WWdN: In Exile

it's the only way to be sure

So it turns out that I do, in fact, have a sinus infection. Because it's the first one post-sinus surgery, my doctor decided that the best course of action would be to blast off and nuke the site from orbit.

I asked him if maybe we could do something a little less extreme, but he assured me that it was the only way to be sure. Since my sneezes weren't going "achoo!" like they're supposed to, but going "Ftagn!" instead, I've decided to follow his advice, and I'm on Prednisone + Zithromax for the next five days.

I'm already feeling better, if not entirely back to normal, but I'm looking forward to getting my command and control systems back online within the next 24 hours. I have this overwhelming urge to blast my quads and rip out my delts, but I understand that will go away IN JUST A FUCKING MINUTE GODDAMMIT WHAT?!

Oh. Um. Sorry. Meds talking and whatnot.

In place of an actual blog entry, here are a few things that have been on my mind:

I was going to write this myself, but Charlie Stross explains why I won't be using Google Chrome better than I can. He even manages to avoid the phrase EPIC FAIL which I wouldn't have been able to do. Competing with IE = good. Competing with Firefox = profoundly stupid. Having the most abusive EULA I've seen in years? That's just fucking priceles, Google. Nice work on that one. I'd like to amend this paragraph, after hours of consideration and lengthy discussion with other people. Apparently, Google claims the EULA was "boilerplate" and they're going to update it. If they update it, great. But does anyone really believe that a company like Google puts out a new browser, one that is as highly-anticipated as Chrome, and doesn't fully vet the EULA? What did they do, borrow lawyers from John McCain? If Google is going to change their EULA to something less evil, that's fantastic, but I don't believe for a moment that this was a mistake. Google isn't that incompetent. As for my statement: "Competing with IE = good. Competing with Firefox = profoundly stupid." Yeah. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I'd like to blame the sinus meds, but that's a pretty 80s excuse, isn't it? I haven't felt well for several days, and I typed without really thinking things through. Competition, as a commenter said, is very good, even (and maybe especially) for Open Source products. I hope I've earned the right over the years to ask for a little slack. If I haven't, I'd like to point out that this mountain is covered with wolves, and the bar is right over there. Thanks.

Cory Doctorow has a really good idea for publishers.

Today is one of those days where it's 97 outside, 81 inside, and only Miles Davis can keep the inside of my house cool.

Coilhouse has a fascinating article about a Modern Pirate Utopia in Hong Kong that has to be read to be believed. Coilhouse kind of rules. I highly recommend their magazine.

Doctor Horrible @ checked me on Twitter. I don't think this should make me as excited as it does, but OMGOMGOMG! The Doctor Horrible soundtrack is #2 on iTunes US, #1 in the UK and Australia. The number one album in the US is some rap thing that makes me stabby just to look at. Come on, American geeks, let's show the rest of the world what we're made of! (Also, the soundtrack is really awesome and fun to listen to.)

Moe's just isn't the same since he got rid of the dank. Come on, Moe! The dank!

I played a little bit of D&D 4e with Jerry, Mike, The Other Mike, and Scott Kurtz when I was at PAX. I got to play a Tiefling Rogue who was trying out to be the new intern at Acquisitions, Incorporated. It was massively fun, and it made me want to play D&D about as badly as I've ever wanted. I'm taking advantage of my . . . current condition . . . to read all of Keep on the Shadowfell in the hopes that I'll be able to convince Nolan and some of his friends to let me run it for them.

I got an insanely cool D&D thing via John Kovalic, but I'm forbidden to reveal it until he does.

I was mentioned rather favorably, in some very nice company, by one of the executive producers on Criminal Minds! "...we have scary locations and amazing guest stars like Jason Alexander, Luke Perry and Wil Wheaton." OMGOMGOMGOMG.

We're late to the party on this, but Anne and I have been watching Weeds on Netflix via our Roku box. We're into the 3rd season (which we had to get on DVD) and I'm not as crazy about it as I was the first two. The acting and writing is wonderful, but the storylines that dominate the 3rd season are leaving me a little cold. I don't believe a single Nancy does in this season, even though Mary-louise Parker is a phenomenal actor.

