Sounds from Innerspace

innerspaceboy · 08-27-2017, 11:22 AM

Fritz Lang's 1927 German expressionist sci-fi epic, Metropolis is heralded as a pioneering work of the genre, and was among the first feature-length films of science fiction. A masterpiece of early cinema, Metropolis is a breathtaking showcase of Bauhaus, Cubist and Futurist design.
Quite tragically, a commercial soundtrack of the original score was for most of the century unavailable to the public. Save for a considerably abbreviated rock-and-roll reinterpretation by Music producer Giorgio Moroder, featuring Freddie Mercury, Loverboy and Adam Ant in 1984, no original soundtrack was produced.

However, a breakthrough came in 2008, after a damaged print of Lang's original cut of the film surfaced in the archives of the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires. The resulting restored edition premiered in Berlin and Frankfurt simultaneously on 12 February 2010 for The Berlin International Film Festival, and ARTE presented a live broadcast.

This restored edition featured the original score composed by Gottfried Huppertz, conducted by Frank Strobel and performed by The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

(Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin). An album of the performance was issued only on compact disc, and exclusively in Austria on the Capriccio label, #C5066 in June of 2011. This 2010 reconstructed version was created to sync with the 35mm restored edition, 3945.5m = 144:12 at 24 fps.

All of the album credits and liner notes are in German, and Amazon user James Wyatt offered corrections and a translation of the disc's printed tracklisting. He notes that there are two track name errors on this album -

Track 19 'Fredersen und falsche Maria' is mistitled as Track 20 'Freder im Wahn' and Track 20 'Freder im Wahn' is mistitled as Track 21 'In Rotwang's Salon"

To correct these errors -

Rename Track 19 as 'Metropolis: II. Zwischenspiel: Fredersen und falsche Maria'

And rename Track 20 as 'Metropolis: II. Zwischenspiel: Freder im Wahn'

Wyatt kindly offers an English translation for the tracklist:

01. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Metropolis Theme
02. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Machinery
03. Metropolis: I. Prelude: The Stadium
04. Metropolis: I. Prelude: The Eternal Garden
05. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Maria with Children
06. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Machine Shop - Moloch
07. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Office Fredersen
08. Metropolis: I. Prelude: The Narrow - Drive
09. Metropolis: I. Prelude: In the House of Rotwang
10. Metropolis: I. Prelude: The Man Machine
11. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Rotwang and Fredersen
12. Metropolis: I. Prelude: In the Catacombs
13. Metropolis: I. Prelude: The Tower of Babel
14. Metropolis: I. Prelude: Freder and Maria
15. Metropolis: I. Prelude: The Pursuit
16. Metropolis: II. Interlude: The Cathedral
17. Metropolis: II. Interlude: In the Laboratory - Transformation
18. Metropolis: II. Interlude: Freder and Rotwang
19. Metropolis: II. Interlude: Freder and false Maria
20. Metropolis: II. Interlude: Freder in Delusion
21. Metropolis: II. Interlude: In Rotwang's Salon
22. Metropolis: II. Interlude: The Dance
23. Metropolis: II. Interlude: The Death
24. Metropolis: III. Furioso: Freder and Josaphat
25. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Revolt of the Workers
26. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Heart machine
27. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Flooding
28. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Escape
29. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Dance of the Workers
30. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Pyre
31. Metropolis: III. Furioso: On the Roof of the Cathedral
32. Metropolis: III. Furioso: The Reconciliation

This recording is essential for any collector of silent-era scores, sci-fi memorabilia, or for any lover of epic and dramatic orchestral works. Finally, Fritz Lang fans have a proper score of his greatest work available for their music libraries.

Zhanteimi · 08-27-2017, 07:54 PM

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innerspaceboy · 09-09-2017, 05:24 PM

On September 20, 2016, a Kickstarter project was launched in celebration of the Voyager Golden Record. The response was tremendous. 10,768 backers pledged $1,363,037 to help bring this project to life. And Ozma Records met their goal – shipping the result of the project to its contributors on September 5th, 2017 – 40 years to the day of the original 1977 Voyager launch.

