« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »

January 29, 2006

And Again With the Censorship!

Despite, recent hopes to the contrary, it looks like my Anti-Ketchup Shirt is down again. I think I'm going to have to call them. I'll keep you updated on any new developements. . . Tagged: ,

Posted by Greg at 2:28 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2006

Hype Machine Download Script

Update: Soon after writing this post, I received a very nice email from Hype Machine's Anthony Volodkin asking me to take down access to the script I described here. He explained that since the streamed mp3s can't be fed through the Coral server the script represented a danger to his bandwidth bills and since its existence implied that he maintains permanent links to downloadable versions of the mp3s it could get him in legal trouble. As a big fan of the service, I decided to remove access to my script and make a few other alterations to this post. Volodkin also, very kindly, agreed to let me reprint some of his email to me, which I have done below the post itself. I think the whole episode just goes to further illustrate the chilling effect that the mainstream music industry's fear of digital distribution -- and their great willingness to use invasive legal tools to excise the most creative agents of that distribution -- has had on new and vibrant methods for promoting even their own products.

It seems that recently all the traditional avenues for finding out about new music have dissolved into uselessness. I honestly can't remember the last time I listened to commercial radio and even the memories I have of doing so without horror at what I found are starting to get fuzzy; Rolling Stone and its ilk are more likely to feature Keira Knightley or some paleozoic sixties artifact than anything that could conceivably be labeled new; MTV, last I had cable, seemed to have just about abandoned music altogether (even on their myriad alternative channels) in favor of ever more 'lifestyle' programming (i.e. nearly naked attractive twenty-somethings running around exotic locations or going on secret dates in fighter planes while their friends tell their parents where they hide their pornography).

So, what's left? More and more, what's left is: mp3 blogs. Just individuals out there talking about music, bravely posting songs they like despite the potentially quite serious legal consequences of the musicians' and labels' ungratefulness. There are a lot of them and a lot of the best music to make it in the last couple of years first broke on their pages. But their very diversity and number makes them hard to navigate and even harder to keep track of. So, along came Hype Machine, a site that aggregates the feeds of selected mp3 blogs offering a great compound RSS feed of all of the blogged tracks and a searchable archive that's starting to get pretty deep. It's a great way to squeeze a bunch of the frantic mp3 blog activity through one narrow channel so that you can keep your eye on it.

There's one problem though. Once the files drop off of the original blog's hosting, they disappear from Hype Machine too. . .sort of. You see, the governing logic of the mp3 blog ecosystem is the fear of reprisals from representatives of the bands that the blogs are promoting. I know, it doesn't make any sense, but it happens. Bands and labels issue cease and desist letters to the very people who are in the process of becoming the gate keepers of taste for music lovers of the internet generation. Just look at any mp3 blog, you'll always see the "If you are the rights holder for any of these songs and you want them taken down just contact us immediately. Everyone else: please buy music, don't steal" mea culpa.

So, everyone's trying to keep the music out there while avoiding legal trouble. This results in some strange situations. For example, on Hype Machine, even after an mp3 drops off the original blog the blog post will still show up in searches and you can still listen to the songs in an onsite flash player, but you can't download them. If this last statement set off your alarm bells, then you may have anticipated the point I'm about to make:

You see, for Hype Machine to make the songs playable in their flash player, they have to put mp3s of them online. It turns out they make copies of the mp3s as they pass through their site, mirror them on a Coral Distribution Network (basically a system for taking the bandwidth burden off of the original blogger: once somebody listens to the mp3 on Hype Machine, they make a copy of it and then serve it to the next ten thousand visitors themselves rather than sticking the original blogger with an outrageous ISP bill; it's only the polite thing to do), and then put them online at URLs of their own, just like any other page on the internet.

Basically, what it comes down to is that Hype Machine's concession to "Digital Rights Management" -- to the desire of copyright holders to control how their audience uses their content -- is to make the music freely available online, but hidden behind obscure URLs which they never make public. It's the kind of decision that smart people would only make in a field run by fear and secrecy rather than a clear and specific public policy and precedent.

And now, here's where I was faced with a moral dilemma: as soon as I saw Hype Machine's flash player, I knew I could get to all the mp3s. You see, I'd seen the player before. It's the open source XSPF flash music player designed by Fabricio Zuardi. We use it ourselves on Music For Dozens. I know how it works. It uses a standard (XML) format to describe the name, title, and URL for each song in the playlist. It is designed to be machine readable. I knew I could make a pretty nifty little script that would allow me to search for tracks on Hype machine and then download the mp3s that I found whether or not Hype Machine made that feature publicly available.

