the end and then what: more UBUWEB

Initially I thought to evade the question of legality entirely by not wandering outside the boundaries of artist-hosted downloads. Of course things got grey almost from the get go. Too many people playing it a bit fast and loose with the samples, too many people tugging hard on the loose ends of the clumsy stitches that sew up the mismatched bundle of concepts that make up "information ownership" - the ragged boundaries of territories like "fair use" and the "public domain." And what tends to be more interesting to me - things that are old and weird enough that it's hard to tell who, if anyone, would know whether any rights are retained, and if so by whom, and nobody seems particularly inclined to find out or do anything about people simply common-lawing it into practical, if not legal, public domains.

A common theme if you've been paying attention is just not looking at or acknowledging that there is an issue, or the closely related expression of the sentiment "it's just a hobby, please don't sue me." It's refreshing to come across something like the UBUWEB FAQ where a bracing, direct approach is taken: "We post many things without permission; we also post many with things with permission. We therefore give you permission to take what you like even though in many cases, we have no received permission to post it. We went ahead and did it anyway. You should too."

There's also a little bit of this: "UbuWeb has no need for funding. All work is done solely on a volunteer basis."

And: "Nothing is for sale on UbuWeb. It's all free. We know it's a hard idea to get used to, but there's no lush gift shop waiting for you at the end of this museum."

Mmmmm, post-capitalicious. More importantly, I figured out what UBUWEB was actually about, finally: avante garde. So awesome, so anachronistic. The 365 Days Project is a bit off that mission, maybe, but so deep, so rich. Just what it says, 365 days, 365 MP3s, the definition of odd and obscure. Faultless metadata, of course: plug and play with the music engine of your choice. We'll be back there many times, I'm sure.

Scrivener downloaded... (please read the download etiquette note)
Major Tom by the Space Lady.

Practice download etiquette: Rather than just clicking on MP3 links, please right click + "save as" (Windows) or control+click and "Download Linked File" (Mac). It will reduce the artists' bandwidth demands!

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