Tag Archive for: music

There’s currently a web-protest going on about a law in New Zealand – the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This law is due to go into effect on February 28th of this year.

Here’s an excerpt of the actual text of the law:

“An internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

… repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using one or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.”

I’d post the whole thing here, but not one of the protesting organizations I’ve found has actually seen fit to do that.

I understand the idea behind this protest, and think the law is silly on its face, as no ISP is going to be able to properly enforce it.

The protest itself consists of blacking out one’s twitter or facebook icon, and / or sending a letter of protest.

Typical of these kind of protests – none of these artist or listener communities is acting – approaching the lawmakers and saying “yes, we value art, but we value our freedom too.  Let’s figure out a way to jointly do both.”

But they’re sure complaining a lot.  And uploading black icons.

Problem is… as easy and as popular as it is to make the argument that this is just the greedy entertainment industry wanting to wring every possible dollar our of the poor working stiff, and using the government to do it, it’s happening for a reason. Read more

I’m a fan of Imogen Heap.

I first got hung on the song “Hide and Seek“, an extraordinary a capella piece which just made me cry every time I heard it.

Then a dear, dear friend sent me the “Details” album by Frou Frou, which is Immi Heap, partnered with Guy Sigsworth.  I was hooked.

Well, I’ve been following Immi on Twitter for a while now.  And she posted a link about audio files being up for folks to download – here’s the whole story:

“A short time ago, Imogen Heap took a few days out from making her new album to write a track that was supposed to feature at the end of a TV programme. She wrote the song and recorded all the vocals, leaving the music for the composer who was writing the rest of the score so she could get on with her much anticipated new album. For one reason or another the song wasn’t used and so the track never got completed. ”

So she uploaded the raw vocal tracks, no music – and invited people to do whatever they wanted with ’em.  It’s here – the Song that Never Was experiment.

I wasn’t going to do anything with ’em.  Really.  I have my own stuff to work on.  But I did download ‘the tracks, just ’cause I had to hear what was there.

Well…

They sat on a machine here for about 3 hours.

And I finally broke.

4 hours later, here’s what came out:

Listen


Over the ensuing 4 months or so, it became the #1 track in the series. SO very grateful.

It was a blast, and I’m thrilled with the result.  It was also great having her voice in these here monitors. 🙂

IMG_1587

xoxo,

M.