By Richard Gehr

During the past several months, the Pirate Bay BitTorrent tracking site has evolved into something more than a means for some 20 million users to trade files legally or otherwise. Beginning in Sweden, it has inspired Pirate political parties active in at least fourteen other European countries. The movement has its martyrs, too. On April 17, four Pirate Bay associates were found guilty of assisting copyright infringement, sentenced to a year in prison, and fine the equivalent of $3.6 million.

In a surprisingly weird turn of events, Pirate Bay was purchased by the Swedish software firm Global Gaming Factory on Tuesday for $8 million. Beginning as early as next month, the Bay’s bounty of unlicensed movies, music, videogames, and software will be removed and replaced with content that will actually be for sale. The company’s chief executive, Hans Pandeya, told Wired.com that the songs will remain the same for Pirate Bay users. “Some file-sharers don’t like all this money talk, and they’re leaving,” he said. But “the user experience is going to be the same. From the user’s point of view, they’re doing a search, they’re finding the song or the movie, and they’re downloading it.” Members will also be able to upload their own content, as on YouTube.

Pirate Bay users are already crying “mutiny!” Bootleggers will naturally just move elsewhere. But at least the Pirate Bay’s four convicted principals will now be able to pay their fine, with a little something extra left over.

By Richard Gehr

As in Malaysia, indie and underground headbangers and skankers in Indonesia are also taking to the stage and freely expressing political opinions as the country gears up for its July 8 presidential election. With a population of 228 million, 200 million of whom are Muslim, Indonesia boasts the world’s largest Islamic population. People listen mostly to Western influenced pop Indonesia and also to dangdut, a fascinating hybrid of local, Arabic, and Hindustani sounds. But this article focuses on an emerging reggae singer named Ras Muhamad, 26, who’s become a particularly outspoken critic of political business as usual:

“‘Not everyone likes what they hear. Lawmakers probably see me as an enemy. I don’t single out specific individuals so I haven’t got into serious trouble yet,’ Muhamad told AFP….’I'm nationalistic and I want society to progress. I want the government to provide our youths with proper education, end child labour, protect migrant workers. I’m not a mere entertainer. I have opinions,’ he said.”

Indonesia’s political climate has changed substantially since the authoritarian president Suharto (1967-98) dominated the country through military control with the help of the U.S. government. As the unlikely named Happy Bone Zulkarnain (of Suharto’s former political group, the Golkar Party) told France 24, “I don’t see why any political leader should feel offended by the lyrics unless he or she has done something wrong and feels guilty.”

By Richard Gehr

As the Rothbury Festival cranks up for its second year at the JJ Ranch in Rothbury, Michigan, this weekend, festival founders Jeremy Stein and Don Strasburg discuss how Rothbury represents the cutting edge of large-event environmentalism, and what this can mean for society as a whole.

How is Rothbury greener than any other festival this summer?

Jeremy Stein: We’re not in competition with anyone. But when this was coming together about three years ago, we were looking at a lot of pieces, like biodiesel on tour buses or whatever, and noticed that no one had put them all together in one place yet. We asked ourselves, how can we get it all in one place and maybe create a new paradigm for large-scale events? The technology’s changing so fast that what we did last year is already outdated, so we have to stay in front of the wave.

What’s changed most since last year?

Jeremy: Some of it’s the non-glory stuff, like composting. It’s nice to say you’re composting, but a lot of waste-management companies and municipalities don’t have the facilities to handle any compost. We almost had to create our own system. But now there are a lot of companies working around here that can come out and help us.

Don Strasburg: One of the coolest things I saw last year was the giant shredder that reduced the amount of compost we generate. We had a vision that if our community can’t get out front and center and say that our lives are interwoven with nature and the fabric of the environment, do you think Rush Limbaugh and those people are gonna do it? Absolutely not! Rothbury’s goal is to set an example and have a great time while being better stewards for the planet.

What’s the hardest part of trying to get thousands of festivalgoers to think green?

