The Bay is bombed

Today the founders of the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay were found guilty of the charges held against them, and they are sentenced to one year in prison and to pay an indemnity of 30 million SEK. Quite a heavy sum. Although, if the sum of the revenue everything that have passed through their website was to be summed up, it would certainly surpass that amount by a considerable amount. It is of course quite complicated to judge whether or not th sentence is fair or not. Some people argue that music (art) is free whilst some stubbornly refer to the notion of copyright.

In today’s music climate, with MySpace and foremost YouTube being a given part in almost anyone’s life possessing an age under 30, and many over that age as well for that matter, many people have a sense of music and movies as being public goods. The time when you bought things on CD or DVD is gone, many people seem to argue.

What is clear though is that the big corporates such as Warner Bros., Universal and others NEED to adjust to the new climate in this area. They cannot, quite frankly speaking, just sit and watch and expect that things will happen as they did 10 years ago. Technology, or rather the improvement of it, enables many things, file-sharing being one of them. In addition, there are bands and artists who I suppose are quite happy they got exposed on the internet with people copying their music. Without it, they wouldn’t have been known to the wider audience. The fact is that this possibility of sharing music instantly has brought about a revolution in the music industry. Something that the big corporates have not grasped.

iTunes is a perfect example, where people pay 0,99$ for every song they download. It’s legal, it’s safe, it’s convenient. So far, so good. But of course, the incentives for downloading illegaly still remain. However, the new IPRED law in Sweden, enabling corporates to look for illegal downloaders by removing all kind of anonymity on the web. This can result in legal consequences, which, I suppose can be quite massive. This is, of course, complete madness, since it fulfils one more criteria of the Zeitgeist prophesy. Now, doubtful as that movie might be, the thought of it is quite frightening. And to be fair, no argument of national security or anything else can bite on me in regards to private integrity. If we loose that, we are lost. With that gone, security amongst people soon disappears whilst fear, resentment and reluctance prevails.

PNAU

I really can’t understand why PNAU isn’t bigger than they are. To me, they are one of the most interesting electronic music projects I have ever heard of. Now, I never would have thought I’d say that about a band from Australia, hah. Anyhow, Lukas was the one introducing them to me through the song “Embrace” with vocal contributions from Ladyhawke, a New Zealander singer.

What bothers me though is that it seems like I can get the record from nowhere. Literally, it seems impossible to get hold of. So, I suppose I’ll have to turn to MySpace/YouTube. Again. As usual. I also happened to stumble upon an old piece of Pnau, from 1999 more precisely. The song “Journey Agent” is in fact one of the more loungy songs I have heard in a long time. A bit like Air, just that it was more retro and even more lovely. “Follow me” from the same album, “Sambanova”, also seems very promising. Ah, I love new music discoveries.

http://www.myspace.com/pnau

Home and set

I’ve arrived safely at home. After 20 hours of travelling including night trains with drunken hard (well, they wish) rockers, weird bus drivers and packed lunch, I am now sitting in my own old bed, thinking about what to do tonight. The weather is very very nice, blue sky, sunshine and around 12 degrees. Perfect spring weather that is.

It is quite funny how it always happens that as soon as I go within the city borders, I am bound to see someone I know within something like 1 minute. Today, it happened as well. I saw my old class-mate biking at around 1 minute after entering the city. How nice.

I have quite a distinct feeling that this stay at home is going to be really really nice. It just feels like it’s the perfect re-charger of one’s batteries. And yes, I’ll take one of those, please.

The notion of home

So, this is supposed to be my first blog entry. How nice. I have to admit that I am actually quite excited over this thing about new blogs, and yes, I do like WordPress. It’s sophisticated without getting too boring. In this blog, I will write most entries in English, however, I will if there is something that concerns Sweden of course write in Swedish. Hopefully, I will in a years time or so also be able to produce something in French. I will write things on politics, language, society, architecture, music, my life and lots of other things.

Okey, so right now I am sitting on the ferry to Bergen, on my way home to Lidköping, my native town. Now, this is where it becomes complicated. I have now lived in the middle of nowhere in Norway on a boarding school for two years with schoolmates from literally all over the world, which has sort of destroyed my notion of where my home is. In fact, it has gone to the degree where I see myself having a home in some sort of vague transcendental international sphere, whatever that is. Of course, I will always in a sense see Lidköping as being my base, or whatever one may call it. You know, something you’ll always relate to in different ways. But still, it has gone to the point that any inclanation of even thinking about moving there again seems to be reducable to a ridicule.

Anyhow, it is nice to be on my way back. I feel like I need a break at this moment. Not that I am tired of studying, quite the opposite. It’s just that I need a break from the place, to get some new ideas and get some space. To be anonymous for once, how I ever thought that would happen in Lisch. Hah.