Monthly Archives: January 2007

SplashCast is About to Launch!

I’m flying to Palm Desert, CA for DEMO in the morning and then shapow – we’ll all be syndicatable via SplashCast. It’ll be great, you’ll love it. If you’re a blogger who’s interested in writing a review drop me a line and I’ll send you our bloggers press pack under embargo.

Update: We’re live, here’s the announcement. Much thanks to everyone for all your support; I hope SplashCast will become an important tool in your online communication.

Mix Tape Maker Jailed: History in the Making

This NYT story is a big sign of our times. DJ Drama, the leading hip hop music mixtape producer in the US has been arrested with an associate at the behest of the RIAA. I wasn’t aware that hip hop mixtapes were the foundation of major lable sales, as the Times and many other sources are now saying. It’s fascinating – both that remixing is truly breathing life into a creative industry and that the practice is being criminalized. Here’s DJ Drama’s MySpace page. Here’s the some very good coverage at MP3.com. That article says that the mix tape medium is one made up promotional music from artists with albums about to be released, though in many cases the songs may use background music from other copyrighted music.

It reminds me of stories I’ve read about MPAA armed raids in SE Asia of buildings suspected of housing DVD piracy operations. Crazy 007 tactics and battles to catch people in the act of dubbing Die Hard movies. It’s like farmers no longer alowed to save seeds that have been patented by western pharmaceutical companies or indigenous people who are convinced to give up their DNA for drug development.

In this case though it’s a beautiful act of creativity that almost everyone, including music lables, appear to be benefitting from.

Super interesting to me is this quote:

“Statistics prove that you can make a 400 percent markup on a kilo of heroine or cocaine, and statistics also show that you can make up to a 900 percent profit on the resale of counterfeit CDs,” the RIAA’s Matthew Kilgo told Fox 5.

DJ Drama may be white but the racism in that statement is clear.

People aren’t going to stand for things like this. Things are going to start changing in a hurry and I don’t think it’s overstated to say this story is an important part of the history that’s unfolding.

Video Hosting TOS Compared – But not on Digg!

I just posted over at SplashCast about an awesome piece written up by OurMedia and TechSoup comparing the details of 9 popular video hosting sites’ Terms of Service. Found via the Revver blog. Though I think that all the posts I put up at SplashCast are pretty groovy, this one in particular is something I wanted to make sure readers here got a chance to see.

Here’s a show stopper: I tried to submit the OurMedia piece to Digg – only to be told that OurMedia.org is on the list of banned domains! That’s an awful shame! Is it because people are taking advantage of the site’s free media hosting and then spamming digg with media spam hosted on OurMedia? For whatever reason, it’s a major loss of high-quality content – like this post I’d like to submit. Digg has a tough job on its hands but as many people have been writing lately, the banned domains list may be overzealous some times.