In the 46th episode of the Freezenet official podcast, “The Incredible Growing Cell Phone Bill”, we take a look at the news and reviews we covered in August 2022.
Welcome to the public version of the Freezenet official podcast for August, 2022. This month’s episode is entitled “The Incredible Growing Cell Phone Bill” because of the ongoing efforts to have Rogers and Shaw merge into one large super corporation. It’s also partly names after the efforts by Telus to slap customers with a 1.5% fee for the “privilege” of paying via credit card.
This month’s episode also talks about Bill C-11 and Facebooks notice that they are now no longer paying to link to news sites.
This episode also features all the usual music and video game reviews as well as a story about why it can be a bad idea for a lawyer to brag about winning in a court case. All this and more on this month’s podcast!
You can check out our official podcast on Soundcloud or Anchor. Alternatively, you can take a listen below:
What follows is a transcript of this month’s episode.
Intro
The Incredible Growing Cell Phone Bill
Hi, I’m your host, Drew Wilson. Welcome to episode 46 of the Freezenet official podcast for August, 2022. Here are your top 3 headlines:
The Top 3
Canada responds to US concerns about Bill C-11. This as another country discusses censoring social media
Link Taxes put on notice as Facebook says it’s no longer paying for news links in the US
… and Rogers pushes its takeover of Shaw to the end of the year as controversy continues to plague the telecom giant
Top Stories
Controversy has enveloped the NDP this month. This thanks to its boiler plate response letter to those sending their concerns to the party. The party, once a stalwart supporter of free speech, has come out against free speech over the last few years through their support of Bill C-11. The social media censorship bill would prioritize government approved “Canadian content” over all other content on social media. The bill would also force platforms to push that content onto users.
Unsurprisingly, many digital creators are turning to the letter writing campaign by Digital First Canada. This in an effort to save their own careers as well as free speech altogether. As it turns out, the NDP are responding to these letters by issuing a boiler plate response. The letter itself utterly fails to acknowledge the concerns that digital first creators and users have. Towards the end of the letter, the NDP claims that, without evidence, freedom of expression is entrenched into the bill. They then claim that talking points by the Conservative party is just misinformation. The point wound up being ironic given that they included the misinformation that the bill would generate $1 billion in new revenue – a talking point that even the Liberal party has distanced itself from because that money doesn’t exist in the bill.
If anything, the letter wound up being an indictment of the NDP who have sold out on what principles they have left. The party has ultimately become a husk of vague notions and empty promises all the while standing up for nothing. This in their shortsighted efforts to try and seek power – with a number of these attempts ending in failure already given the results of the last election. This as some of the most vocal supporters of free speech and internet innovation within their ranks sits silently in the back and voting along party lines.
Of course, one of the big concerns I, and many others, had, is the fact that other countries could adopt similar bills. This is extremely dangerous because users depend on a global audience unimpeded by country filters. For some time, the warnings I have given is that if other countries demand that platforms favour their own handpicked content, that access to a global audience becomes shattered and placed behind geographical barriers. As a result, people who would normally view your video’s would no longer notice that your content even exists thanks to these barriers.
It is unsurprising that those warnings went ignored by the short-sighted Canadian government. What was a bit surprising was how quickly that prediction started to become a reality. In Germany, parts of the mainstream music industry actively called for the government to enact legislation that would promote German content on social media platforms. It’s unclear how far the government will go to actually fulfill the record labels wishes, but we do know that efforts were underway in that country in the first place.
The news that there is even a discussion happening about fracturing the internet into geographical walled gardens ultimately confirms what many have feared would happen. If other countries pursue such a law, it could mean that the audience of those countries for creators would plummet. That is, of course, bad news for everyone involved. With so many with hopes and dreams of making it big online, that possibility could be inching further and further away from their grasp. Hopefully, this will never come to fruition, but if it does, many will remember Canada as the country that set the wheels in motion for this to happen in the first place. That is a stigma we all hope never actually becomes a reality.
