Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

I have little trouble writing negative reviews, but the positive reviews tend to hang around and hang around until they just don’t get done.

Which is why I’m glad to actually have finished three positive reviews for the Anvil & Sprocket. Three!

First, Firefly is a wonderful series that was cancelled too soon.

Second, Dead Man is a bizarre and hilarious existentialist romp through the old West with Johnny Depp and Jim Jarmusch. And I still don’t know how Jarmusch gets people to finance these damn films.

Third, since I reviewed “Firefly,” I thought I’d give Serenity a try. You might want to, too.

In the “Please, Don’t reveal the secret ending to your friends!” file, check out the bizarre twist on the Ashley Smith story. If you’ve forgotten the Ashley Smith story, she’s the woman who was taken hostage and talked her captor down from his violent killing spree by reading from The Purpose-Driven Life.

Well, Nobody’s Business found a story over at ABC News that, well, suggests Ashley Smith and the Word may have had a bit of outside help.

Ashley Smith, the woman who says she persuaded suspected courthouse gunman Brian Nichols to release her by talking about her faith, discloses in a new book that she gave him methamphetamine during the hostage ordeal.

Smith did not share that detail with authorities at the time. But investigators said she came clean about the drugs when they interviewed her months later. They said they have no plans to charge her with drug possession.

In her book, “Unlikely Angel,” released Tuesday, Smith says Nichols had her bound on her bed with masking tape and an extension cord. She says he asked for marijuana, but she did not have any, and she dug into her illegal stash of crystal meth instead.

It’s lovely that the police have no intentions to charge her with drug possession. Of course, that probably has just as much to do with a complete lack of physical evidence as it has to do with her being a Christian news media celebrity.

Pity the poor record industry. Even as the big honchos of the film industry are starting to move away from piracy as an excuse for dwindling ticket sales, the record industry continues to blame illegal swappers for their inability to move inferior product – even with millions in payola flowing through indirect channels.

And now PCWorld reports on a new attempt to combat piracy by… Clear Channel? Wait a minute…

The music industry, shaken by decreasing CD sales, is turning to a high-tech and legal version of the old “bootleg” concept of concert recordings.

The Instant Live unit of Clear Channel Entertainment’s Music Group, part of the Clear Channel Communications conglomerate, is one of the commercial ventures that have been experimenting with making instantly available CDs of live concerts, by mixing recordings on the spot and selling them to club-goers as they exit concerts. On Monday, Universal Music Group and Instant Live announced a partnership, and the concept of “instant bootlegs” is taking another step.

Yes, it appears that everybody’s favorite monopolistic payola recipient Clear Channel has entered the bootleg market full force. They come in, set up their microphones, park outside in their vans, and minutes after the end of the concert they begin selling CD’s. I’m fairly certain that this kind of thing has been done before. But considering the van parkers in those cases had to be on the lookout for the police, they never thought to patent it.

Clear Channel did.

A patent issue stirred controversy among bands and fans in 2004 when Clear Channel blocked bands from trying to make their own instant albums at ClearChannel venues. Clear Channel claimed that such attempts would infringe to a patent they had on their instant-recording and mixing system. But Prendergast, who came from DiscLive/Immediatek to Instant Live in April, appears to want to make peace with bands that want to do their own recordings, and stressed that he will not use the patent as leverage.

Clear Channel promises not to use their patent for leverage. They’ve also promised not to fire popular talent when they purchase a radio station, and promised not to change the format of popular stations once they’ve been purchased. These promises are usually followed by a swift gutting of station personnel and on-air talent, and a quick shift to Spanish language format (unless the station was already Spanish language, in which case it switches to… I don’t know… polka).

What amazes me is that Clear Channel touts this as an answer to the music industry’s piracy woes. Clear Channel records the bands that appear at Clear Channel venues, and – as we’ve seen – they have stopped bands from making and selling their own live recordings at those venues.

But live concerts were typically where the bands made their money after the labels had bilked them out of any money that could have been made off of record sales. The labels had little to no stake in the tours, and the bands finally got their time to shine.

This is why tape trading (a phenomenon that Instant Live ignores in favor of blasting bootlegs sold at the shows) became so popular with bands, and bands became more and more trade friendly. The trading of tapes and digital recordings encouraged people to come to the shows and spend money on tickets.

Clear Channel hasn’t found a way to fight piracy – they’ve found a way to squeeze in and take more profits from the traditionally band-friendly opportunities. Think about it. The band turns over a part of their ticket sales to Clear Channel to play a venue. Clear Channel runs the ticket sales outlets in town (this is true in most markets), so Clear Channel pumps up the price by adding ticketing and convenience fees, etc. etc. etc. and skims the extra money directly off the top. Then, Clear Channel shows up in their nice, shiny van and sets up their audio equipment, swings by the show soundboard and makes sure that the trade-friendly band knows that they can’t allow anybody to hook their recorder into the soundboard and get a decent recording, and by the end of the show Clear Channel is already selling their CD’s from the back of their van. If the band’s label should get on board with Clear Channel, then CC will provide the label with digital copies of the concert to sell from their website, giving the labels at long last a toehold in the concert scene.

