intofreemusic

Sweet Sweden: Pirate Bay Lives

2006-06-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

I've always loved Northern Europe: socially progressive, aware, clear thinking and proactive. While most Americans haven't got the slightest clue about what RIAA and MPAA have been doing to curtail their access to and control of content, even content they "buy" (lease, rent, get to listen to twice....), the Swedes aren't gonna take this shit lying down.

RIAA has been closing down or responsible for revamping every fileshare site online during the past few years, even stalwart Limewire has taken all the fun out of downloading. Not one significant protest has been launched in response to this... until MPAA messed with Sweden.

Lots of pirate flags waving over there, and it's not for the premiere of Gore Verbinski's sequel to the Disney ride derivative. MPAA had the local police do its usual thing show up at the servers with handcuffs... what, did they forget the dogs? They confiscated the servers and successfully shut down The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent site showing file locations, for a few days. Dan, Mitch, Cary, and Dean were all happy again, until..... they fought back.

There was protest in front of Parliament with hundreds of people waving pirate flags, hackers broke into the computers of the Swedish police and disabled their site and The Pirate Baywas put back online with the following message, which was a bit different from what the Grokster assholes put up, here it is:

"Only torrent files are saved at the server. That means no copyrighted and/or illegal material are stored by us. It is therefore not possible to hold the people behind The Pirate Bay responsible for the material that is being spread using the tracker. Any complaints from copyright and/or lobby organizations will be ridiculed and published at the site."

Also, sites all over the world mirrored The Pirate Bay, making the site, which already gets some fifteen million hits a day, stronger than ever.

Dean Garfield, MPAA's legal director, was instrumental in getting Swedish police jazzed about the big raid. It amazes me that corporate associations like RIAA and MPAA are able to mobilize police departments this way for, at best, civil infractions, but they have been doing it successfully all over the world, and getting away with it. Dean has been outed doing some very nasty things, like paying hackers to break into the emails of people working at TorrentSpy.

It's like McCarthyism, the law now is all about intent so finding emails and evidence of specific intent to contribute to infringement is what it's all about, so anyone working in this field at all is likely to be subject to intensive spying. This is supposed to deter anyone from even thinking about P2P, and it's been fairly effective. People all over the world have been taking this lying down, but not the Swedes. So, hopefully, citizens in other places will be alerted and emboldened by news of this. It won't make any mainstream newscasts, that's for sure, but, that's what citizen journalism via the internet is for.

P2P City

2006-05-31T16:13:00.000-07:00

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When the labels started screaming about downloading in 2000, broadband was in some 3 million homes and DSL was in under a million. Now, these magic bullets, which make downloading feasible to the tune of upwards of 50 Mbps, have quintupled and are accessible by almost half of all American homes and 75% penetration is expected by 2010. Millions of people come into the wonderful world of high speed internet access every month and as they do, they build music libraries, largely from free sites. I discussed the rampant growth of P2P, despite continued propaganda to the contrary, in my 3/29/05 post and here's some more analysis.

This music as water theory, as discussed by Gerd Leonhard and Dave Kusek in their book The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Revolution is very similar to EFF's compulsory license (see my 12/27/04 post) and is doubtlessly where this will all shake out at some point. Once the technology exists for so many people to effortlessly and cheaply (if you consider broadband access cheap, many don't, but, I'm getting to that) access and find music they love, there's little that can be done to stop it. Though that doesn't mean strong efforts to stop it won't continue. The labels, with over 10k settled lawsuits already, are now suing hundreds of college students, right before finals, for using I2, an intranet.

Close behind the wave of music is film. The only thing that has really kept film from being in the same position as music is the technology. Downloading a film, for most of us, requires tying up your computer for an hour or so, and you don't even get the DVD features. Actually being able to burn the movie onto disk requires a better computer than one you'd need to do the same thing with music. But, all that is quickly changing. We now have 3G and 4G, the next generations of wireless, are already being tested in Maui, $40./mo. for 1Mbps connection. San Diego residents, for $79./mo. can now use their phones to watch videos, download music over the internet at 320kbps.

I find the Wi-Fi stuff most appealing because of its grass roots nature. Philadelphia and Portland are now trying to heat up their entire cities with hot spots built up from an ad hoc network of routers and antennas put up by various organizations and companies, even individuals, I would suppose. Many have warned of the FCC or other entities, trying to assert control over the internet. There's a bit of trend toward censorship, in case you hadn't noticed. Just ask Wiley & Sons who had the audacity to publish an unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs and he pulled all of the publishers books from all his stores. Powell and Delay have been neutralized for now, but, let's face it, we're just a nipple away from oppression.

Anyway, the powers that be will have hard time prying into every little wireless outpost and neighborhood to see if members are sharing files on their city subsidized P2Ps. Sounds good to me. Though I do worry about Snocap and others who try to assert control over the free P2P providers (well, as free as radio or TV, you can get ads).

Verizon got a law passed after Philadelphia Freedom shined saying they'd have right of first refusal from now on. So, I'm also concerned about any of the telecoms getting too big. But, lots of progressive places are watching closely and this will probably be a huge hit. Of course in Palo Alto, it'll be mired in committee till the technology is outdated. We were the last city in the country to get cable TV, why? Everyone has a graduate degree but no one agrees.

Speaking of finally selling out to the big Comcastic, monopolistic, capitalist pigs, there are also many broadband outposts as well; high-speed cable modems and fiber optic networks. The main point is that the infrastructure is building up. To me, the exciting part of this discussion is what the applications will be. What is the virtual landscape of the future? Soon, we will each not only have a geographic, GPS address but an internet address, and not just an inbox for email. There will be a virtual landscape that mirrors and enhances our physical landscape. There will be property owners and intellectual property owners, and those that have valuable assets in each will profit. How that value is determined will change but, as always, popularity pays.

I can enjoy my neighbors at the market (we on the west coast congregate around produce not liquor) or coworkers at the office... or online. We already exchange lots of email, but, what if each time you reach out to touch someone online, you enter their site, which can contain their art, music, films, photos, documents, log... we were working on that screenplay together, well, I won't bother you with VoIP, or even email, I'll just add my changes in Wiki, the consumer screenwriting programs already allow online interface.

We will each have an online presence that is easy to access, pay for and manipulate. Soon, hopefully, a pay mechanism will follow suit. If you print one of my paintings, even at Jungle print which does gallery quality glicees, it will credit my account and debit yours a reasonable fee. If you listen to my song, a dime, download it, two dimes, I'll let you know where we gig. Watch my film, a buck, leave your comments. So, that's how I see things going. A physicist friend who's far ahead of the curve tells me we're talking generations, but, I'm sure I'll see many more changes in my lifetime... and look forward to them.

RIAA VS XM

2006-05-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

This link is one of the best I've seen so far, not only because of the sardonic tone, which I always appreciate, especially when applied to the anathema of the earth RIAA, but its links and intervision. McKenzie picks up on why these vermin so undermine the fabric of our society, dragging us back to the dark ages of overvalued music. It's music! Not fucking gold bullion that spawns like fruit-flies for your endless profit.

I also liked this report, the first I saw, a few days ago, that show what liars these guys are.

And of course you can always count on the Extraordinary Freedom Fighters for a good assessment of the issues.

So, go XM! Save the world for democracy, freedom, music, Apple pie and all we hold dear! Let's hope they stay strong despite their set-backs, having dropped off 50% this year.

StreamCast Goes To Trial

2006-04-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

So, this is good news. Grokster's codefendant in the Supreme Court case is now going to follow this through and provide the entertainment, legal and venture capital communities some security in this litigious world. I've felt all along they would win if one of these spineless P2P's would stand strong and I find Michael Weiss' hubris inspiring.

I mean, really, without the central servers and incriminating Sean Parker memos, Napster probably could have found the protection it needed under Sony. I wonder whether they will be able to get a jury trial for this. I don't know why Wilson would do it, unless he's very sympathetic. God, would I love to see RIAA in front of a jury. I'd love to do a documentary on this; the drama.

RIAA: But judge, how can we find a jury of people who haven't been sued by us? Without our wonderful DRM the world would be chaos, madness, goddamn it, we're talking Communism here!!

EFF: 75 Fucking years, does that mean anything to you? Happy Birthday is copyrighted for god's sake, I'm gonna have to pay Time Warner a million bucks if I sing it for you right now cause we're putting this all into a Michael Moore film.

From what I can tell, the labels were taking the approach they always do; go away and leave us your users and your brand and we won't flood you with discovery motions. Looks like Weiss may have been willing to do that except wanting, I don't know, maybe a job there for him and a few insiders? Then some new, meaner lawyers came in; lawyers who realized that there was a lot more money to be made if this went to trial.

Since RIAA is desperate, they were able to be persuaded to do an end run and go for a decision. But, what a gamble! If they lose, there will be no stopping the P2P's. The word will spread like wildfire and P2P traffic will increase exponentially, not just for music, for film too. It would eviscerate both industries. The labels are hoping this is exactly how the court will see it and will find some next step on liability.

If there's no smoking gun, some memo or email talking about what their users are doing, how will the court find liability? From the software itself? Well, Sony said you can't make that kind of jump. Then the Supreme Court said you can't find protection there if it looks like you are trying to contribute to infringement. But, what if you're not? Then you're back at square one, no liability. The Supreme Court never said you could use the system itself to infer liability, just that you couldn't find shelter there.

So, EFF and everybody and their brother are going to jump into this fray, bigtime. StreamCast is already $4M in the hole and will probably need help. Now I really do think we'll end up with a big bang when all these players start showing up to court. This is where the media usually jumps in, especially if there's a jury. So, stay tuned.

Justice Dept. to Probe RIAA!

2006-03-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

I told you the tide was turning in DC. The Justice Dept. is launching an investigation similar to Eliot Spitzer's in NY to address the rampant price-fixing in this industry, this time they're specifically looking at online sales.

The labels are not gonna have that cush ride they expected when they were in there screaming about Napster. It's sort of like the US after 9-11. At first, people did feel sorry for us, but we squandered our goodwill and of course that rube Bush didn't care, or notice. Same with the labels, there was some sympathy at first, I mean, they did take it up the ass, and they got a sympathetic reaction from the courts and Congress. But, they don't know where to stop, they just got more and more aggressive and greedy, and they didn't even care how it looked.

But, you know, people are like that. They get imbued with a false sense of entitlement or power. I've started to notice how often it is the case that people don't realize what they've lost till it's long gone. I've seen marriages that are dead as a doornail go for years with no one willing to point it out, Skillings and Lays who rape and pillage California down to its last dime, people who don't realize how far they've gone, how much respect or sympathy they've lost until it's way too late. So, here's another example of desperate companies doing increasingly desperate things instead of doing what good businesses do and respond to the needs of their customers. And, the message is, there is a price.

The studios will survive for many more years distributing exquisite action films to a worldwide audience but, the labels are dinosaurs. The once $16B domestic industry is now under $12B and it will go nowhere but down. Music can be democratized so much more easily than film and it's gone too far to stop it. They've lost the youth. Their last hope is to hold on to catalog, but, they can't, the files are too small. They're out there, the genie is out of the bottle. It's like Tina Turner's patter before Proud Mary, she says, "Some people like it easy, and some people like it rough" . Well, these label guys are the toughest of the sharks and they like it rough. And, rough it's gonna be, for them and the folks who want their music.

In2Movies

2006-02-05T05:59:00.000-08:00

Can't these guys at Warners, much less Microsoft, come up with one original idea? Warners new fake P2P movie download service stole my whole concept here. I just had to go grabbing up the blogspot domains, and now I do indeed have:

In2Movies

In2Music

N2Movies

You get the picture... I think I nabbed up a few similar names. But, I've been using this concept of being into stuff, or in2 stuff, or N2, or Nto.... for a long time.

When I googled IntoFilm, it actually came up with tons of stuff on the little sister website, to this one, IntoFilm. I found out that Intervision, IntoFilm and IntoTune are all traded on Blog Shares, some blog stock exchange thing that I didn't even sign up for... and I'm trading up! Now that I'm actually directing my readers there, I hope to see my stock price spike! My little blog has had over 20,000 hits in the little over a year of it's existence and all the linkage is starting to pay off as I write for more and more websites and work with more and more internet companies. More to come on that.

Make sure to check out my main blog:

Intervision

RIAA's Last Gasp

2006-01-23T20:21:00.000-08:00

As we await the Pixar/Disney decision.... take a look at this story about how desperate the labels are getting. It is inevitable they will go after the ISPs... but that's a much different fight than the one they're waging against Patti Santangelo.

If they try that, I hope they have something better than contributory copyright infringement because the courts made it pretty clear in Grokster that you have to show intent and that intent based on the technology itself is not enough. They'll need to show the kind of stuff they had in Napster, internal memos showing intent to facilitate infringement of copyright. They'll never, ever win against the ISPs, and it will be so fun to watch them fry on the other side, as they see what it's like to be dwarfed.

If they think Congress will come to their aid, they're delusional. They can't even get Induce passed and there's a bill in committee right now that, if passed, will take it out of the courts, severely limiting the ability to prevail on contributory infringement. If anything, Congress is about to sway against them, even viv a vis the helpless American public.. God help them if they go up against the ISPs.

They'll end up, finally and mercifully, made into a utility, like water or cable TV, like we've been wanting for years now. Their commodity will ultimately be just so much bandwidth that they will provide under compulsory license, they'll probably have to track the the whole thing themselves. And then it will happen to the film industry.

And then they'll realize it really isn't worth it to make these big budget films, and then they'll start nominating all these story-driven dramas for Oscars and have people lined up around the block looking for small indies at Sundance and dozens of web-sites looking for content and filmmakers having lots of ways to make money off their films, with relatively low budgets and people will have lots more interesting films to watch and it will be easier to find them and... oh, that's now.

When you look at the choices and behavior of those in the know, you can see that they know exactly where the industry is headed.

The Way The Music Died

2006-01-05T07:07:00.000-08:00

You have to be awake at 4am to find this stuff on TV, but the website gives all sorts of great particulars. The title is a twist on the phrase coined by Don MacLean in American Pie which traced our demise from the date February 2, 1959, when Buddy Holly, Big Bopper & Richie Valens crashed in a snowy field. For me, the day the music died was December 8, 1980, when John Lennon was shot.

Although we had lost, perhaps, our innocence, we certainly had incredible music after 1959. However, I defy anyone to successfully argue that the 25 years since 1980 have produced better music than the 25 years before it. The world of music is a world filled with death and tragedy along with the magnificent highs it produces. It will die many deaths and be reborn as often.

The program I highlight here is a great synopsis of how the industry operates, and it will probably go a lot faster than reading this blog. Though, if you really want to know, and don't mind all the extra opinion and analysis, I suggest IntoFreeMusic. The reason I write about this stuff so much is because when people understand the process by which music, and other entertainment, is filtered before it gets to them and the economics of the industry, they will use their dollars and computers wisely to improve our selection of meaningful art.