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is online for free from his publisher. This is one of my favorites, and I heartily recommend it, even though I'm pretty sure most of you reading this have already read it. However, Neil says, "For those people who grumbled about reading American Gods online, here's Neverwhere. You can read it online, and it's also downloadable. That's the good news. The bad news is you don't get to keep it forever. It's yours for thirty days from download, and then the pdf file returns to its electrons. But if you've ever wondered about Neverwhere or wanted to read it for free, now is your chance. And free is free..."

"America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this." A-fucking-MEN.

During my panel at PAX, I was asked a great question that I couldn't answer to my satisfaction: What episode of Next Generation best defines the series? The answer depends heavily on how you'd define the series as a whole, and the best I could come up with is "Star Trek is all about possibilities. It's about hope, so when you look around our totally fucked up world, you see that there is a better future for us." Which TNG episode best exemplifies that? Is that even what Star Trek is about? My answer sucked so hard, I can't even remember what I said. I blame the ConSARS.

A bit of blasphemy: I finally saw Dark Knight, and I was not blown away. Heath Ledger was spectacular, but I felt like the movie climaxed in the first 10 minutes, and was 2 reels too long. Maybe I'll refine my feelings on subsequent viewings, but it didn't send me into a Batgasm like Batman Begins did. However, it's the second act of the trilogy, and if it's anything like all the other trilogies I've seen, it'll end up being my favorite when the dust settles.

I first became aware of the Xbox 360 game Braid when Buckman mentioned on his blog that the developer licensed a bunch of Magnatune music (which I've listened to and love) for the game. Monday night, I couldn't sleep, so I downloaded the trial. 30 minutes later, I bought the full game, which is similar to Portal in a lot of ways. It's one of the most visually beautiful games I've ever played. Check it out if you've got XBLA.

You can listen to one of the artists, Jami Sieber, with this nifty little gizmo:

Hidden Sky by Jami Sieber

John Scalzi's Denise Jones, Super Booker, at Subterranean Online, dovetails brilliantly with Soon I Will Be Invincible, which I am still reading and still loving. And every single time I see, think about, or say the title, my brain fires up a chorus from Pat Benatar's timeless classic song, "Invincible," from the, uh, equally-classic film The Legend of Billie Jean .

And now that I've put it in your brain also, I'll sign off for today.

calling all geeks

I'm in Head Down mode while I race to the finishdeadline for the introduction to Your Hate Mail Will be Graded, which collects ten years (!) of John Scalzi's blog, Whatever. I care about this particular project more than I do the average project (which is already a lot, mind you) because John is my friend, and letting him down is not an option.

So there's not going to be a whole lot of stuff here (well, stuff with any deep commentary or extended content) until the deadline passes.

However, in this hour's (hours'? hours? stupid grammar is almost as hard as math) 12 minutes of "do whatever I want" time, I wanted to share a new group I created at Propeller 2.0, called the Geek Group:

This group is for me and my fellow geeks. There will be overlap with Science, I'm sure, but we can watch and share stories about comics, science fiction (books and movies), hobby games like D, geeky television shows like Heroes and LOST, and events like Comic-Con, GenCon, Dragon*Con and PAX.

This, I think, is the coolest part of Propeller 2.0: users can create and join groups that are tailored to our various interests, so we can find stories, information, and other people who have those interests in common. It dramatically improves the signal to noise ratio, and creates a more "social" social news experience. We've got 67 members, and some cool stories are starting to fill up our "stories this group is watching" thing, so come on down and get your geek on!

the ghosts in the machine

SpamSieve is the best spam filter I've ever used in my life, and it's made my e-mail reading much more efficient and pleasant than it once was.

A few bits of junk sneak through, but it's probably one every two or three days, instead of several daily offers for luxury Rolex watches at 80% off, or various ways to take advantage of the ATTRACTIVE PRICE on Cializ and Viagre, so she won't laugh at my noodle every day.

Recently, however, this managed to evade the filters:

mort You computer was infected by our software!
If you will not buy our software - you will bee lost all data on your PC!

It closes with a URL to purchase the software, presumably so the e-mail's recipient can respond to the comical extortion attempt.

I laughed when I read it. I mean, it's obviously a load, so I junked it and went on with my day. I kept thinking about it, though: an intelligent person will see right through this and junk it. I've already updated my corpus to catch future attempts to convince me I "will bee lost all data" on my PC. But the spammer isn't looking to ensnare an intelligent person; the spammer is looking to ensnare exactly the kind of person who reads the e-mail, and sees it as a serious threat.

