fiction is lying.

If you haven’t heard about Benn Jordan, The Flashbulb, or how itunes stole and sold his music, here’s that interesting story (which is yet another reason not to patronize Apple or itunes). Long story short: dude gets his music stolen, so he and his label give it away and win from donations; internet works. As far as I know, he is the first artist to work with a private bittorrent site to distribute his music freely.

I’d like to formally recommend the album to anyone interested in film soundtracks or ambient type things in general. “Soundtrack to a Vacant Life” is described basically as it is titled, and while normally a much more aphexy musician, on this album he has toned and tuned everything to the pace of his life. This is a mostly relaxing trip through what I see as a truly grandiose statement of electronic music. This is a project I would do.

This story is a couple weeks old, but I finally finished getting to the album and I really wanted to mention it. This is part of us moving on. Check it out online.

Dynamic tracking is the bane of private torrent sites; at the same time, it is a boon to those trying to use crappy public sites, as well as those who are impatient and think more connections means more faster automatically.

DHT (Distributed Hash Table) is an addition to certain BitTorrent clients that allows them to work without a tracker. What this means is that your client will be able to find peers even when the tracker is down, or doesn’t even exist anymore. It allows the swarm to continue as normal without a tracker. You can also host torrents without a tracker.

I can remember a few times that dynamic tracking has helped me finish something that would have been absolutely unfinishable otherwise. An average example would be a decent quality vhs rip of rare as hell, out of print shit, scraped together at 1.9k/sec from one dude wherever over a week.

With so many big trackers disappearing, the idea that DHT is helping hundreds of thousands of people finish torrents they couldn’t have otherwise is not only hilarious, but it also sort of makes you have to reconsider laws that can no longer be enforced.

The domain oink.cd is now back in the hands of its owner (it had been hijacked earlier this week by the super-riaa and vandalized), and while the tracker is gone, something interesting is in its place.

See for yourself.

What’s going on here? The oink site now links to a google search most likely intended to help you find this page, which links to a huge variety of torrent sites. I’m ok with the terminology “hydra” when applied to torrents.

He even changed the secret shady-as-hell note page, which made the ominous-yet-vaguely written propaganda threat page seem fake. Before it was changed, it was a note from the super-riaa (IFPI + BPI) to the police saying thanks for the help, and had the exact text for the threatening front page in its entirety. How official does that sound? Hopefully I won’t be picked up for plagiarizing this text, which was on the front page after being taken from here:

Pedro,

Many thanks for your assistance with this. Please find attached two logos for IFPI & BPI together with text to be displayed on a new homepage on the ‘Oink’ website. Can the logos be added to the page:

This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.

A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site’s users

Many thanks

Keith

The site was hijacked, literally. This organization had no authority to access or use the domain. Essentially, they pulled exactly the same trick that hacker kids do to sites they vandalize. Hijacking website is generally considered illegal.

This story just gets more weird and twisted as the days pass, but it seems like more sources are becoming respectable in reference to the whole mess.

Here is the best waffle recipe ever (yes, metric; fuck off):

• 50g Egg Yolks
• 15g Sucrose
• 1g Sea Salt
• ½ Vanilla Bean
• 125g Sifted Cake Flour
• 2.5g Baking Powder
• 50g Whole Milk
• 200g Heavy Cream
• 50g Butter (82% fat)
• 10g Dark Rum
• 1 pinch Cream of Tartar
• 45g Egg Whites

Mix wet crap and dry crap together, let it sit for a half hour, then cook in an iron or whatever. Best waffles ever. Seriously.

Talk of new oink replacement sites has thickened to culmination and The Pirate Bay, the Swedish-based public tracker thought to be the biggest in the world, has announced its plans to provide a replacement site with hopes that oink users will fill in all the details and make it right.

There are problems with the Bay’s plan was wrapped up in a single comment from Anonymous:

It wont be OiNK. There will just be hoards of transcoded, non-seeded, mislabled, shit uploaded. This is why OiNK existed, as a reliable source of good quality music, which ‘BOiNK’ won’t be.

It’s true. No matter the level of care taken for the Bay to claim this niche, what is most likely going to end up happening is a “haven” for music that is just like any other public tracker…i.e. crap. What set oink apart was high quality, and a tracker where anyone could upload anything doesn’t have the infrastructure to maintain the same level of quality.

Who knows? The Bay could moderate it for real, and make a genuine attempt at maintaining the standards, but it’s not likely. They are more about the message than the method. It has its place, but it’s not what oink users seem to be seeking; for them, it is about quality and even community.

Scams and misinformation continue, in case you were wondering. There appears to be one source of super-reliable information, and elsewhere is going to be hearsay.

The internet isn’t as fast as people think in some departments, and one of those departments is getting over the 192kbps hump. Many folks do not even know of the v0 “standard,” and have never heard of flac, either. And to think some people take blu-ray seriously.

Bittorrent is a bigger idea than a country or a law. It is decentralization manifest, which is a concept that backfires when the topic of restrictions and private community comes up. In fact, they appear mutually exclusive. What will happen?

Lots of the same ideas coming up here are coming here. Read it.

Dear real world,

You don’t understand. If you think there won’t be (or already isn’t) another site within a week, you don’t understand. All that has been removed from the situation is a single website that connects people. They don’t even know each other. The internet itself is the enemy here. It’s too big to be controlled, and is demanding you rethink the way you do many things. For example, I’ve become a bit of a skeptic, thanks in part to the internet. To further this example, let’s examine the situation skeptically.

DJ Rupture’s sensible take on it.

The current entertainment industry is angry. It’s mad that you damned kids outran it. It’s mad that it can’t control you anymore. It’s mad that the pocket padding (which has not even remotely slowed) doesn’t appear as threatened as it prefers. It’s mad that the enemy isn’t so easy to bully as the damned kids.

A Cleveland Police spokesman said: “This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only.”

Anyone that calls something torrent-related a scheme, and suggests that profit is involved, has no idea what they’re saying. Calling it a “pre-release” site is false propaganda as well. Even respectable news sources are regurgitating the same horseshit. Why lie about it if the law has been so blatantly violated?

“…was central to the illegal distribution of pre-release music online. This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure. This was a worldwide network that got hold of music they did not own the rights to and posted it online.”

What’s the difference in 2007? If you think that question is a joke, you’ve missed most of my point so far.

Almost every major news article I can find inaccurately describes not only the significance and frequency of early releases, but also the invitation structure, and often even the concepts behind how torrents work. They want everyone to think it was a profitable scheme; it wasn’t. They want everyone to think it was a malicious cult; it wasn’t. In other words, in brief, don’t believe what you’re hearing.

The law is the law…however, it still has yet to be broken. I’d explain this, but if you don’t believe me, you aren’t to be convinced anyway.
They used to have these things in the world called revolutions. A huge mob of people would get together with farm tools and take back their land. These damned kids don’t feel entitled; they just know the system is outdated bullshit. And now, all they’ve lost is a significant number of .torrent files. That’s all. They could literally turn around right this second and put the data on another torrent site, and when that site is down tomorrow, another will replace it, ad infinitum.

I like to call this the internet effect.

Please stop comparing this to Napster! Terrorism! Juxtaposition! Just want that in there for searches. And please, everyone, be a little more responsible and do some fucking reading before you lump another piece of shit on the media monolith. Keep sharing and thank you for listening. (even more links!)

It is improper to use “you” to address an audience.

(This site, its users, and its readers have no affiliation with any websites, free or otherwise, at this time, or any time previous.)