The Gillmore Gang portrays Microsoft as the underdog now. But, Microsoft is not the underdog, they are failing in the new online digital media services and online advertising because Microsoft has become a dinosaur. They are slow to act and even slower at learning from their mistakes. Vista is a prime example of just how arcane, slow, bloated and thick Microsoft has become. Longhorn died on the vine after years of MS not being able to make it work, they then jettisoned all the new and real improvements and laid the flashy UI, UAC and the Kernel Mode Driver restrictions from Longhorn on top of a stripped down Windows 2003 Server code base and renamed Vista. It then took them 2+ years of tweaking and hacking the code to make it work, well sorta.

Microsoft Live plus Yahoo is basically two losers in the online services and online advertising space that if it did or does still happen is basically still two losers adding up to be a loser. The only way Microsoft will ever make Live a winner is if they leverage their proven method of leveraging their monopoly position in the OS market to force the other proven players in the market to have less of a market due to Microsoft integrating Live and making it the default without and easy initial setup to opt out. Silverlight will only make it it MS includes it in the OS and/or IE updates.

Windows 7 is being pushed as to be MS next great OS release, if MS stay on it’s current course Windows 7 will just be an update to Vista with Live Services integrations and Silverlight included. Why is any of this important to the topic. Well MS stated that they wanted Yahoo for it’s ability to scale. Well if you look at all the big internet players they all have something in common. It’s the one think MS doesn’t have, and that is UNIX/Linux platforms. Hotmail prior to being purchased by MS was a Linux platform. After MS acquired Hotmail the service was moved from Linux to Windows, as a result all the best developers moved on to other Linux programing opportunities. And durning the OS move (and for the most part, it’s still true today) the service that was Hotmail is a bad service with a lot of problems. If MS acquired Yahoo it’s best developers woud move to other Linux based opportunities as MS would not leave Yahoo Linux for very long.

Microsoft has become so unfocused in the past few years that their core business has become just a distraction from the new online businesses that they appear intent on pursuing even if it means reducing their shareholders value. Why the MS Board was will to let Steve Ballmer proceed on the Yahoo deal as he say fit is questionable at best as Yahoo would not have added any value to Microsoft and it would have just been a wash or a drain on the value as nothing in terms of increased revenues would have ever materialized from the deal. The MS Yahoo stink is now pasted and no Microhoo is the outcome.Is the death of the deal bad from MS? Well yes, but only because MS thinks it’s bad for them, what is really bad for MS is it’s lose of focus as a company. Is it bad for Yahoo? Not really, what was bad for Yahoo was Microsoft’s takeover attempt in the first place. Does Google benefit? yes and no, while Google will benefit in the short term has both MS and Yahoo lick their battle wounds, In the long term MS gets out of touch punters to talk up MS underdog status, like it will make MS somehow look cool and give it some street credit. MS needs all the street cred it needs these days of being unsure and confused on what business model it wants and what business to be in, after all they did loose a lot of their street cred when they name a feature of the Zune "Squirting". A feature they really should have let their customers give a cool name to and then MS adopting that cool name given to the feature by the customers of of the Zune itself. But, after all that is what MS does, how, many Vista versions are there? How many promised Longhorn features ended up in the final Vista release? How many of the features promised for Windows 7 are dropped Longhorn features? Of them how many will make it to the final Windows 7 release version, again not many.

Microsoft is will to bet the farm that search, services and webpage advertising is unlimited growth model hugh and unlimited profit margins. The problem is that the it’s not these advertising types are slowing as the more familiar types of advertising takes off being internet multimedia advertising in Video Podcasts and internet delivered television programing. These advertising media does not require the vast ad delivery platforms as the search, services and webpage ad delivery models do. So, Microsoft wanting to beat Google on Googles turf is well a loosing battle. If Microsoft wants to transform itself into an advertising based company it will need to do so off Googles turf and establish a new model and new ground basically innovating it’s own advertising model turf.

Great Girls Blouse music is available at CD Baby, iTunes and many others. Buy a Blouse and support the indie music artist

While I’m all for artists getting paid fairly for their work, the record labels are not interested in the artists rights or even seeing the artists get paid. The labels want to maintain the status quo which is to place the recording artists under their contacted servitude for as long as possible. Slavery has not ended in the free, enlightened and developed world it’s just gone legal with the use of contracts and creative accounting methods. Under the covers of the record labels what you’ll find in a bunch of legal and accounting idiots devising more and more insidious methods to defraud artists out of even more of their hard earned money, while stripping them of more and more of their rights to earn a living without paying their contract overlords even greater sums of the money they do make.

