Learning with the Fang

This is how Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy

In
the first hyperlink above, user ~ruari carefully explains how to
reverse engineer the ‘legal NPR stream’ of the Danger Mouse and
Sparklehorse album ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ (a wonderful collaboration
with David Lynch and a bunch of cool musicians from Iggy Pop to the
Flaming Lips and Susanne Vega). This explanation is just brilliant -
doesnt provide an ‘illegal download’ service but provides the
information required to extract the .mp3 file from the streaming server
(don’t get me started on streaming vs download!!). The intelligent
reader will understand that the thirteen hyperlinks to each track will
generate an .mp3 file which can be saved via right mouse -> save
link as. Furthermore, these hyperlinks provide the required metadata to
make the collection of .mp3 files really useful to your computer’s
media player and portable device manager. No need to visit those tacky
file sharing sites or bittorrent directory services to get the
downloads that Danger Mouse would have you burn to your blank CD
purchased from the online store. Subversive eh!

The
second hyperlink in my opening sentence is to the wikipedia article
that shows near the top of search results for the album in question. It
gives a brief synopsis of the clever marketing campaign in which either
a book or poster plus blank recordable CD (both made of atoms) are for
sale and, at the time of writing, reference number 7 “^ “Downloading mp3 files from NPR’s online stream of Danger Mouse And Sparklehorse’s ‘Dark Night Of The Soul”. http://www.panix.com/~ruari/dnots.html. Retrieved on 2009-05-19.” So there you have it, one search, two hyperlinks and I am listening to the album while writing this. See how its the hyperlinks that subvert?

(or is it)

While
the 7th reference on the Wikipedia entry for the Danger Mouse &
Sparklehorse collaboration is a true example of subversion via
hyperlink, the whole ‘artist raises middle finger to EMI’ angle smells
like bullshit to me.

Trouble is, I am not (yet) armed with any facts. That’s where you lot
come in:

• what evidence do we have that there truly is a contract issue with EMI?
• any interesting stories/anecdotes/insight into this campaign?
  

To
get the ball rolling I decided to visit the official dnots.com site and
buy (preorder) the 50 page limited edtion book and blank CD-R.
Unfortunately, to get it shipped to my home in Australia I would have
to fork out $176.65 AUD (which is beyond what I am prepared to pay to
‘raise my middle finger to EMI’).

A quick look on amazon.com and I can have the thing shipped immediately
and delivered sooner for less that $42USD (at which point my bullshit
meter sounds louder).

So I do a quick image search to see what the book looks like (and
what all the 50 page limited edition fuss is about) and end up watching
a youtube video of some dude leafing thru the book.

Links:
 - truly Subversive HyperLink
 - wikipedia with 7th ref = the panix.com Subversive link
 - Youtube flip thru the book.
 - rolling stone mag article (with comments)
 - official dnots website (where I can purchase for $177AUD).
 - my Flickr images of online purchase woe

Interesting:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang