide behind the guise that The Hype Machine creates for me in searching for music here and downloading sample songs from albums and rare covers and b-sides, you, the casual music listener will go to The Hype Machine to see what cool new music is available and maybe even blog about it.  You can tweet about it, and when you post the song you found on your tumblr or facebook, your friends will see it and either like the song or reblog it themselves, passing it further down the line.  Now, if the RIAA found reason to come after me because of my uses of The Hype Machine in downloading music illegally alongside of using torrents and zipfiles, you, the casual music listener will also suddenly come up in arms to protect your wonderful music browsing website.  Music is an incredibly powerful tool on the internet today.  It unites people very quickly and very vehemently because we all love a good jam and we’re willing to fight to protect said jams.  Unlike “Cute Cat Theory”, however, where governments block websites that also are used in some form of dissidence, The Hype Machine does not really have such traffic.  If this website were ever blocked for any reason, it would be the government blocking a website thanks to a corporation’s attempts at stopping free media traffic.  Conflicts of interest like this often do not succeed.  So for now, we are safe to enjoy our domain among the internet, sharing music with one another.

                In the same vein, Wesch’s “An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube” shows us that, just like Gary Brolsma and a Moldovan pop song called “Numa Numa” brought millions of people together through video and song; The Hype Machine attempts to bring people together through music.  As more and more people visit The Hype Machine and more and more people blog about music they find, they begin to feed their own searches causing more people to find it via the most blogged about or most “favorite” pages.  The Hype Machine takes user content and uses it to help attract people to more music so that they can post about it as well and create even more user content.  As this recycling effect continues to grow and expand, more and more music that was once trapped in regional bubbles prior to the internet, or merely prior to a band’s ability to get their Myspace page up, can now be heard all around the world and even become blogged enough to gather fans and support to attempt tours and record deals.  One such example is youtube musician, Kiersten Holine.  Holine’s many covers of famous songs she uploaded onto YouTube helped her reach internet stardom.  She now has well followed Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, and Last.fm accounts all thanks to the grass roots movement people did with her music.  Once people heard her do songs on YouTube, they went searching for the song, The Hype Machine was a more than willing participant in fueling her success.  The networking of all these sites in one can be a powerful tool, not only in someone’s career as a musician or band, but also in their lives in general.  These ultimate ways of connecting and reconnecting and reblogging and retweeting spin an almost uncountable amount of free advertising for someone who maybe just likes to sing their favorite Bob Marley song.  One day, you’re singing into your webcam, the next you’re singing into a microphone on stage next to Ben Folds.

Also being incredibly beautiful doesn't hurt either.

                All in all, The Hype Machine is in no way a sinister website out to take musicians’ money.  If anything, it helps to spread the diversity of music that often times is not popular enough to make it out of their garage, let alone attempt to take on top 40 songs and artists.  The Hype Machine is a website for the underdog and already established artist alike, just as it is for me, the aggressive downloader and you, the casual listener.  If the worst thing this website does is fuel someone’s want for more music in their life, then The Hype Machine can be nothing short of good for all the world.

The Hype Machine: Helping Me Pirate Music & Find Great New Artists Since 2005

                So long as you don’t go and tell the RIAA on me, I will admit here and now in this essay that I rarely purchase music anymore.  I am a digital pirate.  Scoff at the now tired and egotistical sounding nomenclature if you will, but it is true.  Roughly 80% of the music I “own” has been downloaded via the internet.  I am not doing anything as sinister as raping, pillaging, or contracting scurvy like your regular pirate does however.  The worst thing I do is use torrents to get full albums.  So maybe “aggressive downloader” is a better title.  When I am not downloading full length albums, however, I am surfing the internet for new music that tickles my fancy and leads me to want to illegally download their albums as well.  My main weapon in that scouting process?  A little website called The Hype Machine.  