Despite the news that these discussions are already happening in another country, some still believe that such legislation happens in a vacuum. That if Canada passes this legislation, it would only have an impact in Canada. Of course, as many economists and political scientists know, individual countries don’t really exist on islands in this global village. What happens in one country can very easily affect multiple countries – even the entire planet. Bill C-11 is, of course, no exception to this.
Last month, we mentioned how a US Ambassador raised concerns with Bill C-11. Publicly, the concerns were generalized, but it was easy to piece together the concerns the US had with the legislation. This includes the fact that the legislation is discriminatory towards US businesses. Also, it could violate trade agreements between Canada and the US – the most famous example being the CUSMA agreement.
For about a month, the Canadian government simply didn’t respond to these concerns. This month, though, the Canadian government did respond. They said that Bill C-11 is not discriminatory and is in line with all of Canada’s trade obligations. So, in other words, they basically straight up lied to the US just like how they straight up lied to Canadians when they said that platforms are in and users are out.
Canadian’s, obviously, didn’t buy that lie and grew even more critical of the government. Of course, the good news for the government is that they aren’t exactly obligated to look out for the interests of Canadians. So, they can basically ignore the concerns of Canadians and legislate rights away with impunity.
The US, however, is different because they can leverage trade sanctions and retaliatory tariffs. Those are options they have available should the Canadian government thumb their nose at their trade obligations – something they are pretty brazenly doing here. In fact, that’s exactly what the US already threatened to do last month. Who could blame them? What’s more, the US also isn’t stupid in all of this either. They have no problem taking Canada to court over such potential trade violations. Unlike the softwood lumber dispute, the US actually has a spectacular case to bring against Canada in this situation.
Of course, the big question in all of this is what impact does the threat of trade tariffs against Canada have on the Bill C-11 debate. It’s hard to say given how quiet so many government officials are about all of this. We do know that, before the Summer break, the Liberal party was hardcore pushing to get this legislation through – even going so far as to tear democratic norms apart and even pushing aside the Hockey Canada sexual assault money scandal to do it. It’ll be interesting to see how much of that enthusiasm to destroy the internet carries through with that cloud hanging over the government on top of it all.
Now, in the last government, Bill C-11 was known as Bill C-10. From pretty much every practical perspective on digital rights, the legislation was just as much of a disaster as the current monstrosity that is Bill C-11. The major difference between the two bills, besides the number, is the bizarre language employed that was specifically designed to confuse the debate. This in an effort to pass something as terrible as Bill C-11.
For some, the question is, why would the government not only go through the effort to craft such a horrendous bill, but also make it a top priority while trying to mislead the Canadian public in the process? There is actually a very simple answer to this: lobbying.
For the most part, big publishers and big broadcasting have been pushing this bill hard in the public. This was seen throughout the previous government and the current government with propaganda masquerading as news. As a result of the blatantly biased reporting, the major media outlets took a significant hit with their credibility.
Now, lobbying records made it very clear that both the social media censorship bill and the link tax was pushed behind the scenes during the last government. What’s more is that the “hearings” at the Heritage Committee made it abundantly clear that major broadcasting corporations, and their satellite organizations, were pretty much behind the push to basically dismantle the free and open internet for their own financial gains.
For those with a reasonably long memory, there was a point during the Bill C-10 debate where user generated content was actually exempt from the bill. It was known as Section 4.1 and it would mark the only known time where any iteration of this bill exempted user generated content. That, of course, got removed after significant lobbying and ultimately kicked off this massive debate we have today. To date, that section never really got restored.
This month, documents unearthed by the National Post confirmed a lot of what we, well, previously knew. The removal of the exemption to user generated content was brought about because of significant lobbying by organizations representing major broadcasting corporations.
They suggested that the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions – or CDEC in Quebec, pushed hard for the removal of all exemptions and allow the CRTC to decide basically who can and cannot be permitted to create content. This is probably not a surprise given how much the establishment in Quebec demands an iron grip on control over what content gets consumed by the public at large. This while driving out any kind of perceived competition as a threat to the provinces cultural sovereignty.
