Mashup Albom Cover 2.0
Times have changed and designs too. It is time to update the cover design I’ve made for the different mashup tracks on my iTunes collection. [click to continue…]
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Posts tagged as:
Creative Commons
This is my dissertation “The Freedom to Create & Creating freedom”. It was written as part of my final year project for BA Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College in 2006. [click to continue…]
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Yesterday, while strolling through one of the torrent sites, I came across a new album by NIN, called Ghosts I.
I normally buy the Nine Inch Nails albums, but I thought I’ll download it to check it out first. When Ghost I was downloaded I discovered a readme.txt file in it:
This torrent is an official upload from Nine Inch Nails.
We’re very proud to present a new collection of instrumental music, Ghosts I-IV. Â Almost two hours of music recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I-IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.
Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.
We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. Â It’s licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons.
We’ve also made a 40 page PDF book to accompany the album. Â If you’d like to download it for free, visit http://ghosts.nin.com/main/pdf
Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts I-IV. Â Undoubtedly you’ll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you’re interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5. Â You can also order it on CD, or as a deluxe package with multitrack audio files, high definition audio on Blu-ray disc, and a large hard-bound book.
We genuinely appreciate your support, and hope you enjoy the new music. Â Thanks for listening.
Hence, what started as the illegal act of downloading an album over a torrent site, ended up as a totally legal act, approved by the creators of the content.
Maybe BitTorrent is not a bad word after all…
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“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. [Nick] Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.”Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.
Neil Gaiman decided to give away one of his books free online (initially for a month), as a “celebratory birthday thing” for his blog’s 7th birthday.
You can vote and help him choose which one its going to be on his site.
At the same time, NYT publishes an article on how HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site.
About a month ago Lawrence Lessig announced that the last of his books is now free to download (and remix).
After a productive and valuable conversation with my publisher, Random House, they’ve agreed to permit The Future of Ideas to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
On January 1st, Charles Sheehan-Miles decided to give the electronic version of his book, Republic, for free.
No more sample chapters, partial books that end in the middle, none of that. You can download and read the complete book. Share it with your friends, email it, do anything you want with it except sell it.
Here’s why: the biggest challenge most authors face isn’t online piracy. It’s not people out there diabolically copying their works and distributing them for free. In fact most authors (including yours truly) suffer from a different problem entirely — no one has ever heard of them. After all, literally hundreds of thousands of new titles come out every year, and only a few hundred writers in the entire United States (if that many) actually live off their books full time. So, by giving away the book, I hope more people actually read it.
Chris Anderson wrote about it at the time:
For the vast majority of authors, being read is actually reward enough. How to turn that recognition into a living is a whole other process, and not necessarily one that depends on the traditional book industry to deliver. Good thing, too, since it so rarely does.
I think 2008 is a good year for electronic book publishing. Let’s see what it’ll do for other media publishing..
BTW, a nice feature is that you can search in most of these books (and many more) in Google Book Search.
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From Wikipedia:
Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is any of several technologies used by publishers (or copyright owners) to control access to and usage of digital data (such as software, music, movies) and hardware, handling usage restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work.
The producers of films and music are trying to keep the rights to their own. Slowly government rules are taking place, forbidding the right to copy digital work, even if its for personal purposes.
Lately, a bill has passed in France, known as DADVSI (in English: “law on authors’ rights and related rights in the information society”).
Most of the bill focuses on the repression of the exchange of copyrighted works over peer-to-peer networks and the criminalizing of the circumvention of DRM protection measures. The law… could significantly hamper free software, and also may significantly restrict the right to make copies of copyrighted works for private use.
StopDRM, (translated, original page here), a group of French activists are calling against the law.
After the adoption of law DADVSI by the government, greatest confusion reigns: the users of peer-to-peer received the insurance of the Minister for the culture which justice will be lenient, but the members of the StopDRM Collective worry for the consumers, who “do not pirate” but buy the music and films: what will arrive to them, now that the law was promulgated, if they circumvent the DRM for the legitimate use of works? And if they say it and inform the population? Are they assured them also any leniency?
3 members of the group have stepped forward. They went to the police to get arrested under the slogan “A lawsuit is wanted“.
The three have bought the original work of either music from iTunes or DVDs and transferred them to their portable media players by circumventing the code, thus breaking the law. One of them even have created a page Internet explaining how to remove the DRM of a protected bought work so that everyone can transfer its pieces on its portable player. While waiting for the response of the legal authorities, this page is accessible to all and is on http://drm.mediaarea.net.
The third, for its part, used a free software to read a DVD under GNU/Linux.
All of the three are about to face charges. The police officer was thinking that they are kidding with him, but at some point he discovered that they are right – this is illegal.
They most probably are facing sanctions of 3.750 euros fine for deliberated use with technical measurements realized by a Net surfer by his own means, six months of imprisonment and 30.000 euros fine for the provider of means of skirting, which acts in a deliberated way.
The problem is not the fact that you can do it at home, and nobody will know, but the fact that it is illegal to do so. A similar law is already applied in the US, and sooner or later, will take place in most of the countries in the world.
Ripping a DVD that I bought in order to save a copy of it at home or to be able to transfer it to a portable device and breaking the DRM of a song I bought from iTunes in order to play it on a non Apple device are my rights.
Lately, microsoft have released their own portable player, Zune, which is applying DRM to every song and video which is transferred to it, even if the title is under a GNU or a Creative Commons licence (of which, its against the licence to apply DRM).
The fight has only just begun.
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