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open letter to hilltop hoods blog entry circling the net/blogosphere this week

not sure if you've seen this already, but I think it's important for 2 reasons..

1. because of the DRM issue and music protection some artists and music labels are introducing, and

2. because it came through via Boing Boing which is the Technorati "#1 ranked blog site". poular blogs are measured & given a technorati ranking based on "The biggest blogs in the blogosphere, as measured by unique links in the last six months." http://www.technorati.com/pop/blogs/

so, this entry just went out to thousands of other sites where other people are linking it and commenting on it - great way to get OZ hip hop out there.. perhaps some of the people out there will check out the bands/artists mentioned in the article. (as I like looking at stats, it'd be interesting to see if their website hits or sales adjusted partly due to this)

original blog entry @ http://intermaweb.net/2005/12/09/open-letter-hilltop-hoods/

Boing Boing blog entry:

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/08/fan_to_hilltop_hoods.html

[quote]
Thursday, December 8, 2005

Fan to Hilltop Hoods: treating me like a thief is bad business

Popular Aussie hiphop Hilltop Hoods band released its first DVD, The Calling Live. Partway through the disk, the band breaks off to call its fans thieves, and to promise that future musical releases will have DRM to protect the band from its listeners. Pete, a big fan of the band, has written an open letter in response:

Anecdotally, if I hadn't downloaded Left Foot, Right Foot in 2001(?), it is quite possible that I would have never purchased it, or The Calling, or The Calling DVD. It's also unlikely that I would have purchased tickets to several Hilltop Hoods shows. The same goes for my sister, and the several friends for whom I've burned copies over the years. If I had not discovered the joys of the Hoods, I may not have sought out (and purchased) music by the likes of Layla, Drapht, Downsyde, Clandestein, Hunter, Fdel, Pegz, the Herd, Bliss n Eso, After Hours, Funkoars, Art of War, Bias B, Lazy Grey, Mnemonic Ascent, Reason, Plutonic Lab etc etc etc....

So Suffa, I absolutely reject your accusations of theft, and am hurt that you reject me as a fan. I thought you were cool, and that you understood. Now, I'm not so sure...
[/quote]

Hilltop Hoods respond to the letter @ http://intermaweb.net/2005/12/10/suffas-reply-open-letter-hilltop-hoods/ and sound very reasonable.

Personally, I like the creative commons form of licensing & the ability to remix/remux existing works but I don't make my living from my art/music so come from a different perspective to an artist who does.

I think that having the songs available for download helps people try before they buy. and if someone downloads it and doesn't like it they probably weren't one of your customers anyway so you didn't lose any money from it, but perhaps one of their friends will hear it and like it and buy it then you'll gain a customer.

DRM is an issue which more & more artists will be having to deal with in the future though, a tough one for sure.

QTVR2MOV - quicktime VR to movie

Ian James Woods is a photographer who specialiases in 360 degree panorama images and creating Quicktime VR videos. He has exhibited work in many galleries in UK. The Apple quicktime VR site has links to software that can produce VR images. To create a video sequence from your QTVR movie, try QTVR2MOV - a simple to use application for creating video sequences from cubic or cylindrical QTVR panoramas. Visit the website to download a copy : http://azurevision.co.uk/qtvr2mov/.

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Argus Clearinghouse

Internet research guide. A selective collection of topical guides. visit http://www.clearinghouse.net/index.html for more details

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elibrary.com

HighBeam Library Research

Search our extensive archive of more than 35 million documents from over 3,000 sources -- a vast collection of articles from leading publications, updated daily and going back as far as 20 years.

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Bitch magazine

Bitch | Feminist Response to Pop Culture is a print magazine devoted to incisive commentary on our media-driven world. We feature critiques of TV, movies, magazines, advertising, and more—plus interviews with and profiles of cool, smart women in all areas of pop culture.

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reading notes "Where you're at" by Patrick Neate (notes from the frontline of a hip hop planet)

I've just finished reading "Where you're at - notes from the frontline of a hip hop planet" by Patrick Neate. I thought it was a great book - sometimes he went off on a few tangents, but they provided interesting background information on the context of the hip hop communities in the different cities covered in the book. I'm now re-reading/skimming through it to post up some notes on sections I found most thought provoking. Much of the underlying thread of the book is about the cultural misappropriation of hip hop.

from Part One: New York
page 30

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critical issues in multimedia e-book

I've started reading the Interactive Convergence : Critical Issues in Multimedia e-book and so far it's providing some more useful names of other books/reports to chase up. The first chapter is about the different new media university courses in the UK. pasting snippets here as I come across things to follow up or ideas to think about.

Chapter 1
Locating Interactive Media Production

(page 2)
[quote]
A few media/cultural studies writers began to look at the social
and cultural impact of new media, Sherry Turkle (1985) Second Self:
Computers and the Human Spirit; Carolyn Marvin (1988) When Old
Technologies were new; Philip Hayward (1990) Culture, Technology and
Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century; Jay Bolter, (1991) Writing
Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing; Philip
Hayward and Tana Wollen, eds. (1993) Future Visions: New technologies
of the Screen and Roger Silverstone (1994) Consuming Technologies:
Media and Information in Domestic Spaces
[/quote]

This paragraph has an interesting point.. there's not many books or published educational materials for teaching 'new media' - I suppose the plethora of academic papers are not used for this purpose??

(page 9-10)
[quote]
8. Maintaining curriculum integrity - quality teaching resources
There are other difficulties facing interactive media course designers
within any academic context. There is an impoverished supply of good
academic sources and few records of the historical development of design
for CD-ROM or the web. Compared with the sources we can draw on for
the teaching of video and film production for example, good books in the
field of interactive-media production are rare. A simple request to fellow
course leaders of interactive media in 7 different institutions for their
favourite production books, revealed that we are resourceful when it
comes to choosing teaching materials but also that most of our books were
over 4 years old and some were very old indeed. This is their list:

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online libraries

It's great to see so many online libraries and different organisations such as archive.org and google running digitization projects. I've spent so much money over the years on technical books and general reading books, which, the tech books in particular, are out of date quickly that I've often felt I have wasted some of my money on them. Since starting the new job (well over a year ago now, so not so new), and having to travel more, I've been using some of the online libraries - partcularly Questia, Safari (tech books) online and archive.org. The blogosphere and online libraries reminds me of the Neal Stephenson book "Snow Crash" - the citizen journalist, uploading of information & media for future references, online libraries. The future is happening!

I'm currently reading a couple of books - an online copy of Dan Gillmor's "We the Media" and a paperback by Patrick Neate called Where you're at - Notes from the frontline of a Hip Hop Planet. Gillmor reminded me of the google print project which was what started this post. I still enjoy reading paper copies of books - there's nothing like reading in bed on a rainy day, or a weekend, but I like the idea of online versions also. One of the main reason's for this, is that I can search for books I have bought and read them even whilst I'm away and not have to pay excess baggage to carry all the books with me. Before I head back to the UK, I'll drop off the books in Sydney and note down their names so I can either borrow them from local libraries or read online versions. Local libraries! I've had a resurgance in using these also! When I was in primary school I remember we were always in the library looking for books for class assignments. Once I started making money I began to buy the books instead of using the library. I've come full circle again, as I'm enjoying heading to the Auckland City Library. They have a great collection of arts and culture books. I have a friend who used to take his recording equipment (laptop/MD) into the library and dub some audio from the archived films and tapes for samples to use in his music. Perhaps I should check out the media collection at the Auckland library - I'm sure they'd have some great Maori language and local speeches which would be interesting to hear. Maybe even footage of the Rainbow Warrior.. Any way, time to go read some more ... :)

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