Anyway, the day it died is far less interesting to me than the way it died, or the way it is changing. As a matter of fact, I don't quite understand why PBS takes such a dour tone. The music isn't dying. The music is being resurrected. It's the music INDUSTRY that's dying, so that the music itself can live. Nothing is more worthy of death than the music industry which has been killing music, not to mention human brain activity, since it became a billion dollar sector and attracted the sharks.

First it became a commodity, and then, via MTV, it became a visual commodity. The music itself took a back seat to those marketing and visual factors to the point where we get to stars as profitable as Britney Spears who succeed almost totally on the basis of visuals, promotion & production. Yes, we reached some low points, boxed boy bands etc. You know, people have a right to be entertained without having their minds or hearts stimulated. And I don't have a problem with anyone offering up that opium.

My issues with the music industry, film, TV, radio, print and many other industries, including, increasingly, the tech sector is the lack of a free market. Yes, crappy art bothers me, so I try not to patronize it. As long as alternatives exist and the economics of the sector have sufficient checks and balances, I'm ok. If Britney is popular because there are more people who enjoy watching her tits bounce than there are people who enjoy listening to Fiona Apple, no problem. When Clear Channel, who owns every major market in the country takes the Dixie Chicks off their stations because Natalie Mains criticizes Bush, I got a big fucking problem. Especially when the powerful broadcasting lobby has Congress exponentially expand the number of stations a company can own.

I prefer not to focus on death but rebirth and the important date for me was in, I guess this was July 2001, when Napster defeated RIAA's first try at an injunction. Hank Barry, the triumphant pirate telling the public, hey, we got your music back... come and get it. Well, we came, we got it. The internet has changed everything, and though we need to be vigilant, I think it will be an uphill battle for entertainment entities to control content and price the way they did before. Music is becoming less something you buy, and more something you do.

Music est mort? Viva la music!

Who Controls The Internet?

2005-12-26T07:17:00.000-08:00

Al Gore thought he invented it. For all we know, this administration, with its closet megalomaniacs, may indeed, possibly with good reason, believe it controls it. From a policy standpoint, they have exerted important influence. At one point, a damning memo from George Bush to Tony Blair, laying out the war with Iraq long before it was approved, was uploaded onto the internet. It was observable to internet users who did not receive service from Comcast, which blocked the memo.

The answer to the above question is: the ISPs. Up till now, we've just assumed the level playing field, equal access structure we've enjoyed thus far, will always continue. Don't bet on it. Short of regulation and Craigslist, the profit motive rules the internet, like everything else. Public companies must maximize profits or they end up like poor Time Warner and all the other entertainment companies having to face their angry shareholders.

For now, the ISPs look at content relatively impartially, giving rise to a new "Flat World" type economy, where all websites have a theoretically equal chance to be seen, to the extent they can gain attention from the public. This policy has given rise to the biggest growth spurt the world has ever seen as tiny, innovative companies and creative individuals all over the world scramble to get their content, ideas, items and services promoted on this incredibly powerful new medium.

This has forced big companies to stop complacently expecting profits from whatever crappy entertainment they provide and have to actually work to profit from content. This has caused problems for those very powerful, wealthy international conglomerates. And they are not taking it lying down. They continue to pressure governments and ISPs to restrict peer to peer usage.

Given the economic temptation, and the lack of transparency to their customers, I think it's only a matter of time until the ISPs start chipping away at their promise of carrier neutrality and start fiddling with hidden ways to profit. For example, ISPs could charge Google a premium to make it's searches go faster than Yahoo's. Michael Geist, a Canadian, points to several examples of Canadian ISPs actually being caught fiddling with access speeds (to BitTorrent) and outright blocking. The most disturbing example is of an ISP blocking a pro-union website during a labor dispute. For now it seems they are most tempted to exclude their immediate competitors, the VOIP providers.

Without telling anyone, these companies can remove content, they can block or slow down access to individual sites, they can block particular services, like VOIP, or give preferential access speeds to different companies. The ISPs, like the entertainment companies, are also capable of forming monopolistic associations which will expand their control far beyond what the public would ever want. So far, we have been relatively protected because the interests of providers looking for customers didn't jive with the need of content providers to protect their capital. That can, and probably will, quickly change, as the scramble for market share marking the new industry matures into a far more static, monopolistic one.

The freedom of the internet is heady, but, we must never take it for granted. We will need to protect our internet freedom by searching for its newer, younger voices and making sure they have the same access the big players enjoy.

Time To Short Sony

2005-11-16T05:17:00.000-08:00

Attention stockholders: you know, I remember a day when Sony stood for the best technology available to bring entertainment to consumers. Now this misguided giant stands for sacrificing its unwitting buyers to security breaches so severe that Microsoft has to step in to try and salvage its own sinking brand. It just keeps getting worse for this company who decided to bring in Howard Stringer earlier this year, who begat Andy Lack and a string of seven figure execs who felt tech’s day was done, it was a commodity business and the big money was in content.

Fed by the success of Spiderman…. they went to town. Now after one of their worst quarters, their music division in a shambles from infighting… we have the biggest scandal yet, and it worsens by the day. If you haven’t already heard, don’t buy any Sony CD. They’re recalling them. Poor Neil Diamond, Rolling Stone was finally coming around to his schmaltzy rock. Anyway, if you put the CD on your PC, it opens a channel between your PC and Sony that can be entered by anyone else, which will monitor your PC. You’ll be vulnerable to one of the many hackers already downloading personal info off of Sony’s former customers.

If you already bought and uploaded, look out for the class action notices that will soon be appearing. So, if this isn’t the death knell of the CD, I don’t know what is. Does anyone still buy those things? Yes, there are plenty of people in little towns all over the place with no broadband. They didn’t put it everywhere. Those folks are disconnected enough to vote for Bush, and now this. Karl Rove is gonna be putting flyers in the church parking lots warning about this one, except that access to all those computers is just what he wants.

I love this story because it will alert everyone to the issues surrounding DRM – Digital Rights Management. The studios, record labels and all major content providers are obsessed with it. They have little Expos to show it to Congress. They won’t let their product off of hard files until they have it. Problem is, digital files are easy to copy. Ultimately, there is no way to completely protect against copying. Until the mechanism exists, on a widespread level, to make sure content providers get paid on the basis of the popularity their product in a transparent, quantifiable way, we will continue to see these entertainment giants at odds with their own consumers.

Wayne Rosso: Make A Buck Off Internet Music Or Die Trying

2005-11-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

OK, before reading the story below in shock and disbelief about my mellow tenor and primer tone, keep in mind that this was written for Slashfilm, a film site I write for. The site is somewhat mainstream and its principal has been courting the studios, everyone does. So. apparently they (the overpaid bigwigs raping our culture) have been eyeballing the site, which has done quite well in the few months it's been running. Today I went to log the story (below) on, and the site was so full of pop-ups, it wouldn't function. The writers have been complaining. Anyway, here's your preview, along with your own title:
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Grokster, yesterday, reached a settlement with RIAA, MPAA & other entities representing Big Entertainment (we had Big Tobacco, then Big Pharma…. ) who had sued it in 2002 for offering software which allowed people to exchange files. Since most of the files “traded” (downloaded) were owned by five big record labels who had secured most of the money making value of those songs through far reaching Copyright laws that they pay $35M/year to have made, they were pretty miffed and continue to seek recompense where they can find it.

Unfortunately, for them, most of the value of their booty has seeped back into the hands of the people it belongs to, the kids of the people who made those songs hits and paid up the ying yang for them. Since the labels have no way to recoup from all these kids, except of course, the twelve-year-old Harlem girl, and the many grannies they’ve sued, they go for where the money is.

Well, they’re reporting the Grokster settlement is $50M. Hmmm, now Grokster isn’t a public company but if they have $50M in the bank, I’ll eat my iPod. No, no, that’s the value of Wayne’s (Shawn’s) new software. Wayne Rosso, former President of Grokster sold out to the labels a long time ago. His new company is Mashboxx, which should launch later this year.

He and Shawn Fanning have been in bed with any label they could find and were making great headway at Sony/BMG until Clive Davis decapitated their buddy Andy Lack. Andy actually was trying to bring music to the internet and wanted to use Shawn’s Snocap software, which promises to turn P2Ps legit through filtering software. To make sense of all this, we need to go back to the original Napster.

Shawn Fanning, staying up night after night, wrote a program that changed the world. It allowed anyone who downloaded it to find files that had been uploaded onto the internet. It slowly started to catch on, and when it was sued by the labels, written up in Newsweek and then Hank Barry got Hummer to put up $11M, things went nuts and it became the fastest growing application to ever hit the internet.

The labels took the position, hey, it took a lot of work ripping your cultural heritage off of the artists who created it, It’s worth about $12B/year dribbling it back to you, and we want our money. No one is innocent and idealistic enough to invest in these P2Ps now, so they continue to go after Hummer, which is insured. As to the others, they just want them down, take whatever assets are there, which, in most cases there are assets, including the 10 million eyeballs on these sites every year.

So, that’s the five minute skinny on what’s happening with the Grokster settlement and P2P music. What does this have to do with film? Plenty. Remember, Sony is Big Five in both music and film. Next time you go to the theater, or video store, think about this. You could be watching that film in your very own home theater, if you wanted to, whenever you wanted to see it. The technology is there, believe me. Big Entertainment does not want that to happen, at least not yet. While the gun lobby pays $2M/year for access to Congress, Big Entertainment pays $35M. That’s a lot of money, money that they get from you and me when we buy music and film. They pay that money for control over content and distribution, and for Copyright terms of over 75 years!

If this is how you want your money spent, fine. We’ve seen a huge democratization in music and film is following close behind. We’ll continue to see the internet play a bigger and bigger role in the film industry. My concern is that Big Entertainment will continue to slow the growth of the internet as an entertainment delivery system, which it is ideally suited to be, because of their paranoia about control, and their insistence in wringing every possible dollar out of their capital.

Clive Davis: Musical Visionary or Label Wonk?

2005-10-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

I was just watching a DVD of the 25th Anniversary Celebration of Arista. Unfortunately, it's just the concert, no dirt, not even a fucking interview, what a gyp. Other than Berry Gordy, Clive is one of the very few to achieve fame for heading a record label. Dubbed "the man with the golden ear", he seems (repeat, seems) beloved by the scores of artists he discovered. The list of them reads like a who's who of music: Janis, the Dead, Springsteen, Santana, Whitney Huston, Alicia Keys etc. etc. Alicia says that when the she first met him, as a teen, he was the first industry person to ask her what HER vision was for her music.

Most recently, he endowed a program at NYU to promote record production as an art, which, it can be. So, as label wonks go, I guess he at least has some real sense of what's good and tries to send the right message to his artists. But, this guy is the enemy right? He exemplifies the excessive lifestyle of someone who has built an empire off the backs of genius artists who would have surely found success anyway, and would have been able to profit from it fairly if not for company men like Clive, who is a lawyer for god's sake. I'd sooner forgive Madonna because at least she is an artist. She made a statement, she deserves to rape and pillage young artists.

Clive, I don't know. Yes, he gets it. He did realize music was changing. I guess he was the only label exec at Monterey Pop in '67 and built a career up off of that. He does have a good sense for what people like. Maybe all the stoned hippies cheering, clued him in. Maybe had a little Kool-Aid himself... him & Bill Graham... soul brothers. Is that a legitimate basis for building a fortune? Not any more. He's a dinosaur. We'll never see more like him. As a matter of fact, that's pretty much why the label he founded dumped him, shortly after the big wingding. In the end, he showed them how hard it is to run a successful label. It's something only the old style shysters can do, you know. Them, the internet embracers and the big hip hoppers with cred... the real ganstas. He started his own label and beat them at their own game. So, they came sniveling back to restore him to his former, and I guess now everpresent, glory.

As a matter of fact, Clive is now at the center of a red-hot power struggle over the giant joined powerhouse Sony BMG Music. The two companies live a precarious harmony as equal members of both former companies make up their board. Howard Stringer, subject of previous posts surprisingly replaced Mariah svengali, Tommy Mottolla with Andy Lack, his longtime friend, as head of the division. But now, at Clive's prodding, BMG has turned on Andy. He's out. How did Clive do it? Oh, you're gonna love this. Yes, Shawn Fawning and Wayne Rosso, urchins of the music industry. Their tarnish lives on. There were lots of problems with Andy, who had no experience running a label, something you need a lifetime, like Clive, to learn. But, his relationship with these guys was probably easy for Clive to exploit.

And by the way Clive, don't you know it's tacky to talk about how Janis wanted to fuck you and you refused? We can see what a stud you are, it's a bit late to prove your manhood now. If you had taken a pass out of class then you wouldn't be flapping your gums now. Looks like you were just chicken and now regret it. And, speaking of bad decisions, I don't care how many bucks you made off it, I will never forgive you for inflicting Mandy on the public. Can you even begin to appreciate how many Barry Manilow songs I've had to listen to, thanks to you? When you're counting your money, just think of the countless millions who had to be unnecessarily euthanized. You also fucked massively with the Dead, which is largely what fueled my thirty year hate/hate relationship with the labels. You got quite a legacy there.

Baby, Please Don't Go

2005-09-27T08:40:00.000-07:00

Things really seem to be changing.

Bury the Hatchet

2005-09-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

I guess I'll skip church this morning. First, we've got to get an early start for the Now and Zen Fest anyway. And second, my prayers have already been answered. Some brave yet wonderful savior has decided to blog his way to unseating Orrin Hatch and becoming perhaps P2P's answer to entrenched power that keeps Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in control of our culture. So, check out this story on the latest David, Steve Urquhart (see link at right for his campaign), and send him money.

Maybe he's the only hope we have to prevent a government for the corporations and by the corporations. Does it bother anyone else that RIAA & MPAA are now (9/27/05) holding an "Expo" for 200 members of Congress, to show them a few P2P services that are controllable. These corporate sponsored ISPs will be legal and other things like the relatively open and free Limewire will be long gone.

Too Legit To Quit?

2005-09-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

A number of trends that I talked about last year are coming to fruition this year as the line in the sand between the P2Ps and bloodsuckers blurs and they enter an early courtship phase. So check out this story and even this older one on Sony, UMG, BMG and the IODA going Snocap as they try out being ISPs.

Some of the distrust and paranoia seems to be truly evolving. Who would have ever thought we'd see something like this five years ago... Fanning, Rosso & the majors all in bed together? Actually, I figured they'd come around after they were assured they'd get paid and Shawn's now done that. So, check out the latest writing on the wall and don't say I didn't warn you. Act now. The P2Ps are falling like dominos.

They're bringing the prices so low, people forget about ownership. There's so much content out there now, so much distribution, the value is diluted in the traditional way. The value now turns to customized, quality, content easily distributed on portable hardware. Search will continue to turn profit, but the value of old content is quickly fading.

