Rip-mix-burn

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In his 2001 book, ‘The Future of Ideas’ Lawrence Lessig envisioned a world of free digital creativity – ‘Digital technology has radically reduced the cost of digital creations.’ (p.4). These creations would be exchanged free of charge in peer-to-peer networks. But, Lessig also saw how corporate capitalists would try to fight this as much as possible and particularly through copyright laws. Remember this report on how ‘the music industry has reacted angrily at a decision to give away the new album by US musician Prince with a tabloid newspaper’? And of course, we have regular stories of new music artists who launch themselves on MySpace. Despite this, anyone who’s ever tried to get a good music soundtrack for a digital video that they intend to distribute will know the difficulties. So let’s hear it for Moby who’s offering a bumper crop for exactly this purpose (you have to sign up to mobygratis, but it’s free). But that’s not what I’m listening to at the moment though, because I’ve developed a taste for breakbeats – here’s DJ Rob Focuz, on MySpace, naturally!