Damned Music-industry Cartel Assholes

I got another DMCA takedown the other day (probably time to switch to a new file host, eh?), this time for Tyvek's Time Change 7". This one seemed particularly arbitrary -- Tom Waits I can understand, Suicide and Can records released in the '80s, okay, I can kind of see it -- but Tyvek?? The fearless Detroit DIY garage-punk troubadours who played Bitchpork just last weekend? The totally nice dudes (/+ladies in various lineups) who in the summer of 2010 did an all-ages early show in my friend's basement for those who couldn't get into Schubas on account of alcohol laws? What I'm trying to get at is that they're hardly the kind of band who would send a DMCA (not that I wouldn't remove links if they asked, but I imagine they'd just go ahead and ask). So let's explore this takedown notice for a brief second:

So the claim was filed by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Uh huh. As you can see, the canned lawyer assures us that they have "a good faith belief that the links/files identified" are "examples of links/files available through your site that are not authorized by Fox, any of its agents or the law, and therefore infringe on Fox's rights," then lists a host of Allegedly Infringing Links (there were about a hundred more links in the actual email than what you see above). Of course none of these links can be viewed, to see what the content of them actually was, so there is no way of verifying if any of it was in fact owned by Fox. But I guess that doesn't stop them for shutting them down, because hey, Fox didn't authorize them, right?

In the particular case of Time Change, what do we know? Well, we know the record was released in 2011 while Tyvek was touring Europe, and came out on the Paris/Bordeaux label Les Disques Steak. This label appears to be about as DIY as any other imprint the likes of Tyvek have worked with, so it's hard to imagine some business relationship between them and one of the Big Six  (owned by Rupert Murdoch, to boot).

There is the possibility that the origin of the claim is Fox Music, which handles publishing business, but I find it hard to believe. Is it even typical for DIY bands to formally publish their songs? What I think is most likely the case is that Fox made some erroneous (or fraudulent) claim.

I'm not writing about this because it's unique. None of it is news to anyone that does a blog for music. At best these takedowns are collateral damage of the Culture Industry's war on 'piracy'; at worst they amount to censorship. The whole thing just makes me really nervous about the future.

Anyway, to make up for the takedown, here's some Tyvek videos for you to enjoy:

'Mary Ellen Claims' in Brooklyn

'Underwater 1' in Scandinavia

'Flowers' in Austin

'Frustration Rock Version' in Detroit

'Air Conditioner' in Benesov, Czech Republic

'Nothing Fits' in Cleveland Heights

STOP ACTA

Today (or yesterday in Europe), hundreds of thousands of people are raising their voices in protest of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a draconian, corporatist treaty that needs only six more countries to ratify it before it goes into action. This treaty would be a huge blow to the internet community, especially music-related sites like my humble space here. You probably already know about the internet shitstorm that blocked/delayed SOPA and PIPA in the United States. That was a good start, but we are still in the position of having to push this oppression much farther uphill before anybody is safe.

ACTA opposes the interests of the vast majority of people on this planet, both in the developed world -- where the main impact would be on free communication and sharing of information -- and in developing countries -- where generic medicine would be considered "illegal counterfeit," deemed so by the pharmaceutical industry who would rather sell HIV medicine to poor Africans at cruelly high markup. This is one of the kinds of laws that affects everyone. It's been in development for at least four years, but the SOPA/PIPA debacle has drawn more attention to it in recent weeks. The powers that be have tried very hard to keep the public out of the discussion:

Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration had rejected requests to make the text of ACTA public, with the White House saying that disclosure would cause "damage to the national security."[101] In 2009, Knowledge Ecology International filed a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request in the United States, but their entire request was denied. The Office of the United States Trade Representative's Freedom of Information office stated the request was withheld for being material "properly classified in the interest of national security."[102] US Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT)and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) penned a letter on 23 November 2009, asking the United States Trade Representative to make the text of the ACTA public.[103] According to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR): “There are questions of constitutional authority surrounding whether the administration can enter into this agreement without Congress’s approval ... Either way, when international accords, like ACTA, are conceived and constructed under a cloak of secrecy, it is hard to argue that they represent the broad interests of the general public. The controversy over ACTA should surprise no one.”[3]

ACTA is dangerously anti-democratic. We all have to do our part to fight it. The MPAA, RIAA, pharmaceutical companies, Monsanto, and other "evil" powers who already run our lives with too much control, will always want more from you. They will continue to take more from you if you do not stop them.

"So what am I supposed to do?" you ask. Currently, the front line of this battle is in Europe. A French organization called La Quadrature du Net has a lot of useful resources, such as this ACTA dossier, an analysis of the treaty, and some ideas on how to fight it.

I'll soon return to your regularly scheduled programming.