Ah, but I found a guy that has rekindled in my heart the hope that we may see some new and innovative scams soon.

Recently, I read an article that laid out a method of searching mp3 directories across the web for music.  I followed the instructions and damned if I didn’t find results for all the searches I made.  I was pretty impressed, but seeing as how I don’t download music illegally, it wasn’t of much use to me, so I quickly forgot about the bookmark.  Until today.  I was trying to download one of the free albums from ytcracker, but the page he directs you to is inaccessible.  Then I remembered this incredible link I found, so I fired it up and gave it a spin.  Which led me to Wally.

Meet Wally( wallywashis.name ).

Remember that article I told you I read, concerning how to search mp3 directories?  Well, Wally obviously read this article as well. As a result, he has packed his directory full of files with names bearing thousands of song titles(most of which would be illegal to download).

Doing a search for ytcracker brought me to his site.  Seeing the normal directory structure, I clicked the album I wanted and was rewarded with links to files bearing the song names.  Clicking a song name however, sends you to a login page. Well, that can’t be a big deal, right?  All he wants is a username and password.  He’s not even looking for an email address.  Enter a username and password and click submit… and I’m presented with this page. For those that don’t want to take the time to submit a bogus login/pass, here’s the content:

Wally says:

To help support downloads you must complete this free offer before your account will work. You will not be able to download until you complete the survey or free offer.

Thanks, –Wally

How does this work?

Once the advertiser determines that the info you entered is real (usually instantly) my server will recieve a message from the advertising company and your account will be activated.

I have a different question. Can you help me?

Please email me if you have any other problems or questions. I will be glad to help.

I want the easy way out. If I email you and beg, will you let me in?

No, please do not waste your time. It is quicker and easier to fill in the form than to wait for my reply that says ‘No!’. It would be nice to let you in without this, but bandwidth costs have become too much.

On this page, Wally sends you to an ad server that he’s an affiliate for.

Oh, and you were so close to having that song too.

Well, I’m sure if I had been looking for something other than free music I could get anywhere else, I might suspend my disbelief and actually waste precious moments of my life filling out a bogus car loan application in an effort to get the music I wanted so badly. Which makes this scam such an ingenious endeavour. Say you visit Wally’s page with his hundreds of thousands of links looking for Metallica.  You won’t find them on his front page directory listing, but a simple search will result in hundreds of links.  Only having obscure listings on his static page keeps him from drawing attention of people with the horsepower to put him in jail for life.  A human search for anything illegal however will provide you results to salivate by.

Wally conveniently explains the fact that he only lists legal and obscure downloads while making you search for illegal music in his blog:

My complete collection currently contains 797,707 albums composed by roughly 170,000 artists. Naturally, browsing this number of files is overwhelming so I can only list a limited number of artists/bands in each directory. To list all of those files in one directory would create a several hundred megabyte html file. Needless to say, that would be a waste of my bandwidth and your time.

Wally just doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time.

So let’s think about this.  You want to download illegally obtained music and happen upon Wally’s site.  You want this music so badly that you’re willing to waste a portion of your life earning him a referral fee while visiting his affiliate link.  Now, Wally tells you that their server is going to hook you up by telling Wally’s server that you were a good boy and asked someone how you could get clearer skin. Here’s what really happens, however.  Ready?  Wait for it:

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing is going to happen after you make Wally a few bucks.  Why does he need to do anything?  What are you going to do?  Are you going to tell someone that you tried to download some music illegally but didn’t get what Wally promised you?

So, think about this.  For the effort of creating thousands of bogus links, Wally is making some dough a tiny bit at a time.  He’s not likely to be carted away to prison for sharing music illegally because he’s not sharing music.  He’s providing links with the names that contain the text of songs, albums and artists.  That’s not illegal.  The genius is in not taking anything tangible away from you.  Wally caused you to waste a few minutes of your time, which leaves people feeling more like a fool than a victim and they will likely go about their business, resuming the search for illegal music.

Do you still have even a glimmer of hope that Wally is the real deal, simply being persecuted by ignorant and cynical luddites such as myself?  Well, let’s take a gander at his picture again:

Man, that looks like one honest face.  Like seriously honest.  In fact, that may be the most honest-looking face on the planet.  Hey, don’t take my word for it.  Just read the article which explains that this is a computer-generated image based on the facial traits that are considered to look the most trustworthy.

Thumbs up to you, Wally.  You may be a scamming piece of shit, but you do it with style.

Man, it seems like these guys have hit the bottom of the barrel.

Hehe, just kidding. Now they want to get paid for the 30 second previews used to sell their music.

Although the purchasing public continue to fund them, the recording industry doesn’t let appreciation get in the way of suing the very same people that line their pockets.  This though, surprised even me and I’m not shocked by much that they do.  Charging people to listen to a thirty second clip so you can sell them an overpriced album?

Fantastic!

that he wouldn’t receive any money from the reissues, released on November 2,

“Morrissey does not approve such releases and would ask people not to bother buying them. Morrissey receives no royalty payments from EMI for any back catalogue, and has not received a royalty from EMI since 1992.”

and in case you’re not clear on his stance:

“Morrissey last received a royalty payment from Warners ten years ago and, once again, he would ask people not to bother buying the reissued LPs or CDs.”

