Well, that happened. It’s a surreal episode that seems not to have any clear winners, as the US government on one side and hackers on the other face off over what is and isn’t freedom online. The mystery is, what will be the long-term outcome for people making content – or, for that matter, do these kinds of dramatics even really have any logic in your work at all?

While the music tech industry was holed away in the palm tree-lined walls of the Anaheim Convention Center, it seems full-blown war broke out over content on the Internet, in a surreal collision of players. Remember that bleak future painted by opponents of new US anti-piracy legislation, one in which your ability to upload your own content might get caught in the crossfire? It turns out it doesn’t necessarily require new laws, and it could look something like this:

MegaUpload file sharing site shut down for piracy by Feds [LA Times]

And then, in spectacular fashion, the hackers strike back…
Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever [RT]

Updated: The raid successfully stopped MegaUpload from operating … erm, except that it’s now right here, via a direct IP address and other sites appear to be phishing scams, so stay away.

It’s hard to imagine a more heated showdown. The US Department of Justice is behind the raid on MegaUpload, and just happened to time their crackdown the day after sites like Wikipedia blocked out content in protest of more restrictive rules in Congressional legislation, rules that claim to target just this kind of site. (MegaUpload was often named specifically, and – in fairness – had run rampant with pirated files. The authorities may have chosen the date as the founder’s birthday party, unrelated to yesterday’s blackout.) But that’s almost not the oddest thing about this story: it places a site endorsed by a number of high-profile musicians opposite labels like Universal Music Group. And don’t forget reports that the CEO is using an alias and is married to Alicia Keys, for added potential drama.

Now, clearly, MegaUpload was a venue for a significant amount of copyright infringement, and it’s inarguable that its owners benefited from that infringement. But artists themselves are already crying foul, partly because a service they used is unavailable. For instance, online radio station SOMA FM protests via Twitter:
“FBI shuts down megaupload .com, claiming no legit users. However lots of indie artists used it to send us (SomaFM) their new music.”

Show of hands. Are you now thinking:
1. I’m relieved! Now that the Federal government is cracking down on these sites, I can at last have the financial security as a musician of which I’ve always dreamed! Clearly, this will help drive more money into sales of music and other creative content, and we’ll all benefit!

2. Great. This will really mean is the next time I try to upload something, there will be all kind of annoying restrictions imposed voluntarily by services to avoid getting shuttered, all because people had to upload Adele albums. I’m just trying to send a darned demo.

3. Who was using MegaUpload, anyway?

Tally to follow.

In the meantime, these fireworks with Anonymous are sure entertaining to watch.

One alternative possibility occurs to me. Because it’s clearly possible to shut down MegaUpload without the benefit of damaging legislation, the MegaUpload closure actually makes an excellent case against the need for restrictive new laws. In other words, you can shut down an obvious infringer like MegaUpload, while leaving loads of other sites that support user content, and you didn’t have to change US law. So, even though Anonymous scored a dramatic protest, the raid itself might actually make a good case against new, tougher laws.

Downpressor, via Twitter, remarks “I’m not sorry to see sites like that go down.” And that’s the crux of this – a large number of parties actually do agree that some sites ought to go away through some sort of enforcement action. After the explosive saga here settles down, the upshot may be that this is left to enforcement mechanisms within the bounds of existing law, and not the kind of radical new laws recently proposed.

MegaUpload itself, though, may prove to be a bit divisive, because it will be seen through the eyes of some users who used it legitimately, even if those activities were a minority.

Perhaps it’s something of an irony, here on a site that heralds shiny technology, but there is a longing among many musicians to return to something raw and unvarnished in music. There’s discontentment in the ranks of the techno-futurists, enough to sow the seeds of rebellions. If that feeling could be given a voice, Anika would be a good candidate. A political journalist who found herself, entirely unexpected, at a session with Portishead producer Geoff Barrow, she is a vinyl-loving, politically-minded throwback, an antidote to everything that commercially-calibrated in music.

http://www.stonesthrow.com/anika

The first thing you should know about Anika’s self-titled debut is that some people immediately hate it. Others just as quickly fall in love with its tendency to sound as though it were made 30 years ago. It’s not retro as pastiche: the music is unrehearsed, largely unproduced, fed through cavernous spring reverbs and played on abused instruments and machines. It sounds like another decade because it was made in the way those records were produced. But it’s also divisive, something unprocessed enough that people can form strong opinions about how it tastes.

And, of course, there’s the question I knew I’d have to broach – the fact that the results sound rather a lot like Nico (of Velvet Underground fame). (The New York Times’ Ben Ratliff described the effect neatly as “healthily irritating.”) Barrow must have been pleased; the guy’s festival here in New York is “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” so you do the math. But it works, because the similarity is entirely organic. Anika, too, is German-born, here German by way of England with a hint of Welsh inflection, and intentionally over-pronouncing the lyrics she intones. She doesn’t sound like an imitator, but like a successor. (She also sounds a great deal more English and Welsh, for the record.)

When Anika was to do the photo shoot, she tells me, Geoff instructed the photographer to “make her look as rough as possible.” That might be the best way to sum up the musical performance and production here, too, a punk rock, just fell-out-of-bed approach to music. And like Nico, like Anika herself, no matter how rough the styling, the results are somehow oddly irresistible. (Anika, on the cover of the album, seems to channel Warhol.)

Producer Geoff Barrow, who gave us Portishead, BEAK>, and Invada Records, might be a surprising pairing on first blush. But his own sense of the importance of song-writing, of the album as a vessel for expression and not just mass-production, and taste-defying, upstream-swimming aesthetic here is perfect.

And I wouldn’t mention this here if I didn’t find this album relevant to the other techniques of production in a digital age. If it makes people angry, actually, that’d even serve its purpose.

I spoke to Anika in New York, where she was doing a series of DJ gigs. The night before, I saw her at Gallery Bar; she struck me as almost delicate with her collection of all-vinyl, no computer in sight. (She told me that she’s doubly careful because she’s actually clumsy, which I can appreciate as something of a klutz myself.) But for all the practiced carelessness of this record, Anika herself is careful and thoughtful. And I think, whether you’re in the love it or hate it camp as far as the music, what she has to say about musical expression and the industry will be very, very familiar to readers here.

