WWR: Justice Live At Griffin’s Pint

Our friends in WorldWideRiot have a new song they performed live at a recent show at Griffin’s Pint in their hometown of Morris, Illinois which popped up on YouTube not too long ago. Love the air drummer…

Visit From St. Nicholas

Cath Carroll’s annual holiday song features her adaptation of the more obscure words to the poem ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ by Clement Clark Moore (1823).

Wishing you & yours the happiest of holidays!

Cath & Kerry | Lilypad Records

Copywrongs Part 2: Miaow’s “When It All Comes Down” Saga Continues

LTM's 2003 Miaow collection.

In January 2009, Rhino/WMG released a box set memorializing the output of the late, great Factory Records. Two songs, Moves Like You (Performed by Cath Carroll/Martin Phillips remix) and When It All Comes Down (performed by Miaow) were included in the collection.

Jon Savage curated this box set. Both songs were written by Cath Carroll (with collaborators providing musical contributions – Sim Lister on Moves and Ron Caine and Chris Fenner for WIACD, and lyrics by Cath) and are owned by Superclammy, Ltd. Publishing, an ASCAP publisher and an Illinois company co-owned by Cath and I.

Yesterday, MySpace made me take their copyright re-education class in order to reopen our Miaow account, citing violations over the uploading of When It All Comes Down. Until January ‘09, MySpace had no qualms with this song on the MySpace-player. This year, it trips the Warners’ music-content filter. Apparently, WMG feels it owns the rights to a track across all versions of derivation and performance. In other words, WMG re-released this song and now Miaow is forbidden to use it for purposes of STREAMING it on the MySpace-player.

Needless to say, this ticked me off. Cath filed the necessary complaint to MySpace. If you don’t file, you automatically submit to terms by deleting the file in question. Fairness be damned! If accuracy of ownership in intellectual property is crucial to MySpace, they need better calibration of their filtering mechanisms.

No response at this time. I posted the content below on the Miaow blog yesterday. Dear MySpace, consider an apology for dragging this on, all year long. It’s just plain wrong.

The never-was Factory album gets its demo collection dry-cleaned by Lilypad.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

When It All Comes Down Again & Again Current mood:  disgusted Category: Music Data collection must not be much fun. Like dumpster diving without the mess to launder but equally smelly.Today, I received my third MySpace suspension for Miaow in 2009. Copyright violation caught by a WMG filter for Cath Carroll’s song, When It All Comes Down (Catechism) performed by Miaow on Factory Records’ 1987 12-inch vinyl pressing from which I sourced the song. Analogue master, original release.   Last time, the warning came I filed the paperwork and waited for a response. Nothing. Months later, MySpace has relaunched its censorship today with an auto warning delivered as a suspension. Under the guise of copyright, WMG is staking claim to something for which they have a very limited license to distribute (When It All Comes Down) as part of their January 2009 release, the re-boxing of Factory Records self-released boxset, Palatine (1992). Oops! I mean the box-set manufactured and distributed by Rhino/WMG titled… It’s not news that the copyright laws are outdated and those that can inflict misery, do inflict misery. The fact that WMG is staking claim to the TITLE, much less the actual source file they used to create their master, is pretty outrageous. All versions??!!! To prove the point that data collection for internet use and access is deeply flawed and prone to massive errors, observe the album I am “listening to” at this moment. Released in 2005? Wrong. It was compiled and released by LTM Records in January 2003. WIACD, The Song, also appeared on several compilations after its initial Factory debut in 1987. And the album is credited to Cath, not Miaow. We also have the original demo which I can’t upload at this time. Predating ALL issues of copyright, Cath’s rough demo was restored from a cheap cassette in stereo format a few months ago by yours truly. One day, that will hopefully live here for Miaow fans to explore and enjoy. Or not. But at least it will be their choice, not MySpace’s choice or their defective WMG data filter or Rhino/WMG’s choice for that matter. -KK@LRC (restoration engineer of all Miaow content mentioned here)