Saturday, September 27, 2014
Friday, September 26, 2014
THOM YORKE SELLS NEW ALBUM VIA PAYWALL PROTECTED TORRENT
In a surprise move Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has released a new album, not through the regular channels, but via BitTorrent. Yorke is not sharing his work for free though, instead he's selling the album via a new paywalled torrent format which can't be shared with non-paying fans.
Radiohead’s Tom Yorke has been very critical of new music services such as Spotify. Last year he pulled his music from the popular streaming service claiming that “new artists get paid fuck all.”
Yorke would like to see more money flowing to the artists and in an effort to accomplish this goal he has teamed up with BitTorrent Inc.
The San-Francisco company has experimented with artist bundles for a while and together with Yorke they have now launched their first paywalled torrent. After paying $6, fans can download Yorke’s “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes” album via a protected torrent file.
“It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around,” Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich write in a joint statement.
“If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work. Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves. Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers,” they add.
In recent years BitTorrent Inc. has been working very hard to show that its technology can be used for more than “piracy” and today’s bundle is a prime example. After releasing various free samples from other artists, Yorke’s full album is definitely a breakthrough.
The paywall and other restrictions are not something traditional BitTorrent users are used to, but it’s a necessary “evil” to draw mainstream artists to the model.
BitTorrent Inc. emphasizes that the album itself is DRM-free but that the torrents do have copy protection. This means that people can’t easily share them with others who haven’t paid.
“BitTorrent Bundles features protected torrents, limiting the number of times a torrent can be downloaded. While Bundle content is DRM-free, torrents are protected with this new way of managing how often a Bundle is downloaded,” BitTorrent Inc. notes.
This works very much like private trackers, where only members can share files with each other. With the “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes” torrent those who pay are a “member” and only they can share the file.
It will be interesting to see if other artists are also willing to join the experiment. A full album for $6 definitely sounds like a fair price and the artists get to keep most of the cash. BitTorrent Inc. says it currently gets 10% of the revenue for enabling the distribution.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, several unauthorized torrents without a paywall are also doing the rounds on various torrent sites. The good news is, however, that the paywalled version currently has more people sharing than the pirated one.
GOOGLE TO NEWS CORP: NOBODY FIGHTS PIRACY LIKE US
After Rupert Murdoch's News Corp branded Google a "platform for piracy" last week, Google has today returned fire. The search giant says that after removing 222 million pages from search results and investing tens of millions in technology, almost no other company has done more to tackle online piracy.
n an open letter to the European competition commissioner earlier this month, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson was highly critical of Google.
Thompson began by speaking warmly of Google’s roots as a “wonderfully feisty” Silicon Valley startup, but that developed into warnings over its immense power today as an “often unaccountable bureaucracy”. And, as is so often the case with Google’s rivals, matters soon turned to Google’s attitudes towards online piracy.
“The shining vision of Google’s founders has been replaced by a cynical management, which offers advertisers impressively precise data about users and content usage, but has been a platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks, all while driving more traffic and online advertising dollars to Google,” Thompson said.
The News Corp statement was never likely to go unanswered and today Google officially returned fire.
“Google has done more than almost any other company to help tackle online piracy,” said Rachel Whetstone, Google’s senior vice president of global communications.
“In 2013 we removed 222 million web pages from Google Search due to copyright infringement. The average take-down time is now just six hours,” she added.
The SVP also underlined Google’s earlier assertions that sites found to repeatedly violate copyright get downgraded in search rankings. It’s something the movie studios and record labels have being demanding for some time but although Google insists it delivers, few content creators appear pleased with the results.
On YouTube, however, things play out somewhat differently. Whetstone reminded News Corp that Google has spent tens of millions of dollars developing technology such as its ContentID, a system that not only combats piracy but enables creators to monetize their content.
And hitting back at the accusation that Google has been a platform for the spread of malicious networks, Whetstone said the company is committed to protecting its users’ security.
“It’s why we remove malware from our search results and other products, and protect more than 1 billion users every day from phishing and malware with our Safe Browsing warnings,” she said.
In response to News Corp accusations that Google undermines the business models of high quality content creators with “egregious aggregation”, Whetstone said that the days of news being controlled by a small number of media organizations were over.
“Today, people have far greater choice. That has had a profound impact on newspapers, who face much stiffer competition for people’s attention and for advertising Euros,” the SVP said.
“Google has worked hard to help publishers succeed online — both in terms of generating new audiences and also increasing their digital revenues. Our search products drive over 10 billion clicks a month to 60,000 publishers’ websites, and we share billions of dollars annually with advertising publishing partners.”
Finally, in a moment of comedy but with a serious point, Whetston held up a mirror to News Corp in response to its argument that Google’s actions could lead to “a less informed, more vexatious level of dialogue in our society” and only add to “the intemperate trends we are already seeing in much of Europe.”
By linking to an image of a front page published by Murdoch’s ‘The Sun’ tabloid, Google makes clear that if you’re going to criticize others, getting your own house in order should always come first.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Satanic Temple to distribute materials to school children in Florida
The Satanic Temple has announced that it will provide pamphlets on Satanism to students in Florida, following the school board’s decision permitting the distribution of religious materials.
Among the materials that are set to be distributed are pamphlets on the philosophy, practice of Satanism, the Satanic Temple’s tenets. Also, the sect tells school children about their legal rights to choose to practice Satanism, according to the official press release.
Earlier this month, the school system made a decision to let any religious and atheist materials be provided in schools.
The Temple said that although it does not agree with the school board’s decision to allow religious materials in schools, it will continue “to ensure that pluralism is respected whenever the Church/State division is breached.”
Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves explains: “We think the responsible thing to do is to ensure that these students are given access to a variety of differing religious opinions, as opposed to standing idly by while one religious voice dominates the discourse and delivers propaganda to youth.”
“I am quite certain that all of the children in these Florida schools are already aware of the Christian religion and its Bible, and this might be the first exposure these children have to the actual practice of Satanism. We think many students will be very curious to see what we offer,” Greaves added.
The Satanic Temple came into the media spotlight after announcing it is going to erect a seven-foot Baphomet statue next to a Ten Commandments monument at the Oklahoma State Capitol. It also unveiled plans to build a chapel in Detroit.