Other information:
Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

An exciting partnership and experience regarding this release will be announced soon.

Trent is following through on his threats. I couldn't be happier.

Latest NIN Album released under a CC license

The court decision determined that recommendation algorithms that rely on usage data to build playlists server-side are still eligible for broadcast license, thereby substantially lowering the costs of operating a music recommendation site.

MemeStreams could generate agent based music under the compulsary license. The Industrial Memetics conspiracy is functioning perfectly. Muhahaha. :)

Slashdot | Court Rules Playlist Customization Is Not Interactive

Front Line Assembly's hit track 'Mindphaser' from their 1992 release 'Tactical Neural Implant'

This is one of the great hacker anthems from this period of time. I must agree with Decius, this brings back memories for me too. This album got heavy rotation from me during the BBS days of old, as well as during the wild west years of the Internet. Amid the fast paced edits in this video, my brain is filling in snapshots of irc clients on efnet, dial-up bbs systems, and unix command line prompts..

YouTube - Front Line Assembly - Mindphaser

The second alternative is for Apple to license its FairPlay DRM technology to current and future competitors with the goal of achieving interoperability between different company’s players and music stores.

The most serious problem is that licensing a DRM involves disclosing some of its secrets to many people in many companies, and history tells us that inevitably these secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can be spread worldwide in less than a minute.

Apple has concluded that if it licenses FairPlay to others, it can no longer guarantee to protect the music it licenses from the big four music companies.

Decius's comments are right on:

Steve Jobs speaks openly about DRM here, which is interesting, but he is obviously negotiating with European anti-trust entities in this essay. He presents a proposition that the two major European music companies license their music to him without a DRM requirement. Thats a bit "let them eat cake" I think. I'm sure he thinks the pressure that Europeans might put on those major music companies as a result of this essay will release some of the pressure on him, allowing him to find a better negotiating position.

Unfortunately, with regard to the passage I'm quoting, he's wrong. In order to have a DRM system you have to put the enforcement technology in the hands of all of your users. Those people can reverse engineer that technology, and spread their results via the Internet. DRM encoding systems can be just as blackbox as DRM enforcement systems, and you aren't handing them to as many people, so the idea that you can't tolerate the risk of those encoders being reverse engineered doesn't make any sense. You're already taking the greater risk that the decoders will be reverse engineered, and thats the fundamental crux of DRM. Furthermore, there is no reason why Apple couldn't support another companies DRM technology that already has shared encoders.

I am of the opinion, and have been for some time now, that the record companies are going to start abandoning DRM technology. I am also of the opinion that we need, and will get, a means of attaining blanket licenses to cover music downloads, as well as a reasonably elegant system for paying royalties.

I would be shocked if Apple is not expecting things to go this way as well. The line they are taking here actually puts more pressure on the powers that be to take moves to open licensing, then if Apple opened their technology. The big win for everyone is if it became possible to sell non-DRM'd tracks. Unless that happens, it is not to Apple's advantage to open their DRM technology.

Screw opening the DRM, open the licensing regime. Like Steve said:

Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

Steve Jobs - Thoughts on Music

Nashville producer and artist Jeremy Dickens remains on the vanguard of electronica in a city known for twang.

MemeStreams user logickal has a new EP out. You can get it from iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, and BeatPort. Jeremy also keeps a blog with numerous podcasts featuring his tracks.

We were all fans of Logickal's last release. I look forward to listening to this one.

dPulse Recordings : Logickal

Don't miss this... Its an interactive java applet the maps samples.

The History of Sampling

] On nin.com, Trent Reznor is offering a complete mix of a
] song from the forthcoming Nine Inch Nails album as a
] Garageband 2.0 file.

I need to get Garageband upgraded.

This is a very cool thing, in several ways. The license is very CC like.

Boing Boing: NIN's Trent Reznor releases song as GarageBand file

] Being thusly a collection of mediations
] and exorcisms based on the everyday life
] of one J. Dickens, also known as Logickal;
] whereupon the use of devices, generators and
] recordings of cans, bottles, calculators, Lego blocks,
] microphones, automobiles, candid photographs with
] dialog, weather systems, poems and other
] vagaries were used alone and in combination to
] perform and construct said collection during the
] period of 2002 to 2003 at Ecliptic, which
] is located in Nashville, Tennessee.

From Decius:
] This is very overdue. Logickal is a regular MemeStreams
] poster. I obtained this from him back in July, but for some
] reason it never found its way into my CD player. That was
] a mistake. When I got this from him he described it as very
] experimental and unlikely to be comfortable to listen to. I
] totally disagree. This is good ambient machine music. Its
] tracy. For some reason it reminds me of Download. You can
] focus on it or you can fade it into the background and let it
] offer context. Its good to code to. Get it.

I was just listening to the excerpts on the webpage. Reminds me of Download also..

Logickal, I ordered one of your CDs.. :)

day by daydream - Logickal

"Johnny died due to complications from diabetes, which resulted in respiratory failure," Cash's manager, Lou Robin, said in a statement issued by Baptist Hospital in Nashville.

One very interesting tidbit that was on NPR this morning, but I can't find references of on Google yet, is the statement that while in the Air Force, Johnny Cash was a codebreaker. This would make Johnny the Alpha-Geek, and most beloved, as the original codebreaking Man in Black.

The following whitespace is for Johnny Cash:

.

Music Legend Johnny Cash Dies at 71

] In April, the legendary Pixies will reunite for the first
] time in over a decade. The notoriously quarrelsome
] quartet have buried the hatchet, clearing the way for all
] four original members to hop onstage together for a world
] tour, according to a spokesperson for the band.

Yes! I have been waiting for a Pixies reunion for soooo long..

Frank Black said in an interview a few months ago that the idea was being considered.. Looks like its happening.

MTV.com - News -Legendary Pixies To Reunite For Tour, Album