I was searching for the J. Geils Band’s “Come Back” video on YouTube and found this:

which I think is beautiful and a really interesting concept for a video/audio project. Turns out the creator of the video, gregbarrett9, has several videos like this showing his hacked jukebox simply playing records. It seems totally fun until you read this in his info:

Sorry but I can’t take any requests. Recently there have been copyright issues affecting other people who post records playing and I may find myself retricted to what I can upload in the future.

For Christ’s sake, this artful and free project isn’t hampering any artist’s ability to make money with his or her music and it is most likely exposing tons of new people to the music. (After all, had you heard J. Geils Band’s “Come Back” before playing that video?) It’s such a shame that creators like gregbarrett9 have to worry about this kind of issue.

TorrentFreak has a good read on the MediaDefender hack a year ago:

Meanwhile, BitTorrent sites witnessed a decrease in MediaDefender activity following the leak. The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde, who sued some key players in the entertainment business for using MediaDefender, told TorrentFreak that there has been a significant decrease in activity from BitTorrent spoofers and decoyers. “It’s strange that no one has given much regard to the fact that the way MediaDefender works is probably illegal in most countries. Even in the US. I might even say, especially in the US,” Sunde added.

I shared this in the What I’m Reading section but I feel it bears some highlighting — Universal Cancels Metallica Interview over Torrent Mention. Basically a reviewer for a Swedish publication reviewed the new Metallica album and linked to a remix of it available on RapidShare and now through torrents (you can find it as “Death Magnetic Better Shorter Cut”) and said he liked the remix version better. The remix version, as the title indicates, is the same tunes minus the sucking repetitions of choruses and riffs. You know, it’s Metallica with the editor they’ve needed for the past, oh, 18 years. Metallica’s record label subsequently cancelled an interview the band was to do with the publication. (continue reading…)