Ozma Records did a magnificent job in producing the first-ever “Earthling edition” of this historic gift to the cosmos. The Voyager Interstellar Record may be the last vestige of our civilization after we are gone forever, and this 40th Anniversary Edition is a wonderful tribute to humanity and our place in the universe.

Original concept illustration for the set:

Audio Tracklisting:

1. Greeting from Kurt Waldheim, Secretary-General of the United Nations

2. Greetings in 55 Languages

3. United Nations Greetings/Whale Songs

4. The Sounds of Earth

5. Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047: I. Allegro (Johann Sebastian Bach) - Munich Bach Orchestra/Karl Richter

6. Ketawang: Puspåwårnå (Kinds of Flowers) - Pura Paku Alaman Palace Orchestra/K.R.T. Wasitodipuro

7. Cengunmé - Mahi musicians of Benin

8. Alima Song - Mbuti of the Ituri Rainforest

9. Barnumbirr (Morning Star) and Moikoi Song - Tom Djawa, Mudpo, and Waliparu

10. El Cascabel (Lorenzo Barcelata) - Antonio Maciel and Los Aguilillas with Mariachi México de Pepe Villa/Rafael Carrión

11. Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry

12. Mariuamangɨ - Pranis Pandang and Kumbui of the Nyaura Clan

13. Sokaku-Reibo (Depicting the Cranes in Their Nest) - Goro Yamaguchi

14. Partita for Violin Solo No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006: III. Gavotte en Rondeau (Johann Sebastian Bach) - Arthur Grumiaux

15. The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), K. 620, Act II: Hell’s Vengeance Boils in My Heart (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) - Bavarian State Opera Orchestra and Chorus/Wolfgang Sawallisch

16. Chakrulo - Georgian State Merited Ensemble of Folk Song and Dance/Anzor Kavsadze

17. Roncadoras and Drums - Musicians from Ancash

18. Melancholy Blues (Marty Bloom/Walter Melrose) - Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven

19. Muğam - Kamil Jalilov

20. The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), Part II—The Sacrifice: VI. Sacrificial Dance (The Chosen One) (Igor Stravinsky) - Columbia Symphony Orchestra/Igor Stravinsky

21. The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II: Prelude & Fugue No. 1 in C Major, BWV 870 (Johann Sebastian Bach) - Glenn Gould

22. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Opus 67: I. Allegro Con Brio (Ludwig Van Beethoven) - Philharmonia Orchestra/Otto Klemperer

23. Izlel e Delyu Haydutin - Valya Balkanska

24. Navajo Night Chant, Yeibichai Dance - Ambrose Roan Horse, Chester Roan, and Tom Roan

25. The Fairie Round (Anthony Holborne) - Early Music Consort of London/David Munrow

26. Naranaratana Kookokoo (The Cry of the Megapode Bird) - Maniasinimae and Taumaetarau Chieftain Tribe of Oloha and Palasu’u Village Community in Small Malaita

27. Wedding Song - Young girl of Huancavelica

28. Liu Shui (Flowing Streams) - Guan Pinghu

29. Bhairavi: Jaat Kahan Ho - Kesarbai Kerkar

30. Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground - Blind Willie Johnson

31. String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, Opus 130: V. Cavatina (Ludwig Van Beethoven) - Budapest String Quartet

Each Voyager Golden Record 40th Anniversary Edition vinyl box set includes a high-quality enamel pin of the Golden Record diagram and a custom turntable slipmat featuring NASA/JPL-Caltech’s heliocentric view of the Voyager spacecrafts’ trajectories across the solar system!

Concept illustration for the box set extras:

From the official Kickstarter page:

The Voyager Golden Record contains the story of Earth expressed in sounds, images, and science: Earth’s greatest music from myriad cultures and eras, from Bach and Beethoven to Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry, Senegalese percussion to Solomon Island panpipes. Dozens of natural sounds of our planet — birds, a train, a baby’s cry — are collaged into a lovely audio poem called Sounds of Earth. There are spoken greetings in 55 human languages, and one whale language, and more than one hundred images encoded in analog that depict who, and what, we are. (To hear those greetings and Sounds of Earth and see a handful of the images, visit NASA/JPL-Caltech’s Voyager site!)

