The Daily Loper – October 12, 2007

Me Want Food Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Radiohead’s Rumored Rainbows Downloads: 1.2 Million
  While, yes, the music industry poo-poohing of this would be that some of those were free, think about it from this standpoint: two weeks ago, nobody even knew that this was coming out, and the sum total of publicity that the band has done was what? A posting on their website and a couple of interviews. Not exactly a huge cranking up of the publicity machine. Instead, Radiohead relied on worldwide word of mouth. The reality is, of course, this is a object lesson about what the music industry missed by fighting the internet for all of these years.
• Fox Shuts Down the "Buffy" Sing-along
  It will no doubt revived as soon as Fox figures out to squeeze a few more shiny pennies out of it.
• The Television-Internet Connection
  Time Magazine discovers multitasking.
• Pagination Blues
  Hardship hits the Pynchon wiki in an unexpected way.
• Free Burma: Military attempts to seize UN hard drives and data
  How to stop a rebellion in modern times? Seize each and every electronic device in the country.
• Being Stupid And Litigious Is No Way To Go Through Life
  If this weren’t so scary it would be funny. An example of just how bad copyright madness can get. I wish crazy people would stop using The Google.
• Death or Glory Becomes Just Another Story
  Ron Hogan brings us the story of the upcoming Clash tell-all.
• Label moves up Spears? CD release
  Label cites pre-release piracy. Hmm, wonder how they’ll blame the rogue tracks on the consumer?
• Open Avatar Announcement a Great Move
  Oh great, now Ronin will be demanding per diems for other virtual worlds.
• Apple iPod Classic Sales Expected To Lag Behind Other Models
  Sure: it seems to me that the only market for the Classic is people who like the iPod UI but had run out of storage with the older models, but didn’t need the gee-whiz stuff of the Touch. That’s why I bought a 160GB with our iPhone refunds. BTW, I can also attest that it passed the jogging test: ran for an hour a couple of weeks ago with no skipping.
• Universal Music Takes on iTunes
  The solution? A subscription service called Total Music. The word "subscription" implies DRM, by the way. In other words, Universal is partnering with Sony and other majors to build yet another soon-to-be failed music download service. There’s a right way to challenge iTunes, but this isn’t it.