9.18.14 I WILL SWALLOW

This article originally appeared in the 9.18.14 issue of Metroland.

This week let’s tear down without building up.

            Let’s talk about U2.

            For years, U2 has been at the forefront of the idiot chatter about the evils of the internet and downloading music.  The band and especially its manager, Paul McGuinness, would regularly sound off about how Google could easily stop “piracy” and how all this business about “free music” was an insult to musicians and was devaluing music, and that music is sacred and yada yada yada.  These pronouncements were some of the most stupid and tone-deaf music-biz drivel out there.  And they were rightfully ignored, because what they said really didn’t matter.

            And so how odd that last week, as part of Apple’s big unveiling of the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch, here’s U2 playing a new song and then sharing a chummy onstage announcement with Tim Cook that Apple is giving away U2’s new album to everyone who has the iTunes program.  Which is most of us.   And as you are probably painfully aware, this isn’t a situation where you can go to some website and download the album, or buy a newspaper and get a free CD.  Nope, Apple instead dropped the album into everyone’s iTunes cloud account (which many people, including myself, didn’t realize they had), and depending on the settings for the cloud account you may not have known you had, the album typically loaded automatically into your computer or phone.  There.  You own the new U2 album, like it or not.

            The reactions were immediate and damning.  And for good reason.  Nobody wants stuff, any kind of stuff, rammed down their throats.  Nobody wants their music library messed with. That Apple thinks it can just stick stuff on your machine, and that U2, of all people, are cool with it, is just mind-bogglingly wrong.  As one commentator said: “a gift on my doorstep is one thing. A gift that you left in my house, after letting yourself in, is something different.”  Apple’s notion of personal privacy appears to be different than ours.

            And we learn that a great many younger folk have no idea who U2 even is.  The website whoisu2.com contains thousands of tweets from outraged teenagers around the world, asking who is U2 and why are they (or him, or it) on my phone?  It’s hysterically funny.  This is not how one builds a fan base. 

            U2’s reaction has been clueless.  The band’s new manager Guy Oseary (McGuiness retired last year, replaced with this young guy who used to work with Madonna, which ought to tell you something) said: “If you don’t like this gift, you should delete it.”  Duh, right.  Except apparently getting rid of the album isn’t that easy. Online how-to articles popped up with titles like How To Get That Awful U2 Album Off Your Computer; after a few days, Apple mercifully issued a one-step removal patch so folks could ditch the album from their phones and computers.

            Bono, ever prone to the misdirected faux-heroic statement, said this: "For the people out there who have no interest in checking us out, look at it this way: The blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys are in your junk mail."  How very nice.  And to the allegation that all of this flies in the face of U2’s prior damning of free music?  Why, the album isn’t free, you see, because U2 got paid for it.  The latest estimate I’ve seen is that Apple paid U2 120 million dollars for the right to infect your devices with the U2 album.  That’s a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears, Bono.  And it’s still free music, dude.  To everybody but you.

            What a ridiculous, avoidable, bone-headed situation.  I suppose that it’s great that U2 got paid, although that’s an obscene amount of money for an album, especially these days.  Innovative ways of getting music into consumers’ hands is good, too.  But not like this.  From Apple’s perspective, what were they thinking?  They’re still trying to deal with the fall-out from the massive hack of photos from iCloud a couple of weeks ago and now they want to demonstrate how easy it really is?  And U2 is cool with having their precious, sacred music reduced in people’s eyes to a nasty computer virus?

            Don’t get me wrong.  I love Apple, I use their stuff and wouldn’t think of switching.  Not yet anyway.  And I generally like U2, have liked them since I saw their very first US appearance at the Ritz in NYC in 1980.  I don’t even mind Bono’s bloviating to world leaders about world hunger and stuff.  I do object, however, to those goofy glasses he wears, those plastic things that look like those big sun-glassy things old ladies wear over their glasses.  What’s up with those?

            But this was just about the dumbest thing either Apple or U2 have ever done.  And that’s saying something.  Nothing good will come of this, except that something like this will never happen again.  And both Apple and U2 got some ‘splainin to do.

Paul Rapp is a frisky local entertainment attorney who would swing baseball bats on TV whilst telling you how great he is if he thought it would do any good.

9.4.14 WHAT'S FAPPENING

This article originally appeared in the 9.4.14 issue of Metroland.