Artists have lived a long time in the knowledge that being signed to a record label means that they give the rights to their recorded works to the record label, sells of that recording would never earn them enough money to buy a fast food lunch at the greasiest spoon in hick-town nor would the record label ever let them earn any real value from the recording even if it was wildly popular and sold like ¢.01 Starbucks Frappuccinos. As the artists gained the marketing the music labels put behind the recordings which helped them sell tickets to live shows and merchandise like t-shirts.

Today the landscape is changing record labels no longer have the market power that they once had and physical music sales are sliding into the abyss. The old record stores are closing their doors faster then Barber shops at a bald guy convention. While the recording labels will swear that this is because of out of control piracy from internet file sharing. The truth is it’s not, the physical media retailers are closing up shop because the music (and now the Movie) industry is sucking all the money out of their pockets. Has the retailers will tell you the manufacturing costs have declined the wholesale prices have skyrocketed, and the number of releases by new artists and established artists are also decreased. Artists that do get signed and the music that they are releasing no longer appeal to the retailers customer base. The labels cookie cutter approach to A&R is not entirely new in the music music industry but, it’s become so pervasive with the major labels that one music artist sounds just like all the others and no one is buying the CDs any more. If a label stumbles on an Artists that appears to be selling and is hot then in short order their is a dozen other artist releases that sound just like it stamped out by the A&R departments of all the other labels.

The labels new contracts are written to charge artists for using the songs that they have record and the label has released in live performances the live performances fees are based on the number of tickets sold and basically will be taking 50% to 60% off the top of what the artist earns at a live show. The new contracts also include charges for using images, logos, song titles, album names etc. on merchandise sold by the artists (this is a bit odd as most artists or someone other then recording labels, own the copyrights on song titles, album names, the artists’ logos, the artist’s name and the images that are used on the artwork.

Why does the recording labels continue down the path of self destruction? While, it really goes down to see the forest for the trees. The music business was founded by the broadcast radio industry to produce content for the stations to broadcast over the air so that the broadcast companies could sell radios and later advertising. Once the phonograph started to become popular the broadcast companies used their recording companies to drive the sells of phonographs. The media market was born and slowly the recording industry was born. Competition and consolidation and a the thought of being bigger then the movie industry thrived in the corporate executives and shareholders minds. The Music industry as always had delusions of being the biggest media industry in the world. They made the choice to try and control every detail of their business. In the 60 and 70 major hits by Elvis, the Beatles, later the Rolling Stones and others causes some record company executives to claim that the recording Artists were getting rich off of their hard work and the record labels weren’t making enough of the pie. By the end of the 70′s the recording labels contracts and accounting practices were so skewed in favor of the labels that artists could barely afford to feed themselves from their royalty payments. This prompted the 70′s and 80′s mega tours and huge venue stadium tours were artists with hit recordings would get together and share the expenses and profits form these massive huge venue tours. By the 80′s the mega tours and huge venue tours were out of favor with most concert promoters due to the increasing regulations and declining revenues. While some single bands could and still can attract hugh audiences the huge outdoor stadium sized concerts became outdated by the early 80′s. The music labels are under the faults impression that artists make hugh sums of money form live performances when in fact most artists only make a modest living from concert revenues. Once the artists start also giving a large cut to the record labels it will force artist to go completely independent.

Is the end of the big music labels near? Well unfortunately the answer is no. The end of the music labels will be a very slow and very painful death for an industry that should have never been allowed to continue in the first place after all slavery was outlaw in the modern world a long time ago. The recording labels are still in the slave trade and until the governments of the world wake up and see the music labels for what they really are. The labels have been enslaving artists for years all the while making huge profits on the works of the artists. The labels justify this by saying that the artists become famous and wealthy on the labels promotion and advertising dollars. The reality is the labels have been turning the artists into slaves and profiting from their works for years. Now the labels are faced with declining sales and slumping performance in their signed artists. The small labels are making the most noise in the music industry today by signing new and different artists and they are the only ones that seem to be focusing on new models like abandoning the major cookie cutter approach and failing to adopt new business models. If the governments what to protect artists rights and their intellectual property they need to investigate. Why is this my opinion? The music labels over the years as found that slavery of the artists have been profitable but, now that the profits are on the wain because of slowing CD sales they see that they’ll need to make the artists even more indentured to them by taking as much from the artists other sources on income as possible but, even that revenue stream is not going to put them back in the big money. So, as slavery has worked to keep the artists in check they see the only sure way to keep the cash flowing is to make the consumer a slave by only offer music as a subscription/rentals. The goal of the subscription model is to tie the consumer to a reoccurring charge that ensures the labels have a stable revenue stream.