CDM: Tell us a little about your background – before you got into promoting this record, you were really a journalist, right?

Anika: I was a political journalist. I had to give it up officially. It’s the Berlin-based news network – ESNA, it specializes in education and science policy, and I was the UK correspondent. We’re a news network, newspapers and policy makers buy our service. It’s on a very specialist scale.

I studied politics in University. I’m officially more of a political journalist. Music has always been there, but it was more of a hobby. I’ve been doing all sorts over the years. I did a bit of work for BBC Wales News, a lot of news stuff, worked for newspapers.

And this is something to which you intend to return.

It’s definitely something I’m going to back to. I was doing that full-time in Berlin up until October when I said, okay, I have to go back to England to rehearse, because the album’s actually doing alright. I recorded it not necessarily with the hope of releasing it. We did it as an experiment, more of a mini-rebellion for me against what I disliked about the industry at the time.

I can think of a pretty long list myself, but what was it specifically that you disliked?

I worked as a promoter. In Cardiff, I used to book bands for four bands in Cardiff and one in Bristol. I used to deal with entertainment for the venues, do all their graphic design, all their marketing, set up a label for them, release local bands in Cardiff. There were just a lot of things I really disliked about the scene, and about the way it works.

In England, people weren’t going to gigs. In my venues, the bands would always be secondary. One of the venues that I worked for, they got a sound restriction the minute I got there, which meant they couldn’t have live acts before twelve. They weren’t aloud to have any live music before midnight.

For the venues, music was always secondary. It wasn’t their biggest income, really. They knew it would only ever make ten pounds a night. Since people aren’t willing to pay for gigs, the most I could charge for a gig was four pounds – like, six dollars. People wouldn’t pay more, and they’d normally expect it to be free. And the way they run it, they never took the bar into account. I usually just break even. I don’t think I ever made money from gigs, ever. I don’t think anyone does.

I worked directly for the venue, so I was on salary. It was four venues. I had to make sure there was a band on every night in two of the venues. For the commercial nights, I had to come up with the concept, the graphic design, book the DJs. I had to do all the graphic design for the bars, the cocktail menus, the food menus, worked with the food and cocktail people to come up with good stuff. It was a lot of work for one person. I had to rep the gigs at night, as well. I’d come in at ten in the morning and I’d be working until about four or five in the morning. I’d go home, sleep for an hour, and come back to work. I’d normally work six, seven days a week. It was a bit much. I had to rep the gigs, so I had to cycle from one venue to the next to sort out the bands, give them their beer, cycle back, buy some more beer, give it to the bands, and maybe DJ at three in the morning and go home. And they’d always say, oh, well, you’re not structuring your time well enough.

So I quit, because I hated it. I was being absolutely taken advantage of. So now I know I only want music as a hobby and not as a career. And then a week later, I got a call from my friend saying, oh, yeah, my friend’s band are looking for a singer. Do you fancy having a go? I tried a few bands in Cardiff, not because I want to be in a band, but because I had a load of lyrics, and I wanted to see how it worked with music. I recorded stuff that directly rejected all the kind of stuff that most bands thought that they have to fit in. So on purpose, we rejected the whole imaging of it. The way I sang it, at first it was political.

How would you say it’s political?

In two ways. The songs I write are [often] directly political. It was also political in the fact that it was a statement for me. It was directly rejecting everything that pissed me off about the industry at the time. It didn’t fit. It wasn’t pleasant to listen to. For ages, in England, all the bands that were doing well were so pleasant and so nice, and they’d go on [BBC] Radio 1 and they’d have interviews and they’d be, like, oh, yeah, it was so nice, I love the record… It was great, and I think music like that is really important to have, but there was no alternative.

It’s great to have that, if you want to do the washing up or you want to do the Hoovering, fine. But there was no music that was any different.

When indie became music, rock music became mainstream, between 2000 and now,, for England, it is commercial rock, isn’t it? In England in the 90s, at least people did stuff that was more rebellious. It wasn’t so nicey-nicey all the time. What if you’ve got something to say? And people were too scared to make any statement, in case someone didn’t like it. There were scared to take a risk. And that’s the thing about this record. It wasn’t designed to be liked. It was designed to make people think.

It’s like “No one’s there.” Now it seems cliche, but when I first wrote it, it was when the English media was writing all these headlines … personifying the recession as if it was some wolf that was going to eat your children. It was just the politicians’ mistakes, and the fact that we spent beyond our means. It was scaring people so much that they weren’t spending any more, so it actually makes things worse.

It was just interesting reading people’s opinions on matters and how they’d been framed. I remember my housemates at the time making all these throw-away comments about religions that they didn’t really know anything about. It’s the same with the Recession. A lot of people didn’t know much about it and didn’t look into it and understand why. That’s the thing about “No one’s there.” It’s just saying you need to question what you’re told.

And I imagine there’s also the politics of the music itself – you had said that music itself had suffered.

The reason music was suffering was because the people going to gigs weren’t taking risks. Firstly, people stopped buying music, which was pretty shit. Gig goers in England weren’t taking risks. So I’d put on a really good band, but they hadn’t had that much press coverage that week. People follow too much what they’ve been told. So this year, at the moment, the BBC released their top ten bands of the coming year. So all the music media has been writing about these bands and no one else. They’re just so lazy. And now they will be the top years this bands because they’ve been told. It’s like the chicken and the egg – which came first?

All those people on that list have the whole package, they’ve got the photos, they’ve got the MySpace friends. It’s just so predictable.

So, really, it’s not only the press, but the listeners, as well?

It’s the chicken and the egg. What comes first, the apathetic listener, or the [press]?

Just thinking about the production here, too, do you think you can record rebelliously, as well?

You can record it rebelliously by not over-producing it. That’s exactly what we did. To try and get that, we had to go to extremes. We didn’t plan any of the songs before we turned up that day. We’d walk in – we’d go the night before and spend the night on YouTube finding things that we could twist into a completely different form, and then we’d go in the next day and say, look what I found? And then I’d go print out the lyrics, Billy would figure out the bass, and then Jeff do that and Matt would walk in, and then we’d try it out, and then the third take was the one that we used. And that’s why it’s not perfect, and that’s why it’s funny when people say oh, yeah, what is this? It’s not perfect singing or whatever. It’s like, oh yeah, it’s not. It was never meant to be.

