You are the big tree, but we are the little axe.

Don't let these people choose your music.

Damn.

Easytree.org, the best torrent trading site for unreleased, unofficial, and live recordings has been shut down by lawyers. Let me tell you about Easytree: It was not a place where people shared cracked software, porn, or even official music releases. In fact, if a post contained a song or two that had been released commercially somewhere, the community was very careful to remove it. So, what did the people on EZT trade? let's see...would you like to hear Iggy Pop give a lecture at a university? How about a 20 minute b&w video taped off French tv in 1972 of the Velvet Underground in concert? Maybe you'd like to hear recordings of Brian Eno sound installations from several years ago, in some gallery in Europe. You would have also found obscure Miles Davis and John Coltrane tv performances, interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their "Bed-In", or "HWY" the rarely seen film starring Jim Morrison of the Doors. As far as I know, the 'rights' to these various audio and video recordings do not belong to anyone–rather, they belong to everyone. To have corporations and their lawyers lay claim to a fuzzy recording of Janis Joplin singing in a coffeehouse over 40 years ago is absurd. Well, some may argue, there's money to be made in these recordings-perhaps the EZT people were making money from them, taking our profits away? No. There's a reason why it's called 'file-sharing' and not 'file-selling'. File-selling, incidentally, is what more and more corporations are engaging in. Well, ok, but if these people are freely sharing these files, well, then who's going to want to buy them if we officially release them? The simple answer is that the vast majority of these little cultural gems are sought out, or even known by, a very small part of the public. The people trading them, like myself, are the hardest of the hardcore fans. The musicians. The students of pop culture. And yet, to this small group of people, they are invaluable.

So,

A) If, say, Megacorp was to release this so-so quality compilation of demos by The Smiths, the number of people who would buy it would most likely not recoup even the costs of rereleasing it.

B) If there was any real profit to be made from these pop culture orphans, I am sure that they would have been strip-mined long ago. And finally, a tip for the lawyers: follow your teenager downtown to any decent sized city and you will find bootleg recordings being sold-often for exorbitant prices. Someone in Italy burns a copy of a Nirvana show, slaps a cover on it, and it ends up somewhere in Massachusetts selling for $30. That I disagree with. But don't go after these rival (and more tuned into what the niche markets want) file-sellers; No, go after the file-sharers, the real fans, some of your best customers.

So, why would megacorp want to shut down EZT? Well, the usual reasons that corporations, or the government, make mistakes: Greed. Ignorance. A confused sense of ownership.

Over a year ago, there was a great site called Sharing The Groove. They had the same amazing stuff, the same smart and helpful community. Then they were shut down by lawyers. This sucked. But I was happy when a few months later, Easytree.org appeared. There had been a migration from STG to EZT. And I guarantee you, soon there will be a new site, with people exposing each other to amazing, rare and strange music and musical videos. So, barristers, hum along to your Ashley Spears and Jessica Simpletons while you choose what finish to get for your new H2, but remember, we'll be back!

Downhill Battle, file sharing activists

www.easytree.org :: EzTorrent v0.3.2