Nov 28, 2005

BSWC Podex #3: From Mexico City to St. Petersburg


Black Sweater, White Cat Podcast Extra #3 is here. It's a fun set that takes us from Mexico City's Gigaboy to the sounds of Messer Chups from the Russian Federation. Both have releases on Comfortstand.com. The set also has a great tune from Bep that can be found on Jamendo.com and more from Freiraum's fantastic new release. It is a wide world of copyleft music and we are loving it!

Giga Lounge by Gigaboy
Off by Bep
Spiegelverkehrte Leuchtkugel by Freiraum
Devil exit from fashion by Messer Chups

Nov 27, 2005

Rapp has the Skinny on DRM

Our Friend, colleague, WBCR-LP member, programmer, board member and damn good copyright attorney, Paul Rapp, is also a contributing writer to Metroland, "the Alternative Newsweekly of New York's Capital Region". He sent us a link to his latest column dealing with Digital Rights Management and the SONY BMG brou ha ha:

The Biggest Hack

As I mentioned here a few months ago, the big record labels have been trying for years to limit what you can do with the music you buy on a CD. What they are trying to do falls under the broad category of what’s called Digital Rights Management, or DRM. If you haven’t already, you’ll be seeing these initials a lot in the future.

They’ve been vainly trying to sell you “copy-protected” CDs, which means for the illegally inflated prices you pay for a CD, you might be getting music with digital handcuffs attached. With copy-protected CDs, if you try to play your CD on your computer, bad stuff happens. Want to bounce the music from your CD into your iPod? No can do!

The industry has been told for years that this is tilting at windmills; that, try as they might, they aren’t going to bend the will of the consumer, and they aren’t going to outrun the smarts of the hacker community, which will deftly undo any shackles the industry tries to put on digital music. Information wants to be free, fight the power, etc. The DRM dog ain’t gonna hunt, bubba.

A few months ago, SONY BMG, in their infinite wisdom, tried something new. They put a few different self-executing DRM programs on a bunch of their CDs. When you stuck one of these CDs into your computer, the programs installed themselves into your Windows operating system. They didn’t tell you they were doing this; if they did, the disclosure was buried in a click-through user agreement that may or may not have popped up on your computer screen when you stuck the CD into your CD drive. These programs took up a considerable amount of space and slowed down your computer. Even worse, these programs monitored what you listened to, and in some cases reported findings, via the Internet, back to SONY BMG’s “security vendor,” a company pleasantly named SunnComm. These programs have features that hide themselves from detection and are hard to remove when detected, and their presence on your machine makes you vulnerable to attacks from vicious hackers. Well, more attacks, I should say, since you’ve already been attacked by a vicious hacker: SONY...

There is more here...

Nov 26, 2005

BSWC Internet Exlusive: Podex 2 featuring Lisa DeBenedictis


This BSWC Podcast Extra features one of the CC queens of the internet, Lisa DeBenedictis. The set starts with Solcarlus from Jamendo.com and finishes with Mercy Machine. Mercy Machine is on Magnatune.com along with Lisa DB. It's a great CC set. Music for the people, by the people, distributed by the people. Enjoy.

Fond sonore n°6 by solcarlus
Pull Up The Shade by Lisa DeBenedictis
The Cuckoo by Lisa DeBenedictis
In Your Bed (instrumental mix) by Mercy Machine

Thanks to Subsystem 7 for doing the over-the-air broadcast tonight. His BSWC will be posted within days. Keep a lookout. I'm listening right now and it is great. Thank you Subsystem.

Nov 22, 2005

Black Sweater, White Cat Online Exclusive: BSWC Podcast Extra #1


Biotic is on vacation in the Rockies this week, but with the power of the internet here is a tasty tidbit of a set he put together last night. Great new music from Freiraum out of Switzerland along with Eloi Brunelle from Montreal, a Christian Didelot release from Jamendo.com and a BSWC favorite by Bruce Lenkei that was released on the Comfort Stand netlabel compilation, "Comfort Cake".

Nov 20, 2005

BSWC Audio File from 11.19.05 Available

Here is the audio file from Saturday's program. Thanks, as always, to the Internet Archive for providing a home for so much cool stuff, including Black Sweater, White Cat.

Nov 13, 2005

BSWC Audio File from 11.12.05 Available

Here is the audio file from Saturday's program. Thanks, as always, to the Internet Archive for providing a home for so much cool stuff, including Black Sweater, White Cat.

