Whilst huntting our Collective have found joy in Dirty Bird Label (Claude Von Strokes) and many of the tunes on this mix come from the label.

living in the city, seeing it, skating it, thinking about it, taking photos

Recently connected with Myles at CC Collective’s local independent cinema/bar – Shortwave. He has an exhilarating positive, creative perspective and some fresh ideas… plus he rolls on the 4wheeled wooden plank of dreams.

Check out his blog…

www.mylesjudd.tumblr.com/

Fresh beats and rhyming treats.

OhDub is a collective connection located on the south coast of the UK, where he has committed to crafting skilfully smooth sounding beats. As his production continues to progress, he is swiftly becoming a master of MPC-Wizardry. You may have experienced the soulful, trippy or epicenes of his flavour already without knowing the maestro, on one of the many Culture Cuts mixes we have blended his beats into. Not a huge amount is needed to be said, as his music speaks for itself. Visit his soundcloud to get in touch and check out how many amazing beats he has created.

Herbal Skateboards Welcomes Lloyd Mcleggon from Herbal Skateboards on Vimeo.

The Herbal Skateboards team is seriously starting to slicken up into a smooth selection of sweet skaters. Herbal was founded by our Collective brother Alex Borton, who is an extremely active and dedicated cultural connoisseur: not just putting hours of his time into building Herbal up from scratch, on the side he is the co-founder of the incredible online magazine Skateboarding Photo: www.skateboardingphoto.co.uk (Along with our amazing Collective Photographer Harvey Mills).

Besides all this phenomenal work, Alex was also one of the key Collective members involved in the conception of Culture Cuts, linking Collective members together and building this incredible website you see here before you.

To read more about the Herbal Team, check out more videos of their skating skills and purchase their fine-ass product, visit www.herbalskateboards.com.

To Contact Alex about his amazing web-design skills, you can hit him up through his new employers here…
www.superrb.com

Photo provided by Harvey Mills (www.harveymills.com)

The secret recipe revealed behind Captain Planet’s “Cookin’ Gumbo” album!

One of Culture Cuts favorite albums of 2011, Cookin’ Gumbo features a wide range of flavour that cater for all dancing instances, great album to get you grooving.

Out NOW on CD, 2xLP and digital format on Bastard Jazz Recordings .

Preview and purchase @ http://bastardjazz.bigcartel.com, or your favorite record store or digital retailer.

iTunes – http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/cookin-gumbo/id460069236?uo=4

Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Cookin-Gumbo/dp/B005K2K3K0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1…

Music: “Fumando” by Captain Planet
Video: Akira Thompson – www.akirathompson.com
Still Photos: Maricel Sison – www.msison.com

Featuring Comic Samples (in order of appearance) from:

We Can Be Heros – Chris Lilly (TV Series 2005)
The Thick Of It (TV Series 2005– )
Tommy Tiernan – Crooked Man (Stand Up 2011)
Four Lions – Chris Morris (Film 2010)
Bill Hicks – Rant In E-Minor (Stand Up 1997)
Wilfred – Jason Gann, Adam Zwar (TV Series 2007)
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (Tv Series 2009-)
Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip (Stand Up 1982)
The Lenny Bruce Originals Vol 2 (Stand Up 1966)
Reggie Watts – Why Shit So Crazy (Stand Up 2010)
Bill Bailey – Dandelion Mind (Stand Up 2010)
Derek and Clive Come Again – (Radio 1977)
Dave Chappelle – For What It’s Worth (Stand Up 2004)
The Thick Of It (TV Series 2005– )
National Lampoon Radio Dinner (Radio 1972)
Louis CK – Hilarious (Stand Up 2010)
Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive (Radio 2008)
Wilfred – Jason Gann, Adam Zwar (TV Series 2007)
Tommy Tiernan – Crooked Man (Stand Up 2011)
Lenny Bruce On Comedy (Pt. 2) (Stand Up 2004 (Previously Unreleased))
Bad News – Excaliber (Comedy Album 1987)
Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive (Radio 2009)
Greg Davies Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog (Stand Up 2011)
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (Tv Series 2009-)
Bill Hicks – Rant In E-Minor (Stand Up 1997)
Robin Williams – A Night At The Met (Stand Up 1986)
George Carlin – Class Clown (Stand Up 1972)
Tommy Tiernan – Crooked Man (Stand Up 2011)
Armando Iannucci’s Charm Offensive (Radio 2009)
Greg Davies Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog (Stand Up 2011)
Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle (Tv Series 2009-)

Many other websites joined the protest on 18th January to raise awareness
and to take a stand against two proposed bills in US Congress – PIPA and
SOPA; Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Acts. Both of these acts are aimed at
online piracy, specifically films and other media. Luckily, the Internet community
retaliated in such a way (Anonymous hacked FBI based sites as well as the
Department of Justice and Motion Picture association of America, all of which support the acts) that the bills have lost support and have been postponed.

However, these aren’t the only proposed changes to copyright laws, a lesser known proposal called ACTA is being pushed into international law and is a lot more vague in it’s wording.