And should the bands decide that they want to sell soundboard copies of their own shows, Clear Channel shuts them down for infringing their patent on bootlegs.

Do us all a favor. Download from the Live Music Archive and support the bands and their fans – not the greedy corporate dogs who wrap themselves in a banner of decency as they stab the artists in the back.

Found at Post-Gazette.com:

Richard Hull, executive director of the Text and Academic Authors Association, called Google’s approach backwards. Publishers shouldn’t have to bear the burden of record-keeping, agreed Sanfilippo, the Penn State press’s marketing and sales director.

“We’re not aware of everything we’ve published,” Sanfilippo said. “Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were no electronic files for those books.”

“But Mo-OO-om! Work is hard! There were no computers back then. Don’t make me go through papers!”

Is it just me, or does this single statement speak volumes about how some publishers treat their content providers? They don’t care enough about them to even pay attention to whether they’ve published them or not.

The Washington Post reports that in addition to Pat Harrison, we now have to deal with some other major GOP backers over at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

A leading Republican donor and fundraiser was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting yesterday, tightening conservative control over the agency that oversees National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

Cheryl F. Halpern, a New Jersey lawyer and real estate developer, won approval from the CPB’s board. She succeeds a close board ally, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who stirred controversy earlier this year by contending that public broadcasting favors liberal views. Tomlinson’s term as chairman had expired, but he will remain a member of the board.

The board also elected another conservative, Gay Hart Gaines, as its vice chairman. Gaines, an interior decorator by training, was a charter member and a chairman of GOPAC, a Republican fundraising group that then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) used to engineer the GOP takeover of the House in 1994.

I’m reminded of that scene in Air Force One when Harrison Ford grabs someone who has just suggested a way to save their lives and says, “If this works, you’re Postmaster General.”

Of course, in this instance Bush isn’t handing out offices to folks who have actually managed to save his life, but rather to people who managed to make sure he got the Presidency. The fact that the CPB now has a highly-placed member whose experience is as an interior decorator – but who was a major contributor to the initial Neo-Con revolution – suggests that maybe Michael Brown didn’t have to pad his résumé as much as he did. He could have just slid by on the strength of his donations.

What shocks and awes me about this administration is the out-and-out cronyism that makes up its very life’s blood. This is an administration built of family friends and donors – who are frequently one and the same – that makes a habit of rewarding failure and punishing competence. Can there be any doubt that this administration hands out its appointments like party favors to the guests who paid to get in?

And does anybody still think it’s a coincidence that the John Roberts nomination was announced so quickly and that Roberts worked for Dubya’s daddy, given that the nomination of a second justice is taking so long to come out?

The Raw Story points to the CBS Katrina Blog where a story that should be of little shock to those paying attention appears to be breaking.

6:44 p.m.
(CBS) — CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate its response following Hurricane Katrina.

Yes, Michael Brown is back. The man who padded his r̩sum̩, botched the initial response to Katrina, botched the further response to Katrina, and then resigned after the heat got too hot for even Bush to back him up, is back on the job Рinvestigating his own botched response.

I guess that unlike the other folks in the Bush administration who don’t do their jobs properly, Brown screwed up so badly that they couldn’t find a medal big enough for him.

It’s been a couple of weeks since it was posted, but it’s back!

I think an actual declaration of it managed to escape my blog, so let me take this moment to state that yes, I am actually back in school. I have just started my M.A. in Communications at East Tennessee State University with an emphasis in theatre and a cognate area of storytelling.

And that also means I’m back in college theatre. My first new production as a student – I’m playing Howard in Inge’s Picnic.

So, in honor of my first rehearsal tonight, I dub this list—The Friday Random Ten: The “Rosemary. Rosemary!” Edition.

1. “Moth in a Gray Flannel Suit” – Bob Peck
2. “The Groove” – Audiopharm
3. “Lost in Space” – Fountains of Wayne
4. “Maa Bonny Lad” – Sylvia Moore
5. “Let’s Go (Signal in the Sky)” – Apples in Stereo
6. “Waiting at the Corner” – Agents of Good Roots
7. “One Rose” – Michael Nesmith
8. “A Life Less Ordinary” – Carbon Leaf
9. “Xplosion” – Outkast
10. “Irish Dream (Live)” – Robbie Schaefer

Wired News editorializes on the lawsuit filed by the Writer’s Guild of America against Google over their new Google Print program. Wired draws a connection between the current lawsuit and the infamous UMG lawsuit against (the now-defunct) MP3.com and their popular “Beam It!” (aka: Music Locker) service.