"This was clearly written by an idiot," the victim would think. Then, after a moment's consideration: "But what if he's serious?! I don't want to bee lost all data on my PC! I'd better do what he says!" Click. Boom.

There are a lot of us who have been online since the Internet was a series of networked BBSes. Some of us remember closed systems like Compuserve and GEnie. We remember what it was like to wait twenty minutes to download a GIF at 28.8, and how magnificent it was to see a weather satellite image on a university's T1-connected computer.

We see through these scams because we pre-date the scammers, but there are lots of people -- and I'm not just talking about our parents and grandparents -- who just don't know any better. They run unpatched machines, leave their routers set to their default passwords, and are prime phishing targets, simply because this technology is, to them, indistinguishable from magic.

As the Internet becomes a more integral part of everyone's lives, we're going to encounter more and more people who don't understand its inner workings any more than I understand how to take apart my car's diesel engine for fun and profit. I believe that we have a responsibility to these people, to help educate and enlighten them, so they understand how to protect themselves online.

Think of this another way: if we don't help people understand how to protect themselves from spammers and phishers, how can we expect them to understand the importance of network neutrality?

squawking like a pink monkey bird

After the great post-eating disaster of 2008, I've elected to experiment with offline composition tools until I get distracted by shiny objects or I find one that I really like. My two candidates are Ecto and MarsEdit. I actually used Ecto quite a lot until I upgraded to Leopard and it expressed its allegiance to Tiger by refusing to work. Luckily for me, the developers gave it a nice talking to and the most recent version appears to play nicely with 10.5.x. I suppose we'll really test that theory out when I hit publish, won't we?

So, rather than make this one of those "testing . . . testing . . . is this thing on?" entries we all make from time to time, I thought I'd take a moment to share some links:

I've begun playing pmog. I figure that if I'm on the goddamn internet all day, I may as well rack up meaningless badges and add an extra layer of fun to my whole experience. I'm a mighty level 3, and I'm not quite ready to reveal my player name.

Warren Ellis has been doing a free weekly online comic called Freakangels. It's been running for a couple of months now, and I absolutely love it. Unlike most of the serials I've read over the years (Green Mile, I'm looking in your direction), this one works in both short weekly installments and as a longer narrative arc when you read several episodes at once.

There's a new version of Propeller in the works. I've seen it, and I'm just blown away by what it can do. There's some official talk about it on Newsquake. Hear me now: Propeller is the future of social news, and the new Propeller is going to redefine the standard for a social news community. I can't remember the last time I was so excited about something like this. Disclosure for the seven people who don't know this: I work for Propeller as a scout.

Some dipshit at TBS thinks that it's a really great idea to interrupt a show -- by pausing the show in the middle of dialog -- to run annoying interstitial advertising. This has to be seen to fully appreciate the magnitude of idiocy on display here. I submitted the link to Propeller a few days ago, and posted the video in my Vox blog.

Yes, I have a blog at Vox -- mostly for pictures and videos -- because what I really need is another fucking blog.

Ecto is as easy and full-featured as I remember it. I especially like how it handles creating links. Just for grins, here's an Ecto-created Amazon link to Interzone by William S. Burroughs. There's a story in Interzone called The Junky's Christmas that is one of my favorite things he ever did. I was introduced to it when someone gave me the CD Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, where Burroughs performs some of his work. Unlike a lot of authors who really should stick to the writing, Burroughs, like Charlie Stross and Neal Stephenson, just make their work something -- well, the best I can come up with is more -- when they read it. In fact, I think the best way to experience Burroughs is to listen to him perform it.

I just found out this very moment, through the magic of the googles, that The Junky's Christmas was adapted into a weird and avant garde claymation movie in the early 90s. There's a short clip from it on YouTube.

Have I mentioned before that Burroughs is one of my primary influences? It's a little strange, because I don't write anything like he did, but something about reading and listening to him accelerated my desire to write more than just a series of journal entries when I was in my early twenties. My first short story, called Scene Missing was heavily inspired by stories in Naked Lunch.

Okay, I am not making this up: in the middle of the last paragraph, my machine's screen saver turned on, and it refused to wake the screen up. This is the second time it's happened to me this week, and I had . . . an episode . . . while I shut down the motherfucker and restarted it. I thought it was the second time in two days that I'd worked on a blog entry and lost it to the land of wind and ghosts.

