Timbaland rips off a Demoscene artist

I knew this day would come. The new Timbaland/Nelly Furtado song "Do It" uses a song made in 2000 by Finnish demoscene artist "Tempest" (Janne Suni). It's a 4 channel .mod (the ripoff is from a playback using the C64 SID soundchip). The song was hosted on scene.org's servers (the main repository for all everyones demos and tracked music, etc.). As you might expect, no permission or royalties were paid to Tempest.

Just to clarify, we're not talking about some kind of coincidence here. There is no question that this track was used to create the song "Do It".

In an interview, Timbaland tries to downplay it, saying things like "he sampled it from a video game". (This track was not written for a video game- it was actually written for the 2000 demoscene music competition, in which it won 1st place). Regardless, he basically claims he has no legal obligations because it's just like all the other pop artists that sample other music. The difference is that those artists get royalties even when other artists sample their music. Anyway, when you here the song, this is a little more than a "sample". Tempest deserves some compensation.

That being said, this is a very interesting situation. Timbaland has the legal power of Geffen Records behind him, and Tempest has his one lawyer. No one has heard of the Demoscene, so he's going to get screwed, and all of us who have written and submitted tracked music to repositories popular among the Demoscene could be next.

There is such a huge difference between the worlds of pop music and demoscene music. In the pop music model, the music is highly "accessible" (simple assed writing, CD's that sell in retail stores, played everywhere you go, etc.) and the artist generally receives revenues (and fame). In the Demoscene, because of the nature of the way the music is "programmed", the music can be complex and intricate, and often uses sounds not heard in the pop world because of the computer architecture that is used in playback. The music is awesome, but obscure. Most importantly it's always been freely shared. For a big pop artist looking to do something revolutionary with their "sound", this is a wide open door. All you have to do is throw away a little thing called "ethics".

When the pop and demoscene worlds are mixed, everything breaks down. The precedence of this case is really important because there's a fricking ton of incredible music out there in the demoscene that could fall "victim" and be used to make money for someone else, and the outcome of this will decide whether there will be any royalties paid to those artists if their music is used.

To make matters worse, he apparently already used this piece of music to make money in 2005, in a ringtone "written exclusively by Timbaland":



Media
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Here's the entire C64 playback of the original (mp3 format)
http://www.genietervan.com/hoerr/glenn_acidjazz.mp3

Here's the Timbaland/Furtado song:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8N4ovp90Ea0

The first post in this thread does a good job of explaining what happened:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2274635&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

Timbaland, in an interview answering to the controversy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTvY3wZrHrQ

Verizon Wireless customer service exposé

As the world is finding out, Verizon Wireless doesn't know the difference between .002 dollars, and .002 cents.

Obstacles to Progress

I have always had the view that the needs of mankind are a set path, and that barring any self-induced catastrophe that wipes us out, it is our destiny to develop new technology until we have reached some kind of "holy grail". Resistance is but one of the many temporary obstacles to developing new technology, but even that occurs less often. As our rate of "progress" (to use a controversial word) goes up, the timeline for acceptance gets shorter, as accepting new ideas becomes more routine.

Our society works in a way that consumer needs dictate the funding and motivation for research and development that leads to progress. Often times, however, people (often individuals) develop ideas that are "ahead of their time". These ideas will be met with the most resistance because the masses will not understand how they will fully integrate with our way of living. The development of these ideas is important, nonetheless, for when their time comes they will be implemented faster, and forethought will become a blessing.

Biodiesel

My friend took this picture in North Carolina.

Charting tv content characteristics

I got to thinking about tv content today. Nowadays, there's more and more "unscripted" reality tv crap splattered all over the cable-waves. It seems like each genre has various levels of 3 specific characteristics. I've come up with a rating chart to contrast 3 major characterists of all the various kinds of tv content:

Type	Scripted	Stupid	Fabricated Plot
NASA Channel
Movies	X		X
Reality TV		X	X
Crappy Sitcoms	X	X	X

NASA Channel: Reality TV without the suck.

A look ahead

My obsession with looking forward to new technology is not a new one. This is a brief essay I wrote on November 30th, 1999. The point was to have some sort of a forward-looking benchmark to "look back at".

