I’m kind of fascinated by the coming copyright wars. That may be a bit dramatic, but there’s no doubt that the digital age and the explosion of the Internet are ripping apart all the current copyright laws. The old media companies take their heads out of the sand only long enough to entrench themselves deeper in the old system and maybe punish both their customers and the agents attempting to help ease their path into the new age along the way.
There appears to be a happy ending on the horizon for Internet radio, although I wouldn’t put it past the various interested parties on the IP side of the debate to find a way to screw it up before everything is said-and-done.
On the other hand is the developing situation at YouTube. The site was recently hit with a massive judgement for royalties owed for songs that they host. Organizations like ASCAP appear ready to go after websites that link to those videos as well, although they seem to make a distinction between commercial blogs and Joe Blows like myself with personal blogs and a dozen or so readers.
With that in mind, and as an F-you to the old media oligarchs who refuse to admit their age has passed, here’s a stunning video of Radiohead absolutely ripping “The Bends” apart. Watching this makes me want to run around the block as fast as I can or do 1000 push ups or find some other way of burning off the energy it creates.
youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAKFSnQdhvE&hl=en&fs=1&
I’ll throw this out there, as well. No one – not Nirvana, not Pearl Jam, not Soundgarden, nor anyone else – had two albums in the 90s as good as Radiohead’s The Bends and OK Computer. If I didn’t have my silly rule about only one album per artist, they would both be in my top ten albums of all time, with OK being my co-favorite of all-time.