Also check out this one on Bram Cohen's inroads toward making BitTorrent legit. So, maybe the film industry won't have to go through quite the same growing pains and end up in RIAA's position vis a vis the public. In fact, as of 9/26, he did get over $8M in funding from DCM.

Speaking of which, check out this story about the mom fighting back the RIAA suit. I've long waited to see one of these puppies go to trial. This stuff will slog through the courts for many more years as the majors find ways to profit off the internet and the court system simultaneously. Unfortunately, for them, the ranks of fighting moms continues. Remember how the Russian revolution (and most revolutions) started? Don't fuck with the mothers, boys, stick with Fawning & Grosso, who'll swing at any pitch for a penny.

Either way, we all lose and we all gain as every internet destination will soon have a Mr. Brightsides/Bruce Wayne identity, giving up a cent or two for each song "downloaded", or at least temp-loaded, or streamed and it going to some barcoded endpoint which is hopefully some indie artist like me.... and a darknet/Batman identity along the underbelly of cognoscenti for those who like their webs free of spiders... who spin.

Live Ate

2005-08-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

7/8/05 Update: Pink Floyd sales go up 1300% on the strength of their performance, give all the profits to charity and urge others to do the same... which Elton and others have done.
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Thank God they let Putin into the G7... it would have been tough getting the seven around the guitar and making it look like a $. As I'm sure my readers have discerned, I can be rather cynical and even have a button with "Hardened Cynical Bastard" encircling an Anarchy A. But, I am a fucking puddle when it comes to these charitable megaconcerts. During the post 9-11 concert at the Garden, I went through half a box of tissues.

I even enjoyed watching Madonna. Come to think of it, I always enjoy watching Madonna, and all the other big artists and when they all accumulate in one big show... I like it even better. Sure, watching these huge artists, especially Madonna, hype themselves as humanitarians is a bit much. But, it's the job of artists to raise awareness and that's basically what they're trying to do.

Of course I cried during Pink Floyd. I mean when Roger and Dave started smiling at each other, after all their bad blood and talkin bout Sid... after all these years... not to mention listening to them play these incredible songs together again after so long. Amazing!! I'm so glad they got Dave's hands as he finessed the notes out of Money, he's underrated as a guitarist, but, it takes a lot to sustain the notes. I gotta tell ya, I'm glued to the fuckin TV, even with the tape rolling. One terrific performance after the next. What's not to love?

I like the fact that they gave free concerts to raise awareness rather than doing outright fundraisers, as they did last time. The fundraising board I serve on took this approach to the big Palo Alto May Fete Parade, which traditionally ended with a fundraiser. We decided to use the after-event as PR , a free community day, and made just as much money... or at least a lot of money. You never know if you could have made more, but I love the gesture of giving freely. It means a lot.

Then again, you shouldn't complain if people want to make a buck in the open market, as Geldorf did after some of the lucky winners of tickets to the British show offered them up for sale on E-bay. Geldorf grumbled till the site took them down... as they always do anytime anybody big grumbles.

Goodbye Luther and Obie (Benson, one of the Four Tops).... you made great contributions to music... these guys were some awesome vocalists! So, both a happy and sad day for music. Maybe more sad than happy when you realize that the twenty years since Live Aid have not done more to eradicate poverty.

As far as I'm concerned, no one in the developed world should spend their time with unhappiness. We have so much. Wake up every day in squalor and wonder if you can get through the day, who of your family or friends will die today. That's a problem, one that most humans who've lived on earth have had. What we have here are not problems, they're fake problems, created by a system that thrives on greed. Buy into that and you've wasted an incredible gift. Count your blessings and love your life, cause, you lucked out.

I talk to so many people who seem to live in these little boxes of fear, so afraid of what they might lose. They never bother to think that they are already such a huge winner, all they really need to do is just enjoy their winnings.

Analysis

2005-08-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

...is what I'm going to need, (sorry Tom Cruise, but, don't worry, I don't take legal drugs... I feel the same way you do about the Brave New psycho-tropics and have said so) to deal with the opinions of these fuckin octogenarians... when was the last time one of them even listened to music? Ok, enough about my mental state (sadness for all the poor shmucks who still haven't figured out how to get their music). I never saw the original Napster website. By the time I got a clue, all they had was sad news and T-shirts... at least I got one of those.

Now, if the lower court reconfigures according to guidelines, we've got some 40 years till the software degrades, which will affect the network. I'm sure they'll do what they can to keep people from finding the software. They are very good at creating obstacles (which is about all they can do since positive actions are anathema to them) and the hackers and light-bearers will find more and better, hopefully aggressive guerilla, ways to sidestep them. This battle is gonna make the Vietnam War feel like the Six Day War... it's just gonna be endless back and forth.

There is no way to stop the exchange and copying of digital files by savvy people, though they may be able to make serious inroads on the sheeple (thanks for that term Jesse, it is handy...sheep + people = sheeple). Then again, many are probably saying, as I was in the fall of '01, "Holy shit, I better get on the ball with this free music before it's all gone". Anyway, as long as people can type "free" and "music".. we should do just fine.

I liked Ernest Miller's summary of the comments today. Here's yesterday's, which is also very good. There's certainly a variety of opinion on the decision. I also liked this story by the Washington Post as it touches on the relationship between the Grokster case and the larger issues of who owns our channels of communication. Today's story also gives a good perspective on the new landscape carved out here for corporate culture. You didn't buy that "We the People"... bullshit did you? The legislature, the MJ and OJ juries, and now even the fuckin Supreme Court cares about powerful people, and who are the most powerful people? The big corporations.

It's too bad I don't do the DVD reviews any more because I did see a very interesting documentary recently called The Corporation which went into the history of the corporation and how they came to be regarded, and treated legally, as people. They have all the same rights that people do... the right to own property and do whatever they want with it. Originally corporations were entrusted with very limited rights to do public projects, but, after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment offered certain rights to all people.

Of course, that was meant to help the former slaves achieve a place in society (we all know how that worked out...) and, in the years following the war there were over 300 lawsuits that refined and expanded the law. Oh, and did you know that only a few of those cases were brought by people of color? The rest were brought by corporations which soon wielded unbelievable power that benefitted the robber barons and their progeny. The film compared the new "people" to real ones and showed how pathological they are.

Corporations, by fiat, are pathologically selfish and will externalize any cost they can. There is one, and only one, acceptable goal... to profit. This is not about immoral people, it's about the way the system is set up. Neither the legislature or the Supreme Court see the problem with giving corporate America such unfettered freedom. It really saddens me that they can't make out the larger issues.

So, personal analysis, social analysis... oh, you thought I meant legal analysis. I can do that in two words: software and stigma. I guess I was in fantasyland thinking those Justices were gonna look at Rosso and those companies and just condone. I can't get past the immorality of the label's ownership but, the court can't get past the fact that they do own that stuff. And it was unrealistic to think that they would rubber stamp websites that actively culled Napster users.

It's amazing how conservative we've become. I mean, Napster was not lead by Malcolm X here. Hank Barry is about as corporate & sanitized an image as you're gonna get. He had spent his career up till then as a lawyer, he came out of the courtroom in a white shirt and horn-rimmed glasses for god's sake. Yet, he might as well have been standing there with his fist in the air. All they saw was rebellion and upheaval. This is about structure and rules. There is only one thing they all agree on in Washington... rules are rules and you follow the rules.

You can try to change the rules, which is primarily what we're about now, but, whatever rules are there... that's what you play by. They ignore the fact that the rules favor the biggest players so strongly that you do create unstable situations that foster revolt and which drag on the economy.

The court tried to nod to hardware and I would like to think a more traditional defendant would see the other side of the pendulum. I think we'll continue to see the California courts act reasonably. Still, it's gonna be a big chill. If you think the VCs are not watching this Hummer lawsuit, think again. Just think what they're up against now, after this decision. No one likes exposure and hassles.

The renegade ventures are not gonna get funded, not with so many available that just have the usual amount of IP baggage. Worse, the VC's are gonna be far less interested in entertainment. This saddens me because the barriers to entry have made entertainment a great area for venture money. Roger McNamee/Bono are doing quite well with it. Worst of all, the marriage of high tech and content is more fractured than ever and all kinds of blended deals are gonna suffer.

So, score one up for business as usual, for more consolidation and corporate control. The High Court had a chance to act that way but, in their minds these are just some dinky little companies leaching off bigger ones and Sony was... well, Sony. While I may be interested in larger issues, the court takes its defendants as it finds them and this wink and nod business about we don't know what they're trading, came off as coy and they went hard after the inducement aspect. At the same time we just did not sell on the substantial non-infringing use aspect, which shows a real knowledge gap on the part of the court.

The court saw Sony as a legitimate innovator that was gonna have some marginal negative impact on the content providers and saw these guys as being about theft. They were not persuaded by all the necessary, good and legal sharing because they probably believed Shawn fucking Fanning who told them he could sort it all out.

Downloading Down?

2005-08-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

As Verrilli and Clement get up there today to argue Ken Starr's brief and execute turncoat Theodore Olson's strategy at SC against Taranto, let's take a look at what they're arguing about because one thing is clear. No matter what the high court decides in June... things are far from over. The labels can kick and scream all they want, they'll never stop P2P. But, they can significantly chill innovation and the tech engine that is our country and, that's pretty fuckin scary.

Also scary is the fact that none of the national morning shows had a word about the case, even though it's being argued today. KRON had a few sentences, which were at least favorable. But it really does concern me that this issue is so far under the radar for the public and, therefore, Congress. Hillary Clinton, who cosponsored Induce has apparently been successfully reeducated by college crowds and IPac, but, I'm continually confused and concerned about the lack of publicity for the side of this issue which represents a huge public interest.

According to Washington Post the Pew American Life Study says people are switching from downloading free music to paying for it. Not me, I switched to Apple, so I don't have to deal with the reverse infiltration from the free sites like you MSDrones. That's the only thing I can think of to sway people, unless you think millions suddenly got religion... or just love that DRM. Jon at P2Pnet sees it differently. I've looked at their studies, you can interpret for yourself.

Lots of people don't want to admit downloading on questionnaires, but Big Champagne looks at P2P traffic and consistently estimates a billion files a month. The lawsuits scared people for a while, but, the odds speak for themselves. A billion files a month, a few thousand lawsuits... that's only gonna scare people so long.

It is possible that overall free downloading may be leveling off. It's been around a few years now and so catch up has been played. When I first clued in I had to build up my library. I looked at everything I'd previously had on vinyl (it took me 3 years to find Robert Gordon's cover of Red Hot!) and CD, went through my rock encyclopedias, aging memory, you name it. It was an exhaustive and lengthy process. At one point my hard drive crashed and I had to start all over again.

Anyway, now, it's done. It's built. Yeah, I have to keep it up, keep it current, but that's just maintenance. My theory of the world is that I'm not alone in the world, if this is my experience, it's probably the experience of my Boomer buds and many more. So, it does make sense that downloading could level off... mine sure has... because I've already got the stuff. Yes, new folks are always coming into the broadband world, but maybe not as fast as that first rush.

Like I told you, it's about catalog and hits... at least for now. Now that I do have the library and ease of use, I am getting increasingly interested in lesser known stuff, which is where the paid sites do better... to an extent. Growing just as fast are the sites listed on the right, where artists are posting very decent music for free. So, I can see some transition... but not at these price points. They keep touting these 300M iTunes files as the next Messiah but... come on. I simply don't believe there's any great exodus from free to paid downloading.

Just wait till BitTorent gets the bugs out. Once those big budget films start torrenting out there to people's computerized home entertainment centers the shit is going to hit the fan big time. That's why they're taking such a stand now. The music's out, maybe they can accept that, but big film... now we're talking about another $30B domestic plus much more worldwide. We have to encourage these massive creative enterprises and we've got to pay for them somehow. The prices can come down somewhat but you're still talking at least $45M to make a nice film with your big stars and good effects, even when everyone's getting "fairly" paid (i.e.. actors not getting $20M for 10 days work).

Robert Rodriguez, who has his own studio, including the airplane hangers of the old Austin airport, runs his pics very efficiently. He's the envy of Lucas, Coppolla, PDI & Jobs the other Hollywood outsiders, because of that real estate coup. By keeping his pictures under $45M he gets the independence from ex-Miramax heads Bob & Harvey Weinstein that he needs, he does his own directing, editing, composing, writing and effects. His latest, Sin City, has half a dozen big stars. But, it's almost impossible to bring in a good looking film under that price and us paying an extra few bucks to our ISPs may not cover that. So, we'll see. It's a lot easier to make good music on the cheap than a good film.

So, P2P for music, the song is over, except for some niche stuff that may get left over for the labels. As to film, I hope MPAA steps up to the plate and gets in bed with BitTorrent because that is a whole different animal and those big popular films are gonna take it up the yinyang. With current P2P, the more popular a file is, the longer it takes to get it. With BitTorrent, the more popular a film is, the faster the download will be. This will do a lot to discourage the leading edge of our film industry. Companies like ILM, Zoetrope & Pixar require huge investment upfront and lots of time and talent.

So, as the second act opens here... we got troubles in River City. But, River City got its music man and so did we. They ended up taking control of their music and so will we.

Grokster

2005-08-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

How fitting this should be the word that will define the future of P2P. Grok was a term coined by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land the sci-fi classic in which the protagonist was able to "grok" things, meaning he could understand them fully, completely empathetically. When you grok something you understand it so well as to virtually become it. It is the ne plus ultra of experiential god-like communal consciousness. It's what it's all about. Your life is about it. Everyone's life is about it. It's the consciousness we all plug into... via the internet.

But, that's only the first part of this word. "Ster" is from that nappy headed boy, and not Stevie Wonder. Shawn Fanning changed it all. So, I'm not sure how Wayne chose his word, but, it's pretty obvious. He knew who to nod to. The Stranger from a Strange Land who stayed up for hours and days and cared nothing but the application... signing it all to the Shakesperean uncle from hell... who scared off everyone but Hank. What a story... I wish MTV get his story moving again. Alex Winter is on board, but that's about it.

So, that's what it's about... the big boogeyman who's gonna let people all over the place exchange digital files. The experts for the Petitioners, upon cross examination, were forced to admit that even if all the licensees were to close their doors tomorrow, there is nothing to stop P2P. The Supreme Court's decision will do little to slow P2P. It would allow these conglomerates more weight in scaring and ripping off the public. And, saddest of all, we will continue to stifle the economic engine of the world, that is and always has been technology. But, make no mistake, P2P is here. It is reality. There is no stopping it. Grok it. Accept it. Enjoy it!

It's my hope the court will make the comment it has before, despite the current administration. It's always been the last bastion of protection for the interests of the less powerful voice against paid interests. The facts are clearly closer to Betamax than Napster because of the lack of central servers and follow on participation. So, keep your fingers crossed.
There is a send off party for the Grokster team at 1750 Social Club Thursday night 3/24 at 8pm and anyone interested in supporting the team should contact EFF. Their link is on the right. I will be there so say hi if you see me... or grok me.

