a Faux Pas

The United States and Antigua have been in a bit of a fight.  It started off with the US disallowing online gambling for sites based in Antigua (which is completely legal there).  Antigua, upset that the US allows its own internet gambling, argued their case to the WTO.

The [WTO] agreed with Antigua that it had no effective trade sanctions against the United States other than to suspend its WTO obligations to the United States in respect of copyrights, trademarks and other forms of intellectual property. Antigua now has the right to produce counterfeit copies of Hollywood movies, Microsoft software, or whatnot to satisfy the judgment.
(via TheRegister).

So what started as a tiff around gambling, has opened the door for legalized pirating of Music and Movies.

zookz.com is the first Antiguan-based company to exploit this loophole by offering unlimited downloads of music or movies for $9.95/month, or both for $18.95/month.  Get your hard drives clear and your bandwidth free, you need to strike while the iron is hot, because you can bet that the US will try to close them down.  If you sign up before August 15th, you get a free month of movies for buying their music plan… excellent.  The biggest con is that they do not have a queue system in place yet, so everything must be downloaded one at a time.  A small price to pay.

As a bonus, here are some additional links.

Allofmp3.com was a fantastic Russian-based music site (Russia doesn’t recognize our copyright law).  However, here are the best alternative, yet dodgy pay sites: http://mp3sparks.us/?p=13.

The best singular MP3 downloading site? Amazon.com’s DRM-free music and cheaper than iTunes.  They may just take over Netflix as well.

The best all-you-can-download MP3 site?  Zunepass, which allows you to keep 10 songs per month and unlimited downloads for $14.95/month.

- Downloading like a madman, AFP

So in case you never saw his last big hit White and Nerdy, you can at least be on the early train for Weird Al’s latest single Craigslist posted on youtube.  Admittedly, I had a bit of an unnatural obsession with his music when I was a kid.  How can you hate someone that sings about things as nerdy as you were?

That said, his music has duly followed along with the times and his new single is tackling the somewhat controversial Craigslist (though a little belated) with a remake of the Doors.  Thankfully he didn’t opt for a Twitter parody because the success of the micro-blogging service kinda chaps my ass.  It’s one of those technologies that suddenly feels uncool after it becomes ubiquitous.

Enjoy.

Yours in 3D,
-AFP