Jeremy: The good thing is, it’s starting to happen in our culture and society. But you have to get down to the nuances. For example, we had 500 people on our green team last year. Many of them are at these recycling stations where there are three different cans: a landfill can, a compost can, and a recycling can. So when people walk over, rather than just not knowing where to throw something, they can ask a question. “Where should this plate go?” “Oh that goes in compost, it’s made of sugarcane.” “Wow, I didn’t know that.” It sparks a discussion, and education, and people start to figure out what’s up and what’s down with this stuff. There’s a lot of great intention out there, and we’re in a phase where education is most important with the whole greening issue.

Don: Our goal has been to show how environmentalism weaves through the fabric of our lives. It’s not some separate element. The concept behind Rothbury is that you can have a huge party and great time while still being a good member of your community. Five years from now, our perfect scenario would be that you wouldn’t have to ask us about this because it’s no longer important. Last night I was with this guy who sells carbon credits. He said, “Do we ever think about taking our trash out?” No, you put in a bag, put in a dumpster, and a company comes and takes it away. It’s part of the fabric of how we live. We don’t just dump the trash in the middle of the road. Twenty years ago we needed commercials of Indians crying on the side of the road to remind us not to litter. But it slowly weaved its way into the culture. Now we have to go that much further. I hope that in five years we won’t be a front-runner and that everyone will be doing this, whether it’s Wal-Mart, Rothbury, or Joe Blow the Plummer.

Jeremy: We already have large-scale event operators and stadium operators coming to us, saying they really want do something and how do we do it? They’re looking at the waste streams that come out of large events, like college football games or baseball games at Shea Stadium. And they’re toxic waste streams, which means they’re not divided into recycling or compost or what not. You can make some very easy changes and make huge differences. They’re not even recycling beer cups at football stadiums. But I feel that in another year or two, it’s really going to turn the corner pretty hard across the board.

Tell me about the Think Tank.

Jeremy: Well, there’s a big-picture side to it all, too. On the operative side, there’s bio-diesel and the waste stream and how we produce energy onsite. The other side of it is the Think Tank, where you can hear some of the most advanced minds in the world talk about where they’re at with this subject. And you get their thoughts directly without the media or political filter. Our speakers include scientists and CEOs. They’re not the talking heads you see all the time, they’re the real doers. I think that resonates a lot, especially with the younger crowd. They don’t want marketing spewed at them. They want to hear what the real guys are doing. And there’s a reverse effect. All the scientists were coming up to me and saying, “This is unbelievable. I teach a class at Yale or Stanford, and there’s no way I can get in front of thousands of kids. It turns us into rock stars. People are coming up and asking about internships. ‘How do I get a job? How do I get involved?’” Kids can start to see a future and connect with the folks who really make a difference.

How many attendees donate to the carbon-balancing effort?

Jeremy: A large percentage, actually. A lot of them contribute $3 and $7 from their tickets because they’re both offsetting their own footprint and contributing to our sustainable schools program. Thanks to their contributions, we installed a $70,000 solar system in the local high school last year.

What are your biggest community-outreach efforts?

Jeremy: Sustainable schools is a huge one. There’s also music in schools, which has had a big effect locally. We gave about $25,000 worth of instruments to music classes. Michigan’s the same as everywhere else: When education funding gets cut, the arts are usually first in line. So we’re trying to lend some support there. We also support a farmer’s market. There’s both a farmers market available onsite to everyone, but also the backstage catering and everywhere else.

What else makes Rothbury different from all the other summer festivals out there?

Don: Besides the environmental stuff, the show, and the party, the site drives everything. It’s like going away to summer camp for a long weekend. The site itself is simply a fun place to be. You can go swimming. You have a whole forest where you can hang in hammocks all afternoon. It’s just a pretty area to be, a nice environment. And at night all the art and nuances of the experience are really amplified. When we decided to do Rothbury, we said, “If we don’t do something completely different, there’s no reason to do it.” And I feel we’ve delivered really nicely on that front so far.

Jeremy: It’s all about the venue, the venue, the venue. Most festivals are just on one big flat piece of land. This one has a fourteen-acre forest in the middle that everyone has to go through, and lakes to swim in. It’s just a grand old place. Last year it was 78 degrees every day and not very humid because of the lake breeze.

Don: It’s nice to wake up in your tent at eight in the morning and not be sweating in a hundred degrees. I really have to give kudos to Jeremy. He worked with local people to move some dirt around to create excellent sites to watch music. It’s imperceptible at first, but there’s about a 4% grade in front of the main stage. You can sit in the back and still get a beautiful view of the stage. That’s always our experiment: What would be the coolest thing we could do?