The Friends of Canadian Broadcasting pushed to have platforms regulated, but users exempt. For those who follow the debate closely, this is almost word for word what the Canadian government has claimed is in the bill, but reality says otherwise. Obviously, this push doesn’t really make any sense at all because you can’t really, for instance, distinguish user generated content from the YouTube platform. This just doesn’t work in any practical sense.
Ultimately, though, the revelations aren’t really that surprising given the mountains of evidence that point to how Bill C-11 is a lobbyists agenda to destroy the free and open internet. This with the ultimate goal of basically forcing users to consume their content whether those users want to or not. Still, you can add it to the pile of evidence already presented that this was a lobbyist driven bill.
If there is one overarching truth about the link tax, it’s that publishers need platforms far more than platforms need publishers. As we noted last month, Facebook has been reviewing just how much the platform actually relies on posts linking to news websites. Apparently, that number is really small. A number being tossed around is 4 in every 1,000 posts being associated with a news article. The real question at the time was whether or not it is financially worth it to spend billions on links that is almost non-existent to Facebooks overall operations.
This month, it seems that we are getting an answer. Facebook has told US publishers that it intends to no longer pay for linking to news articles. This as multiple bills are being bandied about in Congress to compel platforms like Facebook to pay for the privilege of linking to news sites.
The news that Facebook is doing this in the US is, of course, huge. For well over a year, it seemed like Facebook was going along with the insane concept of paying to link to news sites. This is the first time since this issue initially blew up in Australia that Facebook is now saying “no”. The development should be causing the executives at these news organizations to have collective heart attacks.
The reason for this is because sites like Facebook hold all the cards in this relationship. If Facebook is saying they won’t pay for links, there are very few options left for the big publishers. It’s probably a huge disappointment to those big publishers who have been pushing to freeload off of these platforms in the first place. If they demand a law that says that platforms must pay for linking, the platform can simply blacklist all links going to those news organizations.
At that point, the honest question is this: what legal recourse do publishers have at that point? Could they sue? Sure, but chances are, there isn’t really a compelling case to be made. You can’t really order platforms to link to news organizations because that is compelled speech at that point. Even if you could convince the courts that platforms must link and that they must pay for the linking, nothing is stopping a site like Facebook from simply blocking the whole country. Now ask, what options do the publishers have at that point? Nothing. Squat.
This is showing that the debate is now going full circle and we are now back at square one where the platforms basically are starting to say, “Yeah, no” to link taxes. It is showing that the free ride publishers have gotten out of this could very easily be coming to an end. The publishers have overplayed their hand and it finally bit them in the rear. A long overdue outcome, but it’s very possible that this could be happening now. How long it will take for this decision to spread to other countries, however, remains to be seen.
Finally, the Rogers Shaw merger, and dreams of turning the telecom sector into an effective triopoly, isn’t actually going all that smoothly right now. Last month, we brought you news that an outage at Rogers knocked large portions of the entire Canadian economy offline. It even knocked out access to 911 to many customers as well, raising concerns about public safety. While Rogers no doubt hoped that the outage would be politically separate from their attempt to merge with Shaw, that ultimately didn’t happen.
With so much backlash, Rogers and Shaw have agreed to push the deal to the end of the year. While it wasn’t mentioned publicly, it’s easy to see at least part of the strategy here. That, of course, being that they are hoping that the storm would pass and that they could continue their attempt to turn Canada’s whole telecom sector into a triopoly. The new deadline for the deal is set for December 31st of this year.
While the deadline was pushed, it seems that this didn’t stop the telecom giant from making misteps this month. During a hearing into what happened over the massive outage, Chief Executive, Tony Staffieri, told lawmakers that the merger should go ahead. They said that in order to fix the issues that caused the outage in the first place, the massive deal needed to go ahead before the issues could be resolved. Otherwise, neither Rogers nor Shaw would have enough money to make the changes necessary to prevent such an outage from happening again.