But! It turns out that Ecto has an auto-save feature which meant I only lost half a paragraph instead of an entire entry. For that reason alone, Ecto is a HUGE SUCCESS.

I'm off to lunch with a friend of mine who just got laid off from TokyoPop. I think we're going to plan global domination together.

. . . I am now hitting publish, and hoping for the best.

in which a book builds a bridge

Earlier today, I spent about an hour composing a post, filled with links to groovy stories I'd found in the last couple of days while I found links to submit to Propeller. I added brilliantly trenchant commentary to each link, in what was destined to become a post for the ages.

You, dear reader, would have been so awed by the majesty of this post, you'd sign up for Propeller, and join me in the world of social news bookmarking. We'd form a network of like-minded people -- a social news Voltron, if you will -- and soon all of our stories would find their way to the front page, for great justice.

Satisfied with my work, I hit publish, and began clearing my shelf for the inevitable awards that would soon follow.

When I returned to my computer, the browser said, "Hey, Wil, just thought you'd like to know that the post you made has been saved. Enjoy your awards!"

I thanked it, opened up my blog to bask in the glow of my brilliance, and saw that the post wasn't there.

TypePad ate it. Destroyed it. Sent it off into the land of wind and ghosts. I stared at the computer, agog, until my mouth dried out and my jaw grew sore. I couldn't believe that it was just . . . gone. It was like it never existed.

After much furious . . . behavior . . . and fruitless searching for the post in question (which TypePad claims just doesn't exist, like I didn't spend an hour putting the goddamn thing together) I will now attempt to recreate the part of the post that was the most important to me:

Have you read Little Brother? I tore through it in about 4 days, and absolutely loved it. I gave it to Nolan when I finished, because I thought he'd enjoy it, and it would give us something cool that we could share.

I don't know what it's like for other parents of teenagers out there, but getting Nolan to pick up a book for more than three pages has been nearly impossible for the last eighteen months or so. He used to love reading, but  . . . well, there are new friends at school this year. 'nuff said.

I don't have scientific data to back me up, but I've anecdotally witnessed a direct relationship between someone's willingness to read and their level of education, success, expectations for themselves, and general, uh, interestingness they bring to the table. I guess that makes me one of those "elitists" we keep hearing about, but with that in mind, you may understand why it's been pretty damn important to me that I instill a love of reading in my kids.

"I read this in about four days," I told him when I presented the book to him, "and I would have read it faster if I'd had more time. Once it gets going, it's hard to put down."

"Okay," he said, "I'll give it a try."

"I'd really like to have this thing to share with you, and I know that you're haven't been all that inter-- What?"

"I'll give it a try," he said.

"Wow. That was easier than I expected." I thought.

I didn't ask, but I secretly hoped that maybe he wanted to have something like this to share with me as much as I wanted to have something to share with him. Stranger things have happened.

"Okay, cool." I said.

"But I'm probably not going to finish it as fast as you did," he said.

"I totally understand," I said. "No pressure, and I won't take it personally if you don't dig it."

I set it down on the desk next to him while he played Diablo and walked back into my office. The symbolism of this gesture was not intentional, but also was not lost on me.

A little while later, I walked back out into the living room, and found him sitting on the couch, reading. He appeared to be about 50 pages into it.

"What do you think?" I said.

He held up one finger in the universal "wait a minute" gesture, and continued to read.

"What?" he said.

"I asked you what you thought, so far."

"It's pretty good," he said, noncommittally, before he went back to reading.

"Cool," I said. I couldn't believe he was already that far into the book, and though his words were carefully chosen, his body language said that it was much more than just "pretty good." Rather than press the issue, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of iced green tea.

Later that night, I noticed that he was sitting in the chair by our family iMac, but instead of playing games or talking to his friends on iChat, he had his head cocked to one side, Little Brother open in his lap. He'd made some serious progress in the book. I noticed that he had Firefox open to a Google search about [spoiler redacted].

I nudged Anne and pointed to Nolan.

"He's been reading that pretty much non-stop since you gave it to him," she said quietly.

"That rules," I said.

Over the next two days, I'd see him sitting on the couch, sitting in my favorite reading chair in our den, sitting in the chair by the iMac. He was always in the same pose, head cocked to one side, Little Brother open in his lap. We talked a little bit about the characters and the events in the book, and he asked me lots and lots of questions about the technology and real-life issues Cory presents in the book.