The Musician's Perspective

2005-08-19T09:38:00.000-07:00

standard contract clauses
I think it's important to consider the issues of copyright and music over the internet not only in terms of the public and the conglomerates who supply/control/brainwash it, but in terms of those in the middle of all this. When Mommy and Daddy can't get along, it's always the kids who suffer. In this case the "kids" are the artists who everyone says they love and want to protect and nurture.

The labels are suing, screaming and lobbying to protect the artists, that is their position. The consumers say, no, you don't love them, you screw them over, WE love them. We're the ones who cough up the dough, go to the concerts, buy their records & T-shirts, listen to them.... we're the ones who really care. Well now let's take a look at how those kids are really doing and how they really feel, because we need these artists to remind us what life and love and music and freedom are all about... before we forget.

Moreover, there are many players and interests in this game and even within the ranks of musicians, and other groups, there is vast difference of opinion. We have the legislatures, Federal & states, particularly CA & NY which have been active in this area. Recording contracts and RIAA's practices have increasingly come under their scrutiny as musicians have organized. The courts have been burdened with sorting out this mess, giving rise to a huge economy of lawyers who have interests of their own. We have tech companies, many of whom, from Intel to Snocap have been individually and collectively interested in this as IP is a huge area of risk and growth for companies, particularly as start-ups, which brings in the $18B VC interests, a primary growth engine of the US.

We have the artists, in every medium, who have to live in fear and poverty, without career trajectories, being raped from every angle, with no public support, which brings us to the public, the 6B folks in every corner of the world who've been exposed to American entertainment. A quick look at the various parties who've filed amicus briefs in Grokster give you an idea of the many competing interests (3/1/05 post).

What I'd like to focus on here is the perspective of the musicians, who are, in many ways, at the center of all this. My basic take is that the musicians are divided, as they are in any Capitalistic system, on the basis of whether they perceive themselves as owners; primarily, as owners of copyrights. On the one hand we have musicians like Don Henley and Sheryl Crow, both of whom own the rights to many compositions. They formed RAC, not a link on the right, because I only choose links that represent what I guess I'll now refer to as the workers... musicians out there looking for a career in music but who have no valuable copyrights.

RAC has an impressive list of supporters, most of the major names in popular music. Now, in many ways, these are the good guys. They are successfully educating and advocating for start-up level acts vis a vis the labels. The link on this post exposes the seedy truth of what happens to those "getting their big break", the opportunity to sign with a major label. RAC is advocating for changes and has been able to get some progress, but they still accept the current model of distribution unquestioningly, completely discounting the internet as a potential avenue of growth. They call the idea of selling music over the internet a fantasy and they are as rabid about downloading as the labels.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the increasingly long list of sites where unsigned artists DO sell music over the internet, and give it away. In the middle are a number of groups such as the Future of Music Coalition which represents musicians at a variety of levels and shows the breadth of opinion and choice. One thing is clear to me. Artists who ignore the internet do so at their peril. It is an incredible medium for promoting and purchasing music.

Copyright owners see the internet as a leaky boat, with their property interests spreading uncontrollably into the world. It's like the overprotective parent who needs to retain dominion and control long after the child grows up. Henly has contributed some great songs and wants to keep reaping their benefits as long as possible, so do the many RAC supporters. They take the desirability of their product as a given, they are not interested in promotion. But, 99.9% of all musicians DO depend on promotion, just like any company.

I think the path for most bands is to build audience through performing and internet exposure with the goal of grooming themselves toward a label. There are a number of groups geared to helping acts make that transition, such as Taxi. Once they sign, the label will look at what's been built and advance accordingly, and at that point, it's usually the end of building an audience. By the time the record comes out, the group has probably already lost it's focus and now is trying to produce a commercial sound, which may or may not be the sound and feel that nurtured the love of their fans. They also soon realize that there is virtually no hope of ever seeing any more money from the label, and they become just another one of the 99.9% who stop right there.

Of course the labels go on to say, "see why we deserve that VC dough... we take all the risk, it's one in a million that sells". True VCs with that hit rate would go down right away. But, that's because VC's lose their shirts on the losers. Not the labels, they make money off everyone because the acts make the risky investment themselves - it's all deducted against their side of the profits, not the label's. The labels advance what they know they can make from the band's carefully analyzed fan base, so they know they'll clear their outlay. The windfalls are just free gravy on top of that.

Labels exploit market factors, the huge amount of people who would love to make a living in the arts, and, who have talent, and, their exclusive monopoly on the means of distribution.

Freedom of Expression

2005-08-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

I read this book online, you can just download it off Kembrew's website, it's under a CC license. It's almost as easy as reading a regular book, except you have to scroll each page if you want it big enough to read on your laptop.

Like Bollier, who founded Public Knowledge, and whose book, Brand Name Bullies, I recently posted about (link at right), and almost all the writers on this subject, McLeod spends lots of time discussing lawsuits. It's gonna be a long time before we can get out from under the legacy of having so many copyrights in the hands of so few. It's to the point now where I feel the only solution is to shorten the length of copyright to some 20 years and put some retroactive features in there to expedite the process, otherwise we're gonna be bogged down by a body of intellectual property law that's gonna make traditional property law, including the Rule Against Perpetuities (which is exactly what we're getting here), look like a walk in the park.

McLeod discusses how these problems play out in the biotech sector and hip hop community. I learned as a DJ that knowing your music and being able to piece it together to make the sum greater than the whole and put a creative message out there is an art form unto itself. As a radio DJ you're essentially being paid to do that, if you take the challenge even higher and become even more creative, and do it as mashup, then you get prosecuted for it. Kembrew goes through the whole culture of it, how long of a sample you can take ( under 4 sec.), how much money you can make ($15K) before the labels will come after you and put you out. What haunts the hip hop community plagues all artists who build on previous works, from collage to documentaries.

Some of these numbers, man, Kanye was paying some $150K for samples he used in College Dropout. We have a huge economy here which has absolutely no fucking benefit to society whatsoever, only detriment. This is not a bunch of disparate events, this is a organized abuse of the legal system. This is every bit as big an issue as campaign reform and the change needs to happen at the legislative level. The current climate is going to make that extremely difficult and if SC buckles this spring, we're going to start going backwards, not only in terms of our culture, which is already happening, but tech. If we slow down the tech engine, we're really in trouble, because China is out there & they don't give a fuck about our copyrights.

Kembrew points out the irony that the labels hastened their own demise by trying to convert the public from vinyl to CD, in order to make money. People were naturally reluctant to buy their whole music library over again, but, they had to. The labels stopped accepting returns for records. What had been a typical practice of sampling music by buying a record and then returning it, came to a close, so people had to move to digital. The way Kembrew put it was like hey, go out there without a condom, don't come crying to me. Those boys, through their greed, and stupidity, opened the Pandora's box themselves.

The book also explores this idea of the gift economy, the free sample, and gives many examples showing what art and music is supposed to be about. How it's about expression and sharing your message in a creative, warm, communal way. To me, the apotheosis of this concept is the Grateful Dead community. I wouldn't even know where to begin, trying to express what that has meant to me in my life. I never labeled myself a Deadhead, I never made following them a way of life, but I knew many who did. It was a true community of the most loving, amazing people you could ever meet.

When I would be at a Dead show... the feeling was completely different from any other environment. I knew I could ask anyone around me for any type of help and they would give it, they would welcome me warmly, not knowing me... and not in the way of being at some Billy Graham crusade or something. I would often wear, purposely, very un-Dead looking garb, it didn't matter, there was absolutely no sense of evangelism, just sharing. We always hated the labels, even then, but, we had to live with them for some things, get some disks pressed. But, that was a small function, it wasn't about the records, we had all the tapes we ever needed. It was about the community and this book expresses some of what it means to be an artist and what it means to be a fan and love your artist, feel connected to them and their message. The give and take, and trust, of that experience. When that relationship exists, you don't have this sense from these pampered millionaire/"artists" that they feel exploited, you don't have fans feeling like thieves.

By inserting this useless, parasitic layer, between our artists and their fans, we are depriving ourselves of a wonderful experience that nurtured me personally and artistically for a lifetime. Most bands do not show the kind of example of generosity of spirit the Dead did, they gave free concerts, allowed unlimited taping at concerts, just out of love for their fans. Jerry deeply loved his fans, they all did, and they showed that in every way. When I showed up at their suite with a friend, they welcomed me warmly, invited me to party, even sleep over.

Of course, they were probably the biggest earner of all time. They were #1 on Fortune's biggest earners in entertainment (including movies etc.) year after year. This is no coincidence. They earned more money off their hippie fans than Britney will ever be able to skim off Daddy's wallets. The Dead never felt any less than Grateful. They felt blessed by the adoration of their fans and their deep appreciation of the music. I danced in front of Jerry many times and felt a sense of connection and mutual appreciation. There was no phoniness, there are no bad Jerry stories out there... no little boys on Jesus juice.

What the Dead did, many bands have done, very successfully, and the internet will make it possible for many bands to grow the same way. Grow your business the Mom & Pop way, through pleasing your customers, not this pseudo VC model.

Anyway, I think it's important to show the positive example here, not just list one horrid abuse of the legal system after another. We could have so much more. I think about all these Britney dominions. What kind of community is that? What's her message? When we have groups like U2 who posture themselves as socially aware yet who let their labels intimidate artists without even making a stink about it. I mean, supposedly, the Edge made some lame comment about trying to talk to their label...what the fuck is that? "Yeah, I know you're right, I'm an artist too, but the label is what's in control here"... when you're a band with the fan-given stature of a U2??? Come on.

Speaking of Negativland, (link at right), the book also highlights some of the artists who are trying to bring these issues to light in creative, provocative, aesthetic ways. I found this very inspiring and I'm sure to be blogging further on the subject, starting with the following:

The kicker of the book is that McLeod was actually able to trademark the phrase "Freedom of Expression", at least for certain uses. It's cute how he actually uses the mark throughout the book. However, if you need to use the phrase... I doubt Kembrew will prosecute. He did sue his best friend, who posed as an infringer. He hired a lawyer, who drafted a cease & desist & the story was covered by a local paper, who later refused him permission to use the story as part of the artistic statement he made. His activity was listed as a piece of illegal art on the site of the same name (see link at right).

Napster

2005-08-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

Current Napster Prognosis: Poor
2/20 Update: The latest ironic turn of the saga happens when Napster 180 files an amicus against it's former incarnation in the Grokkster case.
___________________________________________________________
Let's get real. When the story of the 21st century is told, it's gonna get down to one word... Napster. So, tune into the Superbowl tomorrow for the latest installment. Disposable razors, disposable society, disposable music....that's ok, I'll hold onto my Napster T-shirt, from the original company, I'm sure it'll be worth a lot of money someday.

Over $83M went into the company that helped people find and trade music over the internet and they got nothing back from the millions and millions of people that used and enjoyed that service. Not that they didn't want to profit, they were forced into bankruptcy by an injunction.

The new incarnation wants a dollar a song, though now the song will self-destruct, probably at your party. Gee, I hope there's some price cut here. I mean really, give me one fucking reason I should pay anything for some song I don't even own, when I can easily get full ownership for free. Morals? Come on, anyone who understands the structure would see that the money they are forking over goes primarily toward people who are hindering, not helping, the cause of seeing music accessible and inspirational in our society. BTW, if you want the real scoop, check out the industry insider sites like NARIP. It was there I got the iTune breakdown: $.33 to Apple, $.55 to the label & $.10 for the artist.

You know, music has had a feature role in my life. I couldn't imagine my life without music. It's not only been there for some of the highest highs, but has been responsible for many of them. I love music. I look around me and see many people so immersed in jobs, kids, money, or sometimes not even that much, who have no real connection to music or art anymore, that was left on some kindergarten desk somewhere.

I have bags of my son's artwork in a closet. Thank god I have it because he'll probably never paint like that again in his whole life. God willing, he'll go out there and make great films with great messages someday, but that's probably only because his mom loves art so much.

What about all these other people who lead lives like mushrooms, satisfied only by notions that they have played by the rules, but without true connection, inspiration, joy, freedom? I was pausing by some Tony Robbins infomercial the other day and they were saying something like, "You have to understand what really drives you, not what motivates you." I guess what that means is we have to look deep into our beliefs to understand how to make the best choices for ourselves in life.

Of course I'm motivated by money and power and prestige, like everyone else. Want to try power? Try directing a play or film... your job is telling people what to do and where to go and they do it and go there... all to enact your vision, inter or otherwise. Want power? Try having kids. The most powerful influence in anyone's life is their mother. Money is nice, but it costs so much life, and that external power seems so superficial, at least to me.

All of these powers can be really attractive but, to me, they pale beside the power that comes from being connected with god. What drives me is the desire to help others experience that connection in their own way. All of you who asked me what I'm looking for, what I want... there you go. That's why I liked Napster, it helped people get in touch with music, which helps people get in touch with god.

I'd also love to have a relationship with a man who is my total equal, who has his own inner core, who is passionate about some of the things I am passionate about, who understands me, who loves me. And, of course, who turns me on. Doesn't everyone want that? Don't we all want to be loved and understood? How many of us actually have that? How many of us settle for so much less than we could have or be in life?

I was just watching Good Morning America and they had women on there talking about infidelity and how few good marriages there are. This woman said she once had a really good opportunity with a man, she stayed out of it at the time but now, I guess some years down the road, she's separated anyway & really regrets missing the opportunity. So, Diane Sawyer goes, "If you'd had the affair, would it have ended your marriage?" and she goes, "Probably, but the marriage ended anyway and now I don't have the opportunity I had before."

Perspectives, perceptions, focus... it's all a matter of choice. A director can't do a close-up and a wide shot at the same time. That woman couldn't deal with the daily realities and limited perspective to see the consequences of her choice in the long term. I also couldn't face the idea that my marriage was, yes, that bad, because I was looking at the structure all around me and not into my heart, at least at first.

But, the past year has changed my perspective immeasurably as I've seen what the world looks like outside those strictures and spoken to many others who have expanded my perspective. So, let's see how Napster looks in retrospect... Vincent Van Gogh sold two paintings in his life, for a pittance. Now they go for $43M. He tried to show the beauty of the world, tried to make them understand. He changed the way we see the world. Napster was just a little failed company. But, the world will never be the same again. Maybe in some ways the story of Napster is the story about the 21st Century.

The century is unfolding just as Toffler predicted 30 years ago, as we shift from an industrial economy to an information economy. Yes, economics is premised on limited supply and unlimited demand, but the reality is that the standard of living in this country has ceased to grow in any meaningful way. As we gentrify, like Europe, I believe we will see far more growth in intellectual property than durables.

If we keep the price of good, uplifting entertainment low, we can do a lot to raise our society and progress to a culture more like what we see in Europe today: a slightly lower standard of living but more opportunity for human connection, growth and learning. We see longer vacations, human work schedules, an intellectual culture, open-minded, accepting... people take time to explore each other and savor life.. it's much better.

