Cyber Punk: Internet Underground Meets Salt Lake Underground
Archived
Okay, so you’ve all heard of hacking, the internet, etc. But what should it mean to you? Well plenty, I think. I have always been drawn toward the “Underground.” I picked up my first issue of SLUG not long after I moved to this great state, and I laughed my ass off. I refer to it as my “ill-literature” and get pissed when I can’t find a copy of it anywhere. I read SLUG. I laugh. And yet the fact that it is underground makes it somehow more appealing. Sometimes SLUG was all I had to tide me over.
And then, I got a computer.
I learned about the internet. And what do you think the first thing I looked up was. Hmmm… well much as there is to see and do in the vast expanse we call CyberSpace, I bypass all of it, find the nearest search engine and type in one word. Warez.
Some ‘splaining is in order. Warez is the hacker term for pirated software. (Note: SLUG Magazine in no way condones pirated software and does not… oh fuck it.) A hacker friend of mine said it was a good word to look up.
Thus began my journey into the “undernet.”
After searching through many broken links, missing pages and generally wading through a river of shit, I came to a conclusion. Warez is an old hat. The pirated software community is not what it used to be. Sites openly distributing the latest software, people downloading an unknown program just for the sheer thrill, readily accessible virus sites where you could infect your work or school with the latest virus…I had missed the “Golden Age.”
So my mind, ever thirsting for knowledge, found a few sites purely containing info on hacking. I learned all about hacking. The complete history of computer and telephone hacking dating back to the ’80s. Sure, a lot of it was just technical B.S. but most was very interesting. I learned the real stories about hackers in prison. About the U.S. secret service crackdown on hacking. About how Microsoft secretly supported hacking (pirated copies of Windows 3.1 made it the most popular OS in the world, despite it being a complete piece of shit). About people hacking web sites for fun and profit.
To make a long story short, I know a lot about hacking history. (If you know something that maybe I don’t, I would love to hear about it.) And hacking history is being made right now. Time to introduce you to another hacking term. MP3s.
MP3 stands for Mpeg compression 3 or some shit like that. But this is what really pertains to all you Sluggers: MP3s are music files; CD quality sound, full length songs, 4MB (average) of hard drive space per song. Prior to this technology, the same song would take up 40+ megabytes of space.
A new underground arose, but this time I was a part of it! People ripped songs and even entire CDs for distribution over the internet. Suddenly my music spending went waaaay down from $15 for a CD with two good songs to $0 and about 10 minutes of my time to download those songs. I filled up my hard drive with music. Good music. Music that would cost me $450+ just to get all the stuff I would even WANT. Finally I found a way to rip off the establishment. (And we all know that few people deserve it more than the big record companies.) Through MP3s, music was available sometimes BEFORE it was in stores.
And that brings us to now. The Golden Age of MP3s is nearly over. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is actively taking down MP3 sites and going so far as taking legal action in the matter. Recently they won a case against three sites. These sites were all fined $100,000 for EACH song distributed. Fortunately for them, the RIAA said they would not have to pay in exchange for a promise to never be involved with the distribution of MP3s again.
Geffen Records (Nirvana‘s label) is also jumping on the site killing bandwagon. They took it upon themselves to shut down every last site on one of the biggest, and certainly the best, site lists of all time: “Blex page of good MP3s.” The sites started dropping like flies and, under pressure from a man named Jim Griffin, Blex took down his sitelist. For more info (and an interview with Blex, and one with Jim Griffin himself) go to www.dimensionmusic.com.
All that aside, MP3s are still really good in some regards. You can still rip (record) CDs or tapes and use them for your personal use. You can also send them through E-mail to a friend and they can send them to you. Hmmmm…. I just thought of several ways to reduce your collective music expenses. There are still sites out there if you can find them, where you can download songs but they are disappearing.
If you have a band, MP3s are a great way to get publicity, almost for free. Say you want people to hear your music: You make a recording, make copies (CD or tape, whatever you can afford), and try to sell them all or find a store that will and maybe make your money back. Best way? Hardly! Say you have a friend who is hacker savvy. You give him the original recording (Hopefully on a CD) he rips it into his computer, and then either sets up a web site (free worldwide publicity, free distribution of your music, and hopefully you get fans), and/or uploads the songs to other sites where thousands of people worldwide can sample it.
Many no-name bands have done this. They are smart and realize that this is good for their publicity. Even big bands like The Grateful Dead and Phish have made their music publicly available to their fans in spite of pressure from the corporate whore for them not to. Anyone in a band can see the obvious advantages of doing this. Will it solve all your problems and make you rich and famous? No. Will it give you cheap publicity? Yes.
Hey maybe all this shit is boring the hell out of you or whatever, but if it’s not I would sure love to hear your thoughts on the matter. E-mail me at NoPretentious@mauimail.com and I can answer any questions you have. I want to maybe write other columns on the “undernet,” so voice your support if you care.
Next column. Emulation. Why is it so damn cool? —NoPretentiousCodename, “CyberPunk Extraordinaire”
Read more underground commentary from the archives:
No Doubt: The End of Solidarity is Irony
Rage Against the Machine
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