John Ó'Ríordáns Blog

The album “Liebe ist Für Alle Da” (“Love is For All”) by German hard rock group Rammstein – currently at No. 2 on Billboard’s European Albums Chart – has been banned from public display in German stores with effect from Nov. 11 on account of its depictions of sadism/masochism, which have been deemed to be harmful to children and young people.

Announcing this ruling, Petra Meier, the deputy president of the Federal Office for the Examination of Media Harmful to Young People, cited the track “Ich tue Dir Weh” (“I Want to Hurt You”) as well as the artwork showing guitarist Richard Kruspe with a masked, naked woman on his knees. The Federal Office objected to the fact that the track includes lines such as “Bites, kicks, heavy blows, nails, pincers, blunt saws – Tell me what you want.”

The German Federal Office for the Examination of Media Harmful to Young People in Bonn also criticized the single “Pussy,” stating that it incites listeners to engage in unprotected sexual intercourse despite the risk of AIDS, although the single was not officially part of the ruling banning the album.

As a result of the ruling, the 11-track Universal album may no longer be advertised or placed on open exhibition in such a way that may be accessed by young people and children under the age of 18 years.

“The ruling will be officially published on Wednesday,” said Meier. “Up until then, the album may continue to be retailed. The decision was made in accordance with Section 18 of the Youth Protection Act.” According to the statistics of the office, 131 albums had been placed on the restricted list in 2007 and 116 last year, while as many as 966 have been put on the list so far this year.

She attributes this sharp increase to the fact that more and more records are being released with content which glorifies violence or is of a racist or pornographic nature, thus breaching the provisions of the German Youth Protection Act. This is the first time that an album by Rammstein has been placed on the restricted list.

The album, released Oct. 10, topped Billboard’s European albums survey on Oct. 29 and has become a big seller globally. In Germany, it hit No. 1 on sales of over 200,000 units, going platinum in the process. In the United States, it entered the Billboard charts at No. 13 and it made No. 16 in the U.K. on Oct. 25.

The album also shot straight to the top of the charts in Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Finland and the Netherlands. It made No. 2 in France, No. 3 in Sweden and Belgium, No. 4 in Portugal, No. 14 in Italy and No. 18 in New Zealand. In has gone platinum in Austria and Finland and gold in France, Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic and Belgium.

The video for “Pussy” has also caused some commotion as it shows what appear to be members of the band participating in sex scenes, although sources close to the band insist that the band members were doubled.

In a declaration on their Facebook site, Rammstein write: “The new Rammstein album has been placed on the restricted list at the instigation of the Ministry of Family Affairs led by Minister Mrs. Ursula von der Leyen. This means that the album is now only available under the counter. If you want to buy the album, make sure that you take proof of your age with you when you go to the retailer of your trust.”

Since launching their career in Berlin in 1995, Rammstein have repeatedly courted controversy with their eight albums, which have touched on such subjects as sadomasochism, homosexuality, incest, abuse, necrophilia, pyromania, cannibalism and sexual violence. The group line-up has remained unchanged since 1995, comprising lead singer Till Lindemann, who writes many of the lyrics, Richard Zven Kruspe (lead guitar), Paul H. Landers (rhythm guitar), Oliver Riedel (bass), Christoph “Doom” Schneider (percussion) and Christian “Flake” Lorenz (keyboards). The Berlin-based band refers to their style as “dance metal,” a combination of metal, hard and industrial rock.

According to the band’s management, the planned winter tour comprising over 50 concerts in 27 European countries has already sold out. Since 1995, Rammstein has played over 450 concerts in more than 35 countries including successful tours of South, Central and North America.

Live performances of the song “Ich tue Dir weh” has also been banned in Germany under the same ruling, and any violation could potentially be punished under German law.

Says purchaser Yannik Hobe of MediMax in Schenefeld, “The album has been selling well so far. However, I personally think that it is appropriate for the CD to be placed on the restricted list. I don’t think the lyrics are acceptable and are certainly not suitable for children. I assume that we will stop stocking the album altogether.”

Department head Jörg Jäger of the Pressezentrum retail store in Lübeck does not think that the ban will have much effect. “The album will sell even better than before,” he says. “We are not taking the album out of stock. From Wednesday, we will be selling it under the counter and will require customers to produce proof of their age. All it means is that the 18-year-old will buy it for his younger sister.”

Says Konrad Reiter of Media Markt Chain in Munich, “The Rammstein album has been selling well here but we will no longer be stocking it as of Wednesday.”

The Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien or BPjM)is an official administrative authority of the German government. Their task is to protect children and adolescents in Germany from any media which might contain harmful or dangerous contents. This work is authorized by the “Youth Protection Law.”

The BPjM can only act on the request of other administrative institutions, not by itself. The German Youth Welfare Departments, among others, can file a complaint against an object. Once an official request has been filed, the BPjM is obliged to act.

The contentious material is examined by a board of 12 representatives consisting of eight different social organizations (such as the artistic and literary community, entertainment industry, youth welfare, teachers, religious groups), three representatives of the federal states as well as the chairwoman of the BPjM. If the board, with a majority of two thirds of the members, decides that the object has a content dangerous for young people, it enters its name into the “list of youth-endangering media”, generally referred to as the “index.”

Distributors of that medium are then no longer permitted to sell, rent out or even present this object in public or to broadcast it to young people. The same goes for advertising for this object. Violations of these restrictions will be punished under German jurisdiction.

There are no official statements from Rammstein’s record company Universal in Berlin or Rammstein’s band members.

Courtesy of Billboard.com

A little while back I commented on Eircom and the music industries plan to filter peoples ability to download music. Now it looks like they are going to implement a 3 strike rule. Should the music industry capture your IP address while downloading music they will contact Eircom (if they are your service provider) and report you. Eircom will then giving you a warning. If you continue to download music and receive two further warnings from Eircom they will cut you off.

Also they will expand this in the future to include downloading movies and content downloaded from other ISPs. If they do not expand to other ISPs  I think Eircom may stand to lose a lot of customers as many people will simply take the three strikes and move to an alternative provider. If one exists in their area.

Should one of the ISPs choose not to sign up to this deal they could capture the majority of the heavy internet users in Ireland.

I assume this tracking by the Music Indistry also includes Music downloaded from bittorrent. I would love to know how they capture your IP address. I thought Bit torrentdidn’t share too much information. But thinking about if you open a direct conenction to someone else they will of course require your IP address.

So be careful, big brother is watching you.

Anybody remember the episode of Fr. Ted with Brendan Grace in it. It was called New Jack City. It’s one of my favourite episodes.

He was Jacks replacement, Fr. Fintan Stack, when Jack got hairy hands and had to be shipped off to a nursing home. Well Fr. Stack used to keep Fr. Ted awake listening to Jungle music really loudly on his Boom Box. I’ve been trying to find that songs for ages and I’ve finally discovered it!

Its a DJ SS Remix of a Cutty Ranks song called Limb by Limb.

I know what I am going to use to annoy the neighbours the next time the mood takes me.

I read the following in the Examiner and on Digg today about the Music Industries trying to force Eircom to filter my internet connection and limit my bandwidth.

A) Why should any ISP monitor traffic. I don’t want anybody monitoring any of my activies be they on the internet or elsewhere. I value my privacy. Not that I have anything to hide mind I just don’t trust the competence of the people holding this data.
Also I download legal files using torrents etc. so why should I suffer downloading these files because people choose to use that technology to download copyrighted material?

B) Why is downloading movies “hogging bandwidth”? I paid for my DSL line. Why shouldn’t I use it. I think this is why this action will never win. If Eircom limit the bandwidth you can use for torrents etc. people won’t need bigger, and more expensive connections, and Eircom will lose money.

So to save this money Eircom will fight tooth and nail. Which is good news for the rest of us.

From The Examiner:
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As CD sales on the Irish market continue to plummet, showing losses of €44 million in the past six years, four of the largest record companies have taken Eircom to the High Court over illegal music downloads.

In the first case of its kind, the record companies are taking on the primary internet service provider rather than individual so-called pirates.

The music industry estimates that for every single legal download there are 20 illegal ones. Latest figures show that on a global scale 20 billion music files were illegally downloaded in 2006.

Because of illegal downloading and other market factors, the Irish music industry is experiencing “a dramatic and accelerating decline” in income, said Willie Kavanagh, managing director of EMI records (Ireland) and chairman of the Irish Recorded Music Association.

The Irish market for sound recordings suffered a decline in total sales from €146m in 2001 to €102m last year, a fall of 30%, he said.

A substantial portion of the decline in sales could be attributed to illegal downloading services and the increasing availability of broadband internet access here, said Mr Kavanagh.

He said legal actions brought against persons with the highest numbers of illegal files on their computers at specific times had proven very costly and time consuming. The companies believed selective legal action was not sufficient to safeguard their property rights.