Trends in Media

2005-08-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

Ruckus
Google Story
Nonesuch
Translation
Peerflix
Future of the Internet
Mercora Story
Mercora

Looks like Ruckus is raising quite a ruckus. It's almost exactly what the EFF website talks about, and I commented on the compulsory license landscape in my 12/27/04 post. However, from what I gather, this service does not allow you to own any music. Other than that, it sounds great as long as it stays indie. I worked in college radio, we students controlled the station completely, almost everyone on campus listened to it. It's just like what is described in the article (link above), the mental hub....hmmm, maybe that's why I'm so into this shared consciousness internet stuff....

Anyway, before I digress to personal excursions in shared consciousness... are we going to moot this whole downloading thing by making streaming personalized, commercial free and low cost? I doubt it. It's not gonna be that easy. My guess is that Ruckus may be or become big, commercial interests even more invasive on the desktops of these college students; young adults already beset by beer, credit card & other groups who view them as easily exploited.

Ownership & control of one's music library is the trend I'd like to see. I've got my library on my iPod, my iBook, a separate hard disk, a separate computer and on some 500 CDs, I can use them on Garage Band or any other software, I can email them, they don't self-destruct or whine, that's pretty good ownership. However, many of those songs are tagged and can be traced.

Grokster recently made a deal with the Norwest funded ($5M) Mercora, which offers P2P streaming that is supposedly legal, subject to Big Music's stamp of approval, which is currently being withheld. BM (Big Music.... or whatever else you might associate with BM) will now probably also enter as a direct competitor in both streaming ad downloading as a NY court just cleared the way for the labels to offer their "own" music directly online.

More promising to me is Google's entry into video image search. Not content with libraries of books, Google seeps into the complex world of TV...amazing. What will they think of next? Music? No no... not goin there!! So, let's tackle a newer medium. Why muck around the medieval medium of music when we have the modern landscape of TV, child of the advertising dollar? Someday, sooner than for music or film, we'll be able to find the exact TV archive (or maybe current too!) we're looking for... now if people only knew what they were looking for. What was that Springsteen song about 100's of channels yet, "nothing's on".

In film, I quit Netflix for Blockbuster because of the wait times, and my next move is Peerflix, more of a trading P2P deal. I watch a film almost every day. I believe in paying for film, and music too, all art, as long as my cost is proportional to the sellers', and artists are being fairly paid.

In terms of movement in the labels, most promising is Nonesuch records, rumored to have beaten last year's revenues of $35M. It is actually a growing record co. within a major label. The secret, as I've mentioned in countless posts, is building from the fan base. Wilco is a band much steeped in the Dead/DMB/Phish mentality of play for your fans - they are your customers. YOUR (the artists') customers, not the labels' .... we know how they feel about their customers. Nonesuch prez Bob Hurwitz gave the OK to a stream of A Ghost Is Born, and it still sold 250k records. The savings, for the company as a whole, were made on promotion.

Anyway, that's how they did it. It's now been proven to be the one successful strategy, and those little divisions that correct will float while the backed up behemoths sink of their own weight the same way the airlines did. Remember Pan Am, TWA? The indies now own 17% of the market, more than EMI or Warner and that would have also beaten Sony-BMG, had they not merged.

Another trend, which I mention more because of it's cultural importance than it's cultural benefit, is Steve Stoute and others like him, if there are any, who have elevated talent management & promotion into the level of almost corporate alliance as I discussed in my Apple/U2 posts (11/10/04 & 12/02/04). That alliance, which apparently grew from a friendship between Jobs & Bono, gave Apple a 70% market share and gave U2 a new life, doubling sales from its last album.

Stoute's company, Translation, matches top names in entertainment and consumer product with each other, to the munificent remuneration of both. My first blush on reading the Newsweek story was that the guy was an intervisionary. I admire people who can straddle disparate worlds, who can do a Gestalt thing and make a sum greater than its parts.

On the other hand it seems to promote the wrong values, unhealthy food, overpriced status sneakers, this is the kind of stuff that lowers, not raises black culture, or white. In other ways, it's positive, it's the kind of thing that promotes hip hop culture, giving a bigger avenue out of the Brooklyn streets that bred hip-hop thirty years ago. Now hip hop owns 30% of the music industry, and these mergers will only raise its profile in mainstream culture. I prefer to see artists get the big commercial deals than athletes because many jocks have that male/violence overtone, as I mentioned in my previous post.

I think the more interesting aspect of this trend is the branding of everything. The way it's structured, the tiny group of elite musicians are indeed brands. Beyonce is a company. JayZ, her beau, is a company. He, like P Diddy, cross brands, promotes younger artists, employs marketers, VPs of strategic alliance, the whole bit, whatever it takes to get out that name, cause it sells a lot of product and employs a lot of people. No wonder the guy hung up his artistic hat after the Black Album.

We see more of this intervisionary stuff in NY as B'way rocks it up; Good Vibrations uses Beach Boys catalogue and Yoko just coughed up two unpublished Lennon songs for his upcoming bioshow. This further changes the landscape of musical theatre which seems to have exhausted the Great American Songbook and, always a step behind, turns to classic rock, as the rest of the culture segues to hip-hop culture.

Also in live performance we see more blurred edges between sport and entertainment. The figure skaters and gymnasts are getting very theatrical and touring amphitheaters as smaller venues thrive for musicians. It looks like the industry got it, momentarily, after last years' disastrous summer concert season and appears to be poised for a summer of reasonable prices as small successful venues that took up the slack continue to thrive.

Hopefully we'll see more cross pollination in this realm, possibly indie oriented websites putting tours together with several of their top draws on the bill, promote and sell tickets, all online. While some of the smaller labels may have trouble putting their own tour together, if they hooked up... there's power in numbers. Matching up music sites to venues would enhance both, just as the consumer websites that survived corresponded to major brick and mortar stores.

On the internet, the future is open source, VoIP, and the home entertainment market, as Gates has already discovered. We'll see TiVoToGo stuff, putting your digital media onto almost anything, having control over it.

IBM made 500 of its patents available to the open source community, and is thinking about aquiring open source software maker JBoss. Over 17 million people have downloaded Firefox from Mozilla. Microsoft is such crap, it succeeds only on the basis of monopolistic coercion, it cannot be that hard to overthrow a sleeping giant, in such a dynamic world.

VoIP is going to be like a game of 52 pickup as every big entity imaginable scrambles for the internet phone call market.
Phone calls will soon be much more like emails; that pick up, hang up, telephone tag feature will phase out to always on "phones" (almost any WiFi compatible device). Meanwhile, the number of possible service providers grows and prices, hopefully, drop.

VoIP provider Vonage is attracting VCs trying to clear their overhang like crazy, but it probably won't hold up well as bigger players enter the market. Flickr, one of my links is also magnetizing VCs & buyers, as is Mforma, a mobile gaming start-up. Again, clicking on any pic in this blog will enlarge it and take you to my Flickr gallery. This feature soon to be available in all aspects of reality.

And we may soon need a reality check feature in the now $9B industry of internet advertising, one of the fastest growing segments of our economy, ( and huge, all box office in this country is $11B). It is jeopardized by its very openness and anonymity as advertisers wonder if the $12. clicks they pay for are even bona fide. It's easy to defeat Adsense ads with simple programs that can click on a competitors ads, maxing out their ad budget early in the day. Other scammers hire third world firms to click on Adwords ads driving profit for themselves off the fake clicks on their sites.

Magazines and TV go to great lengths to substantiate their readership and size of audience. These web players are gonna get a rude awakening if they don't deliver viable leads. They tend not to deal with the sophisticated agency players, as much as the traditional media do. If scam talk grows and these baby business owners scare off, or sue, we'll see an exodus to these smaller sites which are pouncing on Ebay's raised rates, and see more of a P2P business model, on a smaller scale. Soundclick type sites which offer everything, not just music. Listings at overstock.com went up 50% after Ebay's prices went up between 60% and 100%.

Biggest boomer trend...blogging baby! Bloggers cost Kryptonite over $6M in sales when they demanded locks that couldn't be popped with a Bic pen. Yes, people will increasingly turn to bloggers for truth and more instantaneous reality. Do you think Hearst, my old employer, would print this blog as a column? No way! My friend, Alan Grant, writes for ESPN. He's a legit Stanford grad, in English, he also played pro football. He writes in what we shall say is a very racially aware style. ESPN is consequently edging him out and he's been quite receptive to my little pep talk on going indie on the web.

Interesting, powered guys like Steve Jurvetson (on Blogger, BTW), Martin Tobias and Craig Newmark are blogging. Soon, anyone of any interest will be blogging and that is increasingly where I get my own info, especially after SV BIz Ink left me hanging with bancruptcy after paying for a long subscription. These days you can read right off your Treo. If you like your news totally fresh, as I do, websites, not to mention print, are just too stale. So, RSS is the future there, Bloglines, in Woodside, is rumored to have some 30% of the RSS market, or Delicious, which compiles bookmarks.

Also promising is a new technology that will allow a reader to click on any word in a story to get background on that person or word and technology which allows file sharing on an exponential level to what it is today. Under the new paradigm, the more a file is downloaded, the faster the downloads will go... the opposite of the situation today.

How The Economics of the Music Industry Affects Culture

2005-08-19T09:31:00.000-07:00

Soundclick
Lawrence
cc Mixter
CD Baby
GarageBand
Pure Volume
Craigslist
Aquisition
Sign Here Online

This is what music had gotten to before Napster came along:

By 1992, after over 4 decades of seeing 20-30 varied and exciting number one hits, we were down to a dozen #1 hits a year by artists like Boys II Men, Mariah Carey and MJ, who dominated the charts throughout the decade.

Who dominated the 50's - Elvis, the 60's - The Beatles, the 70's - Elton John, the 80's - Michael Jackson, the 90's - Mariah Carey.

These label execs want us to believe that without them to find this precious talent we will have to suffer along with crappy music. Well, look at what they've offered up as they've consolidated power - puppet songbirds and enuchs. I'll take a Pip over this.

The truth is that there are thousands of talented and dedicated artists out there who are prevented from finding an audience because of the lack of venues, the lack of emphasis on live music due to an overinflated emphasis on recorded music, something caused by the labels themselves, and the lack of access to distribution, also caused by the labels.

In addition, the labels are notorious for doing everything and anything possible to obstruct every single new technology that has moved the cause of entertainment distribution & recording forward. They aggressively fought cassettes, VHS, CDs, and, of course, Napster and all the P2P sites.

If these labels stopped doing us this huge favor of finding us that one in five thousand band we would start looking for sites to help us find some live music in our area or a band's website that we might enjoy (see all the great sites above). Don't worry folks, we won't suddenly live in a society devoid of good music and art.... quite the opposite. We would start enjoying the creativity around us & within us.

There will always be artists that dominate a given year or several years...why? They have talent. Will people stop having talent without our treasured execs? I don't think so.

So, where does the label money go? Some of it does go toward cultivating young talent. They add experienced producer talent, and lots of high-tech hardware & software, which sometimes helps and sometimes doesn't depending what kind of sound you're going for. I mean, the White Stripes have a drum & guitar, nothing digital & lots of folks think they sound great.

They do put money into promotion & trying to make these acts polished, often "not getting it back". Meaning profit above their overhead, right? Well, let's take a look at that overhead. There is no ignoring the overinflated cost of all that, which the bands must pay before seeing a cent. So, the label does get it back, they get paid first, along with the lawyers, the ones who are supposed to be working for the bands.

It's the band that stands last, and ends up with nothing but an overly produced album that sounds little like them or their original identity. If they're lucky, it does well and they can get a better deal next time, but, that's rare and the second deal usually looks like the first.

And if they're really "lucky", and it turns out their song is a hit... say goodbye to what should have been your nest egg for life, cause the label owns it now. So, where does the money go - to the highest level in the music business, the ex-musicians who would rather sit behind a mixing board than a keyboard, telling other bands how to "make it" because their own creativity stalled out.

Society is more invigorated artistically when the younger generation is calling the shots.

Labels need to stop advancing to bands, as Steve Jobs has said, and Hillary Rosen says is happening. The key is, there needs to be a way for bands to do that, make actual money by playing music!!. That's why it's so important to have the infrastructure and cultural conditions that will allow that... small but viable venues, a public interested in seeing live music and willing to use the internet to find music, as well as good sites that will help people find live and recorded music that they will enjoy.

When the bands are cutting those checks, then you will really see things start to change. What the public needs to do is put their cash toward the bands, not the labels.

In the label system the winners subsidize the losers, who usually "don't make back their advance" (no profit after paying in house cost). And that is a correct flow. The problem is the reason they have to. It's because it's winner take all in the music business. Here's why: (and this is my major issue with the record industry): efficiencies of scale/volume.

If you order T shirts printed, they'll charge you $100. to make 100 & $200. to make 1000, whatever, why? Most of the cost is in setting the press. The labels do not want 100 albums selling 100 units each. They want 1 album selling 10,000 units.

Even in this internet age, where we can finally shake ourselves free of the CD (o)pressor, they still want that one in five thousand artist, the Eminems, Britneys, Ushers (see my AMA post). It's all about creating that big superstar name, or brand.

First, for efficiency and second, because once the celebrity gets to a certain visibility level, there's a snowball effect and you get all sorts of free promotion. The big names have press on them 24/7 and the labels love that. In contrast, selling too many albums, which all do, say 100k units, gives you lots of mid-level acts, it creates more of a musician middle class.

The powers that be prefer a smaller (thus, more controllable) group of very influential, now owner class, elite musicians. They provide the role model and impetus to drive early-stage musicians...."look how far you can go in music". At the same time, they tout the company line, like Madonna & Eminem.

I'm not a fan of unions, at all. But, you know, it has protected a lot of actors from being totally exploited. Why is there no musician union?

So, those are some of the reasons music got so bad in the 90's, but, Napster (and to an extent, Cobain) really started to change things and, it is getting better out there. I believe that within the next few years we will see a true cultural revolution, a renaissance.

As the US Empire transitions out to the Chinese, we will, hopefully start using our technologies instead of just inventing them. We'll learn how to express ourselves with them and that will propel us to consume more varied and personalized entertainment. It will drive a huge market and those poised to exploit it should do quite well.

This time, the new boss may not be the old boss.

The Economics of Innovation

2005-08-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Gates Clarifies 1/13/05
1/17/05 Update: In response to the comment posted, I agree with respect to 1999, 2000 & part of 2001 but stand by the rest of my comments which compare label execs unfavorably with VCs. I nowhere hold out the VC model of funding small businesses to be the best available model. It's not.

True free market funding would operate on a more direct, internet hosted model. The question here is, what is the role of the gatekeeper, the selector, the one who tells the public, "here's the good stuff". How well should that person be rewarded? That role is rewarded most highly, just look at the power and money available to VCs & label execs, but, how valuable is that role to society, now that we have the internet, which allows instant voting?
..............................................................