This can’t be such a bad thing, can it? We all know piracy is bad; we all still download anyway, so why shouldn’t it be illegal? I intend to break down exactly why this act is bad news and hopefully simplify some of the legal jargon surrounding the whole thing.

Basically – the whole thing is so vague that I cannot say here how it will affect you, or your human rights, but I can give you a rough outline – as that’s all that is available at present. As the USA, Australia, Switzerland and most recently Poland have signed this censorship pact in 2011, it’s not something that is going to go away, but the exact ins and outs are being played close to the chest.

ACTA stands for the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – sounds like a typically vague piece of legislation protecting copyrighted material and intellectual property – yawn. But that’s not all it is. Throughout ACTA it doesn’t clearly define what intellectual property is, meaning it could be protecting anything from a movie script to an idea, or a phrase.

The overall intentions appear to be good and wholesome – to ensure there aren’t cheap copies of high value items, to protect the integrity of artists and journalists alike, and as a way to harmonize copyrighting laws internationally.

The problem here is that a counterfeit is an illegal forgery or stolen, but this cannot be applied to the Internet, as when a file is copied the original exists and the new copy is an exact duplicate, not an imitation. This was the initial intention with the creation of the Internet – an international platform for free sharing of information. But this doesn’t matter to ACTA.

The easiest way for me to explain exactly how ACTA could potentially affect you are with a simple analogy. You have paid for an album out of your own money and saved it onto your computer. This is already on the edge with ACTA, as you have made a duplicate. Next, you decide your friend living in Australia would like one of the tracks, so you send it to them in an email.

What made you think you could do that?! Now, you are a criminal. Depending on your country of residence you could be permanently blocked from the Internet, be fined, or even sent to prison.

But how did they find out?

ACTA proposes new violations of privacy from your ISP’s, giving them permission to open any data packets you send or receive; which roughly equates to anything you do on the internet, as all movements online are just sending and receiving of information. If they find any copyrighted material again you could be cut off from your ISP, fined or sent to prison.
But that’s not all, ISP’s will be expected to check all their servers for copyrighted material or links to copyrighted material and to have it removed or ‘blocked’ from the Internet.

This doesn’t just mean the end of internet piracy, which in the grand scheme of things is on the same crime-par as cycling on the pavement for ten metres, but could well mean the end of user generated content sites such as Twitter, YouTube, or something much closer to home, Mixcloud. The death of the Internet as we know it.

You might be led to think that perhaps the artists and intellectuals whose property we’ve been stealing for so long would be those who would benefit from such extreme censorship pact; but you’d be wrong. ACTA means that once an idea has been protected, it will not be possible to re-use or advance upon that idea, rendering musicians, software developers, intellectuals, journalists and many many more in the dark. There will be no more evolution of ideas on the internet. Even phrases could be protected under ACTA, restricting your language, another infringement of your human rights.

So who does benefit from this Agreement? Organizations such as RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and media publishing companies. These are the industries that have been battling to deal with the ‘problem’ of the Internet. These are the organizations that make the most money out of a blockbuster film, or Beyoncé’s new album. They are an obsolete business model, and have been since the creation of the Internet – which should be used as the ultimate distribution tool for media, not restricted.

So – in Summary, once ACTA is enabled any information tagged as copyright can be suppressed, with restricted access. In order to direct Internet users away from copyright infringing websites, there will be content filters and blocking infrastructures put into place, basically directing your Internet browsing away from certain sites. This is Internet censorship in its most obvious form, and something that is considered as unthinkable as restriction of your freedom of speech. Then there’s the violation of privacy; your ISP, who you pay for a service, can access any information sent or received from your IP address. Even if you have never accessed an [or what will be] illegal website, they can still look at everything you look at. Finally, if you do access illegal material you are punished, like a child, and have your Internet connection taken away from you. And the most ironic thing of all? This Agreement was not devised by elected individuals, and was not acknowledged by elected individuals when it was agreed in some EU countries, and the individuals who are devising it, surprisingly, have not studied the Internet, and there’s no evidence that it will work in practice, and will likely cripple the Internet.

All is not lost however, for now the Internet is safe. But it is important that everyone is aware of ACTA and why it’s a bad thing. Spread the word, use Facebook, twitter, or good old-fashioned word of mouth to share this violation of basic human rights behind closed doors without our knowledge.

Written by Casie Hodges (widget89@hotmail.co.uk)

http://www.stopacta.info/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement

http://www.avaaz.org/en/acta/

Stop Motion editing has bloomed some incredibly innovative and beautiful videos since it gave birth to the journey of the moving image many years ago.

Even today with the CGI-HD-3D revolution, the simplicity of stop motion still yields some incredibly magical videos.

Here is a brilliant example of a dedicated and hard working stop motion master.

“At first I photographed stop motion　animation. And I displayed the photographs in my room and photographed it again. Enjoy a connection with the world of the room and the world in the photograph. Thanks for watching.”