It's being overshadowed by the Terri Schiavo Circus and the Michael Jackson Fiasco, but right now the Supreme Court is hearing an interesting and possibly quite influential case about filesharing.

The issue at hand is whether copyright holders can sue companies whose product is used for illegal purposes, and it's not a new one. The court already ruled in favor of Sony and Betamax VCRs back in the early 80's, and I see no evidence that this ruling will be any different.

The bigger issue in my mind is why, 5 years after successfully shutting down Napster, record companies are still tilting at windmills and going after filesharing companies. They've already successfully sued individual users, and they're perfectly within their legal right to do so despite the questionable PR. Even if they're successful in shutting down Grokster, the company in question, 2 more will spring up in its place.

The main argument that the record companies have is that filesharing is costing them money in lost sales. I've yet to see hard evidence of this, but I definitely see evidence that suing everybody and everything that may have some possible connection to music on computers (who's next, WinAmp? The inventors of the Fraunhofer codec? Dell?) costs a hell of a lot of money.

CD prices have gone up despite the fact that the technology is becoming obsolete and manufacturing costs have gone down. The companies claim that this is due to rising marketing and production costs (and the omnipresent "lost sales due to piracy"), but how much of it is also due to legal costs? As much as I despise mp3s and always prefer to purchase CDs when possible, I really hate subsidizing the pointless legal struggles of a lazy industry that is making no attempt to adapt their marketing and business practices to a changing environment.

Much has already been said about the Terri Schiavo case by David, Rachel, Nathan, and every single other person on Earth with a website, so I don't feel the need to rehash it all again. The people who look the most ridiculous in all of the proceedings are, as is the case with all celebrity or high-profile cases, the dopes who skip work to protest outside the courthouse. I can't imagine going to my manager and saying "sorry boss, I'm going to leave work early today so I can go to the courthouse and parade around with red tape over my mouth, a metaphor to symbolize the fact that I have nothing more constructive to do with my life."

The real loser in this whole sordid affair is Terri's husband, who not only had to endure years of watching a shell of his wife suffering but not comprehending anything but now has to watch her starve to death because the law prevents him from doing the humane thing and having her lethally injected. And now, even though polls show that the majority of the country supports him, he will be a persecuted everywhere he goes by people who will claim that he killed his wife.

There have been some big changes around here. Thanks to David, the Festival is now hosted with a new company and running a newer version of MovableType. You shouldn't notice any difference on your end, but rumor has it that I will be able to track site visit statistics.

I'm also thinking of redesigning the site. Although I abhor the common web practice of redesign for the sake of redesign, it feels like a good time for a change. Does anyone have any cool features they'd like to see added?

A big fuss was made over Ashlee Simpson's debacle on SNL a few months ago when the PA system started blaring what apparently was the vocal lip sync track for the song she "sung" earlier in the program. Nobody seems to be up in arms over Gwen Stefani's performance on last night's show, which was not as painfully embarassing as Simpson's but still was an obviously lip-synched effort. The vocals on "Rich Girl" were *way* too clean and layered for a live performance, and often did not seem to match Ms. Stefani's mouth movements.

This article sums up in a few short paragraphs all that is completely ridiculous and absurd about rap music. It's a quick run-down of the circumstances behind the much-publicized feud between "50 Cent" and "The Game" who combined have about the same musical talent as the tambourine player in the Partridge Family.

In the article, 50 Cent is referred to phoenetically ("Fiddy"), and we get to hear all about his nonsensical feuds with other rappers with equally absurd names like Ja Rule and Fat Joe. Apparently Mr. The Game recorded a song with Nas (keep in mind that it would break the laws of physics for any rapper to release an album without the assistance of every single other rapper, presumably because the more of them there are on the album the more closely they can approximate the talent level of 1 actual musician), which was a major "dis" to "Fiddy" since "Fiddy" spent an entire song on his album making fun of Nas about somethingorother, perhaps because Nas' tricked-out Cadillac Escalade wasn't as big as "Fiddy"'s.

Try to imagine if anything like this happened in the rock world, how come we never read articles like this: "Guns blazed at the end of the Jack Johnson concert yesterday when members of John Mayer's posse showed up to accuse Jack of stealing Mayer's whiny girlish singing style. In a statement released Monday, Johnson responded 'I don't know why John is so upset, it's obvious that we both ripped off Dave Matthews anyway.' Mayer fired back by leaking a self-produced song about how much Jack Johnson sucks to the internet. By this morning it had reached #6 on the Billboard charts."

It's been a bizarre week involving a surprise trip to Florida and free meals from work, but I've been reneging on my promise to start posting more. Without further ado I present...

Pop-Punk

Time of Popularity: 2002-2003
Ripped off the musical stylings of: Real punk
Trademark sound: Take something by the Ramones, overproduce the hell out of it, and change all the lyrics to be about how the girl at school just doesn't understand you or how you'll just never fit in because you have bleach-tipped hair and an upside-down visor.
Most Successful Artists: Good Charlotte, Blink 182, New Found Glory
Band with the most staying power: Blink 182, although they've "matured" beyond their childish days...theoretically.
Clothing: The aforementioned bleach-tipped hair and upside-down visors. Those shell necklaces.
Long-term contribution to society: Didn't have a chance to really make any contributions since Good Charlotte singlehandedly beat this genre to death by appearing on MTV eighty times a day, posturing for awhile about how totally punk they were with their tattoos and black nail polish, then singing songs about how we should rob rich people's houses. The rise of pop-punk did coincide with DVD technology, so every half-assed band with a hit single could come out with either a) a live DVD showing them playing the same 8 songs from their album, only to the tune of 3,000 screaming children or b) a retrospective DVD showing us all sorts of "funny stuff" from the studio, like the bassist eating fast food or the band sitting around strumming on acoustic guitars with beer bottles strewn everywhere.
The Last Word: It's hard to be really sarcastic about a genre that I actually liked. But then again, it's not so hard when all the bands shamelessly pandered to high schoolers, as this was about the time when marketers (and record company bigwigs) realized that teenagers (especially spoiled ones) have tons and tons of disposable income to spend on DVDs. And why was every successful pop-punk band from either southern Califronia or Florida? They must put something in the water there that lets you quickly learn how to repeat simple power chord progressions over and over again.

Next time: Emo, for real this time.