by SHANE SINNOTT

I trust you’ll remember that I gushed in this space a few weeks ago about Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want download release of In Rainbows. At the time, it seemed a harbinger of an upcoming industry shake-up, but it’s looking more and more like the same old same old. The download PWYC version of In Rainbows is of low quality (160 KBPS, lower than most file-sharing sites, let alone CDs) and if you want the high-quality version, lo and behold, you’ll pay what they want. Anyone who threw money at the download version essentially paid for a low-quality leak.

Bryce Edge, one of the band’s managers, said to a trade publication shortly after the download release, “If we didn’t believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD, then we wouldn’t do what we are doing.” And what is it you’re doing, Bryce? Charging fans for promotional material? That sounds a lot less interesting than changing the music industry. A deal was just announced with the ATO records group to release the CD of In Rainbows in Canada and the U.S. on Jan. 1, and I somehow doubt they’ll offer the amount you paid for the MP3 version as a discount against the real thing. So, for the record, Radiohead: fuck you.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association successfully pressured the ISP of the torrent site www.demonoid.com to shut the site down last week, though you should expect the Web site, a haven for media sharing, to return shortly with a non-Canadian ISP. In light of this, Noël St-Hilaire, who’s head of the RCMP copyright theft investigations, offered some relief for those fretting about consequences: “Piracy for personal use is no longer targeted,” he told Le Devoir, adding “it is too easy to copy these days and we do not know how to stop it.” Not that this discourages private organizations from suing, mind you, but at least you don’t have to worry about getting arrested.

And finally, check out this bit, at tinyurl.com/2onf2n, put up on oink.cd, which shows how easy it is to find advances of albums online, OiNK or no OiNK.