SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

It won’t appeal to Kindle fans, but I’m pleased to see that another Espresso Book Machine has found a home, this latest time in the Northshire Bookstore of Manchester Center, Vermont.

On Demand Books, the company behind the EBM, now has nearly 2 million book titles from major publishers available for secure and licensed publishing on demand, in addition to many books that are in the public domain. The machines also can handle memoirs, poetry collections, novels, cookbooks, and other books written by the customer who brings them in.

“The idea is that soon we’ll be able to print out any book that’s ever been printed,’’ said Northshire Books manager Chris Morrow. “That could really change people’s image of the small bookstore.’’

Morrow added that the success of self-publishing was a pleasant surprise. Northshore charges these customers a $49 setup fee plus 5 to 9 cents per page (depending on length). The store also maintains a network of professionals who provide editorial and design services.

(Title lyric from Hawkwind.)

Moby sent an email to Bob Lefsetz regarding his new album Wait for Me [lala link]. In it, the recording artist shared the news that his album would be No. 1 in Europe if it weren’t for Michael Jackson. But then he said it was funny that the best-selling iTunes track is Shot in the Back of the Head.

To quote Moby’s email: “Why is that funny? Because it’s the track we’ve been giving away for free for the last 2 months and that we’re still giving away for free.” (Here, among other places.)

Having an official video by David Lynch certainly helped, but the iTunes sales are an excellent example of the famous bottled water analogy: even when something is available free, people will pay to get it in a manner that suits how they wish to acquire and use it.

(Title lyric by Brown, Henderson and DeSylva via Frank Sinatra.)

Bad Science’s Ben Goldacre has taken on pirate downloading statistics in, “Home taping didn’t kill music.”

He reads through newspaper stories on a report by the government’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) and notes that the estimated amount of illegal downloads music in his native United Kingdom is 4.73 billion items a year worth about £120 billion. Goldacre does the math and notes that equals about a tenth of the country’s GDP and means each illegal download is worth about £25.

Goldacre further calculates that these numbers work out to £175 a week per person. Since this is about a third of the average UK wage, he wonders: “Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press?”

Adding to his skeptism, Goldacre researches the original documents and learns that the original executive summary and press release were incorrect by an entire decimal point. His subsequent conversation with SABIP makes for entertaining reading.

(Title lyric by Mike Skinner, The Streets.)

The first Open Video Conference, being held in NY on June 19-20, is bringing together producers, techies, distributors, lawyers and others involved in “the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video.”

The conference is a production of Yale Internet Society Project, Participatory Culture Foundation (creators of the open source Miro internet TV player) and Kaltura (developers of a full open source video platform), in partnership with Mozilla, Creative Commons, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Among the many speakers and presenters are producer Ted Hope; Daily Show and Air America co-creator Lizz Winstead; Blip.tv CEO Mike Hudack; John Lech Johansen (famed DVD DRM cracker and co-founder of the Doubletwist universal media platform); Eirik Solheim, project manager and strategic advisor at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (where they’ve launched a promising initiative to distribute TV programs using P2P); Jamie King, director of the Steal This Film documentary and co-founder of Vodo; Clay Shirky, author and professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program; and Yochai Benkler, Professor at Harvard’s Berkman Center and author.

(Title lyric from British Sea Power.)

Speaking of mashing and remixing, the entire new album from Danger Mouse can now be heard here as part of NPR’s Exclusive First Listen series. Dark Knight of the Soul is an impressive document of artistic collaboration, the DJ/producer/artist working with Sparklehorse and guests including Iggy Pop, Frank Black, Vic Chesnutt, the Flaming Lips, the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys, the Cardigans’ Nina Persson, The Shins’ James Mercer, Jason Lytle, Suzanne Vega, and probably others.

So can you buy this album? Kinda. You can purchase a jewel box containing a poster and a “custom designed” blank CD-R for $10 or, for $50, all that plus a limited edition (5,000 copies) hand-numbered art book of original photographs by film director David Lynch.

Why is the CD-R blank? The official statement explains: “Due to an ongoing dispute with EMI, Danger Mouse is unable to include music on the CD without fear of legal entanglement. Therefore, he has included a blank CD-R as an artifact to use however you see fit.”

My cynical nature twitches at this non-explanation explanation, especially remembering that Danger Mouse zoomed into the public consciousness with the Grey Album, a critically acclaimed project that threw down a virtual gauntlet to the traditional music industry. But regardless of its genesis or motivation, I think the project is genius.

(Title lyric by Paul Weller/the Jam.)

I’m a huge fan of remixing, collage, and other artistic endeavors made possible by technology. I think copyright laws need to be revised to acknowledge the digital age. And I love animation. So I’m unsettled but not dissuaded by a DVD currently being advertised on TV.