Okay, I have to ask – obviously, the comparison is going to get made to the Velvet Underground. Was that a conscious influence?

It was really weird with the singing thing. A lot of people said oh it’s Nico and rubbish — like a rubbish, rip-off version of Nico. But firstly, I’d like to point out I’m actually half German. I learned German before I learned English.

When I was doing it, because I had a lot of political lyrics, and because some of the stuff we were doing was Bob Dylan, if anything, I tried not to sound American. So I over-pronounced everything, because I didn’t want it to sound American. And I happened to be living in Wales at the time, for the last five years. It actually sounds a little bit Welsh, but people don’t know that. And so that’s where it ended up where it was. It was me trying consciously not to sound American and then trying to sound Mockney. Mockney is like the London accent. And I didn’t want to have that, either.

I personally didn’t realize we were going to release it. I did it just for a bit of fun. I didn’t realize it was Geoff Barrow at first.

Wait – really? When did you find out that’s who it was?

[laughs] I thought it was just some guys that wanted to record stuff. And when I turned up, no one had borrowed to tell me that it was Geoff and people. I only found out after a few sessions.

My friend kept telling me, oh, they’re called, like Beep or something. I typed in Beep onto Myspace and I couldn’t find them. I think eventually it’s because Geoff gave me a CD in the studio. I was like, oh yeah, do you have one of those Beep CDs, and he said, oh, you mean Beak? And he gave me the CD. And so I went on their MySpace and I was like, oh, right, so that’s Geoff Barrow then… [laughs]

It was good, because I think we all just wanted to do something different. At first, they were just looking for a singer, I think, to do Beak stuff. But then, I just did stuff slightly differently and it ended up being a solo project.

Geoff just kept saying don’t practice. That was his only input, he said don’t practice. At first, it was just to get that kind of rawness, where we weren’t trying to fit it into anything. If I’d had more time, I probably would have had singing lessons, and it would have lost all of its vulnerability and everything. And it is vulnerable, because people can dislike it. It’s easy to go off and make stuff perfect, and then if people don’t like it…. At this sort of point, it is … [pauses] very vulnerable. It’s vulnerable to attack. Because it’s me, not necessarily feeling particularly one hundred percent when I was doing it, it makes it even more vulnerable. But at the same time, it makes it more genuine and more sincere.

It’s a rebellion against what we were told to be. We were told the right way, how best to produce a perfect record. I could have probably got singing lessons, gone to the gym a bit, got a haircut. And that would’ve been alright. And I could have fit it in.

I didn’t actually want to be a musician. I wanted to be a politician. I did it for kind of almost the right reasons. I wanted to do it for sincere reasons. There’s this hyped-up image of this amazing pop-star lifestyle. And because of these reality shows where the emphasis is only on the person’s voice, and then probably what they look like, and then nothing else matters. Nothing about what they want to say, the individuality. People often want to be famous, or they want to be musicians for completely the wrong reasons. And I think that’s why so many people have reacted strangely to the record. I know a lot of my friends at home who are used to mainstream records say, oh, this isn’t really my thing. And it’s fine. I know a few people have commented on my singing ability. And that was never really the point.

How did it come to be that you wound up going this route, then? You had been writing for some time?

I’d been writing loads in that year. It was in the years when I only had two hours at home a day to sleep, and I could never sleep. I was so shut down after work. So I ended up buying a rubbish guitar and trying to put structure to my words. I’d written for years, but never put much structure to them. Still can’t play particularly well, but it helps structure it. I used to just sit there for two hours in the time when I should have been sleeping. I think my housemates thought I was nuts at the time. But it was my way to unwind. So I wrote loads in that year.

I tried out with a few bands in Cardiff, just some jamming sessions with my friends. And it didn’t work because they had big electric guitars and would just drown out my lyrics.

I think it was because my Geoff said to my friend, oh yeah, we’re looking for a weird singer with a bit of a weird voice. And my friend was like, oh, I’ve got exactly the person.

When you did hear yourself on the album, did you say to yourself, oh yes, that’s really my voice, personally?

I didn’t listen to it. I just did it and didn’t listen. We just recorded and that was it. I just walked out of the room, went in the kitchen and made some tea, and didn’t even want to know what happened to it.

And then sometimes I’d say, oh, well that sounds really bad. I’d say, can I do it again, and we’d do it again, and we never used that one, because it just sounded, too …

I think the record can be quite enjoyable. But people seem to be one extreme or another – they’ll fall in love with it, or absolutely hate it. That to me is rather interesting.

I don’t mind. I quite like asking people why do you dislike it – because some people really do to an extreme. It’s always nice to hear why. It’s always good, because it’s made them think. It’s made them question why they don’t like it. That’s good. That’s an achievement.

I couldn’t listen to it for ages after. I just forgot about it, took up that job in Germany with the intention of staying, moving to Brussels to work in policy development.

That’s why I let [Geoff] do it. It was rejected all the pre-cut roles, how it should be. That’s why it worked so well. Geoff’s a bit of a rebel, as well. He doesn’t like fitting to what he’s told.

That’s why it’s good for me to do these DJ tours and only use vinyl. It’s really difficult for musicians at the moment … if you sell your soul and make knocking music and get endorsed by some big company, it pays for you to do that. But if you don’t, it’s really hard to try and afford to [be a] musician. I was fortunate that I moved to Berlin and managed to live. It’s really difficult how people don’t buy music any more. I know it’s really cliche to say, but it’s true. Especially with vinyl, that’s why it’s really important to endorse vinyl stores. It’s really important to buy.

So, to you playing vinyl isn’t so much about nostalgia or authenticity, it’s the economics around that physical object.

Yeah. That’s why I bought vinyl today. Even though I could probably pick up the phone and say could I have some vinyl, please. I think you need to put something back, because otherwise it’s not fair.

So many [shops] have shut down in the last years. And they do help underground music survive. They have in-stores, and they help promote records. And that’s why I was in Other Music. They helped with my record a lot.

That’s the problem with the whole downloading culture. It’s just a reflection of consumerism, how we want everything now.

What’s in Anika’s Vinyl Shopping Bag?

