Thursday
March 16, 2006
arts. michigandaily.com
artspage@michigandaily.com
R TC SlChigan Bailg
5A
MP3s=consumerism
The latest hit against supposed
online music piracy came
into effect last week when
last year's Family Entertainment
and Copyright Act (FECA) was
used to indict two guys who leaked
Ryan Adams's Jacksonville City
Nights on a fansite. Hey - keeping
up with the prolific semi-junkie/
momentary Lohan beau's release
schedule can get expensive. The duo
responsible for the leak now face up
to 11 years in prison for
an infraction against a
section of FECA that
prohibits the online
distribution of intel-
lectual property before
the material's official
release, even though
there's no real evidence
that web leaks negative-
ly affect record sales
if the product is half ALEXA
decent. (In a seeming
contradiction, the act JON
also contains a section
exempting devices that automatical-
ly censor DVDs for content parents
might deem inappropriate. So much
for the "intellectual" part.)
While bloggers who release
copyrighted material are more sus-
ceptible to prosecution under FECA
than your average pinko file sharer,
we commie bastards (in the eyes of
the Recording Industry Association
of America and Sen. Orrin Hatch,
FECA's champion) should know
what's happening on the other side
of this controversy. You'd think that
if RIAA's targeting of students at
this and other universities wasn't
going to scare us straight, FECA
might scare our suppliers enough to
derail the whole operation.
After all, Joe McCarthy's list
of 205 suspected Communists was
enough to throw the country into a
paranoid frenzy over red infiltra-
tion. But this is 2006: Most users
of file-sharing programs are young;
as RIAA figured out, many of us
are naive, insulated college stu-
dents wreaking supposed havoc
on record sales. We're also armed
with laptops with tons of storage
space and the cash to pay our high-
speed Comcast bill (but not enough,
apparently, to shell out for the new
Kanye album).
But our most powerful weapon
is our apathy toward this organiza-
tion's self-professed authority. The
futility of RIAA's efforts to thwart
file sharing through prosecution
of both individuals and file-shar-
ing networks makes this glaringly
obvious.
Buying an Audacity membership
instead of mooching the service or
donating money to the creators of
your favorite peer-to-peer client
might help them out and give you
the warm fuzzies. It seems, how-
ever, that the most effective way to
confound the RIAA's scheme (and
royally piss them off at the same
time) is just to download anyway.
Despite the cavalier attitude that
many students have in common
when it comes to file sharing, most
people I know will still purchase
the albums of quality artists, either
via iTunes or the old-fashioned way
- you know, the way that involves
real, actual pieces of plastic and
human contact. At the same time,
they'd just as soon burn a CD for
a friend as download an album's
worth of recommendations; isn't
file sharing the same as
copied discs, just with a
little extra distance and
no middle-media?
The insatiable need for
free; easy-to-access music
- not just whatever tripe
the Black Eyed Peas or
Kelly Clarkson are push-
ing this week - is even
stronger now that main-
stream radio is redefining
the phrase "sleazy and
pathetic." Unless you live
LNDRA
RTES
within broadcast range
of a college radio station (cheers,
WCBN!), peer-to-peer clients and
MP3 blogs have become the best
way to test out new, interesting or
hard-to-find music. Downloading
music is even more consumer-
ist than buying it; we can get all
the files our greedy hearts desire.
We've just found a better way: File
sharing is an endless, free supply
that meets our rabid demands.
As long as the Internet (or the
super-fast, elite Internet2) exists,
music fans and tech geeks every-
where will always find a way to
trade files online. Even if I choose
not to download music without
buying it afterward (with the excep-
tion of material created by art-
ists who are dead or undeserving
- Michael Jackson shouldn't get
a dime because I want to replace
my 10-year-old Beatles discs), I
still want file sharing to exist. The
predicted demise of quality indie
labels and acts hasn't happened,
probably because their listeners
care enough to support them and
the online exposure does more good
than harm.
Think back to when you were a
Napster-happy 15-year-old, tying
up the phone line all damn day so
you could get the Pixies b-sides and
unreleased Weezer tracks that you
couldn't always afford to buy from
your local indie record shop. Fast
forward a few years: You eventu-
ally paid for Surfer Rosa and all
the rest; you giddily bought a ticket
to the reunion tour; you coughed
up for a hoodie and an on-the-spot
live recording at the merch table.
There's a way to make file sharing
responsible, and it's on our own
terms, not the federal government's
or the RIAA's.
- If you're part of the RIAA
and would like to prosecute Jones
for her admitted file sharing, e-
mail her at almajo@umich.edu.
TOMMASO
GOMEZ/Daily
Models
show off
designs by
Sarah Lurtz
and Sarah
Lapinski
at a fash-
ion show
earlier this
month on
Detroit's
People
Mover.
