Bent Corner

There is a feud going on in the podcasting community between singer Brother Love, a superstar in the world of podsafe music and frequent guest of the Keith and The Girl podcast and author Tee Morris, a man who may be best known for writing Podcasting For Dummies. I honestly had never heard of the guy. I’m not a podcaster and I’m not a dummy. At least most of the time.

The two men got into this past summer at the New Media Expo in Ontario California. Being that it transpired at the New Media Expo, the whole exchange was captured on a digital recorder. Imagine that.

The argument stemmed from something that happened prior at this past Dragon*Con. Brother Love was to speak at one of the panels dealing with Creative Commons until he was scratched from the event at the last minute without any prior warning. He didn’t find out until he attempted to go on stage and take his seat. Understandably he was irritated over this. He had spend time promoting his appearance at Dragon*Con and this one panel had been the only panel he had planned on participating in. He voiced his displeasure to Derek and Swoopy, the event organizers and the team that produce the Skepticality Podcast.

How does this involve Tee Morris? Evidently, he is friends with Derek and Swoopy and he didn’t appreciate how Brother Love spoke to his friends.

Not only was the entire argument between Brother Love and Tee Morris recorded, it was played in it’s entirety on The Keith and The Girl podcast (episode 589: A Hero’s Return) the next time Brother Love was a guest. The segment begins at about the 18 minute mark.

Tee Morris might have been irritated with Brother Love over something that happened at Dragon*Con, it’s nothing compared to what he feels about Keith and The Girl playing the audio of the argument on their show. He’s also extremely angry with Brother Love, though I don’t really understand why. The audio wasn’t recorded by Brother Love. It was recorded unbeknown to him by someone who was there. Brother Love said he didn’t know a recorder was going during the argument. Keith and The Girl said they got the audio not from Brother Love, but by the person that recorded it.

Tee Morris is making the claim that recording the argument between Brother Love and his was a crime. He claims that you must have permission to record someone, even if it is in a public place in complete earshot of everyone there. Even if that public place is an event called the New Media Expo. Personally, I would assume everything said in public at the New Media Expo was on MP3 somewhere. I doubt I would be wrong.

If you want to hear exactly what Tee Morris thinks about all this, you can listen to Keith and The Girl, episode 641: Happy Jeremymas. They have the audio of a commentary made by Tee Morris concerning this whole thing. It’s the final seven minutes of the show.

It’s irritating to listen to. Tee Morris refers to Keith and The Girl as “Amateur Hour” and Brother Love as “Dink”. I’m not sure why he feels the need to give them codenames. It seems to me that if you are going to go to the trouble of trashing someone, you might as well make it clear just who you are trashing. There actually is a podcast called The Amateur Hour. Now it seems that Tee Morris has a problem with a podcast he has probably never heard of.

Why is Tee Morris so upset about the audio being made public? I can only imagine it’s because he comes off sounding like a complete douche. Not only when he is discussing his perceived problems with Brother Love/Dink, but what he says afterwards. When he learns that Brother Love is Jewish, he shares that his “first time” was with a “Jewish redhead” and that he has the scars to prove it. I’m not entirely sure I understand what he meant by that. I thought he was talking about the first time he had sex, but why would that leave scars?

I think that if it left scars, he was doing it wrong. I guess he should have read Having Sex With Jewish Redheads For Dummies.

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I recently upgraded my cellphone to a Motorola RAZR. Not only is it the best cell phone I’ve ever owned, it does all sorts of neat stuff such as playing an MP3 file as a ringtone. I’ve been using the generic ringtones because I haven’t had a way of transfering an MP3 file to my phone. That was until this past weekend. I purchased a software package that allows me to transfer picture files to use as wallpaper and MP3 files to use as ringtones. It came bundled with a USB cable along with adapters for most cellphones.The software allows you to edit down a sound file to a more manageable size. I made a 20 second MP3 of the hook from BLACK HOLE SUN by Soundgarden and it turned out great. After that turned out so swimmingly, I decided I would try something else. I decided to convert over PUNKROCKER by Teadybears. It features Iggy Pop doing the vocals. It was used recently in a car commercial. I don’t remember which. I had purchased the song on iTunes. Every time the commercial would play, I would end up playing the song in my head. It’s a cool song.

When I tried to convert the file over to an MP3, iTunes informed me that I was not allowed because it protected.

I paid for this song. I can play it on my PC. I can play it on my iPod. I just can’t play 25 seconds of it on my phone.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a blight on civilized society. It’s an unnecessary obsticle getting between me and the music I paid for. If I want to hear, “well I’m a punkrocker, yes I am” every time my phone rings, I have to burn the song to a disc and then import the one-song disc back over as an MP3. What a waste of my time. And to think this is what I get for actually paying for the song instead of jumping on The Pirate Bay and downloading it.

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

Apple Computers has been accused of ripping off the video from an alternative rock band by the name of The Postal Service. Both the Apple Computers commercial and the music video are nearly frame by frame copies.

I find this to be ironic. This band stole their name from the quasi government agency that is tasked with delivering my mail six days a week. The same quasi government agency that could never seem to be able to successfully deliver my weekly issue of Sports Illustrated. In other words, they stole it.

It’s like one big circle of life type of thing.

The Post Office steals from me. Alternative music band steals name from Post Office. Apple Computers steals video idea from alternative rock band. I am pretty sure that all this means that I am legally and morally justified in downloading some MP3’s of The Postal Service (the alternative rock band) without paying for any of it. They stole something (the name) from something (quasi government agency) that stole from me.

What makes this even funnier is that when I bought my iPod, the first thing I see as I remove it from the packaging is a warning to not steal music.