The dilemma came in the question of whether or not to make the resulting script public. On the pro side, it's a pretty neat little hack, it would be useful to a lot of people, and Hype Machine are making this music available at normal (if hard to find) public urls, so they should expect people to hit them like any other. On the downside, if the script spread widely and everyone started downloading any mp3 they wanted from Hype Machine's archive, it could get them in legal trouble and so they would pretty soon have to do something to prevent this from working which could make their excellent service that I enjoy worse for everyone.

In the end, obviously, I decided to make the script available or I wouldn't be talking about it here. I thought that as a Ruby shell script (and one which might take a little setup to get running) it would only spread to enthusiasts (of either the musical or Rubyist variety) and therefore not put too much stress on Hype Machine itself. Also by releasing it with a relatively strict license I could prevent some other less ethical person from wrapping the same idea to in a quick-buck scheme which might hurt Hype Machine in exactly the way I'm trying to avoid.

Here previously followed a more detailed description of how the script worked along with a link to download it and some explanation of its interface. Instead, I offer (with his permission) some of Hype Machine-proprietor Anthony Volodkin's thoughts on the twin subjects of why he wanted me to remove the script and the dangers faced by creative projects like Hype Machine in this strange world:

I am really glad you understand the issues involved and why I've chosen to implement things in this fashion, preventing people from being able to download the audio. The setup tries to address both the capacity issues involved with serving such a massive amount of downloads (the Flash streaming takes place directly from my server without Coral (it's too slow), but the enclosure links in the RSS feed point to the Coralized URLs of those posted by the bloggers, as you've pointed out) and the massive gray area where mp3 blogs currently reside. I would love for both of these things to be different, but there is little I can do. Ultimately, all that I really want to happen is for people to discover music that they will want to hear on repeat for days, and if they still like it afterwards, buy the CD or the track over iTunes, eMusic and etc.

Tagged: , , , ,

Posted by Greg at 2:27 PM | Comments (3)

Cafe Press Censorship: Solved!

I think I finally beat Cafe Press's censorship algorithm. It turns out, I'd named the actual design file "ketchup.jpg". I uploaded it again, exactly the same, but under the new moniker: "lunch.jpg". Bang. Boom. Shirt's up. You can buy it. Always good to buy repressed art, right?

Lesson learned? Keep brands out of your file-naming scheme. I wonder if they do actually look at the design content in any automated way, hmm. . .

Tagged: ,

Posted by Greg at 3:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2006

Oregon E-Business and the Broadcast Flag

I don't usually write about politics here, but today's news of the return of the Broadcast Flag struck close enough to home that I felt compelled to talk about it and maybe call some of you to action. If you haven't heard about it before, the "broadcast flag" is a proposed mandate for a watermark on all digital content transmitted to televisions and radios. The watermark would allow the people who distribute the shows -- TV networks and movie studios -- to decide how they can be watched. For example, ABC could use the flag to prevent you from Tivo-ing Lost or Columbia Records could use it to prevent you from recording that rare Bob Dylan concert on satellite radio that you have to miss. The worst part about it is that the way the law prevents these things is by making it illegal to manufacture devices that can do them in the first place. Goodbye ever better TVs, radios, and portable media players.

Normally these kinds of big legislative boondoggles can seem horribly depressing and inevitable. But this time we're lucky! As Oregon residents, our voices count more than normal in stopping this one because our own Senator Gordon Smith introduced the "Digital Content Protection Act". I urge you to complete the Electronic Frontier Foundation's online decision maker contact form and to contact Gordon Smith directly via his website.

I often find that the text of these form letters to legislators can be a little idealistic -- true believer rants that may be easy for opposed lawmakers to dismiss -- so I wrote my own, trying to lean more on the 'conservative' ideological principles that Senator Smith supposedly supports and on the practical considerations of job creation and economic improvement that is bread and butter to all congressmen. I though some of you, especially my Less Distracted co-residents, might appreciate the resulting text. Feel free to use it yourself and forward it on however you see fit:

I am a Portland-based small technology business owner writing to you in regards to your support for a "Digital Content Protection Act" which would enact a "broadcast flag" to limit the use of digital media by consumers. In addition to being simply un-American in the limits it places on such core free speech traditions as Fair Use, the proposal would stifle the up-welling of technological innovation which drives so much of this country's -- and, particularly of Portland's -- economic growth. I urge you to change your position on this issue, to withdraw your "Digital Content Protection Act" from consideration, and to fully support the intellectual property freedoms necessary to create this coming wave of digital wealth creation.