The music labels having a steady revenue stream is this a bad or negative thing. Yes, in my experience and my opinion if any company or organization is allowed to control and maintain a guaranteed revenue stream it leads to abuse and no financial accountability. With no choice but to enter into a subscription service controlled and benefitting the music labels. This of course would allow the bigger labels to squeeze the small labels and would prevent indie musicians from ever competing with the label musicians for music sales. In the end of course if device manufactures fall for the music labels plan to make part of cost of the digital music device cover the cost of a subscription service, without informing the customer upfront then the customer backlash will lead to government action. In a way the music labels are wanting the device makers to enter into an illegal forced subscription agreement. Were customers have no choice but to pay the device maker for an unwanted subscription service or the Microsoft model, where Dell and other PC makers still have to pay Microsoft a license fee even if the PC is shipped without a Microsoft OS. So, that’s worked out for Microsoft with more legal actions then they can shake a stick at and more on the way. Dell and the other Windows PC makers are also undergoing some close painful investigations over the forced bundling licensing deals with Microsoft. The Music labels are far more vulnerable to legal actions in this type of licensing deals then PC makers and Microsoft.

In the end artists will abandon the labels (starting with the majors and moving to the minor ones). Digital distribution no longer requires a record label and labels no longer have an iron grip on the distribution channel. Indie musicians are now compete on almost an even footing with label artists. The big difference is of the .99¢ to .89¢ per track charged by the online distributor charges the indie artist makes about .60¢ to .40¢ per track in hard cash while the label artist is lucky if they earn .05¢ to .01¢ per track sales credit, and that’s before the label gets creative with the accounting. Of course, that is, and, then only if, the artist’s contract with the label covers digitally distributed track sells, otherwise, the artist makes a whooping .00¢ credit per track sold.

True there are benefits to being signed to a recording label like you don’t have to worry about feelings of paranoia about being ripped off because hey, let’s face facts and artists signed to labels are being ripped off by the labels.

Pariah is a greatly CD with really well written and played tracks. It’s a tight collection of works that relate together but stand alone on their on. The tracks are a great Alt Rock influenced with a unique edge and interesting lyrics. Over all it’s a great album I really recommend buying it if you can find a copy of it. It’s currently sold out at CDBaby and not on iTunes. While I didn’t search all the online store that stock indie music you might just find it some where.

Is the format war over of has just the smallest player in the war folded? Well what all the media press is over looking is the digital media market is over taking physical media faster then the Hollywood studios will admit. While BluRay has won the physical media skirmish, the war is far from over. BluRay has to overcome and replace the SD DVD format and also as to figure out a way of not becoming superseded and replaced by digital direct internet delivered HD content.

Has the HDDVD vs BluRay war damaged the physical market beyond repair by putting a bad taste in the mouth of consumers for the second and in some case third time (Beta vs VHS, Laserdisc vs Videodisc (CED), VHS vs Laserdisc, DVD vs DIVX, & HDDVD vs BluRay) Video media format wars are nothing new but, over the years consumers have become reluctant to accept a new physical media format. They have proven that when the music industry tried to outdate the CD with various formats and changes including Sony’s failed DRM laced CDs.

Customers are proving that Digital Downloads are the near future for all entertainment media. Though this growth in the music industry is being hampered by the music industry itself. So far, the Video industry (excluding NBC Universal) has embraced the idea of paid digital downloads. One look at iTunes and the Apple TV Take 2 shows a clear path to what the entertainment industry needs to move too.

I personally hate cable and satellite providers, going to a video rental store is a frustrating and time consuming bit that I just don’t want. The Netflix mail subscription service is something that is borderline maddening with it’s twists and unwritten rules. Why anyone would put up with it. Order or as they call it adding it to your queue then waiting to get it and once your done with it you return it. It’s to much to keep track of and frankly I hate having to decide days in advance on what I want to see and then waiting the three five days to get that DVD.