Yes, that was a multi-billion dollar company saying they can’t afford to fix their network. Yes, they seriously proposed that to lawmakers. Oh, and, yes, they also said that with a straight face.
One of the ideas actively floating around is that maybe Freedom Mobile would need to be spun off first before any serious consideration could be given to the merger. Given how small of a role Freedom Mobile has these days, that should hardly be a factor in the decision making process. Still, it seems like Shaw wanted to pave the way for the company to be sold just to sweeten the deal for lawmakers anyway. A deal was struck with Quebec telecom company, Videotron. That part of Shaw operations is apparently worth $2.85 billion. The deal is contingent on the merger being approved by lawmakers. So, it looks like Freedom Mobile could be stored for temporary safe keeping – I mean, spun off and held on by another corporation.
Regardless, for many Canadians, this shouldn’t matter and the deal shouldn’t go ahead anyway. After all, Canadians pay some of the highest rates in the developed world for some of the worst service in the developed world. It’s so bad, it makes the US telecom industry seem like a healthy free market by comparison. That is really saying something given how bad of a reputation many of the US telecom giants have. After all, there’s a reason why Comcast effectively won a life time achievement award in the Worst Company in America polls.
Quite the interesting blend of stories this month. Now, here are some of the other stories making news this month.
Other Stories Making News
Famed YouTuber, MrBeast, has reached the incredible milestone of 100 million subscribers this month. He has become the second personal account holder to do so and only the fifth YouTube channel to accomplish this milestone. We were there for the live stream when it went down. Our message of congrats lasted about a fraction of a second in the shout box. Still, congratulations MrBeast on 100 million subscribers.
Meanwhile in Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is continuing to add more wins to its belt. Adtech company, Criteo, has been fined €60 million for privacy violations in a preliminary decision. The fine was handed down by French regulator, CNIL. GDPR fines do follow a percentage of annual turnover for a company, so the regulator is probably looking for records that relate to the companies actual finances instead of estimates. That might be one of the reasons why the fine is only preliminary at this point. Still, it seems that this represents yet another win for the European privacy law.
The UK is trying to move forward with a terrible piece of legislation known as the Online Safety Bill. In short, the bill takes Canada’s terrible online harms proposal and Australia’s notoriously bad anti-encryption law, and rolls it all into one giant disaster. The Office of Communications (or OFCOM) would be empowered to silence and even imprison users for publishing messages the regulator doesn’t like. The legislation would also empower OFCOM to force online services to “use accredited technology”. That is to say that they would demand services use only encryption that would be backdoored or otherwise accessible by law enforcement in the name of searching for child abuse images. Digital rights advocates around the world have called on UK lawmakers to abandon this bill because it also serves as a blueprint for oppressive regimes to follow. Here’s hoping that those advocates succeed in their public pressure campaign.
Sing Tao, Canada’s largest Chinese language newspaper, is closing its print newspaper operations. Owners have cited their own findings that their subscribers have become more comfortable with their digital offerings. As a result, they have made the business decision to cease its print operations as more customers drop the physical print edition. While that seems like a pretty innocuous story, Unifor and CBC have tried warping the story into a rallying cry for Bill C-18, Canada’s link tax legislation. The suggestion was that the loss of the paper means that news is dying in Canada and only Bill C-18 can save journalism. This despite the clear commentary of the newspapers business owners who point out that older generations are increasingly becoming comfortable with digital only versions of their offerings. The news didn’t get much traction on the Bill C-18 angle, so, all in all, another failed attempt at selling Bill C-18.