It's funny, some of this stuff seems obvious now, but at the time you couldn't even buy a DVD burner, and "TiVo" was not a widely recognized verb in the english language. The iPod didn't come out until Oct. 23rd, 2001... Almost 2 years after this was written. I'll admit that I didn't see the personal music player as a stepping stone to "PC-in-my pocket ubiquity", but you can definitely see things moving in that direction. Some of these things have yet to come to fruition. Still, not bad for a pre-turn of the century prediction.

Here's a list of key modern-day technologies this article touches on, albeit in scarce detail:
-iPod
-DVD burners
-Surround sound audio DVDs (still on the rise)
-5.1 (and 7.1) digital audio soundcards
-TiVo and Windows Media Center set top boxes
-Peer-to-peer music sharing, and homegrown music internet labels
-USB memory keys
-WiFi and the anxiously awaited Wi-MAX
-Shoutcast and other internet radio providers
-In-car GPS navigation

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Into the 21st Century:
Predictions For The Next 5 Years
________________________________________________________________________
Scott McGrath
November 30th, 1999

It truly is an exciting time to be alive. Technology is being developed at an exponential rate, and in less than 5 years, we can expect the same amount of development that has taken place over the last 10.

Music

Conventional CD sales will dwindle as mp3's become more popular. CD's still sold will be encoded audio, like mp3, and sold either directly through the artist, or through a clearinghouse with a small retainer. Record companies will lose control and power over the industry, and will be forced to work *for* artists. Band success will depend on popularity, successful promotion techniques, and quality. The internet will continue to grow as a medium for the transfer of digital audio, both legally and illegally. Most bands will have some music available for free download on the internet, much like shareware is to software.

CDs and CD burners will eventually be completely replaced by DVD with its vast storage capability. Flash memory and other solid state storage will be used for portable storage. Recorded music and audio will be mixed and encoded for 6 channels, rather than run-of-the-mill 2 channel stereo. This will give the recording industry a fighting chance to get back into the market, because manufactured discs will regain its popularity. But this comeback will be shortlived- 6 channel mp3s, players, and sound cards will be commonplace. Typical internet bandwidth will increase, and transferring larger, 6-channel music won't take long. The digital music revolution will survive.

All radio stations will "bit-cast" this digital audio on the Internet, allowing better quality than can be delivered on the limited spectrum available on the commercial FM radio band. Conventional FM stereo will continue to be offered for mobile reception.

Internet

Demand for bandwidth will continue to increase in the home. The fall of dial-on-demand, conventional modem connections is inevitable. Cable companies will thrive, as a rush of dial-up customers make the transition to high-speed, full-time internet access. Backbones will swamp with the demand, cable companies will be forced to impose limits. DSL will become available and common as an increased demand for reliable, private high-speed connections is realized.

Wireless networking will be available over a network of small, high frequency (XX GHz) transceivers placed everywhere in high locations. The bandwidth will be enough to stream digital audio, or comfortably browse the a graphically-rich web, excluding motion video and videoconferencing. Given enough time, even wireless internet bandwidth and compression techniques will be improved to the point where this is possible as well.

Home Computing and Entertainment

Television and the Web will be combined and/or embedded in one-another. The entertainment center and personal computer will be consolidated into one small, convenient appliance. Several of these appliances will be located in any given house- as many as there are TVs in houses today. A plethora of services will be made available by interactive television-like networks. It will bring home shopping, gaming, videoconferencing, and many other services to new levels. These appliances will also function as terminals or consoles for E-mail, home automation and security, and other things. Speech recognition will be dependable enough to use as a primary interface, accompanying the keyboard and mouse.

Palm Computing

Wireless internet will give rise to a strong market for Personal Digital Assistants. Typical uses include remote control of home-automation, personal digital music player, E-mail and Web browser clients, pager, etc. Along with the conventional uses of today which will not go away. PDA use will be greatly enhanced by speaker-specific speech recognition, which will allow reliable speech control and dictation even in a noisy environment.

Mobile (In-Vehicle) Computing

Cars will be standardly equipped with onboard PC's, GPS receivers, and wireless internet. Vehicles traveling on the interstate will be bombarded by geographically-sensitive advertisements on an in-car billboard. Weather information for the traveller's current area, no matter where it may be, will be available at the touch of a button or voice command.
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Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns

An interesting essay. We'll get $40 trillion if you read it! Trust me, this essay will impact your perspective the future.

The Law of Accelerating Returns