Flashback: Long before Little Brother was published, I had dinner with Cory. He told me that he was working on this book for teens that was supposed to have lots of real-life lessons in it about privacy, security and civil liberties. At the time, he told me how he hoped kids would read it and head to Google after each chapter to learn more. Nolan was doing exactly that.

Yesterday was the third day since I gave Nolan the book. After school, he bounded into the house and flew into my office. I looked up from my work and saw him holding Little Brother in outstretched arms.

"I love this book!" He said. "I seriously can't put it down!"

"That's awesome," I said, "but it's not interfering with your schoolwork, is it?"

"No," he said, "I'm reading between classes, and only in class when I've finished my work and made sure the teacher was cool with it."

I loved it that he took it to school with him. He's been spending more time than I'd like with non-reading, non-motivated kids who are, I fear, really in danger of holding Nolan back from realizing his potential. It's a small step (and maybe it's only temporary) but I was nevertheless thrilled that he was reading at school, unafraid of what his current peer group would think. I was hopeful that escape velocity would soon follow.

"That's great, Nolan," I said. "I'm so happy to hear that you're enjoying it."

We talked a little bit more about some of the events that had unfolded in the book that day, and he pointed out that he had about 100 pages to go.

"I want to finish it right now!" He said, before pulling the book close into his chest and hugging it. He lowered his voice and dramatically added, "But . . . I must wait. I must . . . savor it."

I laughed with him. "Don't you love it when you're into a book that's so good, you don't want it to be over?"

"YES!" He said, before he raced back out of my office.

"I haven't seen him this excited about anything in months," I thought. "This is better than I ever could have hoped for." I made a mental note to send Cory a thank you card.

After dinner last night, I found him in the living room, sitting in the chair in front of the iMac. The room was dim, mostly lit by the glow of the computer's monitor. It silhouetted Nolan's now-familiar stance, head cocked to one side, book open in his lap. It was, for me, a "remember this" moment.

He must have sensed me standing there, because he turned around and said, "Eighty pages to go, but I'm really stopping now. I'm going to finish this tomorrow."

I remembered all the times I've gotten close to the end of a book and put off finishing it. I remembered the way it felt to sit in the pull between wanting to know what happens and not wanting it to be over. I could see that Nolan was enjoying that feeling himself. I chose not to point it out.

"I'm so glad you're into this," I said. "I'm really glad we've been able to share this book."

"Me too," he said.

Earlier today, while I was writing the first version of this post, Nolan sent me a text message that said, "OMG it's over!!! So great, so great!!"

I sent back "Ha! I was just writing in my blog about how much you liked it. Yay!"

He replied, "Yeah, pretty amazing."

My heart swelled. I wonder what he'll read next?

Dear Lazy Web: Video Cameras?

Dear Lazy Web: I'm thinking about getting an inexpensive (<$300) (Let's go $400-$450. I guess <$300 isn't realistic for the features I want) small video camera to take with me on all my Geek Tour stops this summer, starting with Mysterious Galaxy and the Stone World Bistro this weekend.

I haven't had time to do the normal amount of research I'd like to do, but I'm sure at least one of you out there on the interweebs has.

The only thing I know I do not want is something that records onto DVDs. We reviewed lots of those on inDigital, and they all sucked out loud. I think I want something that records to a hard drive or solid state memory instead of tapes. HD isn't that important to me if it adds too much to the price, and I don't have a particular brand loyalty or aversion. I assume that whatever I get will play nice with iMovie. Oh, and I need to be able to pick it up by Friday.

If you've got a suggestion on something to consider or avoid at all costs, would you leave a comment? Maybe we'll have the bonus side effect of building a useful list for other people, too.

KTHXBAI.

audio greetings from mount needaplotpoint

With Vozme, you can turn any chunk of English text into an MP3 file by clicking one button. It's far from perfect, and isn't as clear as using the "speak" thing on my Mac (Oh, Vicki, tell me that you love me!) but it gets the job done quickly and easily, especially if you're supposed to be working and really want to be screwing off instead.

I just amused myself by converting a bit of my forthcoming Angel One review for TV Squad into a weird robotic voice.

Enjoy: Download mp3_angel_one.mp3 (136KB mp3 file)

(Vozme was found via Lifehacker)

DRM and the DMCA: so stupid it makes me want to punch babies

I hate DRM. I hate it so much, I want to punch babies. DRM's mere existence infuriates me, because it's anti-consumer, turns honest customers into criminals, and does nothing to stop dedicated pirates.