Let’s talk about naked ladies on the internet!  You already know about the big “leak” of “personal” photographs of various (mostly) young actresses and you probably already have a strong opinion about it.  As usual, this has been misreported by Big Media and the critical issues largely overlooked or obfuscated because... well, because NAKED LADIES ON THE INTERNET.

            Now, it’s my solemn duty as an alternative media journalist to bring you the real story, the whole, unvarnished truth.  Therefore, I’ve taken it upon myself to thoroughly research this story.  To leave no stone unturned, to look down every side street, and to be very, very, very deliberate and contemplative with every shred of evidence that I find.  I do this so you don’t have to.  You’re so very welcome.

            OK.  So over the weekend it was reported that about 100 photographs of a dozen or so young actresses had been put up on the internet.  The photos range from naked selfies to faux-cheesecake to full-on raunchy.  The biggest name, the headline name, was Jennifer Lawrence, but there are also pics of Kate Upton, Kirsten Dunst (what’s she doing here?  She’s 32!) and a bunch of other attractive young women who are apparently famous for movies and TV shows or something. 

            It was first reported that these pics were released by “Anonymous” and 4Chan, who had “exploited a vulnerability” in Apple’s iCloud service.  There’s a lot wrong with this statement.  First, 4Chan is not a person, but a chat-room / posting board that caters largely to geeks and hackers.  Second, “Anonymous” is the name given to anyone posting on 4Chan who doesn’t want to use a handle, which is most of the people posting there.  There are a lot of Anonymouses on 4Chan.  Third, a number of the “victims” are shown taking selfies with non-Apple devices, so the idea that Apple was a only culprit here is a little problematic.

            As would be expected, all hell breaks loose.  Jennifer Lawrence’s publicist quickly announced that most of the photos were real, and bemoaned the egregious invasion of Lawrence’s privacy.  Others said that their photos were fakes, or were photos of someone else.  Some guy near Atlanta got named as the culprit and he immediately said that no, he had found the pics on an obscure posting site called AnonIB and reposted one of them on Reddit while trying to sell the rest.  Which makes him, if anything, creepier that the original poster.

            Then there were reports that the original poster had surfaced on AnonIB, saying that he had hundreds more photos and videos, that he had not acted alone, and that he was “changing locations.”  This, combined with reports that Jennifer Lawrence had asked the FBI to investigate translated to Big Media headlines that the hacker was on the run and the FBI was hot on his trail!   It’s like cops and robbers!

            The whack-a-mole game was in full force as the pics appeared and disappeared around the internet.  Twitter announced it would delete any reposts of the pics, which seems fine until you realize that someone at Twitter is apparently looking at every post you make.  The fact is that all of these photos are now all over the internet and will stay there forever.  That’s the way of the virtual world.

            Then Apple announced that what vulnerabilities might exist in iCloud weren’t exploited by the hackers, leaving it likely that the photos were obtained the old-fashioned way, by the hacker(s) figuring someone’s online account name, then figuring out the password, then picking through the library for the good stuff.

            And so the debate starts.  Some people likened it to rape, which it’s not.  Others blamed the “victims”, which is, for the most part, stupid.  Over at 4Chan (which is kind of like an on-line paint-peeling drunken frat party for young disaffected nerds) a similar debate rages: some posters were aghast and pledged to help find the hackers, others begged the hacker to post more photos.  There were several 4Chan posts claiming to be from media outlets asking for interviews (which may or not be real) and some purporting to be from unnamed actresses offering to pay for their pics not to be posted (which are almost certainly not real).

            What’s happening is no different then what’s been happening for as long as there have been means of taking pictures: the stuff gets out.  From passed-around blurry Super-8’s of Marilyn Monroe to Celebrity Skin to stolen video-cassettes of Pamela Sue Anderson and Paris Hilton to this, it’s varying combinations of innocence, sloppiness, bad luck (on the part of the “victims”), along with equal measures of sleaziness, greed, ingenuity and sometimes vengefulness on the part of the perpetrators.  It is as inevitable as it is disgusting and sad.

            To be sure, one way to make sure this doesn’t happen to you is to never have yourself recorded doing something “compromising.” Duh?  And if you do, then you have to be vigilant: most cloud services and storage devices allow encryption, multiple passwords, and other security features that would have made these latest hacks impossible.  And which will keep your naughty bits safe until the next level of hack-dom comes around.

Paul Rapp is a genteel entertainment lawyer who avoids naked mirror selfies, opting instead for naked selfie stick-figure drawings, which he is happy to share upon request.