Friday, July 24, 2009

Weird, weird, weird

Gentle readers:

Within the last couple of days I have received a couple of weird form letters from Box.net, who do a fine job of hosting my music...somebody complained (to Box, not me) about three of the records I posted...these are:

Bob McFadden and Dor: The Mummy
Robert Parker: All Nite Long (part 2)
Johnny Horton: The Battle of New Orleans.

These files were yanked by Box...who sent me a form letter stating that I violated copyright laws by sharing these sides. Oh well. Things like this happen sometimes.

Here's where things start to get weird...why on earth did someone complain about Part Two of the Robert Parker record...but not Part One? Surely the same copyright law applies to both sides of the same record.

Then, when I went to check on the status of the Horton and Parker files, by going to my blog and clicking on the offending files, I find that my Some Scarce Seven-Inchers posting has gone...Vanished! Kaput! Joined the Choir Invisible!

Gone is the Blossom Dearie record! The rare Columbia seven-inch singles! Those great New Orleans 78s from 1959!

Hmmmmm....

It seems that this blog is under attack by someone. Some dirty little coward who probably has nothing better to do than create havoc...and run away.

Thank goodness that Google has cached an old copy of the post somewhere...I've reconstructed the page as well as I could, with the original posting date and original comments. And a few new comments of my own (in green).


It's too bad that this kind of thing is happening. If much more damage occurs, then I'll just pack the blog up and let it vanish. I have far too many other things to worry about.

7 comments:

J.F.B. said...

Z-Man, Sorry to hear about your troubles. There seems to be a surplus of cyber-bullies these days.Fight the good fight!
J.

Ernie said...

The post itself was gone? I've never heard of them doing that. I've seen entire blogs disappear and certainly shared files go away, but never a single post. That just seems odd.

(Sorry, long time lurker, first time poster.)

ZorchMan said...

Yup...

It does seem odd, doesn't it? But then again, Part Two to a fairly obscure r & b record generated a copyright complaint, but Part One didn't. Surely both parts would have been controlled by the same copyright...

I can't think of any rational way for that post to vanish...the only way I could have done it is to click on "delete post" and Blogger would give me an "are you sure?" page. I didn't do it. Someone else must have.

Thanks for your concern, Ernie & JFB...with any luck the "tweachewous miscweant" has gone on to annoy somebody else.

John & walter said...

hey, zorch, keep up the good fight. first time poster, but have always enjoyed your posts.

David Federman said...

That's just what they want to you to do: quit. They wage a war of attrition. The best thing to do, in my humble opinion, is to keep posting and pretend these culutral illiteratess and imbeciles don't make a dent in your psyche and soul.

I'm a guy who owns 5,000 CDs, many of them purchased because of blogs like yours. These blog raiders and annihilators think they are defending author copyrights and royalties. They have no idea that in these times when corporations have created a musical monocultural in radioland that blogs like yours are the only hope that the true diversity of American musical life will be remembered and maybe, just maybe restored.

Tell the blog raiders that if they want to do some real good for starving American artists--write the FCC to complain of mess mediocrity brought on by decades of media strangulation at the hand of profit-only media conglomerates.

Keep posting and God bless you!

Bruce said...

I was going to post some thoughts, but 5 people beat me to it... Great support you've got, and hang tough... we luv ya...

pwlsax said...

There's another possibility: jealous old-school, blue-collar collectors. These guys feel you gotta earn the right to hear the music - either by junking or putting up the scratch at auction. Any reissue or sharing devalues their investment in time and money, and degrades their unobtanium platters into just another curious media artifact.

Needless to say, our musical legacy isn't their clubhouse, no matter how many rocks they chuck thru the windows.