Concept illustrations for the tip-on jackets:

An exquisitely-designed objet d’art, this limited edition Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition vinyl box set was available exclusively through this Kickstarter. It was described as “the ultimate album package of the ultimate album package.”

Exploded concept graphic of the vinyl edition:

True to the Kickstarter’s proposed description, the cloth-covered box with gold foil inlay houses three, heavyweight translucent gold vinyl LPs protected by poly-lined paper sleeves. The LPs contain all of the same magnificent music, greetings, and sounds as contained on the original Voyager Golden Record – nearly two hours of audio. The LPs slip into old style tip-on, black ink and gold foil jackets. And accompanying the music is a beautifully-designed hardbound book of captivating images from the original interstellar message, glorious photos of the planets returned to Earth from the Voyager probes, compelling essays, and ephemera from the project’s history.

Concept illustrations for the companion book:

The set also features a plastic digital download card with a code to access all of the audio in MP3 or FLAC format. A lithograph of the iconic Golden Record cover diagram, printed with gold metallic ink on archival paper, high-quality enamel pin of that same diagram, and a custom turntable slipmat featuring NASA/JPL-Caltech’s heliocentric view of the Voyager spacecrafts’ trajectories across the solar system complete the box set.

Concept image of the lithograph:

(to be continued in just a moment...)

innerspaceboy · 09-09-2017, 05:26 PM

(continued...)

Incredible attention was paid to ensuring that the audio content was the best it could be. Timothy Ferris, the original producer of the Golden Record, worked with the production team to remaster the audio for vinyl, drawing from the highest-quality sources available.

Below are actual photos of the completed box set which just arrived at my doorstep.

Of the 8,815 backers who pledged enough for the vinyl set, I received copy #00018. (I wasted no time pledging the moment this release was announced!)

The set is of exceptional quality – you can feel in your hands how impressively sturdy the whole package is.

Here is the final version of the slipmat.

(to be concluded in a moment...)

innerspaceboy · 09-09-2017, 05:27 PM

(conclusion...)

And the beautiful hardcover book brings the breathtaking photographs from the record to life…

The discs, dust jackets, and sleeves are just as impressive as the extras. No corners were cut on this production project.

And finally – the enamel pin. I’ll wear it proudly!

From OzmaRecords.com:

It was a gift from humanity to the cosmos. But it is also a gift to humanity. The record embodies a sense of possibility and hope. And it’s as relevant now as it was in 1977. Perhaps even more so.

The Voyager Interstellar Record is a reminder of what we can achieve when we are at our best—and that our future really is up to all of us.

innerspaceboy · 09-26-2017, 09:07 AM

Last night, I had the absolute pleasure and privilege to screen the 1929 experimental Soviet silent documentary film, Man with a Movie Camera. I’d been aware of the film for some time but had never made it a point to view the picture. Directed by Dziga Vertov and edited by his wife Elizaveta Svilova, the film presents urban life in various metropolitan cities including Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow, and Odessa. The film was novel in concept in that it has no characters and no direct plot. Instead, it is a cinematic portrait of A Day in the Life of the Soviet citizen. And interestingly, many parallels can be drawn between the visuals of the movie and the musique concrete qualities of The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”.

The film is universally acclaimed for its impressive use of a wide range of camera techniques invented and explored by Vertov, including double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, stop-motion animations and self-reflexive visuals. In 2012 film critics participating in The British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound poll voted it the eighth greatest film ever made and the best documentary of all time.

The film is utterly captivating. There is a very natural energy to the picture which builds from the serene silence of dawn to the furious and industrious bustle of machinery and men. The film is partitioned into segments of thematic focus, from home life to business to sports and recreation, and with a brilliant fluidity of transition. It’s a fantastic snapshot of an entire world of culture in 1929, expertly framed by the titular man with a movie camera who appears throughout the film, equipment in hand. It is simultaneously engaging both emotionally and intellectually for the incredible vivacity and spirit of the imagery and the astonishing technological proficiency of the director's presentation of cinéma vérité.

