From The Guardian...

The UK's film and TV industries will fade into insignificance in five years unless the government rapidly steps up its anti-piracy efforts, a leading trade body warned today.

Reading this article is pretty much familiar territory, traditional content providers seeing their monopolies threatened are still trying to struggle against technology with antiquated laws and old fashioned attitudes. Here's something interesting though...

Bales said that despite the attention given to the Pirate Bay, the site was "not particularly innovative" but had used the same principle as Grokster and Kazaa to create "a very lucrative business". The Pirate Bay was not concerned with the quality of content, the value for consumers or in creating a business model, she added.

This is key to the debate. The Pirate Bay isn't a particularly innovative or flashy website. It's a search engine with a few banner ads, enabling links to torrent files hosted elsewhere, nothing special. Torrents and Bittorrent is peer to peer file sharing technology that's been around for eight years or so now. It's not illegal, it's not immoral. It's just clever software that enables high speed sharing of large files.

The Pirate Bay site has a simple basic design. It's simple tried and tested infrastructure, nothing more. It's easy to access, simple to navigate, and relies on a community of users to manage the majority of it's content. It's successful, and run by a handful of people. I would argue that all these things are more of a factor to PirateBays success than just simple providing free (if illegal) content. So on this basis how come a whole industry can't come up with a simple solution to old fashioned content distribution models?

Imagine a community driven website that shares and distributes free legal content, content produced by the community for the community. The infrastructure is created for you, and you license your work according to your taste, encouraging free and fair use on your terms. All you need is a handful of ideas.

My name is Brendan Meachen. I grew up in a ghost town where nothing happened, so we made the best of the little we had and made things happen. Welcome to Pixadelica.

Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell all the people that you do not know. Pixadelica launches this Thursday (23rd April) at the Facebar with live music from three highly talented amabassadors of the sonic arts.

Boredom in the Bathrooms

Ebbs and Flows

Pharaohs

Check out their myspace profiles and give them a listen, these bands are well worth your support and attention and we're proud to invite all interested members of the general public to come and listen to them. PlanB magazine had this to say about Ebbs and Flows, just in case you're not convinced by the quality of these acts...

"Caustic oscillations, ethereal scrapings and diamond ceilings of additive drum loops hit with suggestions of My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 and Warp's Zenith. A lone man stands with a loop pedal and synth where, if you close your eyes, a space arkestra exists."

If that's not enough, we'll also be showcasing motion picture narrative artistry from the wonderful William Dew, making Pixadelica a truly audio visual sensory experience. Check out William's website to see his paintings and his film work, it comes highly recommended

Doors open at 8pm, and entry fee is a meagre £3. The facebar is located on Chatham Street, Reading. Check out the The Facebar website for a map and an address, google maps is useful if you need directions. Pixadelica is open to everyone 16 years old and over. We look forward to seeing you there.

Those of you who were at the DoubleDotDash Econo Band Night will have an idea of what to expect. If you're not familiar with DoubleDotDash or the wonderful things they do for music and culture in Reading, then check out their website and look out for their flyers around the town centre, or come to Pixadelica and pick up a few flyers there. We'll be making a selection of other treats and goodies available from a range of interesting people.

Have a flyer with an original painting by Flee Lees

Thank you to everyone who has sent me feedback on the website for their kind words. I'll be tweaking the website today, but this will just be fixing a few things so there won't be a huge amount of change.

I'm going to add a bit more functionality to prepare for the start of something I think is exciting and awesome. It'll be a bit of an event, launching this, and I've invited a selection of talented individuals to be involved in creating something beautiful. Pixadelica has always been intended to be a colloboration, so hopefully we'll be seeing a range of creative content here in the next week or so. I've set the wheels in motion, so we'll see what happens.

The website may break and stop working over the next few days. This is likely because I've clicked something I shouldn't have done while trying to make it bigger and better. This is something that occured frequently while I was building this. Updating this site very much involves me tinkering with things my puny mortal brain doesn't understand. Doesn't help I'm often highly caffeinated when I'm playing with this. Stay tuned for more updates, in the meatime check out William Dew who will be exhibiting his art in Swindon this summer.

 If you happen to be Swindon this summer be sure to check out William Dew and his free exhibition at Swindom Arts Centre. From the press release...

The Swindon Arts Centre is pleased to announce a solo show of artworks by Swindon based artist William Dew on view from 4th June–12th July 2009. An opening reception will be held on Monday, 8th June from 7pm–9pm. The public is invited and all are welcome.

 "These paintings represent a personal apocalypse, the result of modern living."

I- An Exhibition by William Dew