While Rogers and Shaw caught a lot of controversy over their merger and handling of the Rogers outage, it wasn’t the only telecom story we reported on this month. Telus caught controversy when they made a formal submission to the CRTC. That submission asked the regulator for permission to charge customers a fee for using a credit card to pay their bills. What’s being asked is the tacking on of a 1.5% fee plus applicable taxes as a result of this added fee. So, if you pay by credit card, you could be charged a fee for the privilege of paying your bill. This along with the taxes that go along with the privilege of paying a fee for the privilege of paying your bill with a credit card. In short, your getting gouged – again. The submission drew widespread condemnation on social media, but the regulator is probably going to approve it given their history of basically being a puppet to the very industry they are allegedly regulating. If approved, the new fees could come into effect on October 17th of this year. Industry observers recommend customers find a way of paying without a credit card prior to the new fees kicking in. Telus says that it will give customers advance warning before charging these additional fees.
Canada’s RCMP have found themselves mired in yet another scandal. This time, they have admitted that they have been using malware to break into people’s computers for their investigations. The malware used was allegedly able to turn on microphone’s and web camera’s without the individuals knowledge. RCMP contend that the malware was used in a very limited number of cases and with a warrant issued by a court. Canada’s Privacy Commissioner said that he was surprised by these new revelations as the office was not consulted on the use of such malware. As our long running joke goes, though, a strongly worded letter with a warning of “don’t do that again” is probably going to ensue.
The very next day, the RCMP, after admitting to using malware for years, have apparently freaked out that the same kind of malware could be used against lawmakers. In response, they have apparently issued warnings to lawmakers about the apparent threat. Apparently, it took the revelations, all these years, and ignoring stories like the NSO Group scandals before they finally realized that, hey, maybe this is a possibility. So, remember, like racial discrimination and sexual harassment, pumping your computer full of spyware is only OK when the police does it.
This month, we offered a short profile of another YouTuber. This time, we profiled ZHC. ZHC has a comic-style art Youtube channel. while the channel does feature drawing and painting, it also goes a whole lot further. ZHC also uses art to make peoples lives better. For instance, he has painted an entire school in need to feature incredibly intricate art on the walls both inside and outside. He did a reality TV style art contest with up and coming art YouTubers. We also featured a video of him and his crew customizing 100 iPhones. So, if any of this sounds interesting, you can check him out on YouTube via our website.
Controversy has enveloped right wing echo chamber, Gab this month. A user who was threatening to murder FBI agents has been arrested by the FBI. Adam Bies of Mercer, Pennsylvania was arrested after Gab founder, Andrew Torba, handed personal information of Bies over to the FBI on request. News of the consequences of Bies actions spread across the platform as Gab users protested. Users likened Torba to Judas, betraying the followers of their lord and saviour Donald Trump in a totally not cult like response. In all seriousness, though, it’s hard to blame Torba for making such a move in the first place. When the FBI came asking, the only real reasonable response in that situation is to cooperate. After all, not cooperating would likely only mean a 5 minute delay to get a warrant and the FBI would be even more annoyed at you after. So, a no-win situation if you choose not to cooperate in those circumstances.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is warning the public about a new bill being tabled in the US. After years of small, incremental progress to fix America’s obviously broken patent system, a bill known as the Patent Eligibility Restoration Act is threatening to undo those years of progress. It was introduced by Republican Senator, Thom Tillis. The bill threatens to allow trolls to get patents on obvious things, but done on a computer. What’s more is that it could also pave the way to more easily patent human genetics. Since human gene’s exist in nature, the EFF contends that such a thing shouldn’t be patented. Due to elections happening in November, the bill does face an uphill battle to become law in such a short period of time. Still, it seems that there are efforts to try and re-break the American patent system again.
Repercussions from the US Supreme Courts overturning of Roe V Wade is still being felt in the online world. Planned Parenthood of Michigan had one of their Facebook posts suppressed. The post simply talked about the existence of abortion medication. When contacted by the media, Facebook admitted that the post was suppressed in error and restored the post. Many were quick to blame Facebook, but we pointed out that the source of this situation can still be traced to the original Supreme Court overturning decision.