But the delightful surprise that really enhanced my experience was that the version I viewed was synced with a score written and performed by The Cinematic Orchestra, one of my favorite ensembles. I’d already owned a copy of their album, Man With a Movie Camera, but was completely blind to the fact that the album was constructed as an actual score, supporting and playfully interacting with all the exciting visuals of the film. This realization added a rich new dimension to the album and helped me see incredible beauty in its composition that I had not beheld in my previous listenings.

To date, there have been twenty-three soundtracks composed for the film. But the most noteworthy are the ones by Cinematic Orchestra and the Alloy Orchestra of Cambridge. I’m also eager to sample additional scores composed by Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere), minimalist composer Michael Nyman, and particularly Pierre Henry’s L'Homme À La Caméra. Many of the scores have been synced with the film and uploaded in their entirety to YouTube and are widely available via BitTorrent with multiple audio channels to select the score of your choice. I highly recommend the Cinematic Orchestra version (below) for your next movie night!

innerspaceboy · 09-29-2017, 04:53 PM

It was by the most serendipitous circumstances that I happened upon this magical musical discovery. It would be more accurate to state that the piece found me when I was ready to receive it. I’d recently revisited DJ Shadow’s complex turntablist opus, Endtroducing and found one particular track title resurfacing in my mind again and again after I’d put the record away. The track appears in two parts on the album - the classic, “What Does Your Soul Look Like?”

Perhaps it was the existential considerations which had been present in my mind of late, but at one fateful moment I felt curious enough to research the title and quickly discovered that the two segments from the LP are edits from a four-part extended work released as an EP fully-exploring the nocturnal and reflective territory hinted at by the selections on Endtroducing. I quickly secured a copy of the EP and cued it up.

It was instantly apparent that this was going to be an exceptional recording. Much in the spirit of Moondog’s microcosmic symphonies, What Does Your Soul Look Like Pts I-IV is effectively DJ Shadow’s own symphonique. There are even sonic similarities to what Moondog dubbed, “snaketime” in the way the focus and rhythm shifts constantly and fluidly throughout the four movements.

Before the session completed, I really felt it was a piece I’d like to have in an original pressing to enjoy spinning again and again. There was only one copy listed for sale in the States, belonging to DJ Tom Thump. Tom has played at shows or opened for Gilles Peterson, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Bonobo (5 times), Morrissey, Jamiroquai, Femi Kuti, Tricky, Morcheeba, The Original Meters, Gang of Four, George Clinton, Bonobo, and many others. I trusted that this would be a disc handled with care.

I dialed it up, loud, and extinguished all lamps until the sound engulfed the room. What follows is the play-by-play of my experience.

Pt II:

A brief horn instrumental innocently opens the disc, followed by a haunting voice singing lonely with interspersed bass-drenched speech:

“We are standing here at the edge of time…”

(Cold…)

“Our road was paved to the edge of time…”

(Steel... Sparks…)

“Come with me now to the edge of time…”

(Does anyone remember who I am?)

And then silence. And a narrator, (sampled from the 1983 film, Brainstorm), tells the listener that this is their last chance to turn back with a cautionary warning:

“In a few moments, you will have an experience which will seem completely real...

It will be the result of your subconscious fears, transformed to your conscious awareness...

You have 5 seconds to terminate this tape...

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

And on the “one” a steady, persistent guitar loop ushers the listener in and a swirl of sustained strings, snippets of soulful vocals, DJ scratching, jazz licks, and funky percussion gradually transport you into the dark, contemplative world Shadow has built on this EP.

The guitar and drums carry on for more than ten minutes while a vast array of samples weave their way in and out of the piece. There are glimpses of Richard Harris, a reflective soliloquy from the 1973 film, Johnny Got His Gun, Willie Bobo and company's "Shelley's Blues", and several others before the instrumentation finally relents, leaving the listener with the eerily emotionless android voice from George Lucas' THX-1138 speaking:

"Can you feel this? ... What is that buzzing? ... Are you now, or have you ever been? ... Move slowly."

