Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Bach in action

Recently, kickstarter has been in the news.  Group funded startups and projects such as the pebble and what have you.

Now there's classical music funded by kickstarter, available for free under a creative commons license that is essentially public domain. 

It's available at opengoldbergvariations.org/download.  in Flac or MP3.  No need to worry about the RIAA or MPAA suing you for sharing this torrent.   

It's an interesting premise.  We're bound to see more and more free culture funded this way.  Could be a good trend for the future of art and culture. 

As someone who has used Linux for years, the idea of software piracy is odd to me.  Why would anyone pirate software when so much free software is available? 

Imagining a world where the same can be said for popular music and movies.. that'd sure be nice.  A world where culture isn't locked up by a few mega-corporations and watered down and ruined for profit. 

I'm excited by the possibilities. 

It's amusing to see animation done with the free blender software is often used to show the capabilities of LCD screens and hardware graphics processors.  Video Editing software is not quite there for free software, but its only a matter of time.  And the next version of the Gnu Image Manipulation Project (GIMP) has single window mode and CMYK.   The tools are almost there.  The funding is there.  The method of distribution is there. 

Sooner or later the media oligopolies should be scared.  The biggest threat to them isn't piracy, it's competition.   I think they know it. 

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