Independent artists hit top 40
The BBC report that under new chart rules, Essex rock band Koopa have made chart history by becoming the first unsigned band to land a UK top 40 hit. This is brilliant! It shows what the Internet is doing for Independent artists.
What's really sad however, is that they used their fame in being the first “unsigned” band to get in the charts to… uh… get signed with a record label!
Wonchop hits MTV
On a related note, the animator Ben “Wonchop” Smallman, who first found his home at wonchop.hippygeek.co.uk, has released a music video for Hypocrite by Akira the Don. The video is going to be aired on MTV Europe!
Congratulations Ben! It gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside to know that I made just a small contribution to his success by setting up his first web site, allowing him to share his animations with the world!
Creative Commons 3.0
The Creative Commons 3.0 licenses are now available. It's brilliant to see that they've taken into account the concerns of Debian Legal, which I mentioned to them back in 2004.
However, the “parallel distribution provision” suggested by Debian Legal was not adopted, which may or may not mean that the CC licenses will still not be considered “DFSG free”. To be honest, this particular requirement doesn't really bother me. The issue centres on “Technological Protection Measures” or “Digital Rights Management” as the media industry likes to call it. As I see DRM as being flawed by the laws of physics (if it can be perceived, it can be recorded) and economics (this is the information age, not the industrial age) – it doesn't really bother me either way.
Creative Commons make a bit of a jab at Debian Legal by basically claiming that the fact that they're allowing documentation under the GNU Free Documentation License into Debian, means they would now be hypocrites not to allow certain Creative Commons 3.0 licenses.