                The Hype Machine is a popular blog aggregator (meaning it collects information from only blogs).  More specifically, The Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator.  It searches all blogs on the internet for downloadable MP3 content and collects the information for you to view on its site.  The more a song or artist is blogged about on the web with a specific song of theirs, the more frequently they will appear on The Hype Machine, just like any search engine.  If you are interested in looking up a specific artist for upcoming album news or tour dates or even the rare cover song they have recorded, The Hype Machine can give you all of that and more through every single blogger that talks about it on the web.  Each search will provide you with all the resulted MP3s found and a play button beside each so you may listen to it as much as you like through the site.  Also, because the site searches for MP3s on blogs, each search result will give you a link to the specific blog that is hosting the MP3 for download more often than not.  There are also often links for Amazon and iTunes if you are an honest person.
                Now I know what you are thinking.  This doesn’t sound like the same kind of social media website as Facebook or Twitter.  And you are right.  It is not.  The interactions between users are much less subtle.  But they are there nonetheless.  Just like other sites, you can create a user account and favorite the songs you find while you search and explore new music or old music you have yet to find on the internet.  You can link up with another famous music website, last.fm, and whenever you listen to songs on The Hype Machine, just like when you listen to music on last.fm’s website or iTunes, it will “scrobble” that song onto your profile there.  Users can also explore The Hype Machine for the most “favorited” music in the past 3 days by other users.  This is the site’s own way of trending music just how Twitter trends topics.  It isn’t based on what is the most blogged about (which, can still affect the amount of people who select to “like” the song) but instead, it has a different purpose.  This is The Hype Machine helping spread new and popular music to other users across the web. 
                Think you know the most blogged about songs from 2009?  Or maybe you want to know what some of your favorite music blogs like Stereogum or I Guess I’m Floating thought were the best songs from last year?  The Hype Machine can help you there as well.  All of these different features to the website have one massive upside to them that protects The Hype Machine from the RIAA’s legal reach.  No matter what you click on at The Hype Machine, in the end you will end up at a blog with only one MP3 to download.  There are very rarely full-length albums available through the site.  There is no harm in hosting just one MP3 to your blog for download (or even one MP3 per post as many sites do). 
                In terms of Ethan Zuckerman’s Cute Cat Theory uniting activists with casual browsers, the players here are a bit different from activists and cute cat viewers.  Take for example, me – the proverbial internet downloader.  If I can find it online for free, I will do my best to make it mine.  I use Hype Machine to find new and upcoming music, but my main purpose for it is to scout blogs that can lead me to free albums.  Meanwhile, next to me is you, the casual music listener.  While I hide behind the guise that The Hype Machine creates for me in searching for music here and downloading sample songs from albums and rare covers and b-sides, you, the casual music listener will go to The Hype Machine to see what cool new music is available and maybe even blog about it.  You can tweet about it, and when you post the song you found on your tumblr or facebook, your friends will see it and either like the song or reblog it themselves, passing it further down the line.  Now, if the RIAA found reason to come after me because of my uses of The Hype Machine in downloading music illegally alongside of using torrents and zipfiles, you, the casual music listener will also suddenly come up in arms to protect your wonderful music browsing website.  Music is an incredibly powerful tool on the internet today.  It unites people very quickly because we all love a good jam.  In this case, however, the government would be blocking a website thanks to a corporation’s attempts at stopping free media traffic instead of dissidence towards the country.  Much less sinister, yet still a punishable crime. 
                In the same vein, Wesch’s “An Anthropological Introduction to Youtube” shows us that, just like Gary Brolsma and a Moldovan pop song called “Numa Numa” brought millions of people together through video and song; The Hype Machine attempts to bring people together through music.  As more and more people visit The Hype Machine and more and more people blog about music they find, they begin to feed their own searches causing more people to find it via the most blogged about or most “favorite” pages.  The Hype Machine takes user content and uses it to help attract people to more music so that they can post about it as well and create even more user content.  As this recycling effect continues to grow and expand, more and more music that was once trapped in regional bubbles prior to the internet, or merely prior to a band’s ability to get their Myspace page up, can now be heard all around the world and even become blogged enough to gather fans and support to attempt tours and record deals. 

this guy may have gotten help from people reblogging his music.

                All in all, The Hype Machine is in no way a sinister website out to take musicians’ money.  If anything, it helps to spread the diversity of music that often times is not popular enough to make it out of their garage, let alone attempt to take on top 40 songs and artists.  The Hype Machine is a website for the underdog and already established artist alike, just as it is for me, the aggressive downloader and you, the casual listener.  

Weird Facts About My Blog Traffic.

So in looking at the stats page of my blog, I learned that of the 115 views I've received all time:

- 108 are from America
- 3 are from Canada
- 2 are from Russia
- 1 is from Japan
- 1 is from Netherlands

I got some weird traffic, but I found the traffic out of Russia to be the weirdest.  Somehow, www.yandex.ru, a Russian search engine, found my blog via the following search engine queries:

- "the area of not"
- "the area of not blowing"

That is not a typo and I did not leave out "rock."

Also, Sunny D and Rum:

Revised First Web Assignment

Here it is. 

My Website....Is Wonderful

Seriously.  Try and watch this for longer than 3 minutes.  I dare you not to have a seizure...or start dancing.