You've read my blog before, so this is nothing new. DRM is in my mind today, however, because of two links I read at boingboing.

Link the first:

Wellington Grey has a great little slideshow about the idiocy of the DMCA's "anti-circumvention" measures, which prohibit breaking the digital locks off the stuff you own. In it, Grey recounts how offended he was when he bought a TomTom GPS that came with a CD in a sealed envelope, the seal on which read, "By breaking this seal, you agree to our contract," but the contract itself was on the CD, behind the seal. In other words, the CD said, "By breaking this seal, you agree to a bunch of secret stuff."

I saw this on Reddit last week, and meant to link it then. Whoops. Anyway, I love how this guy explains just how fucking stupid and pointless DRM is, and that he shows us what would happen if DRM and the DMCA were applied to real world objects. It's good perspective that's useful for explaining to technophobes (and congress critters) why these things need to go away. Now.

Link the second:

Techdirt reports that Steve Jobs has been pitching studio execs on a scheme whereby DVD owners can pay extra for the "privilege" of ripping their DVDs -- but only for playback on iPods and iPhones. The thing is, Jobs fought the music industry back in the early iTunes day, arguing that people who buy CDs should have the right to rip them without paying anything extra.

So what's the difference? DRM -- Digital Rights Management. This is the anti-copying software that studios put on DVDs, allegedly to "stop piracy." But DRM isn't doing anything to stop piracy (people who want to pirate DVDs just break the DRM, because it's impossible to stop determined attackers from copying bits on their own computers). It seems like the primary use for DRM is to sell you back the rights you used to get for free, so that the studios can pick your pocket every time you find a new way to use the media you buy from them.

That second link reminds me of the first time I encountered some sort of restrictive, proprietary "software": when I was 9, my mom let me buy this really cool cap gun. It was so awesome! It looked just like a real gun (this was in 1979, when things like this were harmless fun for a suburban 9 year-old) and you could load this strip of plastic caps into a clip that went into the handle. When you fired it, it went off with a satisfying bang, and ejected one spent cap like it was a shell.

I didn't want to ever shoot someone for real, and as an adult I don't have any interest in owning a gun, but when I was 9, this thing was the coolest toy, ever, and it was the perfect addition to my James Bond superspy roleplaying adventures with the other kids in my neighborhood.

The thing was, I could only load the gun with a particular type of refill, and if the store was out of those refills -- but flush with all of the "standard" strips and rings of caps -- my really cool gun instantly became a useless piece of plastic and metal that only made whatever "bang bang" noise I could create myself . . . just like the kids up the block who used Legos to make guns that didn't make an awesome "BANG" but more of a 9 year-old vocalized "bang".

Of course, the proprietary caps were more expensive than the standard caps, and after a few months they went off the shelf, never to return. The cap gun became a paperweight, and was sold at a garage sale.

It's not exactly a 1:1 on DRM, but I believe the fundamental concept is the same: a manufacturer uses some restrictive bit of technology to lock consumers into one format and one device. It's stupid, it's anti-consumer, and it makes me stabby.

RIAA, through SoundExchange, is lying to webcasters

The RIAA and its goonsquad, SoundExchange, is working very hard to destroy internet radio, by forcing webcasters to pay royalties that will run from 60%-300% of their annual revenue. For context, satellite radio pays 5%-7%, and over-the-air broadcasters pay nothing.

Why is the RIAA trying so hard to destroy Internet Radio? I wrote in a Geek in Review a while ago:

Because the RIAA (which is essentially the major labels) has spent a lot of time and a lot of money building a monopoly with a few media conglomerates, and it's been very profitable for them all for decades. 

This effort to wipe out independent online radio has nothing to do with protecting artists, and everything to do with protecting a status quo that supports a very few top 40 acts at the expense of everyone else. In their effort to protect their outdated business model and insanely corrupt relationship with a few broadcasters, the RIAA is happy to prevent their artists from having a magnificent way to reach potential customers who will buy albums, merchandise, and concert tickets.

I am rather worked up about this because I believe it's about choice. The airwaves in the United States are supposedly owned by the American people, and licensed out to broadcasters for use, but in practice, that's not the way it works at all. In practice, the airwaves are owned by Clear Channel, and they work hand-in-hand with the big four record labels to limit our choice of music. It's a great scam they've got going, and it's been a very profitable system for all of them for a very long time.

