Chris Hartzog dot Com » Intellectual Property

Can You Find Me On iTunes?

chartzog — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 23:57:33 +0000

I Found Myself On iTunes

Wow….I took the big step this week of getting my music onto iTunes as podcasts! I think that is pretty cool. It is listed as the Musing Mana Song Project. At this point, these are the free versions….eventually, per my original master plan, when I have album-ready music available, I will be creating albums and release those for sale for real money on iTunes as well. For now, if you have iTunes installed, go to iTunes and search for my name under podcasts and you will find me….at least I have found myself. I found myself and never even had to leave home to do it…how cool and efficient is that?

One of the reasons I chose iTunes is regarding Digital Rights Management on digital media: iTunes is DRM Free. I don’t want restriction on my work and I can’t imagine why anyone else would want to put DRM on my songs. I know any time that I have gotten music that is DRM protected, the main thing it makes me feel is annoyed! Oh, I also suppose since I am a Mac-ite in training (see It’s Gonna Be A Mac), I felt moved to do some other Apple-ish activities.

Anyway, here is a good post from a few years ago by Cory Doctorow on Digital Rights Management on digital media basically saying that DRM is a really stupid idea and that people shouldn’t be complacent and allow it to gain a foothold.

So far, from my little vantage point it appears to me that the forces of IP freedom are winning the battle against DRM. Cory wants DRM dead and I don’t blame him.

Nine Inch Nails Making Money by Giving It Away

chartzog — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:49:05 +0000

Here is yet another story on the example of the changes taking place in the recording industry, Nine Inch Nails gave their new album “The Slip” away for free to their fans prior to it hitting store shelves. Whether or not this truly is a good business model is probably yet to be seen over the long term, however the important thing, especially for small, indies is that the control has shifted….from the labels, the guys in the suits to the artists, where I think it should have been all along.

Not Only Can They Take Your MP3’s

chartzog — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:46:11 +0000

I am all for protecting us from the “bad guys” but I am also for individual rights and the constitution. Another troubling story appeared in the Washington Post today on the issue of border agents having the power to seize your laptop, cell phone, iPod, or any other electronics that can store information without cause and take it away and rummage through it and keep it for however long it takes. This was a topic back in June, and now it is coming up again.

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Expanding Creative Commons

chartzog — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:46:59 +0000

I continue to explore the lonely frontiers of the open source movement. Today I opened an account at the Internet Archive and there along with tons of other fascinating stuff, like free live concert archives of the Grateful Dead…I was never a deadhead, but thought you might like to know….you can also find my wonderous new creation - Wild Man From Tennessee. You might want to pay a visit to the library and browse around. It looks like fun.

What is Folk Music? Opening Up Creativity.

chartzog — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:01:34 +0000

There is a great discussion on New Hampshire public radio (NPR) on “What is folk music?”. My comment is that I think there as many answers to “What is folk music?” as there are people to answer the question. I prefer to not debate which instrumentation is or is not appropriate as many others have already debated this to death. The thread that I found very captivating in the NPR discussion was the idea of public domain as mentioned by jimgiddings:

>>The core of folk music is anonymity and the public domain.<<

And further:

>>I would add that the music needs to be part of a community, although the community can now be a worldwide-web community as easily as a geographically-based community. True folk music will always be the mortal enemy of intellectual property rights: i.e. it can only thrive when people are free to build on the work of others. Pop music and country music (though maybe not jazz) all treat musicians and songwriters as islands whose creative “product” is inviolable. To make a living in folk music performers need to be constantly interacting with fans and other musicians in ways that labels and established pop musicians would find dangerous.<<

This is an awesome statement and it is exactly what the Creative Commons movement, founded by Lawrence Lessig, is all about. We need to lower barriers and increase creativity and interaction. The internet and especially Web 2.0 has provided a tremendous opportunity to independent artists and those in the folk music movement to interact with their fans and other musicians in a meaningful, fundamentally different way than has ever been possible. Big Brother is no longer in control. We have the means to restart the engines of creativity. Besides professor Lessig, another internet collaboration pioneer and favorite of mine is Jonathon Coulton. And of course, if you are reading my site, you already know that I have also thrown my hat into the ring and established my own web site with the desire to expand the circle of collaboration and creativity even more.

Can You Have Your Identity Stolen Via P2P?

chartzog — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:10:12 +0000

Online Music Habits Could Lead To Identity Theft?

According to this new article, Online Music Habits Could Lead To Identity Theft, by Amy Clancy, http://www.kirotv.com/consumer/15530001/detail.html if you have a P2P program installed, even if you don’t have it running or open, your computer is still accessible by others if you have a live internet connection.

What do you think? Is this true, or is this fear mongering?

I’m not sure how big of a concern this really is assuming you opt out of sharing any files on a P2P network and use it strictly for download and have a basic firewall installed. But at any rate, this lends support for using other options such as downloading legitimately from indie artists such as me or from reputable DRM free sites.

Chris Hartzog is a folk singer/songwriter. He produces his music and records everything in his own studio making his own MP3’s and CD’s. Chris plays guitar, electric bass, ukulele, Irish penny whistel and harmonica. His philosophy is all about Hawaiian “aloha” and “mana”.

Will the Copyright Police take away your laptop or iPod?

chartzog — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:54:00 +0000

Now this is really scarry. It’s like a scene out of 1984. It is becoming a very controlled, observational, “no-no” world that we live in. If the existing airport security procedures, including “Whole body scans” is not humiliating and frustrating enough, now the government has the power to search and seize your computer, [...]

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Who Owns Culture?

chartzog — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 15:17:45 +0000

Wow, I can’t believe no one commented on Jon Coulton’s “Lessig and Tweedy” post on the Lawrence Lessig and Jeff Tweedy discussion about intellectual property and copyright law at the New York Public Library. I just listened to the recording of the presentation and it is wonderful!

Lessig may be a lawyer, but he definitely has a heart for artists and those who care about the expansion of creativity and fear the stifling acts committed by RIAA. I will soon be getting my own copy of his book: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity