Michael Castellon

The biggest problem with the file sharing thing is not that I can’t lawfully download music for free, but that there aren’t many options for downloading music lawfully that isn’t limited by sneaky technology that dictates what I do with music once I purchase it. I don’t mind paying for music. In fact, I prefer it. This is good, because copyright laws won’t be changing any time soon, and artists still need to make a living. If I buy a CD, I can pretty much do whatever I want with the content of that CD as long as I’m not distributing it or making money from it. I can copy it onto my computer’s hard drive, I can play it in the car, make backup copies of it, and load it onto my iPod. Strangely, when I purchase a song on iTunes, I’m limited to keeping the song on no more than 5 different machines and my iPod. I can put it on a CD, but I’m limited in terms of where I can store it and what I can do with it.

iTunes is no doubt a near-revolutionary concept. I can purchase just about any song or album I want right now, on demand. No more unnecessary purchasing of entire albums just to have one song. No more annoying CD cases and inserts. Fine. But I would like to see more competition in the music downloading business.

I want to see a company that can offer near unlimited restrictions on the music that they sell, much like when I purchase a CD (which I haven’t done in at least 5 years). I still get the sneaking suspicion that Apple is limiting my use of the music that they sell so I’m bound to iTunes and my iPod. Apple doesn’t like me to manipulate music files. Files on an iPod appear as “hidden” by default, which means a novice user wouldn’t know how to transfer their music from an iPod to their PC in the event their computers hard drive failed. Shouldn’t data transfer involving mp3s go both ways if you’ve already purchased the music? I think so.

More competition in the mp3 business might mean a gradual development of responsible and ethical use of music, instead of these guerilla tactics being conducted by the RIAA et al. Let’s consider selling music that is cross compatible with different players, and allows users to have universal rights with the music they purchased, while still respecting the copyrights of the artists.

As if Gmail wasn’t good enough:

A year after unveiling a free e-mail service with a full gigabyte of storage, Google Inc. is doubling the capacity of each account and plans to keep bumping up the limit in the future. Once the upgrade takes effect Friday, Gmail users will be able to store up to 2 gigabytes of e-mail and attachments for each account. Even more capacity will be made available after that as it becomes feasible, the company said.

I’ve used gmail exclusively since its inception one year ago, and I’m never looking back.

Oliver Willis makes this interesting observation:

I’ve found this to be a remarkable phenomenon. In the blogosphere, you have almost a reverse dynamic to that found in the media. Overwhelmingly liberal bloggers identify themselves directly as Democrats. Yes, there are many who see the party as the lesser of two evils, and in their hearts would prefer Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, but overwhelmingly I’ve found bloggers on the left have no problem saying “yep, I’m a Democrat” (I obviously count myself among that group).

But among bloggers on the right, it always seems that great pains are taken to make it clear that they are “independents” or “libertarians” – these are people who usually endorse much of the GOP agenda and reliably vote for Republicans – and they don’t identify as “Republican”. Yes, there are some like GOPBloggers who identify with the party, but that was essentially a recent development.

What does it mean? Well, liberals like to join movements, but as anyone who has watched the rightie echo chamber in progress can testify to, so does the left. It begs the question, are Democrats simply prouder of the Democratic party and what it stands for – for all the handwringing of “where do we stand” could it be that the donkey triumphs over the pachyderm? I think so.