Where did I hear about this Velvet Underground torrent site, http://www.velvetunderground.be? DaisyGlaze? And how did I run across it again?

It has only taken me eight freakin' months to glom on to this, and I only did that cause Mellie woke me up to say I was snoring, but if you're like me (and you should thank god you're not), you will flip.

Highly recommended, btw, is the Firefox extension, DownThemAll! Otherwise you're going to be doing a heap of right-clicking and file-saving-as.

"We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision," said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. "This is like a last stand for webcasting...."

This week, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) is trying to broker a last-minute deal between webcasters and SoundExchange, the organization that represents artists and record companies. The negotiations could reduce the per-song rate set by the federal panel last year.

The two sides appear to be far apart, however, with Berman frustrated.

"Most of the rate issues have not been resolved," Berman said. "If it doesn't get much more dramatic quickly, I will extricate myself from the process."

"We're losing money as it is," said Westergren, a former acoustic rocker. "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money."

I probably won't be up there for any of them, but those July shows sounded great and I'm sure these will, too.

Here's the schedule:

• Sat 09/20/08, Brooklyn, NY, Music Hall Of Williamsburg
• Sun 09/21/08 New York, NY Bowery Ballroom
• Fri 10/10/08 Northampton, MA, Academy Of Music
• Sat 10/11/08 Boston, MA, The Roxy

It has always seemed ludicrous for the music industry to be taking on customers one at a time the way the RIAA is doing it, when there are honest-to-god counterfeiters out there ready to sell carloads/truckloads/boatloads of fake CDs and DVDs for injection into the distribution channel: folks that make a real business out of piracy.

And Germany seems to realize that. Per tech.blorge

[I]n Germany... law enforcement officials from several states have declared that the vast majority of illegal file-sharing will simply be ignored from now on. It seems that while the big players will still be pursued with the full force of the law, small-time sharers need not worry about being prosecuted.

According to Janko Roettgers at the P2P Blog, the toning down of pursuing file-sharing lawsuits was first mooted last week by the state prosecutor of Nort-Rhine Westphalia. Speaking to German site Jetzt.de, he openly stated that file-sharers will not have to worry about legal proceedings unless they share files on a “substantial, commercial” level.

Obviously this begs the question: what constitutes substantial or commercial levels of file-sharing? It seems that not all files are equal, and that it’s not only a question of the number of files shared but also the specific value.

The economic value of a music file is about one Euro, whereas a movie is valued at about 15 Euro. Based on that we define a commercial level as damages greater than 3000 Euro.

But that doesn’t mean you can safely share 3000 music files in Germany without fear of prosecution, as the commercial infringement involved is affected by the nature of each individual file. For instance, sharing a movie that hasn’t been commercially released in Germany at that time could spell trouble regardless of your other activity.

From slashdot:

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 12, @10:55PM
from the quarter-taped-to-the-tone-arm dept.

eldavojohn writes "While the RIAA is busy changing its image to a snake eating its own tail, one man is busy digitizing out-of-print 78s. 'There's a whole world of music that you don't hear anymore, and it's on 78 RPM records,' he stated to Wired. Right now, you can find about 4,000 MP3s on his site, with no digital noise reduction implemented yet."

Even today, the pornography would be "on the top shelf", Dr Hawes said, noting that his American publisher did not want him to publish it at first. "These are not naughty postcards from the beach. They are undoubtedly porn, pure and simple. Some of it is quite dark, with animals committing fellatio and girl-on-girl action... It's quite unpleasant."

Yo La Tengo Release Film Score Compilation

Yo La Tengo will release a compilation of their soundtrack work, titled They Shoot, We Score, via their own Egon imprint on September 5. It contains music from the movies Old Joy (starring Will Oldham), Junebug (featuring but not starring Will Oldham), Game 6, and Shortbus. (Their music for the forthcoming Ryan Reynolds vehicle Adventureland didn't make the cut.)

Of the 27 instrumental tracks on They Shoot, We Score, 26 are previously unreleased. The CD comes with a booklet containing posters for each movie "from around the world," according to the band's website.

Yo La Tengo will start shipping They Shoot, We Score on the aforementioned September 5 release date. On that date, a digital download option will also become available.