A group of musicians calling themselves ‘The Overdub Tampering Committee’ (TOTC) have just made a rather unusual announcement. For the last 3 years TOTC have been downloading newly-leaked albums from the internet and using them to create new versions of the tracks. They added their own instruments, and used additional production techniques in the style of the original recording, to create a subtle remix of the original.

Within hours, they then re-released the slightly modified albums back onto file-sharing networks and BitTorrent sites such as OiNK and The Pirate Bay. “If you illegally download music on the internet the chances that our work is in your collection is very, very likely! In fact, you might have a whole lot of us!”, they claim. In fact, ‘Polluting’ P2P networks with this music didn’t end the spread. TOTC have seen their works spread as far as radio stations. No prizes for guessing where they got it from.

It all started around 4 years ago, a member of TOTC downloaded an album only to hear that someone had tampered with it in the middle. This got them thinking: “What if this problem got more insidious, subtle, and widespread? What if there was a network of musicians who got a hold of albums right as they leaked, added subtle yet very much additional overdubs all over the album, and then re-leaked it to the internet?” That’s exactly what they have been doing for the past few years.

Even though the group seem to want to ‘pollute’ P2P networks with these ‘remixes’, they also dislike the music industry:

Attempting to police and punish “illegal downloaders” with lawsuits and fines is misguided and, in our opinion, a waste of time. This model treats the music fans as criminals. That’s an insane business model. But we expect nothing less than insanity from large, crumbling corporations. We do not know how the music industry will change in the next few years and we don’t know how a method will arise to ensure that musicians are properly paid for their recorded work. We have no solutions.

TOTC, who are all members of other active bands, say they have even released tampered versions of their own songs, and uploaded them to the Internet. “That was particularly fun for us.” they said. But what is the group’s opinion on file-sharing itself? They say they don’t think it’s wrong and download stuff themselves to test before buying on physical media.

So what was their motivation to do this?

“All we wanted to do was fuck with the treasure everyone’s hunting for to realign everyone’s perspective.”

We contacted TOTC for some additional information, but they haven’t replied so far. The Overdub Tampering Committee manifesto can be found here. (via Idolator)

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Most people who have been exposed to his music would agree, Prince is a truly great artist having written and produced literally hundreds of mostly good tracks.

Back in May, Prince announced the “Earth Tour” consisting of many concerts at the very reasonable price of £31.21 – priced deliberately low so that everyone could afford to go. All attending also received a free copy of Prince’s latest album, ‘Planet Earth’. In June, the UK’s ‘Mail on Sunday’ newspaper announced that it had struck a deal with Prince to give his new album away for free with its July 15th edition, in a never-seen-before groundbreaking deal.

After being forward-looking with this giveaway, Prince has now reverted back to the usual anti-piracy stance and according to MediaGuardian he is going to take action to protect copyrights “not just for himself, but for all artists in the digital age” and is aiming to “reclaim his art on the internet”.

So, exactly how does Prince aim to do this? Apart from an attack on commercial physical pirates operating out of eBay, his main focus will be YouTube and of course, The Pirate Bay.

Prince’s spokesman explained further: “Prince believes strongly that as an artist the music rights must remain with the artist and thus copyrights should be protected across the board. Very few artists have ever taken this kind of action over their rights. Yet, Prince has showed time and time again he is ready to challenge the system in new ways to put artists and music first”

In a move which shows that Prince (or at least his advisers) have a sense of humor, they have hired the infamous Web Sheriff (a division of Entertainment Law Associates), headed up by John Giacobbi to deal with the enforcement. They send out letters like this one – the site in question is of course, still up and running.

Apparently, following Web Sheriff threats, more than 2000 Prince clips have been removed from YouTube and 300 eBay auctions taken down but understandably, after Web Sheriff’s last contact with Pirate Bay ended in complete humiliation, they have decided to deal with them last. After they unsuccessfully demanded that PirateBay take down some ‘White Stripes’ torrents and unwittingly laid themselves open to mountains of ridicule on the infamous legal page, one can assume they plan to tread carefully next time.

TorrentFreak spoke to Brokep from The Pirate Bay to see how they feel about Prince’s plans, backed up by the fearsome Web Sheriff: “Well, ‘way to go on losing all your fans’” he said. “I truly respect the son of a king’s work as a musician but he seems like he has some kind of problem in getting to deal with his fans.” Commenting on the free CD album giveaway brokep continued, “And he’s desperate for media attention..

Earlier in the year, Web Sheriff ordered some torrent sites to publicly apologize for their activities by taking out half-page advertisements in Billboard Magazine, Music Week Magazine and Music & Media Magazine so maybe this will happen to The PirateBay?

Characteristically unfazed by the threat of Web Sheriff intimidation, brokep says: “He’s welcome to try and sue us in Sweden, there’s no basis. And it’s so funny that he’s teaming up with the joke of the anti piracy world – Web Sheriff. They are also in a big time need of some media attention, so I guessed they teamed up for that reason.”

Bloggers are also getting familiar with the Sheriff’s informal style of takedown request, which have no basis in law whatsoever. Some bloggers even feel like ‘they have arrived‘ when the Sheriff first comes-a-calling.

With his fans around the world, John Giacobbi isn’t short on publicity. His photos are all over the web but my favorite is this one of him relaxing on the hood of a classic car, not on a horse as everyone expected.

There again, maybe he’s not a real sheriff….

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The goal of the game is pretty straightforward. You have to drive a Bus through the desert from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas. The hard part is that the whole trip is in real-time, so it takes 8 hours at least. And it gets even better:

There is no scenery or even other cars on the road, just plain desert, for 8 hours. Oh, and your bus veers to the right just slightly, so it’s impossible to just tape down a button and go do something else. Rumor has it that if you make it to Vegas, you score one point.

Really, you have to try this one.
So grab the torrent (810MB, it’s a collection of great games), install a free SEGA cd emulator, and you’re ready to go.

Have a nice trip. I will give 10$ 25$ to the first person who beats the game, mail me.

More info on this
via

Instructions: (from waxy.org) If you have an actual Sega CD, just burn the disc images and you’re set. Otherwise, you’ll need a copy of the GENS emulator and the Sega CD BIOS to play. After unpacking both archives, start the emulator and go to the “Options: BIOS” menu. Set the “Sega CD BIOS: USA” directory to the folder you saved the BIOS file in. Then use “File: Open ROM” to open “PTSM1.bin.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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