I got an email from Matt Stoller (IPac) recently. He was outraged that Bill Gates publicly called us Communists with a straight face and also mentioned that Gigi Sohn (Public Knowledge) wants now to go on the offensive (finally!) and come up with a plan. Yes, it's about time to start thinking proactively about what is called for here. So much talent has been spent on these court cases, a lot of this stuff is pro bono work performed by, of course, Communist lawyers. The same amount of effort could be spent in other ways.

My plea is to get a good plan in place, one that includes a public domain (see my 1/5/05 post), which, to me, is the key to setting these guys on their heels. That is going to scare them so much that they will have to react. Once the issue is about a public domain, the public can see the advantages and can see that our framers always intended for there to be a public domain and why.

The discussion would then be less about whether 25% of our population are thieves and more about what we want it to be about... who should have what kinds of control over our culture, our music, our film. Maybe at that point the ignorant American public will somehow catch on that they have turned over their own culture to companies who didn't create it and have no moral right to it, and, that it simply doesn't have to be that way.

This movement also needs to bring other skills to bear. As I've alluded to, I think guerrilla theatre has a place here. Because of the complex laws and issues, and because almost every medium besides the internet is owned by big business, it's been very difficult to mobilize and draw attention.

The media loves colorful, unusual ways of protest though. News editors do have to sell product and by staging interesting ways of drawing attention to what has been happening and what's at stake, the light shines on us and we can then deliver a message that can be heard. So far the best examples have been in the first wave of publicity, seeing a triumphant Hank Barry outside the courthouse, only to then have to go back and plead his case unsuccessfully before Congress. Also, the Wired CD and the Grey album. Lessig's last book sparked some collegiate interest.

Our side of this issue is far more sympathetic to the public and the fact that these corporate interests have brainwashed Americans to a degree that people are actually hostile to their own interests says a lot. The fact that, as Matt pointed out, someone as prominent as Bill Gates can get away with labelling us Communists, with impunity, also says volumes about where we are here.

So, let's look at answering this latest label thrown at us. First of all, last time I checked the Cold War was over. Though I'm sure Bill Gates who ripped off $43B of the world's wealth for himself, personally, finds Communist the worst insult you could hurl. Much better to have a system that allows one man to command more wealth than many countries, that allows 2% of people to use 90% of the world's resources. You deserve it, right Bill? Cause you gave us windows. No, you didn't invent it, you just ripped off the guy who did. I'm sure Communism is very, very scary for Bill. After Communism, public domain is probably what keeps Gates' gates up.

The mentality of these label execs screwing the artists and the public is a bit more complex, but very similar. A friend of mine reports that the label execs he has spoken with view themselves as VC's. First of all, you know you're in a bad way when you have to aspire to the moral position of the Vulture Capitalist, but, here we go. They aren't the same.

VC's look for groups of, essentially, highly educated, usually very accommplished, and all to often, men. They are looking for those most likely to execute a useful new technology, put in large infusions of money and good advice, absorb the risk, and try to get something made.

The label leaches look for the youngest, prettiest, stupidest kids they can find, play to their ego and offer them almost no real hope of profiting the way these company players do. What they put into the equation is far less than what the VC's do, and, proportionally, they reap far more. They take less risk because they usually advance only what they feel very sure they can get back. Now, VC's are also, increasingly, demanding revenues before investing. Still, the label deals are far more lopsided than private financings. I mean, it's not even close.

The VC's look for technologies to exploit. The labels look for children to exploit. There is a very big difference. One of the actresses in my film was signed to a major label at 18. She gave up a college education, she sang, danced, did everything those labels told her to do for 18 hours a day for many years. She never made a cent, neither did the other girls in her group. But her label sure did. They sold lots of albums and concert tickets, that's for sure.

When the VC's invest in a company, most of that cash goes directly to those working at the company in the form of salary. In music, they cut a check up top (have to, it's like the heroin dealer giving that first taste for free) but then most of the cash plows back into their own coffers to feed their own staff. VC is equity, labels essentially loan. I doubt they could ever get terms like that from anyone conversant in business. The lawyers and managers these artists may look to are part of the problem and have little desire to change a system they skim so much off.

In the VC world, the investment usually floats or sinks on the viability and functionality of the product. In music, it's far more about grooming and cultivating. Thus, the VC's are more deserving because they take a true risk. The variables of the tech marketplace include quickly outmoded technologies and a fairly free market economy. Music is a monopolistic economy over which the deep pockets exert far more control.

Additionally, the pool of viable companies seeking funding and the pool of potential artists are vastly different. The latter is huge compared to the former, and far more maleable. To analogize; the VC's are in a field of seedlings, they look for the healthiest, water them and hope they grow. This is what the label execs seem to think they are doing. In fact, they seem to have convinced Steve Jobs that they are astute as hell for doing it so well.

Label A&R guys are in a meadow of flowers and, essentially they plow it over, see what is still standing, and then sell the hell out of it. It's easy to find that "one in five thousand that can make it" (Jobs' words), just take the kid still working after 12 hours of dancing, and, if they look real good and are stupid enough to agree to get nothing for busting their butts for years... sign em up and plug them into the publicity machine... real hard.

VC's truly nurture start-ups. Major labels do exactly the opposite, they look for the most mature acts not yet signed, and they are plentiful. If you don't already have 70 songs and an audience the majors won't even look at you. Even though VC's are looking for income the stage of development is, relatively, far, far lower.

Are we communists? Hell no! What we want here is true free market Capitalism. What we want to change away from is monopolistic Capitalism which, in my mind, is far more like Communism because power is so centralized. So, for Gates, who has done more than anyone to destroy free market Capitalism all over the world... a man who has more money and power than any individual on the face of the earth to call US communists... well, I think a response is called for.

The Fan Plan

2005-08-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

1/19/05 Update: Hatch, while removed as Chair of the Judiciary Committee is now chair of a subcommittee on Intellectual Property... do we have to offer this guy an indie label? Doesn't Michael Moore have a film he could score or something?

It occurs to me, particularly after the previous post and some conversations I've had lately that focused on the positive things copyright protection offers, that I need to do more here than complain. It's time to offer up some kind of direction, some kind of vision or plan. Basically, we need to have the top 2% of our music in the public domain and the rest subject to compulsory licensing for use over the internet in order to recoup music's previous prominence. But first we need to raise the profile of this issue to insure fairness.

I think all certified gold records should go into the public domain. In England, once you get to a certain level, you're taxed at 90%, so Elton & Paul don't end up owning the place. U2 outgrosses Ireland, they could run the place, instead they support it. The point is, it's not that unusual to take a steep increment at the far side of income.

Gold records got that way because the public loved the record, bought it, paid money, we have a stake. We made these hits into what they are today by listening, learning, singing and adopting them into our hearts. People who make gold records will still have a lot going for them, people will still want to make records great so they'll have a chance of going gold.

The original artist can still sell records, perform, whatever, it's just that now others can sample, mashup, add their own stuff to the original whole or bits, play it in bars, record their own versions which might be better or worse, go ahead and try... all for free, without having to ask anyone. Regular folks and aspiring artists of all levels can also burn their own playlists, or the original album playlists, and sell them on streetcorners, not just in NY. We can give a grace period of 5, 10, 15 years before they become public, or at least come under some type of Creative Commons license. Another possibility is to just take all songs written before 1960, or '65 or '70.

The point is to identify good quality songs, the ones that are really integral to our culture, that have already returned substantially to their creators, and free them up completely. It should be a badge of honor to be accepted into the public domain. Making it completely open is the key because of the tendency of those closest to ownership, and thus with the power, to complicate & exploit whatever restrictions are in place in order to skim off more profit. The superior knowledge always gets used against those trying to enter. In this case we are trying to free music up for the public, which has almost no knowledge of complex copyright law. Freeing the music (remember my slogan?... still need to make those T-shirts) would be a huge, exciting, newsworthy event that would invigorate the dying music fanbase.

Those with the master tape can still advertise that fact and charge a premium for it. Quality does degenerate with each copy, so the knockoffs never sound the same and for truly good music, people will pay a few bucks for fidelity. A few thousand of our most basic, classic popular riffs & songs would be like a treasure trove for all these burgeoning new tech savvy artists. You do a complete bye on royalties for the biggest cash infusions to the least productive, leechy aspects of the music business, decimating the most unsavory players, and still preserving rights for people writing songs and recording music.

Artists putting out good music will be unaffected unless they go gold (some 1% of the time), in which case, they can still make lots of money, possibly, if they were smart vis a vis their label. At least that issue will have to be addressed between bands and labels more directly. They still get visibility and leverage which they can use to establish themselves as a brand, an entity. They can parlay that status somehow, if they are smart. The oppotunities are certainly there. As long as they produce good work, they will continue to thrive. Isn't that how it usually goes... work, earn, build something.

Most gold records are by established artists who have absolutely no sympathy from me once their net worth goes into the millions. They have to cough up some of their lucre in taxes anyway, just make the take at the song level, where it can enhance our culture. Not only won't it inhibit them, it will encourage them to write new stuff instead of living endlessly off their first hit.

We live in a fast-paced society here, let's look to the future instead of petrifying the past. After 50 years of modern, post Les Paul music, there is not the base of fundamental riffs and melodies that was untapped in the 50's. We have to build from a much different clay pit here. We need to build up some of these basic tunes into more complex entities and that is exactly what is happening, illegally, with mashups. It should be legal, and encouraged.

Hillary Rosen makes the point that if people can pass property to their kids, why not copyrighted intellectual property? Land is very different from intellectual property. First of all it's much more finite and has intrinsic value. More importantly society does not have the same type of interest in freeing land for the public. While we do seek to preserve open space, at least in CA, land is not integral to our culture the way music is and it can not be dispersed productively into society, the way music can. Passing money from one generation to the next is also different. One is a fungible lingua franca, the other has unique value.

Moreover, cognizant of loopholes here, the law does in fact seek a huge chunk of property upon death through estate tax and what I am proposing here is very analogous to that. When we allow individuals too many rights, for too long, at the expense of the public, it needs to be addressed. And we know who the owners are here, we're not protecting these black artists in the 50's who contributed so much to our culture and got nothing in return.... we're protecting those who exploited them unconscionably.

Websites, TV shows, movies, mashups, podcasts,.. whatever it is you're making, the music can be much less of a headache. If freed up, these great songs will be everywhere and I guarantee you it will invigorate us like Napster did. People will sign on to new free music channels coming through cable, into their computers, start doing garage band, ringtones, karaoke, playlists, getting creative in small individual but consumeristic ways. While folks are getting the music they'll still be taking in ads, there is a huge economy there. If you don't believe me, ask Google.

Songs that haven't made it to gold status should make money selling CD's the old fashioned way to the fidelity oriented, or those without internet, still many folks. But we should have some sort of compulsory licensing system like the one I discussed in my EFF post (12/27/04) for those who can and want to download music from the internet. The thing is, compared to the limited public domain I describe, compulsory licensing can be a logistical nightmare. The music industry is already so bogged down by the complex system of ownership rights and payment modes that creativity is stifled.

Music is already free on TV & radio, but now it would be interactive and controllable, portable...much more fun. We already have the clip art type loops on Garage Band and others but this would increase the fun and creativity exponentially. The few thousand songs we're talking about here will soon become so overplayed it will make you long for muzak, making us hungrier than ever for fresh sounding artists, and new ways to combine the old standards. So, that's the big change I would propose for copyright law. The other changes are already occuring as the internet hooks us up musically.

The future is in sites like Soundclick, link above, which will get more geographically relevant and more a part of the fabric of people's lives. Artists should be able to upload original patchwork quilt music as easily as I'm now blogging, put it on a site where others can find it. On Flickr, where I keep my photos, someone, somewhere, liked my art and said so, right on the site. Well, in the future my local friends and far off strangers should be able to hear what I'm doing, comment, put up their own stuff, add to mine, email it, use it to audition for bands, get exposure & gigs for your band or video or recording projects... all online... where it can not only be heard and seen, but purchased or hired. Let's get the language of music out there on the internet and enjoy it.

Let's hope with bought off fucking Orrin Hatch out of his chair we can get some kind of rationality here. Yes, RIAA bought the senior Senator off by getting his music into the Oceans 12 movie. He turned his back on his "principles", which were apparently to become known as a songwriter instead of a fair and decent legislator. I've never seen such egregious governing and the fact that he could get away with something like that really says a lot about how far this issue is under the radar here. We need leadership and logic on this issue and this is what we've got... a righteous Mormon selling out our culture for his own personal gain and a bunch of paid lobbyists. It's outrageous.

The proponents are so busy in the courtrooms and backrooms, they barely bother to reach out to the public. We need an Abbie Hoffman, or some type of popularizer, for this movement. So far, Hank Barry is the closest we've seen. He sure tops sell-out Shawn, but Abbie was a committed revolutionary, and at that time we were talking about drafting kids, not rock & roll. All we have now is some businessmen, industries and politicians plus some movement in the universities and legal & political groups but we still need a unifier and publicizer. This could be a positive, creative revolution, a renaissance. We shouldn't lose this opportunity.

Lessig, Steele, Stoller, Pavlosky...all have done great things, making inroads on the campuses, courts & Congress. I hope one of them, or someone on the horizon, is media savvy and charismatic like Hoffman & Rubin were. Many of the artists. like Bowie, Don Henley, Sheryl Crow, Dave Matthews & David Byrne make statements but won't really assert to a full-on role. It's a huge role and sacrifice and a long fucking way to go, but think about how long the Vietnam War might have dragged on had middle-class Americans not had to watch American children beaten by cops and shot by Guardsmen on our streets. I'm not at all saying we need to go to those levels. I'm a pacifist.

But Abbie & Jerry knew exactly how to work the media & we need to get control of the message here. I'm a closet "pirate" no more, that's for sure. Was Robin Hood a thief? Yeah, a pretty sympathetic one. I've had people basically call me a thief to my face, in Silicon Valley no less, where we make the stuff that beats DRM. So, I think we need a little education here, people. Now, if folks seem misinformed, I direct them to Intervision.

Americans spend a huge amount of time consuming not only food and crap but tons of entertainment and news. Music competes with cable, software, video games, TV, film, magazines, books, sports, not to mention actual real life, if there still is such a thing. Those of us who are on this issue all love music, so let's unite and elevate here. Let's get people excited about music again. We will all benefit if this great unifier were to gain prominence.

Innovation '04: Ipod. Therefore I Blog.

2005-08-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Google, having it's IPO this year, is certainly a contender, and I did write on that. Other contenders, according to the Washington Post are VoIP, Spyware and Oracle. But, it's clearly these two flowering this year. They both add so much to the lives of many people in terms of enjoyment and creativity; eclipsing business developments in an economically flat year.

