I’m on a dub mission tonght. My subscription to emusic.com is running out, and I’m trying to get a few more downloads in before it’s done. So tonight I’m downloading a sampling of the numerous dub albums they have. Dub is a style of reggae that features a heavy bassline. A friend in Los Angeles often sends me mixes of dub music, that I’ve come to enjoy. So now that my emusic subscription is going away, it’s time to get me some of that. By the way, the emusic.com subscription is a fantastic deal. Tons of music to download and you can do whatever you want with it.

Here’s an abstract of an article on CNET. This is from Edupage, an electronic publication of Educause. The headline is “LIBRARY GROUPS SIDE WITH P2P COMPANIES.”

Five U.S. library organizations are expected to file an amicus brief in federal court supporting the position of peer-to-peer (P2P) companies Streamcast Networks and Grokster in their legal battle with the recording industry. Organizations signing the brief include the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association. In the brief, the library groups argue that a judge ruled properly in April when he said that the two companies are not responsible for copyright infringement committed by individuals using the peer-to-peer tools the companies developed, just as makers of VCRs are not responsible if individuals use them to make illegal copies of movies. The brief reportedly makes clear that the groups do not condone violations of copyright law but that the recording industry should not be given “veto power over the development of innovative products and services” that have legitimate, noninfringing uses. CNET, 26 September 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5082684.html

Now if only the individuals who are being sued would get that kind of help. The last I heard, the RIAA was still promising “hundreds” more lawsuits. We’ll see. A couple of the lawsuits have either been resolved or dropped, but most are proceeding forward. According to the network use statistics over at Slyck, the P2P networks are way down on the number of users. So the RIAA actions are having some effect on the network apparently. But as I advised readers of this website a while back, just sit back and let the smoke blow over.

Ripping some more of my classical CD’s tonight. Two big stacks are now down to half a stack. It just takes time to rip all this shit. I received two discs in the mail (which I have not yet ripped) — a Kronos Quartet disc and a disc of Poulenc.

I just got back into town last night. I had spent four or five days traveling. Got to see some old friends from high school. How wonderful to see old friends. They’ve bought a house. She’s very pregnant. They have their life staked out before them. And it seems good. I’m happy for them.

A colleague pointed out to me someone’s thesis for an MFA. But it has roots in journalism and media analysis from a visual perspective. Here’s a link. The author was looking at how news is portrayed visually — how design, cropping, and presentation inform our opinions about the topic at hand. I took a class from Kay Amert in grad school that centered heavily on the topic of visual communication and the analysis of visual styles. We used Donis Dondis’ book A Primer of Visual Literacy, which Ms. Brigham also relied upon in her thesis.

I’ve been ripping my classical CD’s onto my hard drive the past few days. Fully half of my music collection is classical — including the 20th Century avant garde, which I’m so fond of. Everything else I have on CD has long been ripped to my hard drive, but I was way behind on the classical. And now I’m about 2/3rds of the way through the job. There’s still a stack of CD’s on my computer desk waiting to be ripped.

Why rip music, you ask? For a couple of good reasons. I spend a lot of time on my computer working. When I work on the computer, I often listen to music and I missed my classical selections. The second reason is that I love to make mix CD’s. I’ve made a few rock mixes recently, but it’s been a while since I’ve created a classical mix. So expect something good, in the near future of course, that is, if you’re on my mailing list.

Speaking of ripping, I did some ripping of my hair out of my head. Actually on Sunday, I shaved my head down to a 1/4”. This is in stark contrast to the longish hair and beard I been sporting. Yes, I also shaved off my beard. I didn’t have a good bead on what people would say. I looked in the mirror and wondered if it was good or what — it was such a drastic change. At any rate, over the past couple of days the comments have been really good. People have seemed to welcome the change. And based on the numerous comments I’ve gotten from people, the buzz cut looks good on me.

And so it’s been raining all day. It’s been a long, long time since it has rained here; we really needed it. So I’ve been doing some rainy day activities like scanning in some old photographs. Here’s a choice one from an old high school yearbook I found buried away at my parent’s house. I didn’t even realize I had these old yearbooks, I thought they had long ago been tossed aside. So click on the thumbnail at the right to see the photograph. It’s from my junior year 1988-1989. The caption on the photo read “Dan Stout plays his sax during a home basketball game. Although their performances were many, band members had a lot of fun and released a lot of energy during games.” That’s a pretty accurate assessment.

Tonight, I was listening to M. Ward’s End of Amnesia, an album that Sarah recommended to me. It’s sung with a hushed whisper (or is it a rasp?). Most of the album is just Ward and his guitar, but a few songs have other instruments. It’s all very quiet, but there’s a certain edge deep down. Something not quite settled. If this were electronica, it’d be called down tempo. It’s almost like folk but not really. I’ve been listening to a lot of big scores lately — dynamic, bold music like John Adam’s “Lollapalooza” — so it took a couple of listens to sync in with M. Ward’s vibe. But once you’re there, it’s a good place to be. I’m enjoying End of Amnesia a lot.

Well, as they promised, the RIAA today filed 261 lawsuits. There are two articles over at the New York Times here and here. The RIAA is definitely wanting to make examples of these 261 — that is, make them pay, and put the fear of God in everybody else.

There is a really simple solution to this problem. Create a payment system for file sharers and let them trade. People love music (isn’t that obvious?), but it’s a pain paying $17-$20 for a single CD. These days I buy used CD’s a lot — there’s a lot of music available that way. I pay about $10 usually for a new vinyl record, and those cost more to produce than CD’s!

But ultimately it comes down to established industries. The RIAA is protecting the music industry infrastructure — if the RIAA allowed legalized file sharing a lot of these chain music stores would go out of business. And there wouldn’t be much need for all those CD manufacturing plants. File sharing is a threat to their established way of doing business.

There’s an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about Niklas Zennström, the creator of KaZaA. He’s quoted as saying, “Basically what the [music industry] should do is outlaw the internet. That’s what they want to do.”

After dumping all of my documents into the “my documents” folder for the past year, some serious housekeeping was in order. Damn! That thing was messy. I finally went through this morning and cleared out a lot of drift wood and other stuff that washed up on the shore. Got it all pared down to the essential few GB’s of files that I needed. Some of it is old, like papers I wrote in grad school, but there’s a lot of current files especially with my websites. Windows says there’s 9,000 files in “my documents,” but 80% of those are with the websites. Big hard drives are nice.

Can I just say that Geoffrey Rush is a great fucking actor? Okay, I’ve said it.

The New York Times has an article about the coming lawsuits from RIAA. Apparently some users who were served supeonas will be offered an amnesty if they agree to discontinue all use of peer-to-peer programs. But those who are getting sued will have no recourse. The article claims the lawsuits will start to be filed early next week.

Here’s an abstract of an article from the New York Times. This is from Edupage, an electronic publication of Educause.

Included in court documents filed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are details about some of the group’s tactics and methods for determining which file swappers are trading copyrighted files. The group has subpoenaed the ISP of a woman suspected of trading copyrighted works, to obtain her identity. The woman, who remains unidentified, is challenging the RIAA’s subpoena. Her attorney has said that all the files on her computer were copies of legally purchased songs. In its filings, however, the RIAA indicates that so-called “hashes,” or digital fingerprints, indicate that at least some of the files on the woman’s computer came from Napster as long ago as May 2000. The RIAA flatly stated that the woman’s recordings were not from her own CDs and that she is “not an innocent or accidental infringer.” The RIAA’s court filings also reveal that the group examines metadata tags, which are buried inside many MP3 files, as a tool for determining the source of the files.