Shadow brilliantly evokes a disquieting sense of unease while simultaneously creating a cerebral space that is endlessly intriguing and the listener eagerly presses on.

Pt III:

A rise of bubbling and echo-laden spoken word fragments, chimes, flute, and minimal piano create a mesmerizing atmosphere for the opening of the second movement. The speech is from the 1980 sci-fi film, Altered States.

"...I'm asking you to make a small quantum jump with me, to accept one deviant concept - that our other states of consciousness are as real as our waking state and that reality can be externalized!...

...We're beyond mass and matter here, beyond even energy. What we're back to is the first thought!"

And suddenly, a bass drum and hi-hat kick in full force front and center of the soundstage. Flute and piano are sprinkled in jazzlike hits accompanied by scratching and high-frequency tones from an indiscernible instrument. There is a momentary release from the percussion and the jazzy traces hang in the air before its energetic return to close the track. And not a drop of this sounds artificial or electronically-contrived. There is a brilliant fluidity and ever-present organic quality about this entire record, which keeps the sound fresh and timeless despite the nearly twenty-five years that have passed since its composition.

Pt IV:

A smattering of dystopian dialog (lifted from the movie Dead Calm), humming machinery, and ominous indistinguishable noises return the listener to the dark, melancholic environ that so much of this record occupies. And swiftly, a fleeting rest signals the introduction of the classic, “WDYSLL? (Pt IV)” we all know and love from Endtroducing. The track is an intimate, cerebral, and undeniably classy foray into minimal, soulful jazz turntablism. The vocal elements are restrained, subtle, and perplexingly elusive. This selection expertly captures the lonely, somber, and introspective space that DJ Shadow explored over the course of his universally-lauded epic debut LP.

Pt I:

A booming low-register voice utters the word, “...ONE…” followed by a single bell chime and an array of jazzy components for the briefest introductory moment before the percussion manifests and seizes your full attention. Fantastically sparse horns and traces of a choir appear… (or is it my imagination?) And a mournful voice (evidently sampled from Shawn Phillips’ “All Our Love”) sings words which drift into and out of comprehensibility:

“And why should we want to go back where we were, how many years... (could that have been?)”

“And why should we want to live a life that's past and nevermore… (will ever be?)”

Which is followed by crooning in Italian - the voice of Gianni Nazzaro singing, “C'era Già” which, I believe, translates thusly:

“...and there was already this love that we live long ago, there was already a rose I gave you... the songs I sang, the sadness in joy...”

There is a beautiful sorrow and sophistication from start to finish on this record, and it really works to create a world the listener can disappear into. The final “Pt 1” movement has seven distinct known samples, including “Nucleus” by The Alan Parsons Project, “Voice of the Saxophone” by The Heath Brothers, the aforementioned lyrical excerpt from “All Our Love” by Shawn Phillips, percussion from David Young’s “Joe Splivingates”, the legendary “This is not a dream” pirate broadcast from John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, and finally, "...It is happening again..." from the episode "Lonely Souls" of the TV series Twin Peaks. These elements coalesce seamlessly into one cohesive lucid dream of an album.

After a single breath, the female voice from the opening of the disc warmly repeats the now-familiar phrase, “here we are at the edge of time…”

And then, with tranquil grace and incalculable ease, the instrumentation trails off leaving silence, depositing the listener back to this mortal world. Enter the final, seventh sample for the closing movement - a dialog between two characters from Westworld saying,

“Don't you want to listen?"

...

"Nah, I heard it the last time."

And the needle raises and returns, leaving the listener awed and transformed.

innerspaceboy · 11-07-2017, 07:52 PM

Every now and again I like to publish book reviews on titles relating to music, the content industries, copyright reform, and the future of media. Recently a Joycean scholar recommended that I explore the writings of Cory Doctorow on these very subjects. I quickly realized I'd had a few of his titles on my reading list already, so I wasted no time and read two of his books this week. The first was CONTENT: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future from 2008, and the second was the more recent Information Doesn't Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age from 2014.

