So I’m wandering through my referrers and I come across an exact replica of all the content of my site only on livejournal. And I think to myself – why that’s a little strange. And it has comments, which my site doesn’t. So in many ways it’s actually better. It’s been pulled out of my RSS feed as far as I can tell. I wonder – is this automation happening with other people as well? And who is the sinister presence behind the scenes that pulls the strings? Update: What a funny old world – Culprit / Punter found and all is well with the world…
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Apple and the Pirate Everyman
“Don’t Steal Music” says the sticker on the top of every new iPod – a 5-20Gb Firewire hard-disc with built in MP3 player. But is Steve Jobs’ Apple being disingenuous? Because from the outside, their entire operation seems built around helping information to be free – every effort is being made to make software and music and imagery as easy as possible to create, copy or disseminate. And why? Because they’re in the hardware business…
Let’s go back to first principles here and quickly scout through some of Apple’s offerings. First things first – computer hardware. Apple have done a huge amount to popularise and demystify the writable CD/DVD culture, with almost all of their computers coming with either a CDR or Superdrive as standard. The functionality for such devices fulfils a double function – as a storage media for backing-up or transporting large files or as a way of printing media hard-copies – CD duplicates, home-made DVDs.
Now the software that supports it – iTunes is just an MP3 player with a few bits of fluff on it. But it is a good MP3 player, and more importantly it’s a non-proprietary, non-copyright enforcing, song-organising MP3 player. While default players on PCs use technology like Windows Media, iTunes very specifically sticks with the most popular, least controllable and most readily available form of music format. iTunes makes the process of ripping CDs incredibly simple – and that doesn’t only mean your own CDs, it means any CD you get close to. And in order to stop the use of these MP3s to be restricted to your computer (even if they might sound great with your high-quality Harman/Kardon speakers), you can also take them anywhere you want with your iPod.
iMovie and iPhoto meanwhile may not allow you to rip DVDs to your computer, but they operate on the principle that if you get digital footage onto your computer it should be as easy as possible to edit them and burn them on convenient media. Create, edit, burn, distribute.
Now to software distribution – OSX’s disk-copying software (released as standard) makes it simple to take full images of any install media you have and keep them on your computer. Or burn them to CD and give to your friends. Or put them online. Or distribute them however the hell you like.
But none of this is unique to the Mac platform or to Apple as a company. So what is it about the way that Steve Jobs operates that sets Cupertino apart?
In order to answer this you have to look at their own software offerings. From operating system through all its consumer applications, Apple actually doesn’t seem to particularly care if you pay for them or not. The vast majority (iTunes, iSync, iDVD, iMovie, Mail, iChat etc) are completely free. The odd one – like Quicktime – consists of a free element with a small upgrade cost. Some, like the software upgrade to OSX.2, seems like quite an expensive pay-for software option (�Ì90), but can easily be copied and distributed on CD-R without ever having to type in a software registration key.
It’s only at the professional end of the software market where Apple asks for money, and even then that doesn’t seem to be there only reason for selling the software. The fact that major music-software companies can be bought up by Apple – companies that then immediately stop selling the PC versions of their product – makes it clear that the financial aspect of the deal is almost secondary. They’re simply (for the most part) not interested in selling software.
And this vision extends even further to the way they write their software now – OSX.2 is based on an essentially free form of Unix, iTunes stores all its information in XML, iCal uses a publically formed standard way of holding calendar data. In every area, Apple has pushed away from proprietary software technologies and restrictions and moved towards the creativity, interdependance and freedoms of open standards. Apple has tried – wherever possible – to live by the adage that information wants to be free. It’s decided not to fight this aspect of information but instead encourage it, help it to be free. And in fact try to make it as free as possible…
The reasons for all this, of course, are that – for good or ill – at the moment copyrighted material and intellectual property are endangered and cornered beasts anyway. As yet no-one really knows the effects of this development, but I think it is clear to all concerned that (whether or not it is really happening at the moment) the gradual increase in technology, bandwidth and storage capacity provides an enormous potential for simply routing around traditional media-distribution outlets. Whether this will hurt the entertainment and software industries is as yet unclear – because as yet they mostly haven’t even tried experimenting with different types of consumer-interaction – but whether it hurts them or not, it will certainly have an impact.
In my opinion Apple sees such battles as essentially over already, and has moved in a completely different direction. Why try to sell the intellectual property itself when you can simply sell the best platform for distributing it? Why worry about software sales at all – when you can work instead on making it so that people have to buy your hardware to use it? And why consider one off payments on products when you can move towards getting people to pay for services (like .mac – the value of which is directly related to the number of free applications that gain more value when you pay your yearly fee).