The digital internet download of entertainment programing will be the future. It will not be an overnight transition nor will it be a short one, I do think that the transition from physical media content to internet downloaded media content will occur before the death of the SD DVD by BluRay.

The war of the media format delivery will continue till only Internet delivered entertainment content is standing. The only question is going to be who is left standing when the dust clears. The Music Industry has proven that they’d rather kill themselves then embrace their future. The Movie Industry is still not so sure. NBC Universal has chosen to follow down the path of the Music Industry and Fox is torn. The Movie Industry is hedging their bets and embracing everything. Small Television Producers like IFC are jumping into the waters of paid digital downs and finding that the revenue stream is a good one. Even the producers of NBC shows are creating holes in their contracts with NBC to get their content into the world of paid digital downloads.

Once TV production companies find out that if they release a paid internet only digital download program that people want to see, it can be a money maker. With the need for a TV Network to broadcast it obsolete, the next revolution in the entertainment industry will start. Until then their is a lot of great podcasts that are profitable and free to watch.

Long live the war and keep sending out the waves.

Paramore puts on a great live show as it’s very high energy and they have a lot fun with their shows. While they are still a young band their music and style is still maturing and developing. They do know how to rock and really kick ass. Hayley Williams has a strong voice, good range, power and much better control then her contemporaries. Make no mistake that Paramore’s path is driven by the band and not just Hayley’s passion, she does drive the bus though.

I’ve always had a special spot for Mazzy Star as their dreamy ethereal rock sound is unique. They have protected maintain their artistic style and sound with a passion, which has generated a loyal base of listeners. While they’ve been quit for the last 10 years or so, as their last album “Among the Swan”. I’ll still look forward to the next Mazzy Star release.

Katie Melua at 23 is perhaps the most talented, interesting and artistic label artist around today. With her third album “Pictures“ released in 2007, her song writing is starting to rapidly mature and it’s her best album to date. Her live shows are incredible, her voice is stunning, her vocal range is remarkable (though she doesn’t seem to show it off as much as I’d like), her vocal power is very impressive (one of the few artists that can deliver a song that fills the Royal Albert Hall without amplification), her delivery is from the heart and with passion. She’s also a fantastic musician. Katie is the one current label artist that has the potential, drive and understanding of the music business to be around for a long time with or without a record label. She is also a very professional artist in that she takes her her music career very seriously and is perhaps the least spoiled, easiest to work with/for major artist in the world today. When it comes to her art and live shows, she is very demanding and very much in control. She tells her label what she is and is not going to do and when she is going to do it. She’s not afraid to take risks nor is she one to shy away from a new experience. Yes, as Katie has become a dear friend over the last few years, I might be a bit prejudice in my opinions. But, as I always tell people, go and see her perform, before you form an opinion. Because, you never know your uneducated first opinion might be wrong. The last thing I’ll say about Katie is she has tapped a market that buys music, Her first two albums has sole worldwide more then 20 million copies. Is Katie a super star music celebrity well she said it best when she said, “No! I’m just a working artist who happens to be a bit of a workaholic and love to perform. The show must go on. Oh! that sounds so camp doesn’t it?” A bit of trivia for you, Katie holds a Guinness World Record for the deepest concert ever performed. At 303 meters below sea level (almost a 1000 feet), the concert was performed at the bottom of one the Statoil Troll-A Gas platform’s legs. The platform is in the North Sea off the coast of Norway.

This is my personal list of label artists that I enjoy listening too. Like I said a the beginning it’s a very short list.

BTW, on a personal note to one of my readers. I’m not and I don’t need to be paid. But, I do have an idea that I might write about in detail one day. A comparison two opposite styles with similar passions. A critical look at the musical works of Jen Bye and Katie Melua, two artists that could learn a great deal from each other. If I could figure out some way to lock the two of you in a room together for a few days. Seriously, though I think it would just take an introduction and a friendship would be instantly formed. I think the result would be no less then remarkable, after all two of the most talented and gifted artists in the world today exchanging ideas and becoming friends. Would end up in taking both to a newer much higher level in their artistic endeavors.

