FAIL! Sunday went by so fast that I missed posting a comic strip!
Here it is, though, another Mimi and Eunice strip from Nina Paley!
This is another favourite of mine, as it highlights a real problem with copyright legislation today. The fact that it is increasingly used as a tool for censorship.
I’ll be back tonight with a new Album of the Week!
Cory Doctorow has written a fantastic piece for Locus Online, on what’s wrong with the current debate about copyright.
There just isn’t such a thing as ‘‘copyright policy’’ anymore. Every modern copyright policy becomes Internet policy – policy that touches on every aspect of how we use the net.
And as we make the transition from a world where everything we do includes an online component to a world where everything we do requires an online component, it’s becoming the case that there’s no such thing as ‘‘Internet policy’’ – there’s just policy.
I highly recommend everyone to read it!
Link: http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2011/11/cory-doctorow-its-time-to-stop-talking-about-copyright/
The soundtrack of the week is Pt.II by Degrees. It’s a sort of indie synthpop kind of deal, and it’s really, really good. You can download this album at Jamendo.com, free of charge, so check it out!
Degrees is a swedish band that I didn’t even know existed until a few days ago. That is one of the things that are so cool about the internet. For artists, it’s never been easier to find an audience than right now. But if I haven’t paid anything to download this album, then what’s in it for the band?
Well, they’ve just gained a new listener. The chance of me giving them some money has just jumped from zero (because I didn’t even know about them) to I don’t even know what to call it. The difference between one and two is 100%, but how do you measure the difference between zero and one? If I hadn’t found them on Jamendo, there’s a very real risk that I would never have heard of them at all.
You can learn more about Degrees at http://dgrs.se/. Fair warning, though: Their website looks cool, but I think it sucks from a user’s point of view. Navigation is unclear, and when you manage to identify a link, it opens in a new window. So, good music, bad website. Or maybe that’s just me….
I haven’t listened to their other albums yet, but I’m going to. I hope you too enjoy their music.
Is there an artist and/or album at Jamendo.com that you would recommend?
Sunday is almost over here in Sweden, and I nearly missed posting a sunday comic. 
But as promised, here is another Mimi and Eunice strip from Nina Paley!
I love this strip so much, because it illustrates how price and value are very different things. A lot of artists, musicians and writers worry that low prices, for instance on ebooks, de-value their work. This is simply not true.
There are other kinds of value than that which is measured in dollars. And the more a piece is shared and enjoyed, the more valuable it becomes. Sometimes even in dollars.
The monetary value of an ebook, or a song, is how much money it’s brought in since its publication, not the price of each copy. If an ebook is priced at $1,000 dollars but sells not a single copy, is it really worth anything compared to a $0.99 ebook that sells 10,000 copies?
Please come back tomorrow for the Album of the Week, where I recommend another album you can download and enjoy free of charge and add to its value by doing it!
This week’s soundtrack is Neuland e.p. by EndZeit Effekt. It’s German electronica with an industrial feel and I certainly understand if it doesn’t suit everyone, but I really like it.
At Jamendo.com, you can get this album, and thousands of others, for free. That’s “free” as in “free beer”, i.e. you can listen to it online, and even download it, free if charge. If you feel like it, you can donate whatever amount you want, but you don’t have to. For this artist, reaching an audience is more important than getting paid. And that’s the way it should be, because who is going to pay you if you don’t have an audience?
In later posts, I’ll talk more about the differences between “free as in free of charge” and “free as in freedom”, but for now I’ll just say that this album fits the first definition of “free” but not the other.
Is there an artist and/or album at Jamendo.com that you would recommend?
Mimi and Eunice is a fantastic comic strip by the very talented Nina Paley. I plan on posting a comic from her archive every sunday. Here’s one of my favourites:
Maybe patents used to be a good idea. But now, they really do more harm than good. I’ll be writing more on this subject in the future.
A lot of things are easier than starting a new blog….
What the hell do I write for a first post? I have no readers, so I guess I can write whatever I want. But still… I started this blog for a reason, didn’t I? Don’t I have something to say then? Well, yes, but if I say it all now then no one is going to read it, because right now I’m the only one who knows this blog exists. What a fucking dilemma….
Yeah, I dropped the “f-word” right there, in the first post. There might be a lot more in the future, so if you’re afraid of words like that, then maybe you should just move along and read something else. Or grow the fuck up. Your choice.
Great… I may have just turned away a potential reader…
Well… If you’ve managed to find your way here, then welcome. I can’t promise it’ll always be interesting, but I’ll do my best.