Nov 11, 2005

BSWC Artist Playlist for 11.12.05

  1. L'arrivée by Ehma
  2. pique-nique et jeux dans l'eau by zooey
  3. Le nombril by Au Lit les Mômes
  4. Les petits poissons by Echo lali
  5. y a des jours avec et des jours sans by thierry blanchard
  6. Fanfare de mensonges by Myassa
  7. Autumn Leaves (feat. Martina) by Centerpole
  8. When It Happens It Moves All B by Telefon Tel Aviv
  9. Knock Me Down Girl by Slicker
  10. Small Bird's Got It, Yeah! by LeutOhm
  11. Sword Removed (Anorganik's Oldskool Flava mix...) by DJ Bootsie
  12. Appreciate by Jay Haze
  13. Your sound, my skin by DOC PILOT
  14. the dubbed coil of smoke by aphilas
  15. voyage05192 by Ohrlab
  16. Brainwank (Psycho Foo Edit) by Colektro
  17. Problèmes d'amour (the original) by Alexander Robotnick
  18. pulse-(whomadewho mix) by namosh
  19. Summersound by Self
  20. New Seclusion by Paul Keeley
  21. Good Touch (Eloi Brunelle Remix) by Alland Byallo
  22. Portfolio beta by Pol B & Binarymind
  23. I Can't (Stop) by Paul Keeley
  24. Persecution Of My Pinup Girl by Freiraum

Nov 10, 2005

More on Sony-BMG and their sneaky DRM Ploy

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a list of CD's from Sony that carry the self-installing rootkit that has created problems for those who purchase and rip music from Sony and many of their label subsidiaries.

From EFF's list:

Trey Anastasio, Shine (Columbia)
Celine Dion, On ne Change Pas (Epic)
Neil Diamond, 12 Songs (Columbia)
Our Lady Peace, Healthy in Paranoid Times (Columbia)
Chris Botti, To Love Again (Columbia)
Van Zant, Get Right with the Man (Columbia)
Switchfoot, Nothing is Sound (Columbia)
The Coral, The Invisible Invasion (Columbia)
Acceptance, Phantoms (Columbia)
Susie Suh, Susie Suh (Epic)
Amerie, Touch (Columbia)
Life of Agony, Broken Valley (Epic)
Horace Silver Quintet, Silver's Blue (Epic Legacy)
Gerry Mulligan, Jeru (Columbia Legacy)
Dexter Gordon, Manhattan Symphonie (Columbia Legacy)
The Bad Plus, Suspicious Activity (Columbia)
The Dead 60s, The Dead 60s (Epic)
Dion, The Essential Dion (Columbia Legacy)
Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten (Epic)


Another disturbing development in this mess is the discovery of a version of Breplibot Trojan that uses the cloaking properties of the Sony Rootkit to evade detection in the users system.

Nov 6, 2005

BSWC Audio File from 11.05.05 Available

Here is the audio file from Saturday's program. Thanks, as always, to the Internet Archive for providing a home for so much cool stuff, including Black Sweater, White Cat.

Nov 5, 2005

BSWC Artist Playlist for 11.05.05


Eiffel Tower lights reflection
Originally uploaded by alpower.

Spent some quality time with Musique-libre.org the last few nights. The first half hour tonight will have a definite francophone tilt.

  1. Berceuse de Julie by Ehma
  2. Assise sur un banc by Ehma
  3. l'ame soeur by Audrey
  4. Capotes à un Franc by El Manu
  5. en bord de nationale by sam
  6. le petit pas panal by sam
  7. Sarkozy by CaClo
  8. Le temps by El Manu
  9. Cool Fresh Apple Cider by The Bran Flakes
  10. Just My Luck (fourstones mix) by fourstones.net
  11. thieves by fourstones.net
  12. Shaken Not Stirred by Br Cleve & His Lush Orchestra
  13. You & me baby in my motocarro by Alcachofo
  14. Accidental Beatnik by Coconut Monkeyrocket
  15. riptide.mix by Lushy
  16. lifelong fiction by aphilas
  17. Falling by Twizzle
  18. The Shnay Speaks by Cagey House
  19. Yellow_Chaos by Realaze
  20. Bessere Welt by Zirkulardynamik
  21. Arcade - keep on by stereoskill
  22. Moonlight Zombie Dance by Bruce Lenkei
  23. African melo by zestoff
  24. the spank (Florian Filsinger - Salamandroids mix) by geistfrei
  25. Fear by Mr. Zack
  26. Upon Rock City by Books On Tape
  27. Ballad Of A Drunkard by Talking Cure

Nov 2, 2005

Sony BMG is Caught Red-Handed...Bad Sony, Bad Sony



Taking Digital Rights Management to even more dark and evil extremes, Sony BMG has been caught distributing CD's that slip a form of spyware into the user's operating system. Boing, Boing has blogged about it and has a link to the (very) technical explanation. This is a nasty development.

From Boing, Boing:

"A technical dissection by the mighty Mark Russinovich of Sony's rootkit-based DRM. Sony uses genuine black-hat techniques to install a rootkit, even choosing a Windows-sounding name for a service just like your favourite backdoor, and about as easy to detect or remove. Basically, Sony puts the sort of malware on its customers' PCs that the rest of the world spends alot of money fighting."