For the rest of us, though, this system sucks. For guys like me who can't stand top 40 music, who can't stand the utter crap they play on KROQ these days, and who want some fucking variety in their music, we're screwed . . .

. . .with the notable exception of Internet radio, where we have choices as diverse as Radio Paradise, WFMU, Groove Salad, and Indie Pop Rocks.

Indie webcasters like SomaFM have been working tirelessly with the Save Net Radio Coalition to educate our representatives in congress so that legislation can be passed which would make it possible for these indie broadcasters to stay in business. The RIAA doesn't like this, so they're trying to fight it, but in a surprisingly competent move, Congress is forcing RIAA and its goonsquad SoundExchange to negotiate realistic and fair royalty rates with webcasters.

That brings us more or less up to today, where we discover that the RIAA is getting desperate, and doesn't like that it can't get its way simply by threatening a lot of people and paying off a lot of congressmen.

Rusty Hodge, the GM of SomaFM, has been in DC for a couple of months, working like crazy to save his business and an entire industry. He's been blogging about his experiences, sharing the little victories and big frustrations during the fight.

The RIAA must be afraid of Rusty and everyone who is working to save internet radio, because they've now resorted to outright lying to webcasters, in their latest efforts to threaten and scare them:

RIAA has SoundExchange issue press release to try and trick congress into thinking the royalty situation has been solved. Nice work guys.

The reason many people are signing is because they fear lawsuits from the RIAA. RIAA representatives have been calling webcasters and telling them if they didn't sign by Sep 15th, they would be operating in violation of the law. That's the only reason they signed.  It's like a Sporano's episode.

The only way that webcasters can escape the high royalty rates is by signing this current agreement and only playing SX affiliated label music. This means less independent music, and more big label music. Which is exactly what the RIAA wanted.

The press release Rusty is referring to is reprinted in his blog, but here's the short version: 24 webcasters signed an agreement with SoundExchange that gives them slightly-better royalty rates now, but expires in three years, putting them right back where they are today. If SoundExchange can scare enough indie webcasters into signing this horrible agreement, the RIAA will be able to go to congress and tell them that they really don't need to pass the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would permanently save internet radio by preventing the RIAA and SoundExchange from jacking up royalty rates so high, it would force indie webcasters out of business.

And this "deal" is actually a giant load of bullshit. According to Wired's Listening Post:

However, the agreement only covers artists and labels who are SoundExchange members.  Webcasters who sign the agreement but still want to play music from other bands would have to pay SoundExchange the higher per-song rates originally specified by the CRB for those songs, because that music is not part of the deal. In essence, small webcasters who sign have an economic incentive to avoid lesser-known music.

So that's what this is all about: stopping lesser-known music from even having a chance at finding an audience. The RIAA's major members -- Universal, Warner, Sony BMG, and EMI --  are trying to put indie webcasters out of business. They're not working to protect artists. They're working to protect their monopoly, and now they're lying to do it.

Geek in Review: Brave New World

This week's Geek in Review is about a communications revolution I see happening right now. It crosses generations, and it scares the absolute shit out of a lot of people who benefit from ignorance and the control of information.

Communication empowers people, and an empowered people are very, very scary to the powerful upper class who hope that we’ll just go away, right after we buy a lot of crap from them that we don’t need. And holy shit are they scared right now. The revolution may not be televised, but it’s being blogged, YouTubed, MySpaced, Facebooked, Dugg and Netscaped. Instead of embracing this new technology and the generation that’s growing up with it and taking it for granted, the big media conglomerates and their *AA organizations are spending time, money and energy they could be spending on creating awesome content on trying to destroy the technology that scares them. Is it any wonder the big media cabal want to destroy network neutrality? Is it any surprise that they’re clinging to stupid DRM schemes that punish honest customers and infect computers with rootkits?

The audience isn’t going to stop consuming content online, and creators aren’t going to go back to the old way of groveling at the feet of some network boss or studio head or label president, because they don’t have to anymore. Instead, they’ll just use inexpensive technology to put it all together, and use the Internet to distribute it directly to the audience. The studios have a choice now: continue their full-on war against consumers and technology, or join and benefit from the revolution.

This column has the potential to generate some discussion, you know . . . some communication. Am I nuts? Or does anyone else see or experience the revolution, too?