Apple is one hundred percent ahead of the game here – so far ahead, in fact – that it’s completely unable to say it loud and clear. That’s why they have to keep saying again and again, “Don’t Steal Music”, when everyone knows that they’re only doing it to cover their own backs. The fact is that they know that however much money is being made through the selling of software, music and copyrighted material, the future isn’t in protecting the trade routes – it’s in making everyone a pirate…
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From the book of Internet Revelations…
This might come as a bit of a shock to some of you, so sit yourselves down. From the book of Internet Revelations: “It is possible for a website to have a function to users above and beyond the making of interesting or pretty graphs out of its usage statistics”.
Three comments about films…
- So I went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with Cal a couple of days ago. It’s kind of a complicated story as to how that ended up happening. It certainly wasn’t planned. It’s far from an awful film, but it’s far from brilliant either. The special effects are pretty stunning – considerably better than in the first film – but the pacing is leaden, the characterisation pretty slapdash and threadbare and, well, it’s still a bit long… It’s worth seeing, but don’t get too excited…
- Harry Potter’s length might have been a disappointment, but I went and bought the extended DVD of Lord of the Rings [US | UK] a few days ago, and that’s substantially better than the film that was shown in the cinema. It’s a full half an hour longer than the theatre version – mostly exposition and character-development – and it feels substantially richer and you feel more invested in it as a result. Most interestingly, I think, it exposes how odd the pacing was on the theatrical version, particularrly in the Cate Blanchett / Lothlorien episode…
- While we’re talking filmic nonsense, I’ve put a very old review of The Patriot online – mainly because I was talking to Meg about the film yesterday and because it’s such a revisionist piece of crap that someone has to stand up and be counted and say so…
Over my life I’ve found myself motivated by music more than almost anything else. That push that the right song can give you more often than not is the thing that shoves my mood or sensibility forward. It’s a spiritual kick up the arse. It’s music as mood-enhancer – music as engine for mental change and transformation.
At the moment, I look around and I see a lot of routine. A lot of people doing a lot of things that they’ve done before. A lot of people (myself included) travelling around and around like a needle in a record. The opportunities to jump out of this routine seem only to be skips between tracks, silences before the next song starts. They’re not enough. Does a life change itself by going on holiday? Does a person become a better person by taking a break? Maybe the thing to do instead is to keep forcing yourself back to your work – even the work that we seem to skip over or fall exhausted from. Perhaps especially that work. Maybe the work that we do – that we do for ourselves or for the things that we believe in – is the life-transformative thing. Particularly when you don’t have a partner to get in the way. Particularly when it’s unlikely that you’re going to have a child.
It’s a weird conversation for a Friday night, and it’s inspired by something even weirder. It’s inspired by a kind of semantic implosion and a confluence of pop-culture imagery. It’s inspired by the monotony of yet another year of BBC’s Children In Need Telethon. It’s inspired by the upcoming appearance of the people from Fame Academy on that telethon – people with actual talent and ability whose aspirations and dreams are being turned into marketable products (isn’t that worse in a way – that it’s not their talent that’s for our consumption – that it’s their hopes?). And it’s inspired above all by listening to – for the first time in ten years – a bone fide musical relic of the early 1990s – Tears for Fears’ Sowing the Seeds of Love.
Bear with me, because this is a serious post about a vaguely dumb song. And I think it’s important. This trivial anthem – this vaguely silly, backwards-looking, cod-Beatles anthem – matters to me now in a way it didn’t at the time. It’s a song about action – liberal action – designed to be an way of energising people who want the world to be something to be proud of. It’s a call to examine your morals, your interests, your creativity. And while it’s utterly lacking in muso credibility, it does something that most liberal heart-felt songs don’t do – it points towards the possibilities of a better future rather than wallowing in the problems of the present. It’s trivial because it’s idealistic. But it’s brilliant for that reason to. Or maybe not brilliant – maybe it’s just nice that it exists…
Hear the line: High time we made a stand and shook up the views of the common man. It sounds patronising, but in my heart I have to accept I believe it. If you’re a worried man – then shout about it. Open hearts – feel about it. Open minds – think about it. Everyone – read about it. Everyone – scream about it ! I believe that too. [More lyrics]
The band that wrote the song basically split as a result of writing it. It was too intense, too committed a process to be an easy ride. The man who cared most about making it clean and pure – even if it was saturated in spritzes of pop imagery- had to care too much about the song if it was ever going to be finished to his satisfaction – if it was going to be a something worthwhile. Something not “for sale”. And whether you think the final result was crap or not, it was not routine – it was inspired by genuine feeling, a sense of need, of aspiration and of almost fanatically hard work… I wonder to myself – do we need someone now – whether in the micro-culture of weblogging, or in the greater creative world, or even in centre-left politics, to put that work in? I’m beginning to think so. We need a new ethic of creativity – or a return maybe to an ethic of transformative creative responsibility. And maybe that can start with the creative individualism of webloggia.
