“Do not steal music” See, for example, Brandenburg’s keynote lecture, Techfest 2012, IIT Bombay, India.

Fraunhofer made their feelings known to the device manufacturers Chris “Monty” Montgomery, who led the development of the Ogg standard, later called these kinds of actions a “protection racket.” Open-source advocate Eben Moglen observed that “an accusation of infringement has no legal weight, so there is no real downside to making such a claim.” For more, see Jake Edge, “Xiph.org’s ‘Monty’ on Codecs and Patents,” Lwn.net, November 9, 2011.

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The document that outlined the methodology for encoding and distributing Scene mp3s Historical Scene releasing standards for a variety of media can currently be found at Scenerules.irc.gs.

he wasn’t interested in mind-numbing discussions about the relative merits of constant and variable bit rates But you are, aren’t you? Fraunhofer’s earliest mp3 encoding used the same number of bits per second throughout the entire encoding process—even during parts of the song that could be represented with very little information. This was constant bit rate encoding. In the late 1990s, researchers at an audio software company called Xing realized it would be better to use more bits for the most complex parts of a song and fewer for the least. This was called variable bit rate encoding, and Xing introduced an mp3 encoder with this capability. Most mp3s today use variable.

“black redneck” Facebook comment left on a picture of Glover with the Quad Squad.

charged with felony embezzlement Chaney Sims later pleaded guilty to possession of stolen property, a misdemeanor.

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“a bunch of drunken sailors nursing a hangover” Frank Pellegrini, “What AOL Time Warner’s $54 Billion Loss Means,” Time, April 25, 2002.

up to 40 gigabytes of storage The third-generation iPod, released April 2003.

“people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” Andy Reinhardt, “Steve Jobs on Apple’s Resurgence: Not a One-Man Show,” BusinessWeek, May 12, 1998.

They were “educational” Carlos Linares, the RIAA’s designated expert witness for file-sharing prosecutions, repeatedly used this term to describe the lawsuits in conversation with me.

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targeting companies like Grokster, LimeWire, and Kazaa In 2011, during its lawsuit against LimeWire, the RIAA filed a brief seeking damages of up to $75 trillion—more than the GDP of the entire world.

a deliberate, earsplitting fake Known as “spoofing,” this was a short-lived attempt by the RIAA to degrade the value of the peer-to-peer sites by filling them with bogus files.

The Pirate Bay’s founders loved controversy For more on them, see the excellent crowdfunded documentary TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard, directed by Simon Klose (Nonami, 2013), legally available as a torrent.

“. . . please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons” The response was posted to the Pirate Bay’s website in August 2004 and signed, “Polite as usual, Anakata.” Anakata is Svartholm Warg’s screen name.

University of Teesside Today known as Teesside University.

Ellis was becoming a quality snob To be specific, he insisted on mp3s with a minimum variable bit rate of 192 kbps or higher.

He permitted only mp3s ripped from the original compact discs Ellis would later open this to rips from cassette tapes, vinyl records, and Web streams.

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the distinction of leaking the remix to “Ignition” Kelly himself had leaked the first verse of the song weeks earlier, breaking off listeners with a little preview to the remix. He did not usually do this.

Now 18 APC members were facing felony-level conspiracy charges Seventeen of them reached plea bargain deals. The lone holdout, Barry Gitarts, was found guilty at trial and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

“. . . We are not here to line the pockets of bootleggers” From the NFO for EGO’s 2002 leak of the Dixie Chicks’ Home.

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Warner . . . had been taken over by Edgar Bronfman, Jr. For a book-length treatment, see Goodman’s Fortune’s Fool.

a calcified corporate shell called the Entertainment Distribution Company EDC was eventually acquired by Glenayre Technologies, a wireless messaging firm. Glenayre would then take the EDC name.

Morris . . . now publicly vented against Apple See Billboard, “Red Hot Chili Peppers, QOTSA, T.I. Rock for Zune,” November 11, 2006. His exact words were: “These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it, so it’s time to get paid for it.” The remarks came as Morris was himself trying to get into the mp3 player market. In exchange for providing licenses to sell its music, Morris negotiated for Microsoft to pay Universal a percentage for every Zune it sold. Since the Zune tanked, this amounted to almost no money, but a similar deal with Apple would have made him a fortune.

his critics in the digital era Chief among these was Bob Lefsetz, author of the Lefsetz Letter, a widely followed industry blog. Morris referred to him as a “chirping bird.”

“Females 18–24, all Black” Email sent July 11, 2003, requesting the campaign, submitted as evidence by the New York State Attorney General’s Office. The cost of this fakery was $1,750.

“we are hiring a request company . . . to jack TRL for Lindsay” Email sent June 18, 2005, submitted as evidence by the New York State Attorney General’s Office. The names of the sender and recipient of the email are redacted.

selling songs that even their creators acknowledged were not very good The situation was especially bad for established acts. Joe Walsh, formerly the guitarist of the Eagles, recalled the pressure from the suits for a follow-up to the band’s top-selling Greatest Hits album: “The record company didn’t care if we farted and burped. It was all: when can we have it? They would put that out, because that was their whole corporate quarter.” History of the Eagles, directed by Alison Ellwood (Jigsaw Productions, 2013).

Wayne got weird For more on this period in Wayne’s life, see The Carter, directed by Adam Bhala Lough (QD3 Entertainment, 2009).

“The mixtapes were obviously very concerning to us as a label . . .” Knopper, Appetite, 247.

What if . . . the FBI started leaking albums themselves? The idea is floated in Patrick Saunders’ FBI case file, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The idea is killed by the Computer Crimes section’s senior counsel, citing experience with industry contacts. It is unclear from the heavily redacted file if the FBI had ever done this before.

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Pink Moon had sold more copies than . . . in the previous quarter century See “Rock Star Back from the Dead,” Birmingham Post (UK), April 7, 2000.

an alphabet soup of file types—FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec, an open-source standard from the same group that developed Ogg. Because it does not use psychoacoustic methods, it achieves compression rates of only 60–70 percent. However, as it is a lossless encoder, the original audio can be reconstructed from the compressed file.

“the world’s greatest record store” Ben Westhoff, “Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK,” Vulture, October 30, 2007. Reznor went on to explain that he remained a patron of the arts, and had paid Radiohead $5,000 for his copy of In Rainbows.

He used the music-tracking site Last.fm Ellis’ Last.fm account has since been deleted.