I am a part of a large and growing community of young entrepreneurs working in Portland on projects related to the internet and various aspects of the entertainment industry. For us, issues like the broadcast flag and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act are make or break. They insult our core 'conservative' values -- that the government should stay as far as possible away from interfering with creative and ethical businesses as they strive to innovate and create wealth for all -- and we could never support a candidate who was on the wrong side.

In the coming decades, some amongst us will become wildly successful in the way of past generations of innovators in places like the San Francisco Bay Area. In the process, Portland could become one of the great economic engines of this country and secure for itself unrivaled prosperity. Every action taken against the digital freedoms endangered by legislation like the broadcast flag is a dollar lost for Oregon's economy, a job never created by a successful new internet startup, a hard-working self-starting entrepreneurs made into a political opponent.

Please, reconsider your position.

Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Posted by Greg at 12:51 AM | Comments (1)

January 14, 2006

Cafe Press's Automated Censorship

So, I really don't like ketchup (I like it even less if you spell it "catsup"). I'm always shocked to see people happily pouring it over their meals, eating drenched soggy sugary red mush. Blech! Anyway, to celebrate my spite, I decided to add an anti-ketchup shirt to my T-Shirt-A-Day catalogue. Reasonable enough desire.

So, I opened up Illustrator and drew a relatively generic ketchup bottle. I hinted at the Heinz chevron-shaped label, but left out any real branding elements. It's no particular make or model of the stuff I have a problem with. Then I slapped on the witty slogan "KETCHUP SUCKS!". Pleased with myself, I headed over to Cafe Press to upload the design.

After chewing on the file for much longer than usual, Cafe Press displayed my image surrounded by an angry red box. And the usual option to make it into a product wasn't available. When I clicked the info icon, here was their explanation:

"All images on CafePress.com are verified to ensure that they do not violate the rights of a third party. This image cannot be added to any product since it is pending image verification for the following reason: Your image may be Copyright/Trademark protected and require a license prior to its use for merchandise sales."
Simultaneously, they sent me an email:
"We recently learned that your CafePress.com account contains material which may not be in compliance with our policies. Specifically, designing, manufacturing, marketing and/or selling products that may infringe the rights of a third party, including, copyrights (e.g., an image of a television cartoon character), trademarks (e.g., the logo of a company), "rights in gross" (e.g., the exclusive right of the U.S. Olympic Committee to use the "Olympic Rings"), and rights of privacy and publicity (e.g., a photo of a celebrity) are prohibited."
OK. I had figured that "ketchup" was a generic word. Maybe it had started as a brand name, but now it was in common enough usage to be free from any linkage to a particular company or product, like "band-aid" or "q-tip". But perhaps I was wrong.

So I went back in and edited my design's text. "LET'S RUIN LUNCH!" it would now say. Pithy, sonorous, and in no way in violation of anyone's copyright.

I re-uploaded. Everything seemed to be hunky-dory. No angry red box. It let me create a shirt. I even managed to go through my normal process for blogging it. Look, here it is:

I thought that settled the matter. But no. Just now, an email: the same again, ""We recently learned that your CafePress.com account contains material. . ." and again the angry red box and the product I'd created, Bad Condiment, vanished from my store.

Now, this I just don't get! Is the problem that the image file I uploaded is called "ketchup.jpg"? Are they somehow doing shape recognition on the bottle's chevron (hard to believe since I hand drew it and it's in perspective) or the shape of the ketchup bottle as a whole? What's in their censorship algorithm? It seems to be much stricter than their articulated policy would lead you to expect. Also shouldn't there be some kind of exception for satire?

Has anyone else ever run into Cafe Press's automated censorship or have any kind of sense of what it's limits are? I've read their documentation and I can't figure out what part of my image is triggering the problem. Grrr. . .

Tagged: , ,

Posted by Greg at 3:48 PM | Comments (11)

January 3, 2006

Roundup: The Music For Dozens Blog

While the long gaps between posts here may make it seem that I'm only an occasional blogger, a 'Sunday poster' as it were, they also hide all of the blogging I do elsewhere around the web. All in all, I contribute somewhat regularly to four different blogs (At Dusk, Shouting At Each Other, and MFDZ are the three others). I thought that today I would try a little experiment in bringing in some of that other content here for you to enjoy.

