Blah Blah Flowers

Lily Allen has been saying some very silly things about piracy recently. Dan Bull has a response. [via Bloggerheads]

Labels: music, piracy

The non-dead bits of Monty Python have decided to put everything up, for free, on YouTube, in the hopes that it will encourage people to buy their DVDs. I already have my DVDs, bought from Amazon Germany because they were massively cheaper and in bigger bulk and still in English from Europe than bought in the UK. But this is the sensible way to go about it and it will be worth watching, if this encourages fresh sales of Monty Python merch. If nothing else, John Cleese has got all that alimony to pay...


The Monty Python YouTube Channel. Seems to have some rare-ish stuff, like the Cleese/Palin Amnesty 'Dead Parrot Sketch'.

Labels: comedians, comedy, Monty Python's Flying Circus, piracy, YouTube

Although, as usual, The Times is coming late to a party that's been going for a while now, Why Spotify may spell the end of ownership does highlight my fear that record labels will encourage the development and dominance of services like Spotify and Last.fm as a means of them holding complete control over the public's access to the point where I'd have to pay money if I want to hear any music at all ever. I would hope such a scenario would not come to pass but then they do all they can to try and stop file transfer despite the fact it encourages people to buy music legitimately after they've had an easy hassle-free way to hear it. Or maybe that's just me.

Labels: Digital Rights Management, music, piracy

I'm currently downloading Babylon 5: The Lost Tales 1 . That wouldn't be necessary if Warners released it over here or even better, if it hadn't been decided, when DVDs were invented, to split the world into Regions, so I can't buy a copy from the United States. Sadly, I'm forced to get it for free.

Labels: Babylon 5, Bittorenting, piracy

This is exactly how I feel when I sit down to watch legal DVDs such as Boston Legal ). [via BoingBoing]

Labels: adverts, DVDs, piracy, Television

Fridgemagnet helpfully brings this review of the Microsoft Zune to my attention. Less important is the actual device (I'm actually happy with my iPod and, heaven knows, I may well buy a new one when my old one wears out) but rather another example of how the big companies don't understand that the way to deal with piracy is to not act like dicks about it.

"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."

See, there's around one percent of the music on my iPod which, I'll admit, I don't own the CDs, so out of 8.5 days worth of music, two or three hours of music I shouldn't have. Two or three hours that I should have gone round car boot sales rooting through bins for, because UMG and their ilk certainly didn't want to sell me the albums any more. But comments like that make me want to up that percentage. If those of us who actually, Mr Morris, aren't crooks, worked over the next five years to make sure that 80, 90% of the music on our MP3 players is stolen, will you then stop treating us like scum? Is the only way to get you to stop treating us like thieves is to act like thieves until your bottom line is so damaged that you are forced to come out of your castle and make nice?

And don't even get my started on how every time I sit down to watch my Boston Legal season one DVDs that I received for my birthday I have to sit through warnings telling me not to steal them.

On that mention of DVD box-sets I'll also point you towards two very interesting essays on the subject: Binge Watching contemporary TV from City of Sound, and the essay by Mark Lawson it refers to.

Labels: iPods, music, piracy, Television