Music: Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt by We Are Scientists

I had my last final on Wednesday, so the semester is officially over. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch but I think I may have pulled off another A semester - we'll see. I'm glad the semester is over, it's really good to get a break, I just wish I could have stayed in the city. I put my life off for about 2 weeks during the finals madness, and now that I finally have time to pick up the slack and catch up on things, I'm back in Blackstone, away from all the stuff I put on hold. Well I'm doing what I can and trying to enjoy the peace.

This isn't one of those blogs where there are daily news updates on what's happening in the industry or anything (I'm not John C. Dvorak, thank god), but sometimes shit is just too ridiculous not to mention. In their neverending quest to fight for justice, the music industry has turned on - lyrics sites. Yeah, the sites where you can find the lyrics to songs. They apparently rob artists of the ability to earn a living. The music industry just keeps taking over, bit by bit - a 1984 reference would probably be fitting here, and I'd make one if I had ever read that book. The music industry doesn't even offer a competing pay-for-lyrics service, so I really fail to see how this robs anyone of money - reading the lyrics is not a substitution for hearing the song. And if the industry is implying you have to purchase the CD to get the lyrics then we've just reached a whole new level of crazy - not to mention the fact that less than 50% of CD booklets even have the damn lyrics these days (believe me, I wish all CDs came with the lyrics). And what about legal downloads? Those sure as hell don't come with lyrics. Lyrics sites have enabled me to identify songs I've heard on the radio or wherever else, leading me to later purchase the CD. The music industry is really shooting itself in the foot if it's successful in this endeavor - not only are they killing a great source of free advertising, they are drumming up some serious bad will, something they already have plenty of.

This on the tail of the recent copy-protection fiasco is certainly not a smart move. Recent CDs from Sony-BMG have had a copy protection that installs device drivers on your computer that make any Sony-BMG CD using this copy protection scheme skip horribly, making them all but useless when used with your computer - the goal of this is to prevent ripping the CD into MP3's which could theoretically be distributed on the internet. This is nothing new (unfortunately), but the twist here is that this new scheme uses a rootkit - a piece of software that hides files on your computer and makes them completely undetectable by all normal means until the rootkit is disabled; in this particular case, all files beginning with the dollar sign, '$', were hidden. So now not only can you not remove this piece of software if you don't want it, but your computer is wide open to viruses written to take advantage of this new way to hide files. Sony issued an uninstaller on their site, but the software digs in so deep into the operating system that removing it can cause system instability. Lawsuits were filed and the whole deal, and all CDs using this protection scheme were recalled. But I'm sure they'll be back with something new in no time. The whole idea of copy-protecting CDs is ridiculous. They're only punishing the people who actually buy CDs. These schemes do nothing to stop piracy - there is always someone out there who will crack the protection and get it out on the internet. And once it's out there, it's out there, and there's no way to stop it. Not that I encourage piracy, but hurting the loyal customers who buy CDs and just want to put them on their damn iPod is not the answer.

All this ill-will because of their controlling bullshit, and still they harp over reduced sales. They're all over iTunes to get them to raise prices - prices are already high enough, Steve Jobs and Apple want to lower prices, but the music industry will never go for that. The execs of the record labels look at the number of iPod sales and think music download sales should be directly proportional to that. But how many people do you know who fill up their whole iPod with legally downloaded music? People either have small amounts of legal music, pirated music, or music ripped from CDs (or whatever combination). The labels are expecting people to rebuy everything like they did during the transition between cassettes and CDs. But this time we have the power to convert. I can take a CD and in ~10 minutes rip it into a high-quality mp3, higher quality than I could get from iTunes or Napster or wherever. There is no way in hell I'm going to rebuy everything from iTunes, and there's no reason I should have to. I purchased the CD legally. And here's where it connects to anti-piracy copy protection - it's legal to make copies of media you've purchased, but illegal to circumvent copy protection. Oh what a wonderful slippery slope we're on! The morality of what is going on should be clear-cut, but no one has the money or lawyers to fight these guys, and they already have their claws into the government. It's wonderful.

Well I think that's enough ranting for now. I had just seen the Mission:Impossible:3 trailer and was considering doing a second part of the rant where I discuss how there has to be a scene where Tom Cruise runs like a gazelle in every movie he's ever been in, but I think I'm done for now. If you really need your fix of Tom Cruise hating, check out the South Park episode where they attack Scientology. Tom Cruise physically locks himself into a closet, prompting a running-gag where character after character basically says "C'mon Tom, this is ridiculous, just come out of the closet, you aren't fooling anybody." The end of the episode has Scientologists doing what they do best - threatening to sue. "We'll sue you kid! We'll sue your ass... and your balls!" "I'll sue you in England!"

I'm working on the Best of 2005 list/dissertation, it may be up soon. Or maybe not.

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