Hip-Hop Nursery Rhymes strips the audio from classic public domain cartoons and replaces it with nursery rhymes declaimed in a rhythmic, semi-hip-hop style. Even worse, the ad warns that this is only Vol. 1.

There’s no way I’m going to taint my memory of these cartoons by watching this stuff, but I’m amused at their inclusion of what I’m pretty sure is Fleischer Studios’ wonderful The Old Man of the Mountain. It features Betty Boop at her sexiest, a fabulously rotoscoped Cab Calloway and His Orchestra (the archetypical hep cat, pictured), and an unmistakably lascivious title character; in fact, in its day there were calls for it to be banned from theaters.

There’s a blog, too! My favorite entry so far is a complaint that a major retailer refused to carry the DVD on the grounds that it is “stupid.” The company interpreted that rejection as evidence that major retailers think African-Americans won’t buy “good, clean music for their kids.”

(Title lyric is from Coolio, Ghetto Cartoon.)

Simon on No Rock and Roll Fun wrote an impassioned and logical deconstruction of an editorial U2’s manager Paul McGuinness wrote for Le Figaro (that was picked up by The Guardian newspaper). In it, McGuinness declares his love for the new French law that ultra-criminalizes Internet-enabled piracy. This legislation mandates ISPs to police their content and provides tiered penalties that begin with a warning email, then a letter, and then completely disconnects the miscreant from the Internet for between two months and a year. McGuinness warns against thwarting the stadium-sized aspirations of rising musicians; Simon sees a digitally-enabled world in which, “You might not have the sort of career where you wind up with so much cash sloshing about in your pockets you can buy luxury hotels and massive ranches in LA. But you can make a decent living, and provide for your family.” [Title lyric by Bruce Dickinson.]

Remember how a number of Authors Guild members were very unhappy about the Kindle’s text-to-speech capability, contending that it infringed on their rights? Well, a number of book lovers are equally unhappy that the authors’ stance caused the option to be hamstrung.  The Reading Rights Coalition whose members include the National Federation of the Blind and the International Dyslexia Assn., held a public protest outside of the Authors Guild’s New York offices earlier today on behalf of the 15 million Americans who cannot read printed materials. The Coalition noted that the Kindle 2 made it possible for those they represent to “purchase and enjoy books like everybody else, adding:  “The Guild’s position is contrary to the principle of equal opportunity for all and discriminates against millions of people with print disabilities.” [Title lyric from the Bookworm on Sesame Street.]

Trent Reznor is my favorite example of the artist and the artistic career in the digital age. Frank Rose has a good article about Reznor and NIN’s new iPhone application that adds geolocation and tagging to music, photos, videos, message boards and other stuff.
Also, Nine Inch Nail’s new album The Slip can be downloaded for free, completely legally, by clicking here – in your choice of quality and formats, complete with artwork, and without DRM . If you’ve rather, you can stream it from iLike or pay $9.90 to get it from iTunes. You can even purchase physical product, an option more than 250,000 fans have chosen so far – for perspective, HITS (via Idolator) reported not a single album released during the first quarter has yet hit the million mark in year-to-date sales. I sincerely doubt Reznor misses being on a label.
Reznor brilliantly markets his music using every app and widget you’ve ever heard of, and probably a few you haven’t. But that’s far from being all. NIN’s site encourages you to remix and share the album however you wish. You also can download an EP promoting the band’s tour with Jane’s Addiction and Street Sweeper, songs that also have been made available as multitrack audio downloads on remix.nin.com.
In honor of April Fool’s Day, Reznor posted an item and a Tweet announcing that Nine Inch Nails had a new album called Strobe Light (pictured) that was produced by Timbaland and featured collaborations with the likes of Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Bono. Even funnier was the explanation of how to buy a download: “Your credit card will be charged $18.98 plus a $10 digital delivery convenience fee. Your files will arrive as windows media files playable on quite a few players with your name embedded all over them just in case you lose them. You will also receive an exclusive photo and a free email account with our partner Google’s Gmail service. Your email will be kept confidential and will not be used for spam, unless we can make some money selling it.” [Title lyric by Soul Asylum.]

Many millions of dollars are at stake in a lawsuit against Universal Music Group filed by Eminem’s music publisher, FBT Productions, which finally wended its way to a courtroom this week.

At the moment, legal digital music downloads fall under distribution agreements. That means the artist usually gets 30 percent or a little less. Eminem’s lawyers content that digital versions should be treated the same physical product and be covered under licensing agreements, which would give artists about 50 percent. (All percentages vary in direct proportion to the artist’s clout.)

Let’s remember that this is an industry that continued to levy a “packaging fee” of at least 15 percent of the sale price on digital downloads until enough lawyers complained. (Title lyric by Eminem.)