The pens or pencils were used to rewind cassette tapes. Here’s a video showing it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk8v9Ijp1So

In 2011, a judge ruled in favor of singer Paul Collins, whose rock group The Beat lost substantial revenue from a series of unauthorized bootleg recordings released by an underground record label. The recordings were unknowingly engineered during The Beat’s tours with The Police, Eddie Money and The Cure. Although the label argued that the recordings were tracked and mixed by an independent investor during the 1970s and 1980s, Collins was unaware of these dealings and was awarded an unspecified amount of damages. Collins was granted permission to digitally re-master and officially release the live recordings. In response to backlash and negative publicity from fans accusing him of being greedy, Collins attempted to make a public statement about piracy. In 2012, Collins made the recordings available to everyone as free MP3 download tracks to fans worldwide.

Some fans might argue that Metallica was selfish to target Napster for illegally offering their music as MP3s. In all fairness, not everyone victimized by piracy are platinum-selling, wealthy artists in the caliber of Metallica. Paul Collins had just as much right to take legal action, but he turned the negative situation into a positive one by publicly releasing the pirated material as free downloads to his fans. Case in point, not all rock stars are selfish or “only in it for the money.” Musicians have a right to be paid for their intellectual property. People who support music piracy only think about themselves. If a musician isn’t being paid for their work, how are they supposed to continue recording, writing, performing and touring? Musicians aren’t slaves and if they aren’t making enough money to function, then they might choose a different career path that doesn’t involve making music.

The new feed looks to me like it’s being run from MuteHQ, that being where the band’s UK label guy is based. It’s doubtful Ralf will have much direct input to the feed, but having seen a few irate messages from those associates I mentioned, and being forced to change the password multiple times due to attempted logins not from my computer, it’s clear they weren’t happy with the status quo.

As for an ‘official statement’, don’t hold you’d breath. Kraftwerk don’t say much, do they?

The @kraftwerk twitter has been active for a few years … when they 1st started they used to tweet a lot. 18-24 months ago they cleared everything out and said “official” .. now they have done the same.

It has again NOT been verified .. and one should also the quote from Ralf in a recent interview that he dislikes twitter and other social sites

What do I think … fake.