Anika and I met for the interview at Manhattan’s terrific independent music store, Other Music. (If you do prefer digital downloads, or happen not to be in New York, they also have a digital store – so, in fact, you can have it both ways after all.)

In fact, the very first thing she did was to show off her acquisitions. Here’s what she bought, with some commentary, via her Tumblr blog:

The Soft Moon Parallels 7” (This band played before me at Part time Punks in LA and i really liked them! I hadn’t heard of them before)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwGEG10WIY

Nite Jewel – Am i real? six song ep (I like nite jewel)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9A_2AN39X8&feature=related

Kleenex/Lilliput 4 vinyl box set (This just excited me so much that i closed my eyes and handed over the cash..)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY2nXUUvwg4

Circuit 7 video boys album 12” on MW (I love the MW label and wanted these tracks for a while)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_hV-uqNZ5c

Oppenheimer Analysis album on MW (I always play radiance because i have the single, so was desperate for more!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6faunFcrT0

Anika – I Go To Sleep by stonesthrow

I’m late in posting this, but it’s too good to pass up – our friend Troels Folmann sends us his latest sound design experiment, this time with bees.

Better audio:
Bees by Tonehammer

Specs:

• 200-230 wing flaps per second (hence the tone)
• Top speed: 15 mph.
• Compound eyes with thousands of tiny lenses plus simple eyes.
• A life form with 20,000 known species, on which human life depends
• Availability: with our protection, a long, long time. Without, we’re toast.

There’s also a free bee sample set for use with Kontakt or (via WAV) any other tool. [Download link, .rar ]

We’d love to hear music you make with those samples. If you compose something, send them to us in comments!

Lots of additional info:
Music Made with Bees [tonehammer]

Bee populations are in decline, which is a deep concern. Happily, at least one culprit has been ruled out: research suggests mobile phones are not to blame after all.

The New York Times has a good recent article on bees, why they’re so important to human life and agriculture, the disturbing rapid decline in their population, and a breakthrough that’s occurred in the last week. The news isn’t good: colony collapse, and it may be linked to a combination fungus/virus. Hopefully this new evidence will lead to a solution.
Trouble in the Hive, by Kirk Johnson for the NY Times

You can support bee research here: http://www.helpthehoneybees.com/

(In this case, surprisingly, academia teamed up with the US Army chemical and biological research group. It’s nice to see a non-destructive military application of chemicals and biology.)

The connection to sound, though, is clear to me: just as photographs or video can help us get closer to subjects that matter, so can sound and music. They’re another way of experiencing our world. So send in that bee music.

Visualization often wins out over sonification when it comes to making data clear. But sound has one key advantage: it can make time and scale apparent, by tapping directly into our perception of forward time.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, born well into the Nuclear Age in 1959, uses that property to chilling effect. The sounds in “1945-1998″ are made still more unsettling in their rendering as tranquil, musical sounds rather than explosions. Quietly, World War III is waged not in wartime, but in the 2053 nuclear explosions that erupt mainly in thermonuclear tests (led, ironically, by the United States). This isn’t just political noise, either; the scale of thermonuclear tests has made virtually everyone reading this site a child of the fallout of the testing age, quite literally. And this falls on the anniversary of the deadly blasts detonated by the US to close World War II.

The 2003 work was dedicated as a kind of universal message, thanks to its rendering in sound:

This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world

Sound, after all, can convey real messages, not only about our past and tragedy, but about our future.

Hosted by the people working to end nuclear testing worldwide
Via our friend David Auerbach at Digitalfix.

Patenting the use of all episodic media on the Web might sound absurd, but the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted just such a patent, to a company called VoloMedia. It’s a significant issue, one that could threaten the freedom of all media distribution online. Wherever you are in the world, you can help.

Intellectual property law was created in order to protect genuine inventions and innovation from exploitation. But predatory patents, based on bogus claims and attempting to stake out broad rights, threaten to do just the opposite.

Here’s a new idea: fight back.

Lawyers are the heroes this time. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s patent-busting project aims to take down unfair patents that threaten common-sense uses of technology. A number of these have applied to music and audio. The EFF has already won a big victory against what had been the worst offender – media giant Clear Channel actually successfully patented recording live shows. (No, really — recording a live gig, then burning them on the spot. The EFF was able to bust that patent.) The advocacy group also scored significant victories against patents on sending and receiving online streams and encoding media. (If someone thought they could patent your ears and charge you royalties for hearing, they probably would.)

Lawyers alone haven’t won these battles. The EFF’s clever twist is to crowd-source its case, by getting people like you to help the group document “prior art” – in plain English, to prove that something existed before the patent. (Without basic chronology, I could claim to have discovered electricity.)

In short, you can help save the freedom of online content.

VoloMedia’s Bogus Patent – And Why It’s Dangerous

VoloMedia has been granted a patent for “providing episodic media.” The patent is broad enough to endanger any independent podcast or episodic media producer. Over the summer, Volomedia’s own Murgesh Navar sidestepped concerns about patent abuse to brag on the company blog about just how broad that claim was – that even non-RSS-based episodic media belong to them:

With specific reference to our newly issued 7,568,213 patent, it was filed in November 2003, almost a year before the start of podcasting.  This helps underscore the point, that for nearly six years, VoloMedia has been focused on helping publishers monetize portable media…. and has continued these efforts with the addition of a wide array of smartphone-based applications.  The patent that issued yesterday helps to tie together and reinforce the value of the various technologies and services that VoloMedia has developed to help accomplish this objective.  VoloMedia’s intent is to continue to work collaboratively with key participants in the industry, leveraging its unique range of products to further grow and accelerate the market.  Today, podcasting is 100% RSS-based.  However, the patent is not RSS-dependent.  Rather, it covers all episodic media downloads.  It just so happens that, today, the majority of episodic media downloads are RSS-based podcasts, which is why we titled our announcement the way we did.

Aside from the “before the start of podcasting” lie – and I believe “lie” is the only accurate word – it’s the implied threat that should send a chill down the spine of anyone using the Internet. Make no mistake about it: VoloMedia wants anyone doing podcasting, via any mechanism, to work with them. From that same blog entry:

The impact of a strong growing IP portfolio is such that we would expect new entrants into the podcasting arena to have a collaborative relationship with VoloMedia, just as do many of the current players.

