Some lunatic judge here in Amsterdam decided to block access to a website for all Dutch users. Boy is he going to regret this ridiculously useless verdict! Ignoring the sheer technical impossibility of enforcing such 'boycot', let's see what lies at the heart of the verdict: A private Dutch organisation (Stichting BREIN) managed to persuade legal authorities to block access to a bunch of servers in Sweden. In other words, if you're in The Netherlands, private organisations, with their own commercial agendas and for-profit priorities, now have control over what you can see and do online. Today it's blocking access to a site whose legality is questioned, tomorrow it's websites that criticize powerful corporations or question government policies. Yet another very dangerous step towards full internet censorship where private organisations and uninformed lawmakers control the information we receive. The free spirit of the internet is being destroyed, one lawsuit at a time, and taking its place is a bland corporate-controlled regulated monstrosity, of which the information we're allowed to consume is sanitized and policed beforehand, by strangers, whose judgement needs to be accepted by all, blindly. Let's see what the results of this will be: - Knowing the Dutch, they…

2004

this is part 6, the rest is here

"So if anyone ever wonders why music can often be tiring to listen to, this is exactly why. Mixed in with the music are thousands and thousands of clicks, just like these. Of course, when the loudness war really is finally over, the record companies will be able to re-release their back catalog once again in unclipped versions... Perhaps they know what they are doing after all?" from a great article at RecordProducer.com. Glad at least someone is supporting my views from 2004.