Finally, it looks like Canada’s online harms proposal might experience some headwind when government resumes in September. It all came courtesy of antisemitic tweets. The tweets were posted by a member of, and I kid you not, an anti-hate organization being paid as a consultant to Canada. This to advise the governments efforts to reduce hate in the country. The contract in question was estimated to be $133,000. Mark Goldberg had been flagging the tweets and sending them to government officials for well over a month, but got almost nowhere. It was only when digital rights advocates picked up on it that things started moving forward. Government officials began a finger pointing campaign, trying to claim that the issue is not related to their file. This despite evidence that this was related to the Heritage Ministry. The story was eventually picked up by media outlets.
At that point, the story grew too hot to handle for the government and the government announced that they have severed ties with the organization in question. Liberal MP, Anthony Housefather, broke with other Liberal MPs and called for an investigation into how the situation even occurred in the first place. This as opposed to the reaction of his colleagues who opted to partake in the finger pointing game. The move by Housefather garnered respect from digital rights advocates. Already, questions are being raised about how it was that the government knew for so long that this was going on before action was taken. What’s more is that the scandal does raise the question about government judgment on the files related to racism. Indeed, a valid question can be raised about how it is that the government can feel that they can handle online harms when they wound up hiring an organization with a member making antisemitic remarks publicly on Twitter to fight racism.
Whether or not this has a major impact on these other debates remains to be seen. Still, it does suggest that the government is stumbling out of the starting blocks on this.
Video Game Reviews
I’ll admit it, there’s no real good segue to be made here. So, let’s just turn towards entertainment.
Before we get into the video game reviews, I wanted to point out the first impression video’s we’ve posted this month.
The first Steam game we played this month is Bioshock. That video can be seen directly on our site or on Youtube.
For this month’s Playstation 3 game, we played Gran Turismo 6. That video can be seen on our site and Youtube page.
Next was the XBox 360 game, Halo: Reach. That video can be seen on our site and YouTube channel.
Finally, we wrapped up the month with the more unusual Steam game, Osmos. That video can be seen directly on our site and YouTube page.
As always, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn on notifications to get realtime updates on what video’s we’ve posted.
Now, here are video games we’ve reviewed this month:
First up is Red Asphalt for the Playstation. A game that offers something a little different for racing game fans but nothing to get too excited over. This one got an average 62%.
Next up is Double Dragon for the Sega Genesis. A game with some improvements, but the overall experience was quite glitchy. Still, the graphics were quite good. This one also got an average 62%.
After that, we played Home Alone for the Sega Genesis. A slightly steep learning curve, but once you get over that hump, this game is actually a very solid game. So, a game that gets a respectable 76%.
Finally, we played Pilotwings 64 for the Nintendo 64. Nicely varied objectives, great difficulty curve, impressive graphics, and incredible soundtrack. This one gets an excellent 92%.
Music Reviews
As for music we’ve listened to this month, we’ve got…
U96 – Venus In Chains (Video Mix)
Stone Temple Pilots – Big Bang Baby
Baby D – So Pure (Digital Edit)
Everything But the Girl – Wrong (Todd Terry Remix)
Soultans – Can’t Take My Hands Off You (7″ Mix)
Unique II – Do What You Please (FM Track)
Heath Hunter & The Pleasure Company – Revolution In Paradise (Single Version)
… and finally, Celine Dion – Because You Loved Me
Picks of the Month
So, that leads us to our pick of the month. This month, our pick of the month belongs to Pilotwings 64 for the Nintendo 64. Also, be sure to check out Grindstone – Threshold.
Oddities
A new study says that news addiction may be bad for your health. Specifically, people who impulsively check the news for updates and constantly read news articles could develop a debilitating addiction. To find out more about this, you can check out our website and read the news article about this!