In my post I was made a point of two wildly different extremes. Signing Paris Hilton to a recording contract and signing Jen Bye to a recoding contract. Read the original post here, I’m just glad Jen took my comparison in the spirit it was intended and found it amusing. So, much so she posted it to her my space blog page. I’ll make no secret that I’m a huge fan of real indie music. I even go out of my way to promote indie music and artists to the point of giving my CD’s to friends and businesses contacts that like the music from the artist, I just go and purchase the CDs again while at a show or from CDBaby.com. I’ve lost count on how many copies of Jen’s CDs I’ve given away over the past few years. Right now in fact I have to buy another copy of Jen’s new CD “Less Than Perfect For This World”, I gave my copy to a friend that fell in love with it, after listening to it, while it was playing in my office. I enjoy spreading my love of indie music far and wide and to everyone that listens.

A truly incredible talented writer, singer and artist, is the best way to describe Jen Bye. Her music is fresh, real and performed with passion. The tracks of her CDs are clean, well mixed, they retrain an energy that is reflected in Jen’s live performances. I don’t believing in comparisons that one artist is like another, has each artists is different and what I might get from it you may get something different from it. Like comparing Andy Warhol to Monet. While both are famous artists with many classic works. Jen and her music is more akin to Monet then Andy Warhol. I think Claude Oscar Monet would enjoy the comparison and agree as much as some of you will, no doubt.

Jen Bye’s new CD “Less Than Perfect For This World” is a refreshing breath of artistically passion that weave a journey through Jen’s soul and passions. Listening to the tracks on the CD is a journey that might show you something about yourself. As for the appeal of Jen’s music, you’d be pleased to know that Jen attracts music lovers of all ages and her shows are a tribute to her wide appeal. I’ve had friends that I’ve given her CDs to tell me, that their kids fond the CD listen to it and then put Jen’s music tracks on there iPods. Most people that have fallen in love with Jen’s music from a CD that I’ve past along may never get the opportunity to see Jen perform in person but, they do become enlightened to the world of indie music in a very real and amazing way.

While you’re picking up “Less Than Perfect For This World” don’t forget to grab a copy of her first disc “Jen Bye”. As an independent artist buying Jen’s CDs and going to see her show supports Jen and doesn’t go to support the profits of the multinational Record Labels that squeeze the artists to enhance their bottom line.

Learn more about Jen Bye and her music at http://www.jenbye.net

“Record companies have to get a return, and the people in between need big investments. One of the unfortunate things with the way the music market has gone is that companies spent all this money but only took a return on one stream, the recorded stream. And now the 360 degree model, which is a necessity of the current market, means that artists will have to share all these streams to get the investment. But that’s always a healthy choice – they can do it, or not do it.”

Well what Mr. Kennedy is telling us, is the labels not only want all the money the artist would make from selling their recorded music, they also want all the money when an Artist does a live performance and from the sales of merchandise i.e. Concert T’s.

The recording industry is the only industry were they own the copyright on the sound recording of an artist. But, then charge the cost to make the recording, all the promotion, packaging, manufacturing cost and all the administration cost back to the artist (It breaks down generally like this: 9% to 15% on 100% of sales for the Producer (whom is employed and paid by the label a salary), 6% to 10% on 100% of sales for the Recording engineer (whom is paid a salary by the studio, the studios are typically owned by the labels using a holding companies), 6% to 10% on 100% of sales for the mastering engineer, 3% to 5% on 100% of sales per writer per song (most of whom the artist never worked with or even say (the artist that writes their own songs are even charged this royalty that they never see as their label typically also owns the publishing company that published their work), 15% to 20% on 100% sells for packaging, 25% on 100% of sells for promotion, 30% on 100% of sells for rights and royalty administration fees, the artist by contract will be listed as 20% to 35% on 60% to 80% of sales. Then comes the payback schedule (studio cost recovery charge, Music Video Production recovery charge, contract advance loan repayment charge, advance payment loan interest (normally at a 22% to 35% rate), then there in the royalty statement double deduction for everything. In the end the artist always owes the label money). In the end everyone gets paid but, the artist. Now, the labels want a sizable chunk of all live performance money and of the artists’ merchandizing sales too. And they’re saying if you don’t like it too bad.

One of my favorite quotes is this one:

“I never made enough money from my records to be able to buy anything. I made everyone else really wealthy and I never saw a dime … so that’s life. That’s why I took off eight years. I made millions of dollars for the songwriters, the record company and everyone else who had a piece of me… and the artist has to rent – it’s a sin.” – Alannah Myles.

