Frothy court jester
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If I sounded a little disheartened by my post (EDIT: Now deleted, ha dee fucking ha. EDIT2: And now reposted) about the post deletions on this blog and others, the comment by Mephisto from Totally Fuzzy was greatly encouraging. Mephisto and the people of Totally Fuzzy have seen it all before. I recall a series of deletions being subject to big debate on Fuzzy”s previous incarnation a coupler of years ago. For the benefit of those who haven”t read Mephisto”s comment, here”s an excerpt:
The idea that this would be done by some record company or label or whatever industry branch doesn’t make much sense to me to be honest. I know hundreds of blogs that post a dozen of freshly leaked albums on any given day, and they never seem to have to go through this. There are blogs out there that are genuine Free Record Stores, posting brand new releases every day again and again and they get away with it. If there would be any interest from the industry, those are the ones they’d be going after. It can’t be that they’re too dumb to just use google to search for the latest AC/DC album for example. I’m pretty sure that their visitor numbers are a lot higher than your blog too, so they should be the ones attracting the attention.
Given the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any logic behind any of this, I still think it is some lone cowboy, having what he understands as fun at other people’s expense. And it seems that it are especially the dedicated bloggers that get hit.
Another thing that really is very interesting is that I never see any foreign language blog get hit. Through the years that has consistently been the case. Whoever is doing this is English speaking and he probably gets off reading this kind of comments.
[…] should this blog be deleted, just start another one. We will promote it on totally fuzzy and most people will find it again. In the end we will always win, because we have way more patience and dedication than the freewheeling assholes.
I am persuaded that we”re dealing here with a court jester living a sadly empty life who no longer gets his kicks (yes, I”m sure it”s a male) from porn sites depicting women with heads shoved down a toilet. My post yesterday might have had our detractor wanking himself into a froth. The expression of his sexual disfunction is perhaps best confined to playing power games with the blogging community, because the alternatives to that are ghastly. People who get off on the exercise of coercive power are liable to also be rapists. The deletion of some posts (which, if one has backed up, can easily be reinstated) is a small price to pay for the safety of women and, perhaps, even children.
Of course I would prefer it if the frothy court jester would just piss off, as I”m sure he will when he realises that the blogging community will not be intimidated. Perhaps he will up the ante and force feckless Blogger (who just couldn”t be bothered to distinguish between authentic and frivolous complaints) to close down those blogs who”ll not be discouraged by his antics. Should that come to pass, I”ll simply start a new blog, with all my previous posts ““ or at least those preserving ““ intact. I have tussled with much more powerful people than the frothy court jester in my time. What delusion to think that he is anything more than a nuisance.
No music for this post, so there”s nothing for Blogger to delete but the whole account.
Sorry. There’s a good set of suspicious coincidence happening there, but not proof. Instead, I note that the last two times box.net got take-down requests and removed files from my blog (and then blogger removed the accompanying posts, which is indeed totally not legal, since the songs were dealt with separately), they were happy to provide the contact info for the take-down requester.That contact info? Jeremy Banks, head of Internet Anti-Piracy, IFPI, in England. Their position, according to the ifpi website? ” IFPI has an expert team which traces the origin of illegal content on the internet and works with law enforcement agencies to get copyright-infringing content off the internet.”More here: http://drownedinsound.com/news/4135551This might, incidentally, also explain the “only in english” thing.
Perhaps here are two currents. The removals of blogs like this one or Echoes In The Wind seem random and arbitrary. Why remove the Brandi Carlile post in my second blog but not the post from which it “borrowed” the link? It makes no sense, and there is a precedent for lone cowboys doing that sort of thing.But it would not surprise me if The Man was also targetting blogs.Either way, any news of bloggers packing it in as a result is very sad indeed.
Another interesting coincidence?
Might I make an observation?If the corporate objective is to make bloggers pack it in, targeting the obscure tracks makes a lot of sense to me. Why risk bad PR for your moneymaking artists a la Metallica? Why risk AC/DC (say) coming out and saying ‘actually we don’t mind if fans share our stuff’.The end result has been the same. You’ve thought about packing it in.Not saying this is the case. But it strikes me as an explanation.
It’s not easy to be motivated and blog ur keyboard of. I hope the Dude will keep up the good work cause it’s mighty fine to be entertained here. Wich inspires me to return aswell after a lot of RIAA deleted posts.Fight the power, enjoy open source music, Buy music you like!Thanks for all dude!TMI
The whole thing is just so frustrating – – and I’m just reading about it on others’ blogs. Regardless of who is behind it all, it is damn annoying and so ridiculous. Why does anyone feel the need to lash out and hurt others who haven’t done ANYTHING to deserve such treatment? Argh.Anyway, you keep blogging and I know *I* will keep reading, regardless of how frequently you write or how much music you post. :)) I haven’t come across a post here that wasn’t worth the time it took to read.
So many of these in the past few weeks; it doesn’t feel like a lone gunman getting his kicks, it feels co-ordinated.But my advice would be for all of us to carry on doing what we’re doing. Even if all we do is write about stuff and stop posting tunes.
Bastards. In deleting your previous complaint, they also deleted my comment.
First comment here, I read off and on although I’ve just added you to Google Reader so I’ll be more regular.I had a post go mysteriously missing in August. No letter from Blogger, no nothing. It had ONE music file in it. A bootleg to a trance mix of Heart’s “Alone.” That is the only song that was on there. I can’t believe that I would be targeted for that, and there may be other reasons, but still. Fortunately, I was able to resurrect it and it has stayed up ever since.It has made me less likely to post songs, even ones that are out of print or bootleg or whatever.Keep up the good writing!