By Josh Gelfand

The Democrats now have the filibuster-proof majority they’ve been hoping for, at least on paper. Today the Minnesota Supreme Court decided unanimously to declare Al Franken the winner of the long-contested Senate seat. The Court determined that incumbent Norm Coleman did not have the grounds to dispute the election, and they recommended that Franken be seated.

Coleman conceded, even though he had the opportunity to seek a federal injunction. Governor Tim Pawlenty said he would sign the certification to seat Franken today.

With the two Senate independents – Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut – that usually caucus with the Dems, it looks as though they will have the necessary 60 votes necessary to block Republican filibusters. The Dems have been challenged by the absences of senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, who’ve been ill.

Franken cannot be seated until next week because the Senate is out of session for a long Fourth of July weekend.

By Richard Gehr

In 2004, Marjane Satrapi published Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, a graphic autobiography about her family’s experience during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when the Shah of Iran was overthrown (with the help of the US government). The new regime turned out to be even more repressive than the previous one, so her parents sent Satrapi to Austria, where she experienced both an awakening and an emotional breakdown. (Satrapi faithfully translated her gorgeous book into an equally elegant 2007 movie.)

Last week two Iranian expatriates known as Sina and Payman published a “remixed” version of Satrapi’s work, with the author’s permission, as a website. Persepolis 2.0 uses Satrapi’s images, with new words, to recount Iran’s June 12 election and its violent aftermath. It begins with the optimism of election day and ends with the June 20 shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, the iconic martyr of the Iranian opposition. Widely translated and distributed – via email, Facebook, and Twitter – Persepolis 2.0 has become one of the more prominent expressions of disgust at the rigged election.

In an interview in today’s Guardian, Sina said: “I’ve read some comments online from people angry that we ‘ruined’ Satrapi’s work or unhappy with the poor quality of the copy. Their opinions are valid, but our point was just to get people to discuss Iran so that it didn’t slip back into collective obscurity.

“Satrapi’s novels are about her life, but to my generation of Iranians (at least in the west) they have become more than that: they have become iconic. The fact that images from 30 years ago can tell a story about what is happening now makes them all the more powerful.”

By Josh Gelfand

Leave it to those crazy Oregonians to step up and pass a definitive industrial-hemp legalization bill. Yesterday the Oregon House passed SB 676 by a vote of 46-11. It will allow production and possession of industrial hemp along with trade in industrial hemp commodities and products.

Oregon is now the ninth state to pass such a law. It joins Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Montana, North Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia in regulating hemp farming under state law.

The Hemp Industries Association pegged last year’s retail sales of all hemp products in North America at $360 million. Allowing U.S. farmers to grow and process the diverse, profitable, and eco-friendly crop will help decrease imports and increase domestic production and exports, thereby narrowing the trade gap.

The “Billion Dollar Crop” heralded by Popular Mechanics magazine in 1927 can finally live up to its potential. Hemp has been illegal to grow in the U.S. for more than 50 years because of misinformation and politicization by the Drug Enforcement Agency, along with competitive business pressures from the pharmaceutical, paper, and synthetic-fiber industries.

For information on what’s happening in your state, check out Vote Hemp

By Josh Gelfand

Leave it to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman to speak truth to power, even if the power in question lost narrowly in the House last week. Krugman’s Monday New York Times column called out the 212 dissenting voters of the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill:

“A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

“And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.”

Krugman is not alone in understanding that the issue of climate change is not simply about the environment but about the global economy as well. Economic recovery can only succeed by focusing on sustainable economic forces, and ignoring the effects of climate change will inevitably lead to worldwide economic disaster.

Can you imagine a summer music festival in 115-degree heat? Disastrous summer heat waves will become the norm if we don’t act fast and aggressively – and no one wants to dance in that kind of weather.

Don’t get me wrong. While this bill is an important step in launching a carbon-regulation market, it leaves a lot to be desired. Most analysts believe it will not be nearly aggressive enough to make the necessary impact. While virtually any bill that sets out to regulate carbon is better than no bill at all, this one attaches some very questionable components. For example, Waxman-Markey gives free permits to the biggest emitters rather than auctioning off the permits to raise revenue and offset any potential energy cost increases. Without putting a proper price on permits, this could devalue carbon as opposed to driving up the price, which would directly encourage cuts in emissions.