From the patent itself, as approved, the technology VoloMedia claims to own is described as:

A method for providing episodic media, the method comprising: providing a user with access to a channel dedicated to episodic media, wherein the episodic media provided over the channel is pre-defined into one or more episodes by a remote publisher of the episodic media; receiving a subscription request to the channel dedicated to the episodic media from the user; automatically downloading updated episodic media associated with the channel dedicated to the episodic media to a computing device associated with the user in accordance with the subscription request upon availability of the updated episodic media, the automatic download occurring without further user interaction; and providing the user with: an indication of a maximum available channel depth, the channel depth indicating a size of episodic media yet to be downloaded from the channel and size of episodic media already downloaded from the channel, the channel depth being specified in playtime or storage resources, and the ability to modify the channel depth by deleting selected episodic media content, thereby overriding the previously configured channel depth.

Plain English translation: if what you’re doing with media has episodes, you owe VoloMedia.

If this patent were allowed to stand, and if VoloMedia were able to successfully enforce it, it would have a chilling effect on all Internet distribution. Regardless of the likelihood of their legal success, that underlies the fundamental problem with patent law – it has come completely unglued from reality. That alone ought to motivate people to fully document these issues and try to effect change.

Wondering why you haven’t heard of VoloMedia if they supposedly invented all episodic content online? Right now, they advertise “solutions” for advertising and analytics, an iTunes plug-in, and branded mobile apps for platforms like the iPhone. That’s it. RSS and previous formats date back to the 1990s, with the intention of covering episodic media across formats, just as the VoloMedia patent claims. These were published standards years before VoloMedia’s claim. That’s why demonstrating the details of this history become so important: they could strike down VoloMedia’s bogus patent.

Help Write Episodic Content’s History

VoloMedia’s patent twists the law, and common sense. But the same laws also provide for disproving a patent. If you can prove that an invention existed prior to the date for which a patent is claimed, you can undo the damage.

For that reason, the EFF is asking for your help. Knowing the readers of this site, I imagine there are people out there who know those details, or know people who do.

You’re all old enough to remember the Age Before Fall of 2003, right?

Here’s the call to action:

In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional "prior art" — or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003. In particular, we’re looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes. You can read the entire prior art request here, and if you have something that could help, please send it to podcasting_priorart@eff.org or fill out the form on our Volomedia page.

For more information:

EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent – And We Need Your Help

Patent Busting Project: VoloMedia

Prior art serves a second purpose. Part of the reason predatory firms can abuse patent law is because technology’s history is so poorly written. I would like to see these kinds of bogus patents struck down, but I’d also like the real history behind today’s technologies to be told. So even beyond this legal battle, I hope that we begin to make the story of technologies like what is now called “podcasting” accurate, complete, and fair. Future generations of technologists will thank us.

Certainly, the VoloMedia patent, if enforced, would do tremendous harm to media today. The entire strength of the Web is that it doesn’t have to have homogenized distribution channels, that anyone can publish without centralized outlets or “collaborative relationships” with any big partner.

If you’ve never cared about intellectual property policy before, this might change your mind. No one should be allowed to un-invent the Internet.

Digital technology has the power to transmit information more efficiently, to make the invisible visible, and to express new things. It can also be pushed so far to the limits of actually transmitting information to be meaningless. It can push well beyond what we can even perceive in a useful way. What’s bizarre and wonderful about Johannes Kreidler’s work is that he’s not afraid of pushing toward that boundary. The results may have only a shred of remaining meaning, or be intentionally, comically meaningless. But he’s nothing if not inventive.

Compression Sound Art (2009) [“Comments on Music – Musical Zip-Files … Time is relative!”

The video above, politically speaking, is Not Safe For Anything – where else can you bring up Hitler and Britney Spears and condoms? But the only visually tantalizing information is the brief view of a condom speaker membrane and a chest with pasties.

The creations range from:

An oven pipe imported in 1972 from Alaska to New Zealand, vibrated at 574 cycles per second using a gasoline motor. Then, in 2003, this recording was manipulated and filtered on an old atari computer using hacked software.

…to:

Immanuel Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, played 22,000 times in one second (audible only to bats).

The controversial nods and humor aside, I think this really does say something about time and data. I could tell you, but I’d need a microsecond. Let’s just avoid any mention of datamosh.

Johannes Kreidler does know how to encode information in useful, accessible ways, too, however. He’s done just that with a terrific book on Pd (Pure Data), the open source, visual programming environment in which he created works like the one above. Can’t dance to it? You can do other things with Pd, too. You can dance to it? Then, by all means, go for it:

Be a Music Geek Ninja with Electronic Music Programming in Pd: New Book

Previous Kreidler sightings:

A song made from 70,2000 samples

The stock market declines, as a song

Here in the US, Congressional Democrats have reversed not one but both bad decisions on the role of the arts in the economic stimulus package. Provisions that would have blocked any stimulus funds from reaching arts centers, museums, and theaters have been dropped. (Golf courses and casinos are still in the ban. Maybe this time, someone read the actual legislation.) And the US$50 million (out of some $800 billion) that would go to the National Endowment for the Arts, dropped from a Senate version, has been restored to the bill. It appears both of those changes not only cleared the House but are part of the Senate version that’s in votes as I write this.

If you believe artists shouldn’t rely exclusively on government funding, you can still celebrate. The arts will receive far less of a handout than a lot of other industries — and do more with it. Arts advocacy groups estimate that for every dollar of the NEA money, another seven dollars will come from public and private supporters. What the tiny amount of federal spending does is make up for shortfalls in lean times, protecting an arts sphere that depends on a variety of sources for revenue. Nearly 15,000 real jobs could be saved by those same estimates. That means an arts infrastructure in the US that can remain healthy and independent.

But the important story here has nothing to do with the stimulus bill, or even the US. It’s that public outcry from people like you rescued this legislation. And if public support can do that, it can do a lot more for the arts, not only in federal spending but other key areas.

Americans for the Arts says supporters from its organization alone sent some 100,000 messages and letters to their Members of Congress. That’s not counting the many more letters and phone calls from constituents, not to mention letters to the editor and press attention.