Google, too, could be deemed an infringer simply because it copied books without permission, regardless of what it does to comply with copyright law when it comes to using the information.

We believe this would be a mistake.

There are fundamental differences between copying analog works into a digital format for the purposes of piracy, and copying the same works to create a service that conforms to copyright laws in making that data available to the public.

What happens on the backend should be of little or no interest to copyright holders, so long as rights are respected on the front end, where control over a work really counts.

Wired, as always, makes a good point. In the time since the lawsuit was filed, I’ve heard many people refer to the idea that “Google Print gives you the entire book for free.” Actually, I thought the same earlier this week when I searched for a phrase that I was absolutely certain was misquoted in one of my textbooks. (the lone result, by the way, was the textbook in question – building an even better case that the quote suffers from an unfortunate typo)

“Look at that!” I said, looking at the page displayed on my screen. “It’s the entire page! With the search phrase highlighted! And there are buttons to move back and forth within the book! I could have gotten my textbook for free!”

Then I looked at the mess of underlinings and scribbled margin notes in my copy of Brown’s Social Science as Civic Discourse and realized that if I had relied on Google Print, I wouldn’t understand half as much of it as I already do.

And it turns out that Google has actually taken steps to ensure that I don’t do such a thing, either. While the entire text of the book is searchable, it is not completely available on line for reading. Google Print only allows you to view a few pages at a time (from page 17, it would only let me back up to page 15), and even then it displays them in a fashion that is hardly piratable except by people with far too much time on their hands – much easier to buy a copy of the book, strip the spine, and lay the pages down on a scanner to turn it into a PDF file.

Additionally, the Google Print FAQ encourages you to either buy the book or visit your local library if you wish to read the rest of it.

Honestly, it appears to me that the Google folks have been a little reckless in putting their program together. The publishing industry has been revving its engines to get itself a little bit o’ that RIAA and MPAA action for a while now, and while Google appears to be going to great lengths to avoid violating Fair Use, their methods involve a back end that requires some level of infringement.

That’s not to say that the Writer’s Guild is acting within reason – just that their actions were to be expected in the increasingly litigous world of copyright law. A quick scan of the Lulu.com forums (by the way – I publish work through Lulu and am a big fan of their service and this should in no way be construed as an attack on Lulu) shows a number of their authors are convinced that they are, in fact, bestsellers, it’s just that somebody is bootlegging their books from the DRM-free PDF files that Lulu sells and they’re not seeing a dime beyond the sale of the first PDF. Writers are a funny lot.

If you ask me, the Google Print case is yet another example that in this modern world, copyright law is going to need some serious revision. Rapidly-advancing technology is changing the ways in which intellectual property can be used and distributed, and the current copyright law is having trouble keeping up. It’s time to re-examine copyright law and consider that Judge Rakoff’s statement in UMG Recordings Inc. v mp3.com – that “Copyright is not designed to afford consumer protection or convenience but, rather, to protect the copyright holders’ property interests” – may not be wholly inaccurate, but may be in need of some revision.

Just a quick Katrina-related note.

For those of you from educational or research institutions or from non-profit organizations affected by Katrina, the Community of Science is offering a free subscription to those who don’t have it, and a free extension to those who do.

Community of Science is an online database of grant-making institutions and funding opportunities. Their website puts it best:

The COS Funding Opportunities database contains more than 22,000 records worth more than $33 billion offered by over 6,500 government, private, and public sponsors from all over the world offer. It contains opportunities for many types of funding, including grants for Facility Construction or Operation, Travel, Visiting Personnel, Research and much more.

While the organization is the “Community of Science,” their funding catalog covers a broad range of topics from the sciences, the arts and humanities, and more.

If you are associated with an organization hit by Katrina or know somebody who is, you can find more details at www.cos.com/katrina

You know, it occurs to me that if you think a painting might be a forgery, there are better ways of protesting it than trying to cut the painting up.

Police said a 35-year-old woman, from Munich, in Germany, pulled a knife from her bag and slashed it [Roy Lichtenstein’s “Nudes in Mirror ”] four times on Saturday afternoon.

She was stopped by visitors and staff at the Kunsthaus Bregenz museum.

Mr Sagmeister, who organised the exhibition called Roy Lichtenstein: Classic of the New, said the painting could be restored.

I don’t know if I should be reassured or not that my first instinct on reading the story was to breathe a sigh of relief that at least the slashing was motivated over a question of the painting’s being a forgery, and not over its being a nude.