Los Pikadientes De Caborca

So there are these guys in a Mexican band that recorded a song on their home laptop and handed it out to their friends via memory stick and bluetooth as a cellphone ringtone. Their friends passed it around so much that the song became popular and eventually was played on local radio stations across Sonora, Mexico and people uploaded videos of themselves dancing to the tune on YouTube. One thing led to another and they got a record deal from Colombia.

Click here for the video.

Apparently passing songs by cellphone works in these communities because they have a low rate of computer ownership, broadband access, credit card possession, and itunes accounts. But they do have pre-paid cellphones with bluetooth, so there is a very distributed network there for sharing information and music. I remember seeing people in the Philippines share information on their phones with each other and use them like laptops.

Although it looks like we're breaking away from the corporate music model, when compared to the potential growth of this distributed phone model, are we actually getting anywhere? People use ipods, but they can't talk to each other. I see local music around town and people are still selling CDs...a twenty year old technology. If I want to share it with my friends, I have to take the cd home, burn it to a computer and fileshare it from there, where I could possibly be ratted out by my internet service provider to the RIAA. Or I make copies of the CD to distribute to friends, or I buy more CDs. It'll be interesting to see where things go in the future.

The War On Drugs

Rolling Stone has published a very interesting history of the United States' War on Drugs. It describes how the presidential administrations starting back with Nixon have tried different approaches towards quelling the production and transportation of narcotics from South America and how the cartels changed and adapted to meet the new restrictions. It describes how the Columbians split up after Pablo Escobar was killed and how the Mexicans began to get more and more power and eventually began introducing methamphetamine into the American market.

What meth proved was that even if the DEA could wipe out every last millionaire cocaine goon in Colombia, burn every coca field in Bolivia and Peru, and build an impenetrable wall along the entire length of the Mexican border - even then, we wouldn't have won the War on Drugs, because there would still be methamphetamine, and after that, something else.

This article is well detailed and teaches a lot about how we've gotten into this mess, and how even $500 billion later, we are no better off than we were in the 1970s. Lobbying by pharmaceutical companies and military executives has led to misguided politics and useless enforcement. Drug use has not changed, drug prices have gone down and purity has risen.

"The lesson of U.S. drug policy is that this world runs on unintended consequences. No matter how noble your intentions, there's a good chance that in solving one problem, you'll screw something else up."

Pretty wise words.

Link to article.