[SGVLUG] semi-OT: DRM rootkits et.

[Dustin]

On Wed, 2 Nov 2005, Terry Hancock wrote:

> It's not necessary to go quite that far. You just have to 
> adjust your universe:

I did think about mentioning the Free music sites, but I'm digging my way 
out of a lot of email and didn't want to complicate things.  I've decided 
that I can live very happily on pre-DRM music (not much DRM'd blues), and 
the less that is true the more I will be pushed to Free music.

I have a brother in a working band, unsigned because they didn't want to
sign a standard slavery contract.  When people talk about theft from the
music industry, I say it couldn't happen to a nicer industry.  When they
talk about the musicians not getting paid, I laugh and wonder what
alternate reality they are from where the music industry isn't entirely
about exploiting teenagers (both making and buying music) for the profit
of corporations.

> There's a *lot* of music on that site, in a very wide
> variety of styles.  You have to ask yourself what are 
> the big label bands doing that makes them so exclusively
> necessary to your cultural universe.  Maybe you *don't*
> need to compromise your ideals.

Actually, they're not--you are making some assumptions that couldn't be
farther from the truth.  Let's see, what did I buy recently--some old
Freddie King albums, one long out of print I had to dredge off EBay and
one foreign title I had to track down from Camsco (Google it--wonderful
place to order folk and anything vaguely related to folk), some sea
shanties bought from the table after a Pint & Dale concert, and (I kid you
not) some classic '80s Christian metal so obscure that I think the reprint
run was like 1000 discs.  (How much you want to be nobody here has ever
heard of Barnabas?...good old Barnabas...Nancy Jo Mann made Pat Benetar
sound like a pop singer.)

In what way do I appear a slave to the corporate machine to you?

So no, it's comparatively easy for me right now and I shouldn't put on too
many airs about it.  But the rights to a lot of that old music is held by
the same corporations harassing and stalking children, the elderly, and
dead people, and if they can get DRM accepted for pop I have no doubt
they'll send their jackbooted thugs for the reissues of old albums next.
So it will likely touch me eventually, and I'll be limited to the used
market and Free music.  Might as well start getting prepared.

But if I'd gotten into that aspect, it would have distracted from the 
point.

> what the industry produces. But haven't you ever wondered
> what exists beyond the stuff they play on the radio?

Careful about "they" and "the radio"--"Nothing But The Blues" is on 88.1
2-7 Saturdays, and I think 2-7 Sundays is "Atomic Blues."

There also used to be the wierdest host on <mumble> late nights, "The
Raven"--she played a lot of blues too.  Dunno if she's still on--I don't
listen to the radio that late anymore.  Anyone listen to The Raven, and
where/when is she now?

She was one wierd lady, but she played some mean blues in between
improbable-sounding stories about her life that were as sordid as the
blues she played.  She had quite a little following that would call her
*to give her advice*, a hilarious switch on the Frasier style late night
programs.  I seem to recall they were worried at one point about her
dating a married cop...I never figured out if it was all part of the 
persona to introduce the music, or if she really lived like that.

But I digress. :-)

Dustin, "Life in the city ain't pretty for The Raven, but she's hangin'."