04.28.06
LINKSPAM: More music news
Over the past couple of days, there have been several stories about artists finally taking on the RIAA…who represents the “recording” industry, not the music industry.
04.18.06
LINK Spam - Guys who think like me.
Hate hummers? Me too. If you drive a hummer, go to hell. Me and mine are risking life and limb in Iraq so that you can putz around in your bloody baby-killer suburban assault vehicle, and get massive tax breaks for doing it. So, here’s to you, hummer drivers, pulling america down for your personal compensation needs. If you have to drive those goddamn things, join the army and volunteer for convoy duty in iraq. Otherwise? Go fuck yourself.
NPRs continued to slide to corporate asskissing - “pirating” edition
Normally, I love NPR. They provide some of the last refuge of decent, honest reporting. They’re also pretty much as neutral as you can get, most of the time.
However, ever since the neo-con takeover of the CPB, things have slowly begun to degrade around NPR. Its in the little things. The small frames that appeal to the neo-con mindset. Things like “tax relief” rather than tax cuts, a little bit nicer, more pro-corporate viewpoint in the stories. Its subtle, but its there. And its getting worse.
The most recent example of this is this week’s series in NPR about “Piracy”, started by the Chinese president’s visit to the states. Of course, one of the talking point they have thrown out there has been about how much money Microsoft et all are losing to chinese piracy.
But the story isn’t so simple. Microsoft has a lot to benefit in china from chinese piracy. Heres how it works: Chinese users put a copy of windows software on their machines. Windows achieves its normal proprietary lock-in on chinese customers…especially those in corporations. As those corporations start to go international, they start to have to play by other countries’ rules. Which means they buy microsoft so that they can play.
A billion chinamen make a hell of a market for their software.
[EDIT: 19 April 2006:1037 This article from cnet shows exactly what I'm talking about. China is beginning to push open source, and that is going to scare Bill a hell of a lot more than piracy is.]
The other bit of the story that irratated me was todays bit. On it, they gave this oh-so-heart-rending story of charles dickens and his coming to america. Apparently, young america was as bad about “pirating” as china is today…young, weak economy, people didn’t have much money to waste spend on non-essentials like books. So a lot of papers were printing excerpts from his books and selling them cheap, without paying any royalties to him. When he came over to speak, he complained about it on his tour and got eviscerated in prose by the american newspapers.
So he came back 20 years later on another speaking tour, and this time he just charge people to speak. The poor, poor dear. He was so goddamn popular he made a million dollars. I’m not sure if its todays money or 19th century money, but does it really matter? He gained his popularity because people had access to his work. The lesson from this is not that piracy is bad, but rather that people who wish to make money from content and from artwork need to sell it in a way that appeals to the audience in order to maximize profit. In most cases - be it music, writing, or art, the best way to profit seems to be to make sure your content reaches a maximum audience, and then selling yourself and products that appeal to people that like your work. This is a much better model, because it allows everyone to get full benefit from the content, rather than locking it away for only those that can pay.
NPR, happily playing their new role as a corporate shill wanna-be, missed this.
Sigh.
This resembles me linkspam
Ctrl Alt Del once again reminds me of myself.
The only real difference is I feel less guilty if I make an attempt not to be lazy.
