I was browsing the web a couple of days ago and I came upon a hilarious video. The full video can be seen at www.ultimateshowdown.org. Everyone should get to see it if they haven’t yet. It’s a little old but hilarious. Just imagine every single pop culture icon ever in one major battle and this is what you get. Who wins the showdown is pretty surprising. All I’ll say is they chose the correct winner. Just make sure to have the volume on and click for the subtitles. It’s in English, but still this way you can understand everything they say.
If you were like me as a little kid, you would use your tape player to make a mix tape from the radio. Little did you know that you could be sued for a lot of money for doing it. Now that technology has become more prevalent and flawless, it is becoming more dangerous for an individual to do such a thing.
The recording industry and Peer-2-Peer networks continue to play cat and mouse with each other. On one end the government and the recoding industry fight, a change in the social ideas of what music is becoming. It feels as if Napster, Fasttrack, and the Gnutella network, as young as they were, have become ghosts in the midst of BitTorrent. As music piracy progresses it is hard to say what will become of music in the future and how the music industry will react. We are in the middle of revolution that will influence music, even if it is illegal.
On October 23, 2007, Oink.cd was shut down. Oink, a free website and that did not accept donations depended on referrals from members. Once a member reached a certain download criteria they we be able to invite friends to use the network. Since the close of the website, some members have created their own networks for file sharing and started to branch off. The trial is pending to start and the upcoming years will create more legal change that alters music forever.
The past events like the close of Napster and the flooding of corrupt music files on the Gnutella networks echoed bitterness from both sides when Oink was closed. Shortly after Oink’s shutdown, the website posted a link to Google.com to indicate alternatives to Oink. They argue their technology is no different from that of the popular search engine. The media often portrays it as a network and as a resource to download popular music before it was released. It is true members could get an album weeks before it was set to release but many members enjoyed an extensive and astonishing database of rare and unknown artists as well.
The network thepiratebay.org has had its own legal battle and pressure from the recording industry. In 2006, its site server was raided in Sweden. However, pressure from protestors caused a backlash, because technology like BitTorrent networks are not illegal in Sweden. Swedish citizens became angry that an influence from the U.S. would tell their government what to do.
As other countries create social activism from its citizens and to not too much is happening in the U.S. with that regard, I realize how much we have not spoken out against important issues. When all the other issues in foreign countries present themselves, there is still tenacity to revolt against free music.. What has happened to civil disobedience? Although, the social change in the U.S., as with illegal music downloading in other countries too, seems to come out of simple apathy; moreover, a social change of ideas through not caring.
Isohut.com may have even more of an advantage in the battles with social change and illegal music downloading in the future. It claims to be the most comprehensive search engine for BitTorrent. Operating as a search engine with no membership required it does not host any of the files that individuals download but uses string search technology like Google to locate a file. With a legal battle from Hollywood in pursuit, the founder claims that he neither distributes nor hosts any copyrighted material.
It will be interesting in upcoming years to see what occurs with the legal battles and the change in power of the government, recording industry, and Hollywood. If music becomes more oriented toward the past, before the creation of the record, or if the industries win out, or it there is ever a meeting in the middle. In the spirit of this blog, here is some free Lindsay Lohan: