And so another pirate platform has bitten the dust. I was 14 when Limewire first came out. I remember the excitement of discovering such an enormous gateway to free music. Yet unlike many of my generation – especially those of my political persuasion – I was gratified to hear this week that Limewire had been [...]
My mate’s step-dad manages Half Man Half Biscuit. They’re that sort of band. An ordinary band that writes and sings about mundane, ordinary life with an extraordinary humour and eloquence. You don’t hear much about them these days, but for a brief period in the 80s they were very, very cool. They were seen as [...]
There isn’t a lot of love for illegal downloaders on this blog, and to some extent I think that’s fair. But even if we accept that the activities of Pirate Bay and their ilk are ultimately unjustifiable, the jaw-dropping stupidity of some of the comments from the anti-piracy camp shouldn’t be allowed to go through [...]
Guest post by Holly Robbins Celebrating its tenth birthday this year, (The People’s Republic of) Shambala has everything a festival-goer could possibly desire – without being the size of a small town (yes, I’m talking to you Glastonbury). Set in the grounds of a manor house in Northamptonshire and playing host to around 10,000 punters, [...]
Guest post by Thom Harrison ‘Suddenly I viddied what I had to do and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked cruel world. One moment of pain, perhaps, and then sleep forever and ever and ever.’ – Anthony [...]
There are times I wonder why I do it. Standing for hours in the queue at a remote train station in the depths of rural Somerset hauling what feels like the unfortunate result of an unseemly encounter between Jabba the Hutt and Dibley’s eponymous vicar on my back. Waking up to the sound of thunder [...]
This week’s report on Britain’s digital future has once again raised the question of online file sharing. The carter report sets out an aim to reduce illegal file sharing by 70% over two years, yet the music industry has been fairly unanimous in its opinion that proposed measures – primarily written warnings to repeat offenders [...]
The ongoing court case against Pirate Bay – a massive hub for online file sharing – is attracting a lot of comment and attention. I was around 14 when online file sharing first became big and, as a music lover with relatively little disposable income, I fell in love with it. But it was not [...]
