Pariser has a very broad definition of “stealing.” When questioned by Richard Gabriel, lead counsel for the record labels, Pariser suggested that what millions of music fans do is actually theft. The dirty deed? Ripping your own CDs or downloading songs you already own.

Gabriel asked if it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music which they have purchased, even just one copy. Pariser replied, “When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ’steals just one copy’,” she said.

With the recent decision by NBC to pull their TV shows from the iTunes music store, I was hoping this type of thinking wasn’t growing in the entertainment industry, but this statement seems to indicate otherwise.

One of the motivations claimed by NBC for removing their shows was that iPods could be used to play illegal media and they wanted Apple to take stronger measures to prevent that. This seems to indicated that they might’ve wanted only protected music to be playable on iPods, a ridiculous request. Most of my music comes from CDs I rip to my computer. I’m on my computer all the time, so it just makes sense. I should also mention that I buy CDs in lieu of buying straight from iTunes so that I can get a hard copy of the music as well as the packaging. This at a premium over iTunes albums.

Apparently, to rip these CDs to my computer is equivalent to ’stealing’. I suppose their solution would be to buy another copy of the same album from iTunes, which is bullshit.

In addition to the movie industry putting insulting “don’t steal our movies” ads in front of DVDs that you’ve already purchased, this is indicative of a larger attitude within the entertainment industry of treating their own customers as thieves and criminals, and it’s not a good way to do business. This type of attitude makes me much more reluctant to buy TV shows, movies and music from NBC/Universal and Sony.

Of course, NBC is the maker of Heroes, Lost, The Office, 30 Rock, and other shows I enjoy, so I don’t know how effective my self-imposed boycott might be. Also, their Amazon based TV service doesn’t work on Macs anyway, so it’s not like I have much of a choice there…

(via Daring Fireball)

Reggie Watts: Out Of Control on Vimeo

And here we have a few videos of Greg Pattillo, a beatboxing flute player doing some classics. Must be seen to believed.

Inspector Gadget/Beverly Hills Cop

Sesame Street

And the always the favorite, the Super Mario Brothers theme

I’m not going to go through ‘em all and give a description, it’s taken me long enough to make the list and get the Amazon links working. If you’re bored at some point and want something to blow some time, check some of these out.

Just to clarify, these are simply my personal choices, I am in no way making any statement on their historical relevance, or judgement of what all time greatest in the history of music might be. I certainly haven’t listened to enough music to make that kind of decision anyway. Tyrus, I’d be interested to see what you would put down for your Top 10 (or 20).

Alphabetical Order

Arcade Fire – Funeral

Augie March – Strange Bird

The Beta Band – The Three E.P.’s

Broken Social Scene – Feel Good Lost

Cake – Fashion Nugget
Just about everything else Cake does is awesome as well. Check them out.

Elbow – Cast of Thousands
(two Elbow albums are listed because I couldn’t pick between them)

Elbow – Asleep In the Back

Engineers – Engineers

Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights

Jem – Finally Woken

Kings of Convenience – Riot On An Empty Street


Metric – Old World Underground, Where Are You Now


Modest Mouse – Good News For People Who Love Bad News


Muse – Absolution

Our Lady Peace – Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch

The Secret Machines – Now Here is Nowhere

The Servant – The Servant

Spoon – Gimme Fiction

Zero 7 – Simple Things

White Flight – White Flight

Sigur Ros – Takk…(It was quite difficult picking between all of my Sigur Ros albums, I wanted to put () at the top, but Amazon didn’t seem to have a link to that one. Go ahead and check out () and Ágætis Byrjun while you’re at it.)