Most people are inured to the welter of small print that comes with software - disclaimers, limitations of use and the screeds of legally binding terms for which we have to click "agree". Funny thing is: if you review new pop albums, it's even worse, writes Guardian music critic John L Walters.
Since I spend most of my writing time dealing with non-mainstream music, I rarely have to think about it: I usually receive finished copies with plenty of information. But with David Gilmour's new album, I got a scrappy CDR covered in legalistic threats, with no information about the musicians or composers (whose copyrights are supposedly being protected).
In fact, I had to agree to all sorts of conditions before I could even hear the bloody disc. An EMI email announced: "In the next few days you will receive a watermarked CDR . . . Once you have received the sealed CDR, reply to this mail as confirmation you have received the CDR in a sealed condition and accept the terms and conditions."
The promo disc arrived by courier, its plain wrapper emblazoned with "WARNING! THIS DISC IS ENCODED" (twice) and "0001 John Walters External GB" in red ink. The disc itself had my name on it: "This promotional CD is unique and traceable. EMI is able to monitor its use and to identify the source of any unauthorized copies. EMI will take appropriate action in respect of any misuse of promotional CD releases."
"Unique and traceable"! To use Bruce Sterling's neologism, my "watermarked" David Gilmour album is a spime - a kind of virtual object traceable in space and time. The implication is that even if I chucked it away, it might still haunt me from a landfill site, forever spawning bootlegs with my name on them.
Watermarked albums from the Time Warner AOL empire are slightly less stuffy but still forbid me to play the CD on a computer. The majors' paranoia comes to the fore when dealing with artists with large, obsessive fan bases, such as Gilmour/Pink Floyd, Pat Metheny, Steely Dan and Morrissey. Yet it is this kind of behaviour that has fuelled some of the most remarkable, Arctic Monkeys-style successes of recent months.
Journalists can often dig up more information (not necessarily correctly spelt) from fan sites than official sources. (Metheny's fans decoded Stefan Sagmeister mysterious pictogram liner notes for Imaginary Day and posted them on the net within hours of the album's release.) There may come a time when the smarter companies and musicians will realise that this is an energy force they can harness ... and that means understanding the brave new world of gizmos and spimes.
But I don't want to knock EMI too much. They're having a bad year, and you can understand their nervousness about being ripped off. You only have to read Beatles' producer George Martin's autobiography to realise that they know a lot about that particular subject.
