The RIAA’s head, Cary Sherman, wants to put encryption on our computer that will force us to decrypt music before listening to it. In other words, the filter will scan all your incoming data and then either allow or deny your ability to listen to it. since this idea likely won’t be popular (who’s going to willingly put a filter on their computer that blocks the files they are downloading?), the next suggestion is to put the filters in our modems.

Despite the predictable public backlash against these tactics (in an environment where the RIAA already has public approval that rivals the US Congress), some ISPs are moving ahead with these filters. The technical specifics are a bit thick, suffice it to say that various file encryptions can bypass these filters unless entire protocols are blocked.

Here’s a video of Mr. Sherman lauding the glories of filtering:

Bottom Line: Being out of touch with your consumers’ needs does not improve your financial picture, or your credibility.

If you want to honor Bob’s memory today, stand for something you believe in.

A couple of interviews, speaking about music, rasta, and oppression:

Africa Unite – Live – Bob was a true freedom fighter.

Roots Rock Reggae – Originally broadcast on TV. Dig the I-Threes!

Bob Playing Soccer in Paris, 1977 (Bob loved soccer)

And finally, Bob speaking about ganja and prohibition

Who woulda believed that a 20 year old video would provide such great wisdom about music today?

The first half of the video is on the music business. The second half is a tirade about sex.
Had he mentioned drugs, we’d have the holy trinity of music.

Steve Albini speaks about DIY music promotion and bands operating in the music business.

Here’s something from a couple months ago. It’s novel to occasionally look back at all of the information that never makes it to us, the media consuming public.

The FCC ordered all copies of a study on the localization of media ownership destroyed. This independent study examined the difference news coverage between locally owned and non-locally owned (i.e. transnational corporate) ownership of Television stations. Since there are no copies of the report right now, it’s hard to say what’s actually in it.

Thanks to some civic minded folks, here’s the clip of Senator Barbara Boxer ripping FCC Chairman Kevin Martin a new one, along with a description of the report. Apparently, Sen. Boxer was sent a copy of the report anonymously (Video courtesy of C-Span via YouTube).

Apparently, the study concludes that local ownership of TV stations increases the amount of local news coverage by about thirty three hours of news in a year about your area. Now, lots of local news may seem hokey and trite, but 33 hours more is plenty of room for real stories of value about our communities.

It would seem that the trend for the FCC is to only release information that is favorable to corporate consolidation of the broadcast medium, and all conflicting reports seem to be squelched. You can view two of these reports here and here, through the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting website. A few politicians demanded and investigation into this incident, but somehow nothing further has surfaced. It did take more than a few minutes of crawling through the interweb to find out that there was an inquiry made at all. That story never made it out as a press release. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be nay follow up on this story at all since then.
The Benton Foundation has a great list of link about the issue of media consolidation and local representation on the airwaves here. Of course, it’s not all bad news. The FCC started a new Review of Media Ownership Rules in June, so maybe this time they’ll give us back the airwaves. They’re even holding public hearings.

In the meantime, you can take stand to help free the airwaves by checking out the Prometheus Radio Project. With the corporate move to digital, they should consider turning the radio dial over to the people again. Unless they take FM and AM receivers out of cars…

Universal Music filed a lawsuit against MySpace at the end of the day on Friday.? The lawsuit claims that Myspace is allowing their users to violate copyrights, in order to make a profit off of it. The suit also claims that MySpace encouraged copyright infingement. The suit even goes as far as suggesting that MySpace owes their success to using this same material.

Myspace asserts that they are in full compliance with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects web sites from the copyright violations of their users, as long as they act fast when a rights-holder complains. Not to mention the fact that Myspace is a social networking site. The same thing accusations were thrown at YouTube shortly before they signed a deal with some of these major rights holders.

All links and cross-references aside, MySpace, YouTube, and even Universal are owned by huge corporations. The thing I find most interesting about the lawsuit is the part that says “UMG owns copyrights in thousands of sound recordings, including many of the most popular and well-known sound recordings in the world.”

So the soap opera continues, and somehow, the more I read, the less it all makes sense, or even seems to matter. How can a few dozen companies appear to own all of this fantastic music, movies and TV shows, and pass back and forth billions of dollars? Perhaps the real question to be asked is how just a few companies can own and make all the money off of this huge catalog of popular art.

Art, and especially music, are powerful because of the emotions they evoke, and have different values to different people. As the value of music continues to tank, these major music companies seem to striking more and more deals where major media corporations and websites are paying huge lumps of sum to each other. Money flows from Google to YouTube to Sony BMG to Viacom and around and around. Where exactly are the rest of us in all of this? Where is all this money going? If Universal won $400 million dollars from MySpace, how much would they pay to the artists?

To put it more simply, huge amounts of these catalogs were created by people who have left this world, or who are getting pennies out of billions of dollars that changes hands. The day of the post-major label is finally dawning. The age of the distributor.? Long Live D.I.Y.

“The old model of acting is that the rehearsal is great and then things change when you say ‘rolling’ –usually for the worse. Now there’s no film in the camera. You can shoot everything. So there’s no rehearsal. Or perhaps it’s all rehearsal. Either way, it’s far more natural.”

There is something powerful about this. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it when I was watching the War of the Worlds (Spielberg Version), but the above quote triggered it for me. It was his first forray into digital film making, and there was a certain authenticity in the faces of the actors.
And this seems to be the trend. As more and more directors adopt digital film making techniques, and become comfortable with these tools, the human condition will finally be reflected on the silver screen in a way that here-to-fore has rarely been seen.
That’s something I can really digg.
another long tail insight

originally published on dr.xnlb.com