After reading the article, it’s clear that the people with the warm-fuzzies just aren’t paying attention.  Morrissey doesn’t give two shits about EMI and Warner suing your dead relatives and pets.  He’s just not getting any more money from it, so he asks that you please buy an album that he will make money on.

The long and short of the issue is this.  All of you that are posting and commenting in regards to artists being trodden upon in this, just give it a fucking rest.  They signed the contracts with their eyes wide open.  The labels have been fucking the listener for a long time and the artists that signed their rights away further empowered them to fuck us harder and in larger numbers.

If it weren’t an RIAA supporting label, I’d buy the albums he’s not making money on and toss them.

Well, I sure wouldn’t keep them.  Have you ever heard a Morrissey song?

A man after their own heart.

Which reminded me of when the RIAA stated that lawsuits against the consumer were dead, kaput, no more and finally no longer endorsed or condoned by the RIAA.

You can probably use the same grain of salt for both statements.

That’s beside the point.  During my search, I found this fantastic article. In it, the CEO of EMI Records laments that while he knows that a divide exists between EMI and it’s customers, he’s not sure what he can do to lessen that gap.

You guys remember that about a year and a half ago, EMI was taken over by some hip non-industry types and things were going to change!  They stated that they would cut(or altogether end) funding to the RIAA because they didn’t think suing their customers was the way to sell an album.  ars technica went so far as to speculate that it might be the end of the RIAA.

So what happened during that time?  Well, they sued every entity that they could think of.

Seriously.

I’m not shitting you.

It’s mind boggling really.

But it’s the truth.

It’s really quite impressive that a group of people that foretold the death of the old system ended up not only embracing it, but damned near rewriting the book on it. See, they go after innovators.  Entities that are trying to change the face of music delivery.  If it’s groundbreaking, you can almost rest assured that EMI is suing the group that brought it to you.

And in spite of all of this, Mr. Leoni-Sceti isn’t sure what he needs to do to to make things right.

I promise not to tell if you don’t.

Well, the Pirate Bay is no stranger to being attacked.  Christian Engstrom, part of the pirate party decided to sit down and pen a thoughtful piece, concerning what he’s fighting for, why it’s important to everyone and what could turn the train wreck that is copyright and IP around.

Rick Carnes, head of the Songwriter’s Guild, wrote a rebuttal, which is a fantastic read.  Not because his points are interesting but because he completely twisted almost every single thing Christian wrote and then addressed the new points, that Christian never made.  The fun part is that he did it so transparently that it makes him look like a bit of a tool.

The best part of the piece though?  We find out that a man that failed at making a living as a songwriter is the head of the SongWriter’s Guild.

Well, it seems that the SIIA wanted to update it’s message and is rolling out a sequel. This time, instead of using the game developers to bring tears to your eyes, they’ve taken a slightly different approach. This version shows one person becoming a prison bitch and inking jailhouse tattoos and another getting their mom tackled by the SWAT team because of their downloading.

The first PSA made you aware of the fact that piracy would lead to the early demise of the digital age. Hopefully, the second one will tackle that little hiccup in predicting the future before they send little Billy to the bighouse for making a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R..

It’s a great time for the software development community to begin trying to scare the shit out of their customers. After over 30,000 lawsuits, the RIAA has actually won in one case, and big! The movie association has been labeling their viewing clientele as thieves for a few years now and it seems the time is finally right for the software developers to take of the gloves and join the party. I know they’re already well into development, but in the spirit of doing my part to prevent the collapse of the digital era, I wanted to offer a verse to them, provided under the CC license, of course:

Go ahead and make that copy
Set it up as a share
Give a copy to your friends
See if we care.

When the men break down your door
and lay your mom out on the grass,
It’s just a little while until
you’re in prison, taking it in the ass.

Don’t copy that floppy
Don’t copy that floppy

A couple years ago, he got his ass into a sling by releasing a mashup called the Gray album, which took The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album and stuck them in a blender.  EMI wasn’t very impressed and sued the shit out of him.  Since then, he’s popped up in the news ticker for continuing to piss off entities protected under the RIAA’s umbrella.

Well, he’s released a new album, this time in cahoots with Mark Linkous, of Sparklehorse.  Putting both DM and Mr. Linkous together on an album puts you at risk of overdosing on brooding alt hipness. I own a few of Sparklehorse’s albums and must say that this one follows closely stylistically behind the others, which may explain why the mp3 shows Sparklehorse as the artist, not mentioning DM anywhere, at least on the copy I have.

Remember when I said that he’s a favorite target of the RIAA?  Well, in an effort to save himself a lawsuit, he’s releasing the album sans music. He’s going to release a case with artwork and a blank cd-r.  You can of course do anything you’d like with the cd-r.

Regardless of whether it’s solely an attempt to keep from losing everything he owns in future lawsuits, an attempt to get some free publicity or a mix of both, it’s welcome to see.  The more music that gets passed around via alternate methods to the tired and broken system that the labels use, the more comfortable people will be with it.  Hopefully there will come a day when people don’t find a release like this to be newsworthy, but commonplace.

Since their congressional and public declaration, they have sued hundreds more.  62 cases have been filed in April alone.

Keep it up, guys.  It makes me smile inside.