Sunday Comic: Balance

Ok, so once again, it’s actually monday here in Sweden…. But hey, in a large part of the world it’s still sunday, so this post still counts!

Here’s another favourite Mimi and Eunice comic strip from the archives of Nina Paley!

copyrights all about balance balancing creators' and the public's need for free expression / with copyright lawyers need for paychecks

Ever noticed how most corporations pushing for stricter legislation to “protect creators” never actually create anything themselves, except lawsuits?

Barry Eisler: 25 Years of Copyright Would Be More than Enough

Photo: Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler

Over at techdirt.com, best-selling author and former intellectual property lawyer Barry Eisler is talking about Copyright, Piracy And Why SOPA/PIPA Are ‘Extremely Disturbing’.

Copyright terms have grown to be over a century. No reasonable person can claim that, with a term of less than a century, artists wouldn’t be adequately incentivized to create. So current copyright terms are clearly too long from the standpoint of what’s best for society overall. Personally, I think a twenty-five year term would be more than enough. Anyone who claims he wouldn’t bother creating if he could only commercially exploit his creation for a quarter century wasn’t going to create anything worthwhile anyway.

If you are at all interested in this stuff, you really should go read it right away!

Album of the Week: Listen

Cover: Listen by Tryad

Download and listen for free!

This week’s soundtrack arrives a day late, but better late than never, eh?

Listen, by Tryad, is an album described as “a mature work of melodic electronica”, and it fits that description perfectly. The album encompasses several different styles and moods, as it is a collective effort by 20 different musicians from all around the globe.

I really love this album, and I’ve listened to it quite a bit since I discovered it. It’s difficult to explain, but it stirs my feelings. It’s a roller coaster ride of emotions. You should really check it out.

Something that is very special about this album, apart from the fantastic songs, is that you are allowed to do a lot of different things with the content. Remember how I briefly mentioned that there’s a difference between “free as in free of charge” and “free as in freedom?”

This album is really free, as in freedom, as well as free of charge. It is licensed as CC-BY-SA (Creative Commons – Attribution – Share Alike). This means you are allowed to use the music in almost any way you can imagine, even for commercial purposes, as long as you give credit to the artists and distribute all derivative works under the same license.

At http://tryad.org/ you can support the artists by buying a CD or making a donation!

Have you got any favourites at Jamendo.com?

Album of the Week: Digital Memories

Once again, monday rears its ugly head… To keep you going, here’s the soundtrack of the week!

Digital Memories by LukHash

Download and listen for free!

If you love retro video game music half as much as I do, you’re going to dig Digital Memories by LukHash. It’s electronica with a definite 8-bit chip tune edge. It’s energetic and I have a hard time sitting still whenever I’m listening to this album!

As always, this is an album that you can download and listen to free of charge, so what are you waiting for? Go check it out!

If you like it, you can support the artist in several ways. I imagine a donation is always welcome, for instance. But just spreading the word will help as well. What’s an artist without an audience, right?

I encourage you to visit http://www.lukhash.com/ where you can read more about the artist, download his music and watch videos. Oh, and remember to sign his guestbook and let him know what you think!

Have you got any personal favourites at Jamendo.com? Don’t keep ‘em to yourself. Share the love!

Spam! Spam! Spam! Wonderful spam!

Spam, photo by Janet Galore

I’ve had this blog online for only a few weeks now and the spammers have already started their attacks. I’ve gotten two genuine comments (ok, they’re from friends of mine, but they still count!) and I just got my second spam comment.

So people, if you’re reading this, remember to comment, or the spammers win…. :)

The spammers are getting sneakier, though. The comments aren’t all about black market Viagra, or hordes of russian girls “just waiting for you”. No, the comments I’ve gotten are parts of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) schemes. The aim of SEO is to get your website to appear at the top of search results, for instance on Google. One major factor in SEO is links from other sites. So, by commenting on random blogs and including a link for the website to be given the SEO treatment, you hope to drive traffic to the website both directly, by the included link, and indirectly, by getting higher up on Google because you have a lot of foreign links pointing to your site.

Here are the spam comments I’ve had so far:

Son Terry:
You are a good writer… I am just learning english maybe you could proof read my article for me so I can be good as you.

And:

Cory Everson Today:
I do trust all of the ideas you’ve introduced for your post. They’re very convincing and can definitely work. Still, the posts are very quick for novices. Could you please lengthen them a bit from subsequent time? Thanks for the post.

To the untrained eye, these comments may look pretty innocent, but I’m getting fairly savvy at recognizing crap. :) So how do you identify these as bogus?

First of all, look at the relevance of the comments to the actual post. The first comment was posted below one of my Album of the Week posts. Now I actually enjoy proof reading, and I’m pretty damn good at it, so I jumped a bit when I read the comment. It didn’t really make much sense in that context, though, so it looked suspicious. The second step, then, was to hover the mouse pointer over the commenter’s name, to see what website he was linking to. This revealed an address with the word “pay” in it, and it didn’t look right to me. The third, and most revealing test was to copy a sentence from the comment and google it.

In this case, a search for the phrase “I am just learning english maybe you could proof read” yielded over 6000 results. Looking at some of them, it was immediately obvious that the same comment had been posted all over the web. The top search result even said “Powered by SEO Super Comments”. Real subtle….

The other commenter had linked to a bodybuilding forum, not really the crowd I’m aiming this blog at, to be honest. A quick search for the phrase ”I do trust all of the ideas you’ve introduced for your post.” gave me over 300,000 results! Glancing at the top ones, it was once again obvious that they were all variants of the same comment.

So, I’ve removed the comments, and I urge you to do the same if you have your own website. Identifying and removing spam will help you keep your comment fields relevant, will help your readers avoid clicking on crap links, and will also hinder the companies paying for and performing this kind of SEO services that fills the web up with more unnecessary crud.

Also, please, please, please don’t hire people offering these SEO services. There are better, more honest ways to SEO your website.

I’ll be back later tonight with a new sunday comic.

Stay safe.

Photo by Janet Galore (http://www.flickr.com/photos/janetgalore/)
Used under CC-BY-SA license.