Doctorow is no stranger to the legal world surrounding digital content. A Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author, Doctrow serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of Creative Commons, publishing many of his books under CC licensing. His writings and lectures focus on digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.

Doctorow worked in London as the European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and helped establish the Open Rights Group. He was named a Fellow of the EFF and the 2006–2007 Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. He's served as a professor at the University of Southern California and was the first Independent Studies Scholar in Virtual Residence at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and is also a Visiting Professor at the Open University in the UK. In 2012 Doctorow was awarded an honorary doctorate from The Open University.

CONTENT features many of Doctorow's essays and keynote speeches on digital media and copyright. It opens with a talk he delivered to Microsoft's Research Group on the developing technologies of DRM outlining five key points:

that DRM systems don't work
that DRM systems are bad for society
that DRM systems are bad for business
that DRM systems are bad for artists
that DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

The subsequent essays in CONTENT and the chapters of Information... expand upon and contextualize these ideas with discussions of copyright control at critical moments in digital content's history, and outline the true costs and inherent ineffectiveness of anticircumvention. Doctorow offers a brief history of copying technology, from the piano roll to the Luther Bible, to the Betamax Ruling, the proto-DRM of Discovision, RealAudio, OpenMG, Blu-ray, TIVO, the 3DS, and on through the present day. He calls attention to each of the industry's attempts to suppress the usability of a technology, from the Broadcast Protection Discussion Group to the Copy Protection Technical Working Grouptoclosed-door meetings of the RIAA and MPAA, noting that each attempt at anticircumvention imposes critical security flaws into the affected components and greatly hinders further development of that technology.

But Doctorow is clear to differentiate the impact of DRM on technological revolutions of the past from its catastrophic effect on the current climate of the Web. In a chapter titled, "It's Different This Time" he states:

We are remaking the world and everything we do in it. In the past, a regulation applied to VCRs would impact a few other industries or activities (making it hard, say, to record a home movie), but it wouldn’t have changed everything. You could regulate the VCR or the radio or the record player without regulating the automobile, the hearing aid, and voting machines along with them. That’s not true anymore. The stakes for getting copyright right have never been higher. There has never been a fight over entertainment-related technology where the consequences for everyone outside the entertainment industry were potentially more disastrous than they are now.

Later essays in CONTENT discuss the practicality and curious marketplace of ebooks, the grand potential but admitted caveats of metadata, and the world of fanfiction in an age of rampant copyright litigation. While earlier chapters establish a contextual history of content sharing innovations, the book closes with advice for content creators and artists and speaks for the viability of Creative Commons. The essays are brief and written in simple plainspeak, making the text a breeze of a read.

Information... picks up where CONTENT closes diving deeper into the impact of ever-restricting copyright laws. Doctorow examines the draconian consequences of unfettered censorship brought about by the engineered renewability of DRM technologies, citing the example of Amazon removing Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four from all its Kindle users' digital libraries in 2009 as just one case of potential abuse.

These texts also explore the consequences of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and ruling surrounding The Pirate Bay, the Grokster decision, and other anti-piracy acts. He calls attention to the ramifications of these actions, adding some important context to the events:

In 2006, the Swedish police raided the data center that housed the Pirate Bay, an infamous BitTorrent tracker that had made a sport of taunting the entertainment industry. The circumstances surrounding the raid were contentious: it seemed the action had been improperly ordered by a government minister who was supposed to have an arm’s-length relationship with the police, at the behest of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

But what was more controversial in wider Swedish society was the collateral damage of the seizure: hundreds of websites went down at the same time as the Pirate Bay, as the police enthusiastically seized a data center’s worth of servers. These other servers—which hosted sites for businesses, nonprofits, and individuals—had nothing infringing on them, but the police couldn’t be certain of this at the time, so they took the lot. It’s like they decided that, since one store in the middle of town was carrying unlicensed products, they were going to shut down the entire shopping district while they figured things out.