Here’s one example from CDM comments, by Dartanyan Brown:

I heard the congressman from Nashville (!) talking down the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. I immediately called his office and let his staffers know that (blue dog democrat Cooper) was full of hot air on this issue. As a synthesist, jazz musician and former NEA artist-in-residence I had the facts and anecdotes to make my points clear.
If Rush Limbaugh can get his folks to call, we can at least counteract them with some facts and persistence.
Call them, they listen, they respond to numbers.

More background on today’s developments:
House passes stimulus bill with $50 million for artists [Los Angeles Times]
U.S. Senate Begins Voting on Obama’s $787 Billion Stimulus Plan [Bloomberg, including various other details]

To all of you who were active, and to our elected representatives who got this right, thanks.

Targeting the arts in this way may have backfired for those elements seeking to vilify it. Instead, it caused thousands of people to rally to the cause. Here’s an example of organizing meetings in Chicago – and a renewed sense that the arts could be part of the economic solution, not the “costly distraction” so many try to make it out to be.
Organizing around art [Chicago Tribune]

Folks, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

To wrap up the thread I started, the plot in US politics, in the space of a few short weeks, has gone something like this:

1. A new Administration could bring new vision to making the arts part of the economy.
2. Arts spending is wasteful.
3. Any spending on anything should be specifically prohibited from reaching the arts, as that would be wasteful and evil, and the arts are the best symbol of Waste itself.

I live on Wall Street (technically, on the corner of Pine). I guess we’ve now forgotten about them.

As digital musicians and visualists, relevancy to the rest of the people around us is important. What we do can be meaningful to people, and it can pay for our health care and our loved ones and our kids. It’s often not a life or death thing – but then, neither are many jobs. It’s a gig. Heck, even if it’s a hobby, it supports someone else’s gig.

So that raises some really deep questions about what’s going on with our society when arts-related jobs are singled out above nearly every other sector as meaningless or “wasteful” or not “real jobs.” This stimulus bill will pass, but that fundamental misunderstanding isn’t going anywhere – and it’s time to recognize there’s a problem, and start to work to set it right.

Roughly half of one one hundredth of one percent of the US economic stimulus plan was slated to support job protection in the arts — US$50 million. Meanwhile, we’ve just passed one trillion-dollar bailout of finance and are told another trillion is needed.

You might expect anger to be directed at finance, given their industry was at the heart of the problem. Instead, legislators single out — the arts?

In last-minute negotiations in the US Senate, legislators — including key liberal Democrats — have gone still further to ban any use of stimulus funds for the arts (“museums,” “theaters,” and “arts centers” get singled out). The move was largely symbolically-motivated, not fiscally-motivated. Adding insult to injury, arts institutions are lumped together with casinos and golf courses – literally.

U.S. Senate votes against arts [Chicago Examiner]

Arts Bashing [Center for American Progress]

Some of those Democrats, incidentally, are now pleading ignorance – including my own Senator Schumer:
UPDATE: Senator Charles Schumer in Hot Water With Local Arts Organizations [New York Magazine]

I had really hoped to leave this issue rest, but I want to be clear: this ban would cover appropriations for Labor, Education, and Transportation that could also give funds to arts organizations. It doesn’t just strip the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts — it locks out any arts activity from the nearly trillion dollars in the rest of the plan. If you make roads, you count – if you make art, you don’t. Senator Coburn, who introduced the amendment, didn’t even vote for the final bill, meaning this wasn’t even a concession to get the bill passed.

This ceases to be a legislative issue. It’s now a cultural war — one that’s being waged by both parties on a target that lacks powerful, rich advocates. That’ll be — you. And we know from CDM readers around the planet that this is an issue in other countries, too.

You may not believe in lots of government funding for the arts — I’d tend to agree with you, in that it’s not a panacea. But these were a small amount of funds intended to support jobs in arts organizations, which receive lots of their funding from you and from private interests. If you believe in public and private (and not government) funding for the arts, this is exactly the kind of targeted stimulus you want, and it could save thousands of real jobs.

Ironically, it’s in the US that we have the strongest private funding for the arts, which is a good thing. American Institutes for the Arts, the advocacy group supporting greater government funding, isn’t looking for handouts; they point out that every $1 spent by the federal agency would be matched from $7 in public and private funds. That means a $50 million NEA stimulus could have saved or created 14,422 jobs by their estimate.

OPEN FORUM: Economic stimulus should invest in creativity [San Francisco Chronicle]

I’m certainly not in line for a government handout. But am I angry when I hear “real jobs” as the talking point? Am I angry when people in the arts are considered lower than condoms? Heck, yeah.

From a Republican campaign ad airing on the radio next week:

Democrats said they would fight for fiscal responsibility in Washington, but went back on their promise by voting for $335 million in STD prevention, $75 million for smoking cessation and even $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts.

(emphasis mine)

GOP radio ads to target House Dems who supported stimulus [USA Today On Politics]

Or as Representative Jack Kingston, R-Georgia put it:

“We have real people out of work right now and putting $50 million in the NEA and pretending that’s going to save jobs as opposed to putting $50 million in a road project is disingenuous.”

Congressman Blasts Arts Jobs [Volume One]
Arts jobs are real jobs [Los Angeles Times]

The arts are the punchline – and the punching bag. I’m all for fiscal responsibility, but given the current banking crisis, is it really money for the arts that’s fiscally irresponsible?

Look, policy is one thing. The battle over economic stimulus was bound to be contentious, and the dangers facing the US and world economy have put immense pressure on the process. I think in a way, just getting defensive on this issue is exactly what anti-arts advocates want artists to have to do.

My question is fundamental: why can’t the arts and “entertainment” be considered part of the economy? And what do we have to do, exactly, to convince people that there are real jobs that don’t involve building roads?

Side note: so many people are complaining about this issue (try a Google or Technorati search) that I’m hopeful the final bill will nix this nonsense and protect arts funding, or even the NEA. But as I say, it’s really the fundamental debate that needs fixing more than any one bill.

While I’m discussing the potential to take new directions in the arts and technology worldwide, and about ways in which creative technology can help repair the global economy, I’d be remiss if I didn’t make one sobering concession:

To many policy makers, the “arts” don’t count as the economy. If you’re employed as an artist, (and by extension in creative fields), you’re not a worker. Um… thanks?