The music the record labels are shoveling out these days is tripe trash. We hate it the first time we hear it but, they cram their crap into everything and over time it’s not that we hate it any less we just become accustomed to hearing it but, we still don’t go out and buy it.

If the music industry want to survive I’ll give them some pointers:

1. move all digital downloaded music to a lossless format and make the format s standard. (i.e. FLAC or Applelossless (We don’t care but, pick one for the industry make it a worldwide standard and stick to it and insist on the music being delivered to the customer in that format. The MP3 manufactures will support it and welcome it with open arms.))

2. we want DRM – Free ONLY. Subscription Music is a waste of everyone’s time. It’s over and done with and it failed let it go and start working on business that works.

3. we want really good artists, that make really good music. The Labels’ producers and engineers need to stop dictating & manipulating what the artist does on the recordings and just record what the artist is producing and stop attempting to make the artist fit into the suite you want them to wear it doesn’t work.

4. we want the artist to get fair and reasonable contracts from the labels, because fair and reasonable contracts attract better artists and better artist mean better music. And here’s a news flash for the labels if you’re selling Music by good artists we’ll buy them. (i.e. The label is getting ownership of the artists recorded work, therefore the label needs to pay for that recording fairly and stop stealing the artists’ work, they need to pay for the promotion and they needed to pay all the costs, plus they need to pay the artist a fair royalty rate on 100% of all the recorded works that the labels sell and not just 80% of it of less).

5. Invest honest money in A&R and stop just trying to crank out the same formula music with just different artists names. We’re tired of the Britney, JayZ, …. formulas. It just doesn’t work. The labels need to stop trying to make celebrities and focus on the business of music from a wide variety of artists and styles.

6. The labels destroyed their physical retail channel a few years back and now they are trying to do it to their digital channel too. I have one word and a statement on the subject. STOP! Treat all the retailers fairly and equally, let the customers pick the retailer they want to use. The product that all the retailers are selling must be the same and it must be of the highest quality (see #1). The customer in the end is going to make the choice no matter what the labels do to try and change it. The labels need to make the call establish a solid strong online channel or let free P2P replace them. At this point the choice is still theirs to make.

7. The labels have tremendous value in their back catalogs or recordings and Music Videos. But, most of it will never see the light of day again. I’m an old fart myself and I have 3.5 to 5 thousand major label CD’s and records and 5 to 8 thousand minor label CDs and records and another 8 to 9 thousand indie CDs and tapes. I can digital encode all the CDs, tapes and records, which I’m slowly doing into a lossless format or I could and can afford to just buy them in digital format. I would spend the money to do that were possible but, 256kbs MP3′s sound like crap on my stereo and even on my iPod. Like I said, I’m and old fart, and the on-line retailers don’t sell much if any of the music I’m looking for in digital format, iTunes comes the closes and it’s the easiest to search and even browse.

8. Like most music fans my music collect spans worldwide and my CDs are releases from all over the world it’s time that the labels removed the artificial copyright barriers that they created when they were attempting to stop, control and earn extra profits from the importation of CD’s. Today is a global economy and if the labels stick to the regionalization that they themselves created it will slowly choke them them on the internet because the internet has no artificial borders and no limits on who trades what with whom. Move into the modern economy of die.

EMI’s Guy Hands has the right plan and I’m glad to see the IPFI chief John Kennedy understands it. As he said, “So what Guy Hands is doing is absolutely right in pruning, and you need that expertise.”

Guy Hands plans to prune the expense of the IPFI and RIAA membership fee vacuums right out of EMI’s wallet. Once EMI does it the other major labels will follow suit. With UMG being the last to holdout. John Kennedy and Mitch Bainwol should be checking out the want ads now, as their big money (million + dollar) jobs at the IPFI and RIAA are going to an end. Tell UMG to turn off the lights when they leave.

Let the pruning commence! I love to see over paid executive, who know their asses are headed to the chopping block, start talking all kinds of trash. They know the end is near and the gravy train is running dry so, they start telling everyone off. Like the unwashed, stealing, lying, cheating customers who paid for their big house and fancy car, plus countless kilos of cocaine and hookers. The Customers are so heartless and ungreatfull.

