Offmessage

The latest round of HD-DVDs have been cracked, only a week after the update.  That, in itself, is not surprising.  What is surprising is the way it came out.  Fascinating.

I have to say this is absolutely no surprise - there are a number of commercial organisations whose business model is based on exactly this activity; uploading duff content to networks and trapping the downloaders. If one is prepared to attempt to download ‘illegal’ content then this is a basic risk. What’s interesting is that, unlike the uploading of duff content to the P2P networks, it’s relatively easy to identify the source of these fake torrents and remove them from trackers. One up (at least so far) for the torrents…

For some reason I can’t quite identify I’ve ended up watching some fascinating rockumentaries over the last week. First up was Don Letts’ amazing “Tales of Dr Funkenstein” (a George Clinton/P-Funk film). Then last night a frank view of Paul Weller and tonight Artsworld showed “Fearless Freaks“, which turned out to be a really moving film about the Flaming Lips. I was expecting it to be a little overblown (like some of their recent TV appearances) but actually it was really close to the bone and utterly enthralling. As one reviewer of the movie over at Amazon says - “there is a fine line between hope and despair in small town America”. All 3 films are well worth a watch, but both Tales of Dr Funkenstein and Fearless Freaks are highly recommended.