Never mind that in the US alone, nearly 6 million people are employed in the arts – or that that figure itself is  probably wildly conservative, compared to the many more creative freelancers and the economies around them. (Ask companies like Yamaha, Roland, Korg, Avid, and Apple, who then sell products to musicians, many of them pros.)

It’s not just a US problem, either. The Dutch government – just the kind of liberal European government decried by American conservatives – had to be convinced of the value of its music technology research center in 2008.

To me, this shouldn’t be an issue that pits liberals versus conservatives. In fact, important issues around the economy have always been solved by cooperation between people of different political persuasions and parties. Unfortunately, conservatives have decided to declare the arts “liberal.”

The Heritage Foundation claims funding for the arts amounts to “pork.” Leading Republican Jeff Flake, when asked for an example of pork in the current proposed economic stimulus bill, replies:

"For example, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts," Flake says. "There’s no better example than that. How that stimulates the economy, I don’t know."

Does ‘Pork-Less’ Stimulus Bear Porcine Whiff? [NPR]

Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some pork in there – but the NEA funding is all Rep. Flake can come up with? This seems to be less about policy and more about reigniting culture wars.

Specifically, the conservative talking point is to focus on “productivity” and producing goods. The implication: if your job involves the arts, you’re not a “productive” member of society. (I’ll have to scratch my head to work out just what “goods” the financiers buying up bundled debt were producing. I’ll get back to you on that one.)

Of course, the way in which arts funding would stimulate the economy is obviously the way any other part of a stimulus package would – by providing support to people doing work in a field during rough times, support that in this case provides an educational and cultural resource shared by everyone. Ironically, part of the reason these aren’t arts jobs for individuals is that the US long ago eliminated direct funding for individual artists, a move designed to placate conservatives opposed to arts funding.

Yet for some conservatives, the arts have been used as a key talking point, even though it’s $50 million out of an $875 billion bill. That’s a tiny fraction of one percent of the funding, like arguing over the number of pennies in the tip on a $1500 steak dinner. Now, I’m all for some genuine fiscal conservatism – it’s badly needed in these economic times. And likewise, I would hope the opposition party in Washington is tough on the Administration plan. But where are those conservatives? Why are they beating up on a tiny line item over philosophical reasons? In the past, conservatives and Republicans had long been patrons and supporters of the arts. We could use some old-fashioned conservatism right now if we’re going to save the planet and its economy.

If you want to stimulate the economy, you invest in jobs, in making actual goods. In 2008, the US taxpayer funded hundreds of billions of dollars in handouts to the failed finance sector that singlehandedly created the economic crisis. Billions of those dollars wound up ending up as executive bonuses.

But, guess what? If you’re an artist, if you’re a creative person, you don’t even count as a person with a job.

I bring this up because if you do live in the US, you can call your Representative tomorrow and tell them what you think about this issue. It’s especially important if you’re a Republican or a conservative, because I think there are more important points to be made – and this can distract from them. This could be a bipartisan issue again. And for everyone else, we clearly – as an artistic community – have some messaging to work on. We can’t allow this to be a political issue, a wedge issue. And as former NEA chair Bill Ivey puts it:

"Once we move away from a consumerist view of a high quality of life — once we’re forced away from it — arts and culture, creativity, homemade art, those things can begin to come to the fore."

Stimulus Package Includes Millions For The Arts [NPR]

American citizens have turned their eyes to the incoming Obama Administration for all kinds of change. It wouldn’t be overstatement to say that just about every possible hope is being pinned to the new government – practical or not. But there’s good reason to believe some significant changes may be in store for both the areas of arts and technology, in ways that are not only relevant to CDM readers in the US, but could impact the global climate for these areas.

The federal government in the US can’t do everything, particularly when economic pressures are likely to make budgets tight. But they can do something to set the tone. Even more importantly, there should be opportunities for people who want change to become active and vocal, and to learn from each other, wherever we are in the world.

The agenda I think we’ll want as tech-using artists and makers:

• Defend innovation, commercial or common, from patent abuse (see: White House)
• Embrace open source – something that could benefit, again, commercial and community endeavors alike (see: BBC, OSI)
• Make the arts a priority, and one that via technology connects to renewed interest in math and science (see: NYT)

As you can see, regardless of your party affiliations or even country of citizenship, these are things we can work on together. For a start, I’ve already talked about personal changes – not simply governmental or political changes – that can make a difference in our communities:

Your Own Times of Change: Greetings, “Makers of Things”

Here are some additional issues that may well interface with the incoming US government, with impacts on the US and around the world.

Above: Remixing history, through the ears of the UK.
Obama’s Inauguration as Reaktor Mash-Up: Tim Exile

Technology: Patents

You can read the Obama technology agenda on the new White House site (itself a subject of discussion and hopes for new transparency).

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/technology/

A lot here reads like campaign language, so it’s tough to say what the actual policy will be. But this bullet should be especially interesting to digital musicians and visualists:

Reform the Patent System: Ensure that our patent laws protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and collaboration. Give the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) the resources to improve patent quality and open up the patent process to citizen review to help foster an environment that encourages innovation. Reduce uncertainty and wasteful litigation that is currently a significant drag on innovation.

I think flawed patents may be the single biggest to new creative technologies. It impacts both hardware and software, and everyone from DIY makers to useful research in big corporations. (And yes, even big corporations can do research that’s useful to the rest of us. For one thing, even some of that corporate research is open source.)

Patents in the US in particular have been wildly abused. Companies who don’t make anything have effectively “squatted” on ideas that might someday turn into products. Those patents are defined so broadly that by the time a genuine innovator invents something real that works, they often find they’re in “violation” of a nonsense patent. Large businesses, acting defensively, have added to the problem by over-patenting their own research. Clearly, we need some common sense rules so that patents cover people actually making stuff.

There are few political issues more directly relevant to the music and visual technology covered on CDM. I’ve seen patents stifle innovation countless times on this site, and when that hasn’t happened, fear about patents has often been a factor in preventing people from more aggressively pursuing their inventions. It’d be unrealistic to expect the Obama Administration alone to magically solve these problems. But a friendly Administration could invigorate debate, meaning now is the time to get active on this issue. I’m no expert in patent law, but I’ll certainly welcome people who are to become involved.