I’m going to end this rather epic post about trivial music, responsibility and the ethics of creativity by talking about another song – and pointing towards a kind of approach to our creative endeavours that has the capacity to break us out of our routine and our creative ruts – to help reinvigorate us all politically and productively. It’s called “Emile” by Pressure of Speech. It’s not a pop-song. It wasn’t released as a single. Instead it’s a bit of an odd little piece of music with some reading over the top of it by a man callled Emile de Antonio from a documentary about his life called Mr Hoover & I. It’s got some stunning phrases in it about creativity and responsibility – insights that I think apply to all aspects of our lives, but are perhaps particularly potent when looking at weblogs:
Perhaps the only thing that’s worthwhile is to make something that isn’t really for sale, except on your own terms – which is “I made it. It’s true. If you don’t like it, to hell with you. I want you to like it, or I’d be crazy, but I’d rather be crazy than have you like it because it was false – because it was what you wanted from me instead of what I wanted…”
Well it’s swiftly approaching that time of the year again – and that means it’s time for Cal, Denise and I to throw open the doors of Secret Santa 2002!
“The idea of Secret Santa is very simple – you pull a name out of a hat and buy that person a present. Your name is in the hat as well, so someone buys you a present too! Everyone gets a present! Everyone’s happy!”
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Another image sent to me from Davo…
So again – I don’t know if this image is accurate or whether it’s a piss-take, and I can’t tell whether it’s offensive or incredibly funny. It’s probably doing the rounds of e-mail at the moment so I’ll apologise straight-off if you’ve seen it dozens of times before. But whether it’s true or not, thanks to Davo for sending me an image of this receipt – apparently given to someone who’d ordered a Bacardi Breezer…
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On Tom's Ten Tip Top Tunes…
Ten Tip Top Tunes for Tom: Being a list of songs that I’m listening to over and over again at the moment and which if you had less conscience and were prepared to (immorally) steal music through some kind of file-sharing application, you should probably download immediately. Bearing in mind that I couldn’t countenance such behaviour obviously.
- Lonesome Tears, by Beck
The most played song I own (says Mr iTunes), Lonesome Tears has been played about a gajillion times since Sea Change was released last month. Best song on the album. Wonderful. - Temptation, Heaven 17
I miss power pop like this – escalating chords in this song quite alarmingly resemble the end of Lonesome Tears. I always wonder if the woman who belts out the twirly bits was brought in afterwards to spice up a slightly boring song or not… - Nutbush City Limits, Tina Turner
Because post-Ike Tina Turner may have been a great big-haired 80s power balladeer, but 70s Tina Turner was a spiky hardcore edgy song-belter with enough spine to scale many a dinosaur. - Poplife, Prince
Liking Prince only became a crime when Prince’s music became criminally awful. I’d suggest this was when he started thieving from temples. Personal opinion of course – many people like his crapper work. Nonetheless, there’s got to be a place in life for Pop Life. Because life it ain’t too funky. Unless it’s got that pop. - Top of the World, Shonen Knife
You know what’s great? Happy Japanese Punk-Pop Pixies singing bouncy Carpenters’ songs with quite bad accents. Kurt Cobain loved Shonen Knife. And then he killed himself. - God Save the Queen, Sex Pistols
The most tuneful and iconic of the Sex Pistols’ ouevre is just a bloody good laugh when you’re in the lift by yourself in the mornings (carrying your green soya smoothie with spirulina to your creative desk-job – sigh…). - Get Free, The Vines
“I’m gonna get free, I’m gonna get free, Ride into the Sun.” For some reason this and Randy Crawford belting out “Someday I’ll fly away” have been stuck in my head for the last few holiday-free months. - The Killing Moon, Echo and the Bunnymen
Donnie Darko biking down a moutain road in the early morning light cracking through the branches as 80s indie icons get cruelly kissed as the sky’s all hung with jewels. Fate, up against your will. Through the thick and thin. Whatever… - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John
This boys too young, but he’s not too proud, to be singing these Elton John inspired blues. Back to the howling old owl in the woods. Hunting the horny back toad. I’ve finally decided my future lies beyond the Yellow Brick Road. - I’d Love to Change the World, Ten Years After
From a film where liberal intellectuals kill all the right-wing bastards they can, until they meet the ultimate bastard, who then persuades them not to kill him, before killing them and becoming a satanic President of the USA. Everywhere is freaks and hairies, dykes and fairies… Good film…
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On writer's block…
You’d never know it to look at the amount of writing I’m currently pumping through plasticbag.org at the moment, but I’m currently experiencing a fairly alarming creative block. I have three pieces of longer writing on the go at the moment – three pieces that are addressing issues that I often write about on this site (the relationship between personal and mainstream publishing, the relationship between weblogs and journalism, and the implicit politics of the discussion board). None of them are going well. Each and every one of them is in my head in an essentially complete form, but there’s something between my mind and my fingers that is interfering with their transcription. This is yet another one of the reasons I left academia – because the process of writing became a painful and difficult one – a situation rife with angst in it’s literal Old High German sense… Eurgh…