The four leading record labels — EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner — have brought the High Court action aimed at compelling Eircom, as the largest broadband internet service provider in the state, to take specific measures to prevent its networks being used for the illegal free downloading of music.

The companies are challenging Eircom’s refusal to use filtering technology or other appropriate measures to voluntarily block or filter material from its network, which is being used to download music in violation of the companies’ copyright and licensing rights.

The proceedings arose after Eircom told the companies last October it was not in a position to run the filter software on its servers.

In his affidavit, Mr Kavanagh outlined measures by the record industry aimed at discouraging record piracy, including public awareness campaigns and legal actions against individuals engaged in piracy.

Mr Kavanagh said illegal downloaders come from all walks of life and the reality for many young people was that they have never known a position where they actually have to pay for sound recordings.

From Digg:
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It looks like the IFPI has shifted its focus from the individual filesharer to the ISPs. Last month, the IFPI won a court case in Denmark, and the ISP “Tele2″ was ordered to block all access to The Pirate Bay. Tele2 announced later that it will fight the decision.

Banning illegal filesharing from their network, voluntary or not, is in the best interest of ISPs according to the IFPI: “Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth,” they state.

Been listening to online radio a lot recently (Well in work anyway so I don’t use up all my own bandwidth). As ye know on the right of the main page I show which songs I have listened too most recently. Anyway in an obvious plug two of my friends are current broadcasting over the ‘net (and good ol’ FM as well).

For those of you of the heavy Metal persuasion a VERY good Irish based (Galway) metal show called bleedingeardrums can be listened to here.
And for those of you with a little soul can listen to Discos radio show (UK) can be listened to here.

Also I would recommend visiting Shoutcast for a good list of online radio stations.

This is pretty cool. I have been running amaroK for a while now to listen to my Music and each time I listened to a song it submitted it to last.fm.

Well I finally decided to visit the site after reinstalling amaroK recently and wow! It has fantasitc stats on my listening trends and also suggests songs and artists to listen to

Below you can find a feed from the site showing what I am listening to right now (This feed will update automatically each time I play a song on my PC).

I also put a smaller version on the sidebar so you can listen as well. Just click on the links and it will bring ou to a page showing some of my listening stats and will also give you the option to listen to a 30 second sample of what I am listening to. Cool huh?

[rsspara:http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/thesraid/recenttracks.rss]

I was filling out the online survey recently launched by Novell looking at the applications people would most like to see on Linux. One of the applications that people would most like to see on Linux is iTunes and if we could get it on Linux that’d be great. But in the meantime I’ve been using amaroK to move music to my iPod. For those who may not be aware of it AmaroK is one of the best, if not the best, music management applications around. However as it is installed as standard on most modern SuSE systems I am sure many of you have already had some exposure to it. This article is an outline of the what I think are the best features in amaroK and why it’s a joy to use. Please bare in mind however I am not writing about every feature in amaroK (that’s what the manual is for) but just the features that have drawn me to it.

The Player Window
The first thing that I noticed about amaroK was its interface. As it is developed by KDE the look and feel fit in very well with my current KDE theme. The Application window itself is laid out in a very easy to navigate manner, with the tracklist in the right larger pane and your navigation options in the left pane. Particularly useful is the left panes ability to slide in and out so maximising the about of information that can be displayed. Everything is laid out in a very clean, easy to use and intuitive manner

ID3 tags
In my opinion the most useful feature of amaroK is its ability to fill in the ID3 tags automatically. The ID3 tag of a track is basically a way of storing the name of the song, the name of the artist, the album name and other information about the track in the file so it can be read by any music player. Other music players I had used didn’t have this function (at least not for free) and there is nothing more annoying then trying to organise a music collection where every song you have is called “track1″ or “unknown title”.
To update the ID3 tags on a song simply right click on a track, select “Edit Track Information” and choose “Fill in Tags Using MusicBrainz”. To ensure you get the correct data multiple options may be presented to you, just select the one that matches and away you go. Not only will this update the tracks information in the player window but it will also write the data to the file. Once these tags have been filled in properly organising your music collection is a breeze. The tags are also very useful when you transfer the file to another machine or an MP3 player. As well as that there is a search bar built into the playlist window that allows you to quickly search for a particular song using the information provided by the ID3 tags.

Album Art
Another nice feature is amaroKs ability to download album covers from Amazon. Simply select the “Context” tab from the left pane and click on the cover with a question mark. You can cycle through all the available results from Amazon and for some reason should one of them not be correct you can refine your search using the “New Search” button.

