Musician Dan Bull, whose letters to Lily Allen and Lord Mandelson both became YouTube hits, has done it again; His latests piece is about the music industry’s consistent refusal to accept or adapt to new technology, from the gramophone to the jukebox to commercial radio to the internet. His song, and accompanying video focuses on the most famous campaign, the ill-judged 80s classic; Home Taping is Killing Music.
Check out the British campaign against the Digital Economy Bill at DontDisconnect.us
Lyrics after the jump. Continue reading…
A couple of days ago Israeli President Shimon Peres has launched his very own YouTube channel. While this is a great idea, it allows me the opportunity to demonstrate more evidence that Israel is stuck in the 1990’s:
The President’s press office took the initiative to mark every single video as ‘all right reserved‘. Legally this means you may be allowed to watch the videos, but probably not to show them in a classroom and most definitely not to sample or re-edit them.
The American President also has a YouTube channel, but it is clearly marked ‘public domain‘. This means anyone can use its content in any way they see fit: watch it, show it, embed it, mix it, basically do everything with it without asking for any permission and with no need to credit the original work.
Of course ‘all rights reserved’ and ‘public domain’ are not the only options. The Creative Commons initiative enables anyone to choose just the right license for their work and allow certain uses of it while forbidding certain others. Unfortunately, while the president across the pond clearly shows 21st century mentality when it comes to sharing, most people around here do not – and apparently this goes up to Israel’s number one citizen.
P.S.
Another major difference between the Israeli President and his American counterpart, is that while Obama knows enough not to wing it and almost always works off a script – Peres apparently ad-libs his messages. This results in his Hanukkah video containing the following phrase: “There are many dangers, like the Iranians”.
While the Iranian regime might be harmful, the Iranians people are clearly not. In fact we were BFFs back in the days.
After watching the brilliant Israeli rock opera ‘War’ on stage, and blogging about it, I have been corresponding by email with musician Kobi Vitman who created it based on his experiences in 2002 as a reserve infantry soldier during Operation Defensive Shield, and the PTSD that followed. A couple of months ago, when the original cast recording was issued, I tried to convey to Vitman my own experiences as a listener and a fan of the genre, emphasizing the difficulty in trying to track down these musical gems once the curtain closes on the original show. In accordance with my beliefs about file sharing, copyright laws and my own experiences searching for recordings of Israeli musicals, I tried to push for making the entire album available online.
Well, I am so very happy to announce that as of this week, the album is indeed available online and for free. You can still purchase the physical CD, booklet and all, for 40NIS, but if you just want the MP3 files, they are now legally available on WarRockOpera.com. You can still watch the show live in its acoustic version. Check the website for details.
