My First Purple Heart

Well, quite frankly I'm surprised it hasn't happened before. After all, it's been nearly four years that I've been peddling my musical wares for your titillation, and up until now I've been pretty much left alone. But today I was whacked by one of those digital drone attacks that have become all-too-common in the blogosphere, a DMCA C&D, fully known as a Digital Millennium Copyright Act Cease & Desist order.

It seems I was wounded (hence the self-awarded Purple Heart) in the latest spring offensive launched by The Man in His attempt to crush the rag-tag band of music bloggers that he sees as a threat to his way of life. Now, it seems I got off lightly; Blogger merely took the offending post from 9 February offline and flipped it back into Edit mode, while informing me that I was welcome to republish it once the objectionable material was removed. Trouble is, while I was invited to visit Chilling Effect to see the details of the C&D, upon visiting I couldn't find it. Moreover, after perusing the other C&Ds listed, I'm not sure I'd be able to figure out which of the three songs I had offered up was to blame. Two came from PR sources with what I thought was pretty explicit permission to post, but there are Kafkaesque stories galore about bloggers getting blessing from the artist or PR to post, only to find themselves enmeshed in nightmarish battles with rekkid companies who have other ideas. So, having little time or inclination, I just removed all three tracks.

It is actually getting very serious out there; along with a squadron of others, Dearest Coxon of To Die By Your Side recently had his blog shut down. You can read about it all in this Guardian article. Now, I don't intend to add to the steamy indignation out there, largely because my energy is needed elsewhere - like Sunday's demonstration against the evisceration of public education by the BC Government. But let me go on record as stating that I abhor the persecution of bloggers --who by and large are music lovers dedicated to spreading the Gospel of Good Music and putting $$$ into artists' pockets-- by the big record labels and their lackeys. Moreover, the Holy Bible of Copyright that they allege to defend was originally crafted to promote innovation and the flourishing of ideas, not to lock intellectual property up in crates and milk them for decades. I would encourage you to listen to the podcast Who Owns Ideas?, a fantastic Canadian Broadcasting Corporation programme about this very subject. It's a war folks, a war for culture.

Anyway, I'm going to go lick my flesh wound, but in the meantime here are a few tracks to get you stoked:

Sex Pistols - Who was It [aka EMI] (buy here)
Taken from the Spunk bootleg, reissued by Castle, which is now a subsidiary of Universal Music Group. Say, is that the buzz of a drone I hear??

Max Romeo & The Upsetters - War Ina Babylon (buy here or e-here)
It's a war folks, a war for culture.

Ninja High School - It's Gonna Be Us (buy here)
Yep, that's right, we who love tha choonz shall prevail! Ninja High School was a Toronto noisenik outfit that sadly disbanded in 2007. Choose now, Babylon or Zion. IG-88 take the stand!!