So, Lily Allen killed her blog, and the revisionism has begun. Almost everyone (including, worryingly, mainstream publications) is hailing her as some kind of hero, saying she suffered terrible ‘abuse’ and that’s why the blog died. Funny that no-one’s reporting that fact that she got busted for illegally sharing copyrighted music herself, which is what the vast majority of negative responses were down to. And the fact many of the comments were constructive shows how uninterested Allen was in a discussion (or, perhaps, that she was simply unable to have the discussion), given that she deleted everything.

So, to recap:

• Stealing music is wrong
• Stealing music isn’t wrong if you do it on the way to becoming famous and become famous.
• Stealing music is wrong if you do it on the way to becoming famous but don’t actually become famous.

Glad we cleared that up.

You might be aware that Lily Allen is now using her opinions on IP infringement to get herself press and further her career single-handedly saving the music industry by telling everyone that file-sharing is bad and evil (BBC News: Lily wades into file-sharing row).

However, here are some tips for you in the future, Lily, when you start arguing the toss about rights infringement and what other artists have to say about the subject:

1. Don’t misrepresent the opinions of your peers. When you referred to The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) and claimed “These guys from huge bands said file-sharing music is fine,” you might want to ensure that’s actually what they said. If, for example, they said pretty much the complete opposite, you might end up looking a wee bit silly.
2. Don’t rip off other people’s content. When you’re on a crusade about IP infringment, it’s probably not a good idea to infringe someone else’s IP, by, for example, copying and pasting their blog posts. Do this and you might end up looking a wee bit silly.
3. Don’t infringe other people’s rights. When you’re informing people about the evils of rights infringement, it’s probably not a great idea to rip off other people’s IP by scanning in newspaper articles and posting them on your blog. Do so and you might end up looking a wee bit silly—doubly so when your Photobucket bandwidth is exceeded and said articles can’t actually be read. (Although I guess this at least deals with the IP issue, since the stuff you ripped can’t be seen when your account’s down. MAJOR WIN FOR COPYRIGHT!)

For the record, as someone who’s been smacked hard financially by file-sharing (albeit with books rather than music), I do have some sympathy regarding dealing with file-sharing in some manner. However, government proposals to boot people off the net won’t do it, nor will celebs on their high-horses.

Content providers need to figure out some way of monetising file-sharing, and, most importantly, to simply encourage more people to buy content instead of copying it. People should be rewarded for doing so, rather than—in many cases—being seen as potential criminals (such as with rights ads on DVDs that can’t be skipped) or gouged for every penny they have (as with £1.89 single-TV-episode downloads on iTunes).

Hat tip for some of this post: the ever-fragrant Gary Marshall on TechRadar.

A few years back, I bought a new car. I knew roughly what I wanted, but there were a few different models available, and so I test drove a bunch of them before making a decision. The garage in question knew full well that I’d be making test drives despite possibly not buying from them. And they didn’t charge me a penny.

If you’re thinking “well, of course they didn’t, idiot,” you might be in for a shock if the completely staggering stupidity in the music industry goes up another notch. And that’s because, according to CNET, the music industry now wants money for previews played in the likes of the iTunes Store.

Yes, that’s right—those 30-second previews that you use to see whether you want to buy a track are, according to David Renzer, CEO Universal Music Publishing Group, ripping off artists and labels, due to them not receiving ‘performance’ income.

So, essentially, people in the record industry want you to pay to see whether something is worth buying from them. They are mistaking ‘advertisements’ for ‘performances’, or, to put it another way, ‘abject stupidity’ for ‘common sense’. I’m sure if anything’s going to lead to a resurgence in the music industry, paying for previews is it. No, wait—the other one.

Cnet reports that yesterday’s iPhone OS 3.1 update reverses ‘jailbroken’ devices. Services and apps installed by Cydia (and Cydia itself) will vanish if you update your device. Already, people are bitching about Apple being ‘invasive’, ‘closed’ and a little bit like an evil dictator that goes MWAHAHAHAHA a bit too much. So here are three helpful hints to anyone with a jailbroken device:

1. Last I heard, Jobs wasn’t traveling the world, forcing you to upgrade. Just wait until the hacking software is updated or update now, lose your hacks and quit your moaning.
2. Every single Apple update prior to now has reversed/wrecked unofficial hacks—why did you think this one would be any different? Apple’s remarkably consistent in this area.
3. Apple owes you nothing. Seriously. Why people think Apple should support a hack is beyond me.

That third point is especially obvious when you look at Apple’s desktop OS. Every time a major bump to Mac OS X happens (and, sometimes, a minor bump) a bunch of add-on hacks keel over and die. With Snow Leopard, every Safari add-on bit the big one. But these were essentially hacks to the system potentially affecting security, and certainly doing things over and above what typical apps do. Supporting such things simply wouldn’t be feasible for Apple, and so it is also with iPhone and iPod touch hacking.

Yesterday’s Apple event didn’t draw gasps of amazement of the good kind. Some great announcements were made (app management in iTunes 9, a cheaper iPod touch, a camera in the iPod nano), but the biggest surprise was the lack of a camera in the iPod touch.

This strikes a lot of people as crazy, but from yesterday’s event it’s pretty clear that Apple is aiming to differentiate each of its devices in a very clear way, rather than in the old days where everything played music and perhaps did a couple of extra things not particularly well.

The iPod shuffle is the truly mobile device, aimed at people who don’t care what they’re listening to, and don’t want any weight to carry around.

The iPod nano has been repositioned as a device to smack Flip with, due to bundling a VGA camcorder, but in a device much thinner than its rival.

The iPod touch, judging by the fact a quarter of yesterday’s announcement was about gaming, is now positioned as a handheld videogames device—Apple’s answer to the DSi and PSP Go. I still feel that the device’s name is a massive hindrance to true mass-market acceptance, but with 21,000+ games on the App Store, it’s clear where developers think the money is.

The iPod classic remains the player for people who must have every tune available at all times, under pain of death.

The iPhone is the device that mashes everything together in a profitable package for Apple.

Despite this desire to differentiate individual devices (presumably to encourage people to buy more of them rather than concentrate on convergence), it still seems odd that iPod touches lack a camera. Jobs argues in an interview with David Pogue that iPod touch is “the lowest-cost way to the App Store, and that’s the big draw”. He says Apple was focused on “just reducing the price to $199 […] to get the price down where everyone can afford it”.

I suspect in the medium term, there will be an about-face on the camera decision, not least when you consider Jobs goes on to say in response to Amazon’s Kindle: “General-purpose devices will win the day [because] people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device.” Right now, iPhone is the only truly general-purpose device; iPod touch is close, but really needs that camera to have the widest appeal and scope.

But next year will see flash memory reduce in price to the point that the iPod classic becomes irrelevant next to a 128 GB iPod touch. At that point, it’ll be a no-brainer to add a camera at least to the more expensive models in the iPod touch range, perhaps leaving the low-end without a camera, intended as a cheap gaming device to continue attacking Apple’s newfound handheld-oriented rivals.