What follows are highlights from recent posts on the Music For Dozens blog. I write there about my favorite music that shows up on MFDZ. In these posts, I'll always link to the MFDZ pages of the artist I'm discussing as well as post a copy of our portable player so that you can listen to the song and I usually do my best to describe the music itself and add any other outside information I may have about the bands. Lately, I've been posting here a lot because people (many of them from Portland) have been uploading a ton of new music (if, impossibly, you're reading this and you have never heard of Music For Dozens, I should probably explain that it's a site for independent musicians to upload and sell their own songs, get feedback from listeners, and find tools to help in spreading their music around the web. I created it along with Chris and Jem; it's been in business since 2002).

So, without further ado, here are some recent highlights from the Music For Dozens blog:

Nephewredman's atmo-electro guitar pop

Hanging out in new uploads just now, I discovered some super cool music. Nephewredman combines electro beats and sounds with some catchy vibrato-ed electric guitar melodies to make songs that walk the tough line between being electro/atmospheric and pop-listenable. Here are two of my favorites:

Why So Many Ladybugs? is totally the breakout hit:

and also checkout In Transit It Is:

Note: One little complaint about our beloved MFDZ users I've been asked to pass on by many of my friends: Come on people, let's see some spacing and capitalization (and fewer numerics) in the artist and user names, you're freaking out the old-folks! You've got real names and you know some real words, I'm sure, what's so wrong with those?

Who Could So Rudely Smite Thee?

I'm always so impressed by people who have actual old-fashioned technical musical ability. I just spent the last hour recording my housemate Ethan singing a Bach hymn, Owelt, Ich Muss Dich Lassen. It's four part harmony and Ethan sang all of the parts himself (the tenor part was the hardest). I spend so much time immersed in music that is (or pretends or aspires to be) "naive", "direct", or "personal" in some way that it's amazing and refreshing to see someone with a real grasp on music as literature, as history, someone who can use the tools of reading and performing to make music from the past live now.

And, Ethan's using the recording as part of the process involved in getting this incredibly cool job working on an online Google ad campaign. He's (fingers-crossed) going to be part of a traveling quintet of brass-playing singers who'll travel the west coast serenading gMail users. I've been working on him to get a laptop and digital camera (not to mention a blog) to document the trip when it happens. I'll keep you updated on that, but in the meantime, here's the track:

Dragging An Ox Through Water

Last spring, while working on curating the PDX Pop Now! 2005 compilation, I was totally amazed by the amount of amazing music that's made in this town. The first year we'd gotten about 125 submissions for the thirty or so slots on the double disc compilation. Last year we got more than 400. Even after we filtered that down to around 150 on a first listen, the list was still overwhelming. Everyone involved ended up with a bunch of bands they'd never previously heard who now became new favorites. And, obviously, with only about twenty slots open after the great job our compilation team did soliciting tracks from bigger local bands like Slater-Kinney and The Decemberists, not all of these could make the final cut.

One of my favorites that didn't make it was a band called Dragging An Ox Through Water. The song they submitted was warm and buzzy pop with a great combination of lo-fi finger picked acoustic guitar, beautiful synth harmonies, and a great melody. So, I was thrilled this morning to see they'd uploaded a song to MFDZ. It's called Aces:

I look forward to more uploads from them (and maybe even from some of those other great Portland bands that are lurking out there).

Today's Portland Bands #2

The Beauty, another neat Portland band that uploaded today, couldn't really come from a more distant part of the Portland scene than Agents of Future without being from Seattle. On their Soundclick page, they describe themselves as the "house band" at Voodoo Doughnut, the crazy all-night doughnut shop in downtown Portland, which used to sell a Nyquil-filled doughnut before they got in trouble with the FDA. Shows there take place on the roof of the bathroom, about ten feet above whatever crowd has managed to squeeze into the tiny shop's very limited standing room.

The Beauty's music is like a combination of TV on the Radio's indie soul with Nine Inch Nails' industrial crunch. The song they uploaded, Weight in Gold, combines a distorted didgy beat that's often punctuated with shrill beeps and shreiks with harmonized vocals that range from sweetly pretty to gritty and throaty. It's a compelling mix:

Note: You can subscribe to the MFDZ blog and, of course, you can always go to Music For Dozens itself to find all kinds of great independent music and to upload your own.

Tagged: , , , , ,

Posted by Greg at 2:52 PM | Comments (0)