ItBeRandom.com

Unless you’ve been without a computer for the past year, you no doubt have heard that Radiohead chose a somewhat unorthodox means of releasing their latest album entitled In Rainbows. They first made the title available for download with a “pay whatever you want” marketing scheme that drew as much scrutiny as it did praise. As was their announced plan from the get-go, In Rainbows was later pulled from their download site and released conventionally.

Nine Inch Nails, brainchild of acclaimed artist Trent Reznor, must have been inspired by Radiohead, though taking a slightly different approach but the media hype may prove just as valuable. So what are they up to? They have officially released the first of four volumes of a new album entitled Ghosts I - IV on various BitTorrent sites. Volume one, entitled Ghosts I, contains nine of the 36 brand new tracks that make up the Ghosts set. (more…)

Neil Gaiman’s publisher Harper Collins has put his magnificent novel American Gods online for free reading as an experiment to see free digital copies sell print books.

This is a great idea — it’s really exciting to see publishers trying to get actual data about the market, rather than simply condemning all copying as piracy and hoping that the Internet just goes away.

However, I think that Harper Collins got this one wrong. They’ve put the text of American Gods up in a wrapper that loads pictures of the pages from the printed book, one page at a time, with no facility for offline reading. The whole thing runs incredibly slowly and is unbelievably painful to use. I think we can be pretty sure that no one will read this version instead of buying the printed book — but that’s only because practically no one is going to read this version, period. (more…)

A New York man who discovered that millions of dollars had mysteriously appeared in his bank account, and withdrew more than $2 million, has been arrested on charges of grand larceny, prosecutors said on Wednesday.Benjamin Lovell, 48, pleaded innocent on Tuesday to charges that he withdrew money from a Commerce Bank account that had been opened by someone with the same name, prosecutors said.

The account belonged to Woodlawn Trustees Inc, a Delaware property management company, and was listed under the name of its finance director, who is also named Benjamin Lovell, court papers said.

Lovell had just $800 in his own Commerce Bank account when he went to make a deposit, but a teller, mistaking the Woodlawn account for Lovell’s personal account, told him that his account contained more than $5 million, prosecutors said.

Lovell made multiple withdrawals even though he knew that the money was not his, prosecutors said. He used the money to buy jewelry for his girlfriend and to make several investments, they said.

Commerce Bank and Woodlawn Trustees did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Legal Aid attorney representing Lovell could not be reached for comment either.

Lovell is being held on $3 million bail. He faces up to 25 years behind bars if convicted, prosecutors said.