I got my Ipod earlier this year and it has definitely enhanced my life to be able to easily carry 8k songs with me. I simply plug it into whatever stereo I'm listening to, and airports, dentists, previously unpleasant places, are so much better when you've got great tunes, the ones you want, coming into your ears, without the insipid commercials I had to listen to, to pay for them. When I lugged those boxes of unplayable albums in my car for months at a time, there were probably only a few hundred great songs in there, sure hundreds more mediocre songs, but, they only made it more dilute. They were big, heavy and unwieldy, so unlike my cute little Ipod.

From what I understand, there is nothing that really compares to it for ease of use. The wheel and button are pretty easy, though, I carry so many artists, it is hard to find a given song unless it's on a playlist. I only tried one other mp3 player, years ago, and couldn't even get my library on it. I just plug P Poddy up to my iBook, and it completely updates the songs and playlists in minutes, the whole library in a few hours, which is what I'll have to do again soon. My iPod hungry son is still some $100. short of his dream, so I generously, posssibly stupidly, lent him my iPod for a week. He already deleted my amazing library for his little 90 song library. But, that's what you can do with a hard drive. I see more and more folks with the givaway white wires coming out of their ears. On the U Mich campus, and many others, ear emanators outnumber the podless. And, of course, these little beauties will spur on Mp3 downloading, free & non, forever extincting CDs.

I, obviously, started to blog this year. Shout out to Hank Barry, who once again turned me on to a Brave New World of fun and creativity. I had wanted a website for quite some time but was daunted by my lack of HTML, which I'm now learning by trial & error. Kudos to Blogger and Google for coming up with something easy to learn. I'm sure it's just the beginning. Already you can upload photos and audio. It's pretty basic stuff, but it's still audio.... coming soon, not, I just tried it and it's completely useless for music. Speech, which I guess is all it's designed for, may be ok, who cares....I guess I could phone in my posts, but I don't think the world is ready for quite that reality. I did leave you a little blurb up top, after deciding to spare you a longer rant.

The link up, editing, organizational and archiving systems are not bad considering I don't know much HTML and it's free webhosting. In fact, the money flows to me, and should. I am, in effect, an extremely low-paid, yet uncontrolled, staff writer for Google. Their algorithms reward text-rich pages. They're hoping my words attract eyes and give me a certain support to achieve that. Unlike most tomes, they don't care what I write, cause they only pay me when someone who looks at my words clicks on their ad. Print can't offer writers commission based pay.

Blogging may explode in a way the more passive Pod won't. Most people I know are well aware of iPods, even if they don't care enough about music to own one. But few, even here in Palo Alto, know much about blogging yet. They don't realize how approachable and empowering it is. They think of blogging as something done by semi-pro political pundits, not as a way to express yourself, allow others to get to know you, record your thoughts and your life, and, most importantly, to have a voice, and possibly a positive influence in this world. We are so inculcated into this role to our role as passive viewers (fat & happy Americans), but, people have a natural desire to express themselves. It just gets cut off. I went into that in great depth earlier in this blog. But, it can get turned on again. I see it in the Dad's bands, and the many other bands and film projects that are becoming more prevalent.

For me, being single, and an artist, it's a way to let others get a very, very good sense of who I am, without having to personally spend a lot of time revealing myself to each. My life is literally an open book here....available to any who care to look, and I'm finding many do. My conversations are more interesting because people often do know quite a bit about me, sometimes before we have even met. It is kind of like Warholian fame; and has actually hepled me understand a bit what fame must feel like. You're "out there". There is a certain loss of control. People know stuff about you that you have not personally told them. For others, it's more professional, commercial, and I think it will develop in that direction for me. The medium can demonstrate not only our voice and personality but our productive output as well. BTW, anyone who likes my art is welcome to buy it... email me. These blogs are quite interactive, so, interact... visibly.

Electronic Frontier License

2005-08-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

I've been an EFF referral attorney for several years now after exchanging a series of emails with Shari Steele who I contacted upon reading about the organization in SV Biz Ink. Hers was one of the early organizations dedicated to protecting the freedoms that the internet offered and fighting the various powers that be who have sought to use the internet to invade privacy and restrict our rights to share and communicate over it. Most of their fighting has been in the courts, where it started. But, more and more this will be fought in the court of public opinion.

This article of theirs (link above) is a good discussion of the compulsory license concept and how it might work. RIAA will fight it to the bitter end because they rightly view the internet as their ultimate undoing. But, according to EFF, music will be included on your broadband bill, or college bill or whoever is providing the internet access, and whatever money goes into that pot will get divied up on the Big Champagne/ Neilsen type model. If TV worked on this model it would be like Comcast collecting the most cash for Apprentice because that's the top rated show on TV, and then doling it out to every other show that comes through their cables on the basis of how popular it is. The only way you could get them to do that would be to offer them (Comcast) the ability to not get sued for using their lines to transmit the music. Ooops, we don't hold the providers responsible now, so they're not gonna do it. Why should they?

But, you know who does pay Apprentice the most? The advertisers. They know the most eyeballs will be on the most popular show. Same concept except Trump does not expect money directly from those eyes, or to get it from cable providers, but from the newtworks who use the show to bring in revenue. Hello. And TV shows can take a lot more to make than songs. If not for the threat of prosecution what you'd see is iTunes, (knock-off) Napster and a million new competitors have to bring in users on the basis of quality of site, best sound quality, songlists, control, search, DJ's, entertainment, ease of use, look of site, innovation, ability to use the content creatively.... there are so many ways to add value.

The best sites would attract the best ads and make a lot of money like Google and Yahoo did.... from advertisers. EFF kind of gets the first step when they talk about the emergence of filesharing being similar to the emergence of radio, but, they lose the analogy somewhere along the line. Artists have been selling their content to sponsors instead of directly to the public for many years on radio and TV and now the new mediums are also finding the most success on the sponsor/advertising dollar model... just like Yahoo and Google.

EFF suggests some type of voluntary payment directly from end users in exchange for not getting sued, like that failed RIAA amnesty program. Know why it failed? Few are stupid enough to make their identities more visible as file-sharers, or step up to half-assed programs. Maybe with a more reassuring govt. insured type amnesty, it could work. The only real thing they have to offer anymore is to withhold the threat of prosecution. But, that threat is diminishing and it will continue to diminish as word of their abuses and broadband availability emanates through the world.

Most of the world uses our intellectual property for free so why do they focus most, if not all, of their prosecutions on Americans? Because they can. The legislators we elected to represent our interests are in their pockets. Sixty million Americans download, who represents them? That is more than the audience for any TV show or movie. Stop trying to charge people for songs, and instead use the songs to bring in your (humongous) audience, like radio, like TV. Yes, you're giving them control and portability, the technology is doing that, just like TiVo and Comcast-on-Demand. These labels should be grateful for all that time they had their monopolies, since, at the time, people did need those disks to control their music.... but....it's fucking over!! Move on.

There will be others to try and stick their finger in the dyke and make money doing so. But it's a lot of fighting for something that is so quickly becoming extinct. The genie is out of the bottle, the music is out there. I just don't see any way of getting it back in. People who feel guilted about stealing might volunteer some money for a while, but, you've got a whole generation of kids who see music as just another file you get over the internet.

When it comes to software and films, which take so much to develop, I feel differently. But, a song, sorry. There are too many talented artists out there. We'll still have great, if not much greater, freer, more varied music. That's not the same for films and software. Search/ matchup stuff will grow as will the use of music as a component in selling other things. But mostly, I think people wanting to make money off music will have to perform it, or help those who do. And, I have no problem with that. Music is now an 11 Billion dollar industry. The diet industry is a 35B industry. Get all those flabbies dancing & you're all set.

The State of Music 2004

2005-08-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine seems to think my rantings are "negative". First off, let me just say that we recently reelected George Bush, there's no job growth or much economic growth, the chasm between rich and poor keeps widening, we are acting imperialistically and killing people, for very little reason. I think anyone who doesn't notice, care, speak out on all this, and more, ought to, cause we are all a part of this world and it's our responsibility to be aware of the big world out there, not hide out in some little shell hoping it gets better some day.

Having said that, while I'm obviously opinionated, and will speak out about positions, people, songs, ideas, whatever, that I don't like (or do!), I've always been an optimist and an idealist and love watching the world move forward. Overall, we are growing in awareness and fulfilment, and most of the big changes I see are positive. Perhaps it sounds like I'm somehow dismayed or upset about the direction music is headed. I'm not!! I'm concerned that those in power will hold up change but I'm convinced the change will come and it's the dream of that happening that inspires me to inform and motivate others.

First, take Hillary Rosen (please). She's done as much as anyone to protect the rights of these big companies to this huge catalog of great music. But, there's hope. She took a nice little walk with Larry Lessig (check out the link) and is coming around quite nicely to this idea of creative commons licenses. She says sees response in the music industry, that the artists are calling more of the shots as these labels merge, then lay off staff. These are exactly the changes I had hoped to see, you can't expect things to change overnight. It's about direction and being part of the solution... and speaking out and organizing.

The biggest part of the solution is the technology, which will make music accessible. I see huge upside for the music industry over the next 20 years. Right now the Boomers are still focused on their careers & kids but in another 10 years they're going to want to return to the great music they left behind. It's my hope that by then we'll have the 50's, maybe even 60's in the public domain where they can play with real transitions and mashups with all their old favorites, and new, on something handheld. At the same time, we have a generation of kids who doesn't even know what it's like to not be in charge of their own music, no one is going offline, only on, so, there's just no future in selling records.

The RECORD/DVD industry (not the entertainment business) is obsolete. Blockbuster is switching to an online, Netflix model and will soon be closing up real estate. Tower and Wherehouse are hanging on. Wal-mart still uses records as loss leader, holding the line at $10. only because they need the labels far less than labels need them, they could drop records anytime and not lose a cent. In ten years the idea of going to a store to buy entertainment will be laughable. We've subsidized enough meat and sugar to make us the fattest country in the world, are we gonna now subsidize the record industry too? Because, that's what they're going for with all this legislation.

So, the state of the law in '04. Well, there should be some focus on this issue this year. The Supreme Court granted cert. to the Grokkster case. The previous decision in this case relied on the Betamax decision, saying Grokkster is not responsible for all those people downloading copyrighted music because there are many more millions who use the sites to exchange perfectly "legal" files. Fair use doctrine allows people to share copyrighted material with friends, and this was curtailed by the labels. So, big issues. Do we as a society hold those who advance technology, sort of a big industry in this world, not to mention this area, back, so that we only invent things that cannot disseminate information?! Is that in the public interest? Do we restrict individuals rights to share info because we now have the means to both restrict and share, more easily over the web?

If these various public interest orgs. can get it together, (they email each other all the time, but it's mostly about legal issues.... we need to win in the courts AND in the court of public opinion) they should use the trial to draw attention to the various ways the labels are aggressively trying to chill the distribution of music and how much of this "property" they really own (because most people think musicians own their own music!) and how much these ownership rights are worth. It's a good opportunity to get some of these more complicated intellectual property rights issues understood, cause that's what needs to happen. This is not gonna happen cause Hillary has a little walk with Larry and sees the error of her ways. It's gonna happen cause it'll be the only way these companies have to make a buck, if they cannot sell records they will find another, more useful way to make money off music. There is plenty of opportunity to do that as there will be more and more people listening to music, following music, playing around with songs on some fun new program, making music, singing. Music makes people happy. It will be with us always. Remember Capitalists, you can still use the music to sell stuff.

But more than that, we need to claim ownership of the medium here. It's time to colonize the moon, people. And if we don't step up to the plate you're gonna be stepping up to your world-wide-Wal-mart-web, the corporate control version of the web, and our one big shot at freedom will have been lost. And I'm not just talking about music.

On a local level, the most promising thing is a rumor that the '05 VMA's will be hosted in San Francisco. After Michael Greene had his little Napster-induced nuclear breakdown at the '03 Grammy's, they took it from LA to NY after 5 yrs. The music industry may again be sending a message here. The VMA's are respected yet progressive and it's about time the music industry steps up and takes notice of an area that has taken it on the technological chin after opening up a world of opportunity to distribute music, get creative with music, make music more interesting and revolutionize their almost dead, of it's own fucking weight, industry. If it goes, it should bring $5M in tourism and... I will be there.

On the other hand, I get increasingly frustrated with the lack of live music. Draper's Music, a Palo Alto landmark and the only place left for musicians to even go, is closing. I went in yesterday and got an electric guitar (more about that to come) and will go in for another amp today, but, it's very sad. The Edge, a beautiful venue just lies there vacant. There's more and more stuff happening on a grass roots level, more bands forming, doing more of their own producing and promoting. The local community colleges are training actors, DP's & now music producers, with a new 30 station Pro-Tools training room. Those producers will hopefully stay local & perhaps they could focus more on promotion, especially web. In a few years we should hopefully see the fruits of all this.

The Liitle Fox Theatre in Redwood City is an up & coming venue. We need to turn some of these mid-peninsula wineries or parks into some venues like Mountain Winery & Montalvo which host some great old & new acts. Another idea is to extend some of these summer concert series into more stable year round (indoor) things. Once the venues are in place and people get used to the idea of going out in the evening & spending $20. to hear some live music & have a drink... a lot of bands will be there to perform.

Podcasting

2005-08-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

Ever wonder why you were put here? Well, it's stuff like this that makes me think I was put here to watch this amazing explosion of technology meets creativity meets community. Podcasting, essentially, is to radio what blogging is to books. It's easier, faster, more approachable. As they put it in the Christian Science Monitor (link above), aspiring directors have iMovie, aspiring writers have blogging and now aspiring DJs have podcasting. I actually wonder about the "aspiring". In my book, if you direct a film, you're a director, regardless of the size of its audience.

So, podcasting allows someone, with the right software, computer & mikes, to format and "broadcast" their own radio shows. It's done through the internet and offers more of the flexibility of say, TiVo, than traditional radio. No commercials, just the rantings of whoever is putting the playlist out there.

Well, I guess you can all see the handwriting on the wall....where do I sign up? All these new mediums opening up are like manna from heaven for a ham like me. Long before I had the balls to sing, I was definitely broadcasting my very good taste in music, and my breathy on-air voice all over town. It's great to have people always walking up to you telling you they enjoyed your show. Now again, I'm having people tell me they like my art on the blog. It's a trip, so I definitely understand how exciting it is for folks to have mediums that were previously reserved for the few to now be open.

As time goes on, I think we'll get further away from mass culture. Where we now spend most of our time absorbing big news & big entertainment, in the future we'll be spending about a third on the mass culture stuff, a third on local or "garage band" level input and a third of our time creating our own output.

It keeps getting easier to make our own custom content, a collage of our interests....slideshows, playlists, films, effects, titles.... and you can mix and match this stuff onto websites and soon it'll be easier to blog that stuff. It's also getting more approachable in terms of music production. CG, modeling, composing etc.

Anyway, I'm starting to get a little hot just thinking about all this. I mean, if, using the handy dandy new ipodder software, I put together a show of say the REAL Greatest 500 Songs (see RS rant) and put it out there and you sign up... does that mean you now "own" those 500 songs on your own ipod?? If so, what will darling RIAA have to say about that?!