Doctorow's specific contextualizations always return to the broader global impact. In a chapter on the effects of copyright misuse on human rights, he describes the implications of the suit Viacom brought against Google and YouTube for not doing enough to keep their copyrighted works off their service. Viacom argued that YouTube was complicit in acts of infringement because it allowed users to mark videos as “private,” rendering them inaccessible to Viacom’s copyright-enforcement bots. He states clearly that:

Under Viacom’s legal theory—which was supported in amicus briefs filed by organizations representing all the major studios, broadcasters, publishers, and record labels—companies should allow the giant entertainment corporations to access all of our private files to make sure we’re not storing something copyrighted under cover.

Later chapters of Information... such as A World of Control and Surveillance, and What Copyright Means in the Information Age explore the present and future of copyright and cautions us of the consequences of unrestrained access in the hands of a few content distribution conglomerates. By this point, my notetaking consisted of highlighting entire chapters as every paragraph made a concisely-phrased critical remark about the state of technology and copyright. Snowden is mentioned, of course, as is the state of the music industry - both for the limitations brought about by licensing restrictions crippling the art of sampling as well as the transformation of the industry in an era of filesharing.

Doctorow points out that pivotal recordings like Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique could never have been made in today's copyright climate. He notes that "extending the scope and the duration of copyright doesn’t just criminalize a whole genre of music—it also puts the labels in charge of the only legal route open to musicians, effecting a massive wealth transfer from artists to labels."

Doctorow's writing isn't all doom-and-gloom. He does propose that concepts such as blanket licensing have an incredible potential to benefit content creators, distributors, and consumers alike. And he is a tireless advocate for Creative Commons. He summarizes his position quite effectively when he states:

Content-blocking and surveillance are the province of book burners and censors, not creators and publishers. We have fought for generations for the freedom of conscience necessary to have a robust intellectual and creative sphere... ...And since the Internet is likely to be a fixture in our lives and the lives of our children, we all have a duty to stop arguing about whether the Internet is good or bad for us and our particular corner of the world—a duty to figure out how to make the Internet into a force for helping people work and live together, with the privacy, self-determination, and freedom from interference and control that are the hallmarks of a just society. It’s not enough for creators and their industry to love free speech. We have to learn to share it, too.

The final chapter is a statement of great hope for the future. The internet provides the world with a potential for connectivity and collaboration and a richly diverse domain of access for the history of creative works. Artists are empowered to distribute their content directly to their fans, and the relevance of the old world distributive intermediary is shrinking. There has never been a better time to be an artist or a citizen of global culture. Doctorow's books inspire both an appreciation for that fact and a participatory role in the shaping of our world to come.

Cory Doctorow offers his books for free at craphound.com. If you enjoy his writings, please consider purchasing a copy for your library.

OccultHawk · 11-08-2017, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Doctorow points out that pivotal recordings like Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique could never have been made in today's copyright climate.

That’s a very important point. There’s probably 50 classic records that don’t exist due to copyright laws. It bothers me that people don’t see sampling in the same tradition as variations on jazz standards or the rewriting of classical compositions for different instruments. I also find it funny that rappers who brag about committing felonies left and right are meticulous about following copyright laws.

Great write-up as usual. That’s why you’re the best.

innerspaceboy · 11-08-2017, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OccultHawk

That’s a very important point. There’s probably 50 classic records that don’t exist due to copyright laws. It bothers me that people don’t see sampling in the same tradition as variations on jazz standards or the rewriting of classical compositions for different instruments. I also find it funny that rappers who brag about committing felonies left and right are meticulous about following copyright laws.

Great write-up as usual. That’s why you’re the best.

Thanks, OH! I appreciate the feedback!

08-27-2017, 07:54 PM	#562 (permalink)
Zhanteimi Mord Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: Tokyo Posts: 4,873	. __________________ Zhanteimi LetsTalkMusic Last edited by Zhanteimi; 05-01-2018 at 04:09 PM.