A man in Los Angeles was being pursued by police in a stolen vehicle. The chase began somewhere at around 10PM. Eventually, the vehicle exited a freeway and drove near the campus of USC. By 11PM, the vehicle was driving around in circles in the residential area of Jefferson Park. By 11:25PM, the driver stopped near a restaurant called Ralph’s, got down on the ground, put his hands on his head and surrendered to police. There was just one problem, though. Over an hour earlier, the police had already given up the chase. So, apparently, it is possible to not notice something like that. On a side note, why would they name a restaurant “Ralph’s”?
It’s probably a good feeling for a defence lawyer to win their case. It’s probably easy to think that when there is no appeal, the case is over and there’s nothing more to really worry about. That’s what happened to one lawyer. He defended a gastroenterologist accused of medical malpractice causing the death of a patient in an Orange Country courtroom. In a celebratory video afterwards, the lawyer commented that the case involved “a guy that was probably negligently killed, but we kind of made it look like other people did it.” A victory bell was also rung.
Well, that video apparently got posted to social media. That video was examined by a number of people in a legal web forum. Eventually, that video made its way to the judge in the case. The judge saw the video. That judge then vacated the court decision and ordered a whole new trial “to protect the system”. Awkward.
Outro
Before we close out this month’s episode, we got one quick announcement to make. This month, we’ve released the July Wiki content patch. This month, I wound up rolling some personal news with this announcement. What happened was that I was working on the archive for Synth City. Personally, I didn’t think I’d get the show done that month as there was still significant chunks of the podcast left to go.
Well, as luck would have it, I came down with a mild cold. It involved a headache, cough, runny nose, and the swelling of the sinuses. At first, I thought it was allergies, but those symptoms got worse. So, I contacted my day job and they responded by putting me in COVID quarantine for a week. This because the symptoms resembled COVID-19. I did the nasal swab testing and both results came back negative. Side note: it sucks when you feel a sneeze coming right in the midst of the swabbing process.
Anyway, because I got a week off with mild symptoms, this allowed me to pretty much work on the site full time. As a result, I got the entire rest of the Synth City archive completed! As of the completion of the archive project, I was able to archive 368 episodes which represents 737 hours worth of documented music in all. It’s a big addition that adds representation from a third genre of music, so I am happy to have completed that project.
So, the next question is, what is the next big project for the site? Well, there have been a few things I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. You might remember that when I started this archive project, it was a tough choice between Synth City and another archive project. Well, now that Synth City is done, I have now started the legwork to getting the trance show, Group Therapy done.
The legwork to get this project underway involves making up for a slight shortcoming of the site. That is the fact that Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep both linked to a page talking about Anjunabeats. This was a shortcut I did early on so that when I got to this particular project, I could finally complete a proper Anjunadeep label page. Well, it took a bit longer than expected to get to that part, but I finally corrected a long-standing issue of the site. The Anjunadeep label information page has now been completed and all links that are supposed to go to Anjunadeep now properly link to an actual Anjunadeep label page.
What’s more is that I also added a page for Oceanlab which is a side project of Above & Beyond.
What’s more is that Group Therapy is no longer a placeholder page, but a page that is ready to start getting a bunch of data and individual pages linked to it. It’s finally happening! Group Therapy is finally getting archived. I hope the wait wasn’t too long for those waiting for this, but it is, indeed, finally happening.
In addition to that, we’ve also updated the archives to have the latest episodes for Synth City, Future Sound of Egypt, Fables, Resonation, and the V Recordings Podcast. No new episode for the Random Movement Podcast, so that show remained updated as-is.
If you’d like to get your hands on some behind the scenes stuff, exclusive content, and early access material, you can check out our Patreon page at Patreon.com/freezenet. Through this, you can help make Freezenet just that much better all the while getting some pretty cool stuff in the process. That’s Patreon.com/freezenet!
Alternatively, you can simply buy us a coffee via ko-fi.com/freezenet!
…and that’s this months episode for August, 2022. I’m Drew Wilson for Freezenet. Be sure to check out our website at freezenet.ca for all the latest in news and reviews. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Thank you for listening and see you next month.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