So, what can you put on these podcasts? Anything that won't bring the copyright police? One band I sing with does originals, so it wouldn't even make Hillary mad. Come to think of it, bands will have these as easily as they now have websites. Only it'll go directly onto your ipod.

Now that I think of it, I have some quotes on this blog. They're all credited, but I didn't ask the author's permission, or pay them. Though I did spread the word about how meaningful their quote is. Now, I doubt Buffy St. Marie or Peter Fonda will come after me... but what if I quote Hilllary Rosen or one of the other champions of big business ownership of content?

Creative Commons

2005-08-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

Copyright protection is extensive in the US and most of the developed world. This stands in stark contrast to the Third World and most NYC streetcorners. Once your pen leaves the paper, or notes recorded, you have exclusive right to that for life plus 75 yrs after, for your kids & theirs. Thing is, there is so much content out there. We basically have a herd mentality and want to view/hear that which we think most other people are viewing & hearing. Copyright is not very meaningful to most people because it's so hard to get a foothold on popularity, they do not see themselves at all in the content-holder role. As powerless as they are as creators, they accept the same as consumers too! They allow themselves to be brainwashed into believing that they have no right to their own culture, the one they created, if only by watching it.

Meanwhile, large corporate interests that create the brainwashing, also target and cultivate the most talented artists, early in life, and then, in many ways, own them. So, these copyright "protections" are not in the interests of individuals or artists, they are in the interests of the owners, who duped and ripped off the real owners. It's the classic case of the tail wagging the dog. We see it with the drug companies, the food/obesity thing, tobacco, alcohol, firearms. Why do you think these are some of the most powerful lobbies in DC? These are all cases where you have large corporate interests basically at odds with the health and happiness of the public, and yet they succeed! Time after time after time. It's unbelievable. The only way to fight back is through educating people, or trying to. It's an uphill battle, even when you're offering people free music.

Often, artists don't want or need all that "protection". They like to have their art disseminated, enjoyed and used by others for their own creative purposes. Most people don't want someone taking their art and selling it for their own profit, but are happy to allow others to use it, make it better and more meaningful, as long as they get credit. For example, two of the photos uploaded to this blog were taken by others. I titled them and they enhanced my site while giving "airplay" to the talented photographers who put their photos on Flickr under a cc - creative commons license.

So, check out the Creative Commons website, the link is above. It's got a great little video on the White Stripes. I'm looking forward to putting more stuff out there, and using more stuff, under these oh so much better licenses. Even the ever-so-charming Hillary Rosen "Learned to Love Larry" ( Lessig, an article she wrote for Wired), and these very creative and hopefully increasingly common licenses.

Apple/U2: A Downhill Battle

2005-08-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I take back my endorsement of these two, it was borderline anyway. Francis Hwang took the special edition ipod, uploaded Negativland's albums, changed the box, stated it was unauthorized and put it up for sale on Ebay as a work of art meant to comment on the 1991 case U2's label brought against Negativland for parodying Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, making "an example" of Negativland and outlawing the song. The comment was also about free culture, specifically mash-ups, showing the irony of putting U2 on a device meant to connote artistic freedom when U2 should stand for exactly the opposite. The bidding was up to $455. when Apple made a stink and Ebay pulled it. Most lawyers feel there was no copyright violation here, stringent as those laws are, I thought we still had a right to parody and artistic comment in this country. Silly me, I guess I was wrong. Is that right reserved for Bono and all the promo Jobs can buy? As it turns out, the GC at Ebay is a friend of mine, so I'll try to find out what went on here. If they are just buckling to Jobs, that's pretty outrageous.

Hwang intended the profits to go to yet another fledgling advocacy group called Downhill Battle (what an optimistic group - I would definitely classify this battle as uphill). The link to it is above. Anyway, Downhill Battle had a great piece from the guy who produced for Nirvana showing a typical record deal where 250k albums get sold (what is typical are the terms, not the sales, which sounds very high, to me). After grossing 3M, over a year of ball-breaking work, the band members get about 4k each. Who gets the rest? Guess? And you know what the labels do with that money? Spend it in DC. Who pays for that? Music lovers. In other words, if you love music and are willing to pay for it on records, you are essentially paying someone to go screw you over; do everything possible to keep music from you unless you pay and pay and pay. When I was active in the anti-nuclear movement, I did know people who were into civil disobedience, and it does have its place. Last night at the Billboard's they awarded OutKast for most LEGAL downloads, they should be accounting for all downloads, especially those willing to risk their own necks to apply pressure to those who want to inhibit very important freedoms. The legal downloads account for well under 1% of all downloads.

Anyway, this little expose also goes into these labels MO: it's just like the tobacco & alcohol companies, they pick someone young, that the bands will trust, to face these bands, he goes into the whole psychology of it; the control, the "we'll make you a star", ego stuff. Check out Damn Yankees, it's the deal with the devil.

Another David: IPac

2005-08-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Goliaths beget Davids. Whenever an entity egregiously abuses its power, someone will notice, and fight, weakly at first. The first David I met in this battle was Hank Barry (original Napster), and it was painful to watch these multimillion dollar forces attack with such vengeance, actually threatening his home, to his face. At the time, BTW, he was doing everything imaginable to work WITH them. He's a businessman, thought he could make a profit & they could too. But, they were greedy and arrogant, and behind the facade of fighting for artists, launched a major offensive. They made it so personal. He may have been one of the first, he certainly isn't the last. IPac is a recently formed political action committee. With its paltry $7k, it successfully supported the reelection of five freedom friendly congresspeople in 2004, including Rick Boucher who sponsored legislation reigning in RIAA etc. I urge everyone interested in creativity and personal freedom to check out their website. The link is above. This is an important issue, no one is immune, unless you live in a cave somewhere. Its only when attention is brought and the public is educated that real change will happen here.

Orrin Hatch Warning

2005-08-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

12/28 - Check out the link to see what motivates the hatchless wonder
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Orrin, Chiarman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and pawn of show BUSINESS, after failing to shove the Induce Act through this lame duck Congress before he loses his chair, is now focused on the Intellectual Property Protection Act HR2391. At some point I really do need to post something more focused on how they keep changing the law to restrict rights to material we previously held, but, for now, let me say, they are retracting the very limited rights the public has to content, rights that have existed for a long time. This is an umbrella bill that seeks to squeak through very onerous restrictions on our right to utilize and share content and to have control over our lives and what we view. It would be illegal, for example, to block commercials. This is going to have a big impact on the tech sector. The wording is vague, includes lots of jail time for offenders, all sorts of crap the growing entertainment lobby loves... they want to own it all, control what we view and hear, where, how & when. They have fought tooth and nail every technological advance that has given us freedom to control our entertainment, or enjoy it, or share it; from cassettes to video. Can you imagine any other industry showing such blatant disregard, if not outright hatred, of their own market?! The airlines came close, till 9/11. There is no quick solution here, the sides are very far apart, this is a very complex situation, with a landscape that keeps changing. I sure never thought I'd side with ACU (not ACLU, ACU - American Conservative Union - who object to the Justice Dept. being used as a free entertainment industry lawyer.)
So, write your Congressperson expressing your opinion about the Intellectual Property Protection Act HR2391. I guess what bothers me most about this whole issue is watching paid political wonks like Hillary Rosen, Cary Sherman and Mike Green portray themselves as representing and defending the creative community, when they are doing the opposite. They represent those who seek to exploit them. Don't be fooled when you see artists side with them. Those that do, like Eminem, change. After 8 Mile success, M went from worker status to owner... it all gets back to Marx in the end. They do not represent the consumer, they do not really represent the artist, so, who the fuck do they represent? They represent the interests of Capitalism seeking to profit off the ability to own content. It's about ownership, not art. The copyright laws were written to do exactly what has been so successfully done, encourage business people to distribute art. The internet has meddled with forces of nature, as Howard Beal (Network) would tell you. Those who have built up power do not easily let it go.
The scariest part is that this is basically being done under the cover of night here. It's a non-issue for most people, as the media has not done it's job informing the public how its rights are being affected. Fortunately, word is slowly disseminating through the campuses, thanks to folks like Lawrence Lessig and Nelson Pavlosky, who started Free Culture groups at numerous campuses. I promise I will get to these movements.

How to Overthrow RIAA

2005-08-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

Some 90% of recorded music is the property of five huge record labels, which are owned by even bigger conglomerates. They were bought up mostly during the eighties in a period of consolidation brought on by the fact that most Boomers turned their attention from music that mattered to making money in the early 80's giving room for pop pablum purveyors to fill in the gap. Huge, reliable artists like MJ & Madonna gave them the taste for blood and they've been sucking us dry ever since. Well it's mid-life crisis time now baby, and your time is up.

Technology always wins...not necessarily easily, but ultimately. Always. So, make my music easy to get and transport, (thanks Steve, but, you know, you could give Hank a little credit... do you really think those boys would have played with you if he hadn't just gouged out 15%?) make it easy for me to find what I'll like, and I'll watch your fuckin pop-up ads. That's all you're getting off me for catalog I bought two technologies ago, and that's plenty. Accept it. Think of it as radio but giving us a little headstart in adavoidance....can't you just put the ads in the songs, like they're doing in movies now? (they are!) Hits and catalog: it's loss leader. Stop trying to milk an industry out of it, focus more on the new artists. I would definitely pay for search engine, easy delivery of flawless product and good programming. And BTW, the film industry is a completely different story. I'll get to that.

Anyway, listening to all these great records (yes, music is getting good again! hmmm... I wonder why?) makes me want to go spend lots of money! I want to go see these bands perform, meet others who enjoy their music, I'll even fork over for a T shirt, or a CD of the concert I just saw, cuz, damn, that was fun. I wasn't being ripped off, had a great night. And, for all you bands that think you can't do it, go check your Dead history, or a Fortune magazine. That's how you're supposed to make your money...get your record out there, so everyone can see how good you are... and they will come. That's right, get out of your little studio room thinkin you'll produce something your grandkids will live off and go play for your fans - they will cheer and pay.

To all you talentless vampires who made a cushy living at some label job, trying to figure out how you can sell this new band as well as the toothpaste you sold yesterday, and to the three guys at Wal-Mart, who buy 20% of what the labels put out... bye bye.... go start a band and make some musical contribution, write a song, say something, put it up on the web and tell your story, or go find a nice office in some other industry where you won't do as much harm. Marketing, everything, needs to be band-centric, which means bands will need to build up from their fan base. It's slower, but, again, if you look at bands like Dave Matthews, No Doubt... it is best, and most profitably, done that way.

Producers should be going indie, be paid directly by musicians for their services.
We don't need your mobster distributors (as Prince said, "Why do you think they call them 'hits'...with a bullet?') anymore. We have the internet now. You're about as viable as the tobacco industry - move on. And stop threatening that we won't have any more good music, you wouldn't know good music if it bit you in the ass.

So, the way to overthrow them is to speak to them in the only language they understand; the almighty dollar. Anyone who goes and pays for (major label) records is supporting a system of exploitation of artists and diminishment of our rights to some type of genuine artform here. You're listening to propaganda without understanding the inner workings (top names may see 15% of record sales, most never clear their advances - and those advances are calculated very carefully based on preexisting fans), or the larger societal picture of how the artform should function in our society. Remember all those great songs with conscience you heard during Vietnam, well, we're in Iraq now... what are you hearing? It's not quite the same... yet.

Everyone loves a well-produced hit. God knows, my ipod is the biggest hit-suck in history. Every artist wants the fame & money, we all do. I deeply appreciate the artistic gifts we've seen from the great musical genuises who have graced this planet, and for whatever allowed the distribution and development of their music. But without a sort of artistic working class, we suffer. It makes the gap between the average artist and "star" huge, it's too daunting. There needs to be a path for artists to follow, so they can build a solid career, and make a reasonable living. This warped world of make it as a star by age 21, or it's over, that's just sad. Not only would we lose great content, stuff we could share and build upon, but the artist in each of us would be darker.

Napster est mort, viva Napster! And I mean the real Napster, the one with ideals and purpose (though not necessarily a business plan...did you really think you could make money on anything other than ads?) not this suck-up spawn trying to use their cache today.

Bottom line, there are plenty of great ways to make money in music, or should be. People interested in both should orient themselves around the music makers, not this dying and corrupt infrastructure that got built up around it.

What's wrong with corporate/commercial art?

2005-08-19T09:11:00.000-07:00

Well, one problem is that it alters what people expect from art. These days most of what passes for art is in fact commercial product, and, because of that, the audio and visuals we ingest and pay for (one way or another) don't do much to stimulate our critical thinking or our desire to create and express ourselves. It's just all fungible commodity now, our images are evaluated on whether they stimulate our appetite for STUFF, not whether they satisfy our need for meaning, understanding, inspiration etc. etc.

Art is supposed to challenge our worldview, cause us to look at things differently. Can we ever see a Campbell's soup can the same after Andy Warhol's paintings? The guy became one of the most famous artists in the world putting common images onto canvas. Thank goodness he wasn't arrested by the copyright police, thankfully, we still have enough free speech to build on the works of others if it is satirical. Far more important than his popularity, was his respected stature as an artist for the noteworthy attention he drew to the idea that art had been diminished by it's commercialization. If you are talented in the visual arts today, you are for more likely to have applied that talent to commercial purposes, than expressive ones.

Art is supposed to inspire us to feel close to our creator and creative spirit. Our society would ultimately be better served by art which does that than by art which motivates us to consume or which simply entertains us.

When all art was sponsored by the church, everything had to pass the Vatican smell test. Only art which fit certain parameters was supported. Anyone with a different vision had almost no viability, there was really only one customer. The church was the only entity willing or able to support artists so they could create and the only artists they supported were the ones presenting, essentially, what was commissioned. Sounds pretty backwards and sad, huh? Well, look around. Yes, it's somewhat better today, there are all sorts of small niches of people out there creating stuff from their hearts, and, with the internet, that will hopefully grow and grow and grow. But, compared to the larger, more pervasive society, I would have to say that the vast majority of "art" that most folks see and hear, must conform to certain paramenters. The powers that be no longer care if you're a Christian, as long as you're a consumer. But, don't be fooled, you're still being manipulated. That desire you feel for more stuff; vacations, private schools, houses, whatever, it's not an inherent feature, it's been stretched out by powerful forces you no longer recognize. Fish don't see water and we don't see how we've been hooked onto the treadmill.

And, I'm not just talking about visuals here. If you look at the best-selling records, movies and books, you'll see that they rarely get there by grass roots word of mouth but rather by the support of monied entities.
The internet is the best thing that ever happened to art. Now we all have the chance to easily access a public forum and use it to express ourselves. Artists have more potential customers, more ability to find them and be found. It's that central funnel feature we try to avoid and the P2P nature of the internet will alleviate the funnel phenomenon more and more as individuals become more empowered.