Unfortunately, considering all the issues the Obama administration is currently dealing with, from health care to Iran to celebrity deaths, there wasn’t the grassroots push necessary to strengthen the bill. This led to a watering down in order to get some of the more fossil fuel-loving Dems on board.

Still, it’s a start. With Waxman-Markey as a foundation, we can begin regulating carbon as the enemy pollutant it is, which opens the door for bolstering regulation down the road.

Let your senators know how important it is that they pass this bill. It’s never too late for a grassroots push. Remind them that not taking action now is a crime against country and planet. As Merl Saunders said, “Save the planet so we have somewhere to boogie!”

I’m not an expert on Malaysian politics. But I was fascinated by this Malaysian Insider article about the voting inclinations of young underground metal, punk, and ska musicians who play their music – and express their views – in this country of 10 million Muslims (about 50 percent of the population).

Khairuddin Aziz, a guitarist with the straight-edge hardcore band Second Combat, believes that the younger generation of “tweeters” will not swallow whole the mainstream media’s vilification of PAS [Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, a popular opposition party to the ruling National Front coalition].

He believes they are more than capable of making their own judgement.

“I think it would be better than it is now if PAS rules the country. At least there wouldn’t be any corruption,” he told The Malaysian Insider.

His remark is something which would have been unheard of just a few years ago. Many in the underground music scene regard PAS as the enemy instead of BN [Barisian Nacional, AKA National Front, the nation's ruling party], as the Islamist conservatives is considered a threat to their way of lives.

“Go for the lesser evil,” said political science graduate and bass player for Komplot, Haekal Talib on the growing antipathy some young urban Malay voters may feel towards Umno [United Malays National Organisation, the nation's largest party], the party of their fathers.

In the July issue of Relix magazine, Dave Matthews explained the lyrics to “Dive In,” an apocalyptic warning from the band’s month-old Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King: “It’s talking about the future of our planet, but in a very lilting, light hearted way,” Matthews said. “The gravity of the topic sort of sneaks up a little bit. If you think this song sounds light, you need to listen a little harder. It’s the end of the fucking world, that song!”

Matthews is no doubt speaking about global warming and climate change. So what are Matthews, his band, and their fans doing about it?

A recent DMB email blast introduced the Bama Green Project, a group of green initiatives the band has taken on. The Bama Green Project is a partnership with Reverb (founded by Adam Gardner of Guster and his wife, Lauren Sullivan, to promote environmental sustainability among musicians and their fans) and IZSTYLE (an environmentally conscious music, sports, and design project founded by DMB bassist Stefan Lessard).

DMB has also teamed up with Collective Good, a cell-phone recycling organization. Fans who recycle their phones become eligible for free merch from the DMB’s store at Music Today.

Likewise, with every purchase of Dave Matthews-designed vegan-friendly kicks, TOMS shoes will donate a pair to a needy child.

The Bama Green Project’s other partners include:

* HeadCount

* Honest Tea: The nation’s top-selling organic bottled tea company is on the road with DMB this summer to help green the tour while hydrating fans.

* Specialized bicycles: Riding a bike is greener than a car in more ways than one.

* ClimateCounts: A nonprofit consumer-awareness organization that helps consumers buy the most eco-friendly products possible.

* The Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance: promoting sustainable biodiesel practices.

* PickupPal: This free online carpool service delivers economic value while contributing toward the reduction of carbon emissions caused by ground transportation.

* NativeEnergy: With significant ownership by Native American tribes, this wind farm-building organization fights global warming while creating new sustainable communities.

Other than the occasional rumor about Phish performing Thriller some Halloween or other, the late Michael Jackson never made much of an impact on the improv-rock scene. His tightly knit arrangements and intricately choreographed stage presence never quite fit improv-rock’s looser and bluesier bent. But, man, could that cat – and his four brothers – deliver the fireworks onstage, as I learned during an utterly mind-blowing show at the Los Angeles Forum during the Jacksons’ Triumph tour in 1981. As this weird clip taken from a video mixing board shows, among his other talents, Michael Jackson was also a master of the tease.