An October 1^st, 2010 posting to the Eugene Permaculture Listserv.
	Birthday copycats.
	Tomorrow evening I celebrate my birthday with an itsy-bitsy group of cohorts. Along with kind company, food, and music-making, the gathering is also doubling as a Music Copying Shindig. I have, you see, invited friends to bring not only a potluck dish and musical instruments, but whatever gizmos they have to hand to gift and grab their favorite muzak with one another. I believe it was that quintessential American, Henry David Thoreau, who said, "Unjust laws exist – shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?" I'm thinking success, myself. Might I therefore suggest you also celebrate my birthday by endeavoring to, yes, copy music tomorrow too, wherever you are. If anyone asks, do please tell them that the co-chair of the National Computer Ethics and Responsibilities Campaign gave you the green light. Yup, that's moi. I must admit to having co-chaired a Congressional Briefing in DC around this very topic, no less. And yes, from that hyperlink you may correctly infer a Monsanto paycheck in my past. (For the record, despite my insider knowledge of Big $eed’s recent black ops in the S. Willamette Valley – such are the dangers of outta-state, legal proxies and their in-pocket, university collaborators rather underestimating the insight of shit-kicking, public-domain plant stewards hereabouts - my own direct, personal experience with Monsanto through the decades, whether its ethicists, PR personnel or plant breeders, has been consistently amicable, positive, professional.) Though, admittedly, my understanding of copyright has evolved very significantly in the decade and a half since I last donned a suit and tie in Congress. Where was I? Ah, yes. Music, filthy lucre and the law: what a triumvirate. And bizarre, isn’t it, that these days, no lyric poet, no dramatist, no songwriter is rendering more palpable the stench of greed or giving sharper voice to the hymns of money than the music industry itself. Panic, indeed. But no matter the raucous screeching issuing from the braindead megaphone of late capitalism in the Web Era, such McCarthyite hysteria and the poisonous enormity of its commoditized mechanics of persuasion, guilt and punishment have clearly run their course. Reality, you see, is far, far richer indeed than the hegemony of dollar-zombie values and desires which ‘North American and Western European’ politics and social bureaucracies have come to exercise over so much of the earth, allows it to be. As such, my birthday seems as good a time as any to acknowledge the implacable truth to life that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with copying. So then, why not take this opportunity to free yourself from the authoritarian personality in yourself and in those whose who would lead and those who would follow? Free yourself, the music, the seed, and the Logos. For those of you unsure about how exactly to copy music, I have attached a small how-to guide giving suggestions. Peace in our Time, n "Time is wanted for this but there will come a day when music and its philosophy will become the religion of humanity." - Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882 - 1927) "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." - Hunter S. Thompson ------- How to get music from the internet: There are a few fast and safe ways to get free digital music using the internet. These are separated into several categories: Friends, Web search tools, automatic stream downloaders, sound card hacks, and P2P/Torrents. Friends: By far the best, safest, and fastest way to get music is from friends. Take a thumb drive over to their house, just drag and drop from itunes (careful, duplicate files will cancel the whole move, so check now and again that things are going through). Friends through the internet: You can create a .zip file of an album / array of songs, (mac control click, compress / windows download winzip), and then send it through an online file swapping service: https://www.yousendit.com/: free under 100Mb. http://www.4shared.com/: free 10Gb personal webspace: just upload your files (less than 200mb) and someone else can download them. If you'd like it not be immediately clear that you are posting music, do music files in .zip format. Web File Searching Tools: These sites search the web for any mp3's that may have been uploaded on sites on the web, and allow you to download them: http://beemp3.com/ http://www.mp3hunting.com/ http://skreemr.org For the first two, make sure the bitrate of the file is above 128 Kb/s, and right-click (control-click on mac) on the link to the file and select "Save target as" For Skreemer, they don't give you a visible link to the file. All you get is a flash player embedded in the page to listen, but nowhere to download it for free. You can use several options here: a) use a sound card hack to grab the file when you play it, and b) check the source code of the page and find the file. For Geeks: Checking the source code to find the link to a file: Click "View =>page source" in your browser (could be view=>developer=>page source) Use the find tool (edit=>find or control+f) (command+f on a mac), and type "player.swf" This will locate the flash player in the code. Just below this, in a jumble of other stuff, you will see "value=". The very end of this block of code should say "File=" What follows is the web address of the embedded mp3. Just take all the parts marked "%2F" and convert them to "/" so it looks like a web address, and the link should work. Go to the page and select save as from the file menu. Automatic Downloaders from Streaming sites: These programs take ordinarily embedded/protected media and create real files on your hard disk. For Mac: Pandora Jam: http://www.bitcartel.com/pandorajam/download.html This will convert all the songs you listen to on pandora into mp3's For PC: FreeCorder: Download anything from sites: youtube videos / mp3's http://www.applian.com/freecorder4/help.php#youtube Freezer "Easily download songs from music streaming sites like Deezer, Jiwa or Imeem." http://www.brothersoft.com/freezer-188600.html Similar to pandora jam for PC/Mac http://www.recordstreamingaudio.net/download-audio-recorder Sound-Card Hacks: Audio Hijack (mac) http://www.rogueamoeba.com/legacy/downloads/AudioHijack-226.dmg This takes anything coming out of your computer sound card and converts it to an mp3. Trial version only works for ten minutes at a time, but this is enough for songs. HardDiskOgg - (Windows) Same as above, freeware. http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php Torrents / P2P: These are much 'riskier' than other forms of music download, in that they have attracted some lawsuits. They, on the other hand, can download huge files, whole albums, etc... If you do use them and are worried about being tracked, make sure to: Block Block-Listed IP's: http://filesharefreak.com/2007/12/04/ip-blocking-blocklists/ which will reduce your chances of being tracked by 99%.
	April 10, 2011