So, it looks like I’ll be ripping my music collection for some time to come. The music buyers need to telegraph there dislike for the labels and their trade associations’ whining. How you say, well it’s called supporting the indie artists year, which by luck happens to be 2008. Take the pledge that in 2008 you will only purchase and listen to music from independent recording artists.

Unedited and in it’s entirety:

“Hi – This is Eric Krock, Director of Product Management for Kontiki at VeriSign. Like you, we take security very seriously, so we wanted to take a moment to address the concerns raised by this article. We have architected the Kontiki Delivery Management System to prevent hijacking by hostile attackers. There is a closed public key infrastructure built into the system. This prevents servers or clients from being spoofed and enables all server-to-client and client-to-client communication to be encrypted. The clients communicate using our proprietary protocol which provides a closed vocabulary of commands. Even if an attacker were to decrypt, study, understand, and reverse-engineer the protocol, it’s not possible for the attacker to then send arbitrary commands to another client or transmit a script for remote execution. They could only send valid requests in the closed vocabulary, and then could only do so as themself using their own signing key, not impersonate a server or another client, since they lack the necessary signing keys to do so. Unlike consumer P2P file sharing systems, obtaining the Kontiki client does NOT enable an end user to introduce new files on to the system. Only the specific individuals who have been provided publishing accounts by Kontiki or one of our customers are able to publish new files on to the system. When a file is published, a hash code is generated to enable the client to “verify that the content being delivered to the software is indeed the content that should be delivered to the software.” That hash code is delivered directly from the Kontiki servers to the client over an encrypted connection as signed metadata. So it’s not “easy to trick the Kontiki server to propagate any file to other Kontiki servers on the P2P network.” The architecture prevents that. Our customers inform end users in the licensing agreement that this is peer-to-peer software and that their connection may be used to serve content to other users. Users have to agree to these terms in order to install the software. If you’d like to learn more about our security architecture, please see our technical white papers on “The Power of Commercial Peer-to-Peer Delivery” at http://www.verisign.com/products-services/content-messaging/broadband-delivery/intelligent-cdn/index.html and “Intelligent CDN Technical Overview” at http://www.verisign.com/products-services/content-messaging/broadband-delivery/intelligent-cdn/index.html. Thanks very much for your interest in ensuring Internet security!”

End of Comment Quote.

I’ve worked closely with my ISP and we developed filters that stop all incoming connections to P2P applications such as Kontiki to the users computers. The ISP’s customer’s can connect and use the application normally but, their system will not redistribute the content to others as the requests are never received by the client software. Does our P2P connection filtering software violate the law, the courts have said no. The ISP’s have agreed to nothing with the software vendors or the Commercial P2P Service operators and the customer’s without the filters would be in violation of their contract with the ISP. The ISP is just protecting their network from unauthorized commercial, potentially dangerous and hazardous network traffic.

That being said, from an ISP’s point of view commercial P2P service is still theft of bandwidth. EULA with software vendors do not over rule the user’s agreement with their ISP. All home non Business account ISP user agreements, that I have read (and I’ve read more then my share) prohibit the ISPs bandwidth from being used for non-personal use. While it will be argued that the enduser is with in their rights and are just using the bandwidth for their personal use. The law as not seen it in that light. The user by allowing a commercial service to piggy-back on their “for personal use bandwidth” is in violation of their contract with their ISP. Anyone thinking of using any Commercial P2P network application, I would strongly advise them to contact their ISP prior to agreeing to any EULA and installing the software.

As I have time over the few weeks or months I’ll tear Kontiki apart and examine it for security flaws, bugs and short comings. As I find them I’ll be letting you know. I’ll make as much of the security issues public as possible without revealing how the software was compromised. I’ll fully disclose the security issue including the exploit code to CERT for vendor notification as I normally do.

I’ll start with some of my favorite CD’s by some of my favorite Indie Artists.

Upcoming Indie Artist Reviews:

The Binders
Black Kite
Default Outfit
Enda
Eve’s Reason
Fields Of Aplomb
Frances Charlotte
Gatja
Gild
Great Girls Blouse
Paradox
Demon Bros.
Red Zone
Run Silent Run Deep
Soul Driver
Vertigo Road
Victoria Vox

Not necessarily in the order above, and I might toss in a surprise or two along the way.

If your an indie artist and you want me to review your CD send me a email, I won’t promise because I’ll only be reviewing CD’s that I buy. But, I might buy it after all I spend a lot of money on Indie CD’s every year.