This is a nice feature when used with the “On Screen Display” that flashes the name of the song briefly at the top of your screen along with the album cover. However this can be very time consuming if you have a large collection. So amaroK allows you to download covers for all your songs at once! Simply open the “Cover Manager” from the “Tools” menu and click the “Fetch Missing Covers” button. Easy! Should an incorrect album cover be assigned to an album you can unset the cover and search for it again individually. If the cover cannot be found you can set the cover manually by browsing to an image of the album or simply dropping the image in the albums folder. Again a search bar, similar to the one in the playlist window, is available to make finding the album you are looking for that much easier. Also some built in searches are included to find all albums without a cover etc.

Transfer to/from MP3 Player
So now from a collection of “unknowntrack.mp3″ playlists you now have mp3s with full ID3 tags and even album covers. This is very useful for organising your music collection on your PC but even more so when using a portable MP3 player, such as an iPod, as an MP3 player uses these tags to organise your collection.

To copy songs from your Music collection to/from your iPod simply connect your iPod to your machine and select “Media Device” in amaroK. Click on the “Connect” button and a list of the songs already on your MP3 Player will appear. Now all you have to do is drag and drop songs and select “Transfer”. And that’s it! The songs you selected are now on your iPod. Who needs iTunes?! Not me!

Context Menu
But that’s not all amaroK has a lot of other features that make it a joy to use. On the left side of the amaroK window (which doesn’t have to be open all the time by the way as amaroK can be run from the system tray and operated using the windows key on your keyboard) you have a context pane. Within this pane you have four useful tabs which I will outline very briefly.

Home
This contains quite simply

Your 10 most recently played tracks
Your 10 most frequently played tracks
Your 10 newest tracks

Current
Current is the most useful of all these tabs. It shows you the name of the current track along with the artist and album name. Underneath this it shows the album cover and when the track was first/last played. Under that it shows your favourite (most played) tracks for this artist and under that what albums you have for that artist. Fantastic for navigating your way around your collection!
Also it can suggest similar songs to the one you are playing using the LastFM service, which is very useful for discovering new bands you may not have been aware of. Personally I have discovered a host of new bands I was not previously aware of.

Lyrics
Exactly what is says on the tin. Allows you to search for lyrics using the Lyrc database. Also if it doesn’t find the lyrics for the song you have the option to add the lyrics to the database yourself. Thus helping your fellow amaroK users.

Artist
The artist tab allows you to view info on the currently playing artist/album from the Wikipedia database. This is achieved by embedding Konquerer in the left pane. And since you have a fully featured webbrowser you can follow links, view images and basically get the full benefit of the data stored in Wikipedia.

More Panes

Apart from the Context Pane there are other panes that can be accessed in the left pane.

Collection
This pane stores all the music in your collection. Your collection are the folders where your music files are stored. You can change which folders make up your collection from the configure amaroK menu. You can sort your collection by Artist, Album, Genre, Year etc. Also this section has the, now familiar, search bar.

Playlist
There is a playlist pane where your different playlist types are stored. You have “Dynamic Playlists” which contain “Random Songs” and “Suggested Songs” playlists which uses your listening habits to dynamically create a playlist of songs. Other playlists contain albums and artists of the same type. Also you can listen to Radio Streams and Podcasts. AmaroK has some Radio Streams preconfigured so you can try them out. A great site for finding more Radio Streams is Shoutcast. AmaroK also has smart playlists which are collections of 50 most played tracks, Newest Tracks etc. All very useful for organising your collection.

Media Device
This pane, as mentioned earlier, allows you to copy music files between MP3 players. Currently, as far as I am aware, only iPods are supported.

Files
And finally the files pane which allows you to navigate through your file system for playable files. This has a very useful search panel built it which allows you to search through the current folder for music files.

Shortcuts
And finally one of the most convenient aspects of amaroK is it’s ability to operate while being minimised to the system tray. When the main window is minimised you can skip tracks and stop/start the player by using the windows button as a hot key. For example pressing the windows button and the “B” key skips forward. When a track begins an On Screen Display shows the current track information (Track, Album, Artist, Album Cover). If you miss the data displayed by the OSD, as it is only displayed for a moment, you can hover over the amaroK icon in the system tray which will show you the same information.

Overall amaroK can’t be beaten in my opinion. It is so straightforward to use and packed which so many useful extras I can’t but recommend it to everybody. It is very well integrated with KDE and maintains the look and feel of my theme. And when I want I can make it disappear to the system tray and control it using shortcut keys. Also nearly everything is customisable. Shortcurt keys can be changed, the engine that plays the tracks can be changed and much more. Brilliant!