DESIGNER FASHION
PURE DETROIT DESIGN LAB BRINGS STYLE AND FLAIR TO THE D
By Kimberly Chou
Daily Arts Writer
It would do well for the Detroit Transportation
Corporation to consider combining its $200-million
rapid-transit mistake - popularly known as the Peo-
ple Mover - with more hand-sewn, urban couture.
Derided by bitter commuters and non-native
Detroiters, the People Mover found itself in
more fashionable light as both tram and catwalk
for Pure Detroit Design Lab's March 11 fashion
show. The event featured the Fall 2006 collec-
tion from Wound, Design Lab director Sarah
Lurtz and partner Sarah Lapinski's handmade
menswear line.
Swathed in reverse-stitch blazers and genie
pants, lanky, kohl-eyed models slinked down the
Times Square station platform and into the People
Mover cars housing VIP buyers and media per-
sonnel. Other fashion enthusiasts, photographers
and curious onlookers clustered on the platform,
cosmic experimental music undercutting the chat-
tering voices.
Wound's People Mover runway show was a
twist on Pure Detroit Design Lab's usual opening
festivities. The store-cum-studio features a new
artist every two to three weeks and one of their 25
contributing designers about once a month, kick-
ing off each respective line with a party.
"Whenever the feature designers have a new
collection, they get their own rack," Lurtz said.
"(Parties) are always on a Friday night ... usually
have a DJ and food and drink."
Designers also play dress-up with the window
showcase. The current display features the West-
ern-inspired dresses of Kate Bennett's new ready-
to-wear line, accented by pairs of cowboy boots
and carefully arranged bales of hay.
"Designers can pretty much do whatever
they want (with the window display)," Lurtz
explained.
Part of the growing Pure Detroit mark, the
lab functions as both a boutique and a fashion
thinktank. Lurtz is most often seen working at
the store's centerpiece - a do-it-yourself island
with Singer sewing machines - but the variety
of designers on tap are encouraged to work in-
store as well.
Compared to the typical clothing store and its neigh-
borhood, the design lab is a self-contained party.
"It's the financial district; most of the people
down here - it's not their style," Lurtz said."So
come in and find us - we're the weird art kids on
the block, I guess."
While the Pure Detroit label is know for its own
line of t-shirts, automotive seatbelt buckle and
other 314-friendly products, there are no "Detroit
Rock City" or "Cass Corridor" shirts to be found.
"We don't have any (Pure Detroit) product and
they don't have any of ours," Lurtz said. "Every-
thing here is pretty much one-of-a-kind, hand-
made by local designers."
A little more than a year old, the design lab
takes up the corner of Shelby and Congress, down
the street from the historic Guardian Building. Its
clientele is made of mostly Detroiters, Lurtz said,
as well as "destination shoppers" who drive out
to browse the colorful racks of recycled vintage
clothing, menswear and splashy T-shirts.
"We do get some ... international customers as
well who just happen to be downtown and come
in, so there's definitely pieces floating around in
Germany and Japan," Lurtz said. "But when they
were filming the movie The Island downtown,
when the store first opened, we sold tons of stuff to
the people who were cast and crew of The Island,
like going back to L.A. and everyone who comes
in here is like, " 'Oh, it's so New York!' "
Still, Lurtz maintains her shop is something
unto itself. Though she says it resembles a mish-
mash of stores from around the globe, she has yet
to see its defining feature copied elsewhere.
"I've traveled a lot and I always find I always
scope out the local shops. Internationally, there's a
place in Mexico City that reminds me a lot of the
design lab - it's like a co-op of local designers,"
Lurtz said. "(The lab is) kind of a montage, I guess,
of shops I've seen and been to. And I don't know
of anywhere else that has the sewing machines as
well that any (designer) can use.
The store's roster of designers include D.S. Bull-
ock, Zak Ostrowski and Anastasia Chatzka, a former
Betsey Johnson intern with already-impressive P.R.
Reconstructed brands like Golden Kitsch and Vin-
tage Rescue pepper the racks as well.
"(Golden Kitsch) is very representative of
Detroit fashion - really kind of pieced togeth-
er, random, reworked pieces. Inexpensive. (It's)
very do-it-yourself, kind of raw ... a lot of found
resources, people finding things and piecing them
together all crazy," Lurtz said. "I don't know how
to define it."
you may be eligible if you:
- Are troubled about your lack of sexual desire
- Are 18 years or older
- Still have regular menstrual cycles
- Are in a stable relationship with one man for
the past year
- Do not suffer from any psychiatric conditions
except mild depression
- Are otherwise generally healthy
J 1:- - ...:a.L. " i A t J Y W\Y t 1 1
r