I crossed a mini-Rubicon on Thursday: I finished ripping both my classical and my jazz discs. (Somewhat ironic, in light of the Sony Boycott Blog activities—but I haven’t bought many new CDs, if any at all, in the last year.)

New totals for the losslessly ripped files: 355 artists, 441 albums, 130.64 GB for 5584 tracks, 19.4 days of playing time.

WSJ: What if we give it away? The Journal’s free article today covers Harvey Danger’s experiment in giving away content, and in the process provides a concise description of the business model for bands today, as well as why it doesn’t usually work:

CD sales aren’t a great money-maker for most bands: Absent a huge hit album, a band’s best chance to make money is through a combination of publishing royalties, concert-ticket sales and merchandising — all driven by the hard work of creating and keeping a dedicated fan base that will buy not just a current CD, but back-catalog albums and future releases as well. The problem is that takes time and patience labels increasingly don’t have.

“The time frame for success is a lot longer than what a label will give you,” [Harvey Danger guitarist Jeff] Lin says.

The band’s solution—to use the music itself as the free promo for the CD—is insightful, taking advantage as it does of the classic “viral infection” model for marketing experience goods. If you get the barriers to experiencing the music as low as possible, you “infect” as many possible listeners as possible. And it appears to be working, within the limits of the band's terms of success.

Of course, the question is, what’s the incentive for users to buy the CD once they have the music for free? Here the band is smart, offering a custom bundle with a shirt and other hard goods for listeners who buy from the band's site.

The model works for Harvey Danger even though they don’t plan to tour. I can only imagine how well the model would work for a band with Harvey Danger’s name recognition—or even a fraction of it—that does embrace touring.

Nice stuff on Jeff Lin’s blog about this, too.

According to News.com, Sony is going to release a patch for the rootkit DRM mechanism (created by First 4 Internet) that it has been installing on customers’ computers. The patch is available on Sony BMG’s site (though as of this writing not linked from their home page) and will be available through major antivirus manufacturers.

Well, that’s dandy. But it doesn’t address the main problem. Yes, it makes the DRM software visible and eliminates the $SYS$ hidey-hole that could have provided cover for numerous other infections on compromised systems. But it doesn’t eliminate the core issue, which is that an audio recording is modifying the computer systems on which it is played, patching device drivers and otherwise modifying the operations of the machine.

As far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t change anything. They still aren’t getting a red cent from me.

Oh, and the best part? If you go to the update page, it only works with IE...

Courtesy the Times Online, I now have a new set of obscure music to hunt after, the contents of John Peel’s record box at the time of his death. The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks” has been mentioned in so many articles about him, I’m surprised that it hasn’t been reissued in download friendly form. Other surprises: Cat Power’s “Headlights” b/w “Darling said sir,” three records from Eddie & Ernie (who?); three from Nilsson; .

Less surprising than affirming: Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” Pavement’s “Demolition Plot,” Sam and Dave’s “I Can’t Stand Up For Falling Down,” a foreign pressing of “Come Together” b/w “Octopus’s Garden” AND “Something,” and 10 different White Stripes records (some with multiple copies).

Like I said, quite a shopping list.

Read this article at Mark’s Sysinternals Blog about how a Sony copy-protected CD installed a rootkit on his system, and the lengths he had to go to to get the normal functions of his PC back. I’ll wait.

Back? Confused? Let me summarize:

1. By inserting this Sony CD in his computer, Mark’s computer was infected with software that installed hidden processes, modified his CD drivers, and tricked the OS into hiding any directory that started with the sequence $SYS$.
2. Using the features in this software (commonly called a rootkit), the Sony DRM could monitor how many times it was being played and limit the burning of music contained on the CD to another disc. However, it also makes the user’s computer vulnerable to other infections.
3. When Mark tried to uninstall the software by deleting it, his CD drive completely stopped working.

Over the line? Sony obliterated the line long ago. This is egregious. As one Slashdot poster points out, this inverts the argument about P2P networks being hives of spyware, trojans, and viruses. We no longer have to go to P2P networks to infect our computers; they now get infected by music produced by the major labels.

As if that wasn’t enough: first, Sony’s artists, such as Van Zant, whose CD infected Mark’s computer, have nothing to gain and everything to lose from this DRM madness. Second, technically Mark is now a criminal for undoing the damage that Sony did to his system, thanks to the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA.

As of this moment, I’m boycotting all Sony products—music, movies, video games, electronics. And I call on others to do the same. It’s simple. If you treat me with disrespect, I stop doing business with you; if you treat me as a criminal, I call you on it; if you ship a product that disables my computer, it’s war.

Because make no mistake, this is war. More to come; watch this space.