I’d also like to see the open source community begin to formulate a way of responding to patent issues. Open source has almost exclusively dealt with licenses in copyright terms. Certainly, the community is sensitive to the issue, but just sitting around worrying about patents does nothing: open source inventors need to start formulating a concrete strategy. They’ll need help, not only from the government but experts in the field. But the timing is right.

Whether people want to open-source their inventions or not, I think DIYers and researchers and even businesses who actually create stuff have a common need here. So it will be equally important for that open source community not to just blindly rail against patents, but find policies that work for everyone. “Makers of things,” not just open source advocates, have an opportunity to come together.

Technology: Open Source

The Obamas clearly have the power and popularity to popularize trends and ideas. Sometimes, that borders on the absurd: when it was revealed the Obama children wore J. Crew, the clothing company’s site crashed. It’s little wonder, then, that open source advocates would hope the new Administration would champion their cause. BBC News’ Maggie Shiels has a great story on those possibilities:

Calls for open source government [BBC News, via Slashdot]

One figure behind the rallying cry for open source is Sun co-founder Scott McNealy. That’s interesting, as Sun was actually quite late to the open source party. Sun didn’t open its flagship Java technology until after McNealy’s tenure. The fact that he has been won over I think is telling – McNealy created one of the world’s biggest tech vendors. The rationale for his appeal is simple: open source is cheaper.

I think the case should actually be broader. If the US – and, indeed, the economically-weak planet – want to advocate new growth in education, science, and technological innovation, it’s a no-brainer to have at least some technologies common and shared. That could ultimately lead to benefits for big vendors and individuals and the economically challenged alike.

And if you want to push open technology, artists should be among your first stops. We push the real-time capabilities of computers harder than anyone. For instance, when researchers wanted to demonstrate real-time Java, they chose a Bach performance. Why? Playing Bach turns out to be more timing-critical than one of the other applications – controlling a nuclear submarine. (The Army phrase “Be all you can be” comes to mind.) The drive of self-expression can be a powerful way of to realize technology’s full potential.

Direct quote on that, by the way:

Music synthesis is, in fact, more stringent in its real-time needs than many other hard real-time systems. For instance, avionics typically operate at a period of 20 milliseconds, or about 10 times longer than the synthesizer.

Harmonicon research at IBM

Open source needs music and visuals – and we often need open source. In music and visuals, the lack of interest in basic, open frameworks has often stifled the success and expressivity of the tools we use. I was impressed by the new stuff at this year’s NAMM. But many of the leading technologies – Novation Automap and M-Audio HyperTransport for controllers and Akai’s APC and Native Instruments Maschine among the hardware announcements – were limited by aging standards and proprietary implementations of control. Those same vendors struggle with drivers for proprietary computer operating systems owned and controlled by someone else. The result: music technology is often hard to configure and unreliable, limiting its appeal and reducing the number of customers. The solutions there aren’t all easy, and open source is no panacea, but I don’t think I’m overstating the problem – or the lost potential that could be coming from the open source world.

Of course, the Obama Administration is unlikely to do anything of practical use to artists or musicians when it comes to open source. But it could set a tone – and I’d argue, it already has. The Open Source Initiative’s Michael Tiemann noted just after the election that the Obama campaign had benefited from running open source tools. Whether or not Obama mandates federal offices run OpenOffice or something like that, I’d say the proof of open source’s utility is already out there:

Barack Obama proves the power of Open Source [Open Source Administration blog]

And that should be the main interest of arts technologists and creative tech vendors – politics aside, open source can pay.

Arts

We have mixed blessings in the US. On one hand, government arts funding has often been scant. On the other, we have an artist community that has vigorously defended its own value against the harshest critics, a uniquely-generous private funding climate, and a bootstrap, DIY approach by artists to supporting themselves. Arts advocacy groups are nonetheless eager to use the Obama Administration as an opportunity to get more badly-needed support – and they’re using the economic stimulus as a new angle:

Arts Leaders Urge Role for Culture in Economic Recovery [Robin Pogrebin for The New York Times]

Don’t believe them? Here’s a number for you: US$167 billion. That’s the amount Americans for the Arts says nonprofits contribute to the US economy. (They also employ some 6 million people.) And that’s just nonprofit groups; the impact of the arts and music are of course far bigger than that. As evidenced by this site, that cultural economy is increasingly globalized, meaning the entire business of making things could grow around the planet.

Much of the actual policy here would be more symbolic than practical. The additional US$50 million advocates want for the National Endowment for the Arts would have little meaning to an individual artist, though I’m sure the agency would love to have it. But “reframing” culture as an important part of the business of America is something that’s badly-needed.

Along the same lines, calls for WPA-style support for artists as part of economic recovery:

Will Act for Food [Newsweek]

More practical, I think, is the need for US policy that makes healthcare more affordable and accessible to the self-employed, a significant group of American readers of the site. If individual musicians or visual artists or freelancing coders and visualists and the like didn’t have to worry about spiraling health care costs, they could contribute in other ways a lot more easily.

Globally, we need a climate that’s friendlier to artists in general. The recent struggle of music tech research centers like STEIM in Amsterdam and IRCAM in Paris – places Americans might have assumed would be safe – is solid evidence of that.

Connecting this to the material and business of this site sure isn’t hard. Musicians and visualists increasingly sell to fans and one another, build their own businesses from scratch, innovate technologically, share open source research, teach others, volunteer, and add DIY tech businesses to their portfolio as they make their own hardware and software.

One thing missing from the traditional arts advocacy approach is the ability to use music, movement, and motion to aid in innovating in and teaching math and science. With technology (or even without it), expressive media are a fantastic way of demonstrating math and science concepts and making them creative and personal. I know I would have had a much easier time in school with topics like physics and Calculus if I could have connected them to music and animation, and I don’t think I’m alone.

That’s the philosophical framework, anyway. Given that tone matters for all of these issues, it’ll be interesting to see whom Obama makes NEA chief and what steps that agency and the Obama Administration take in arts policy.

So, thus concludes the post-Inauguration edition of this story. But you can expect to see a lot more on all three of these issues as they directly relate to the subject matter(s) of these sites – and expect more than just the President making some of the headlines.