Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

I wonder sometimes about what seems to be a trend toward legitimizing borderline larceny. Credit card companies and banks are allowed to take more and more leeway and charge more and more fees without offering extended (or even reducing current) services to their customers. Paycheck advance stores and title loan offices seem more and more to be quasi-legal loan sharking. And don’t get me started on the legalized grand theft auto of private tow companies – personally, I feel enforcement of trespassing laws and collection of fines should be a duty of well-paid law enforcement, and not the territory of privately-owned for-profit companies.

It appears in every industry and every aspect of life. It even occurs in the music you listen to, particularly if you dig internet radio.

The game is rigged and the RIAA has rigged it in their favor. The strategy of playing only non-RIAA songs won’t work though because the RIAA has secured the right to collect royalties on all songs regardless of who controls the copyright. RIAA operates under the assumption that they will collect the royalties for the “sound recording copyright” and that the artists who own their own copyright will go to SoundExchange to collect at a later date.

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So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties (http://soundexchange.com/faq.html#b6). But, and this is a big “but,” you only get royalties if you own the sound recording copyright. If you are signed to a major label, chances are you don’t. Even if you do own the copyright to your own recording of your own song, SoundExchange will collect Internet radio royalties for your song even if you don’t want them to do so. [ed. emphasis mine]

So. SoundExchange – which is in the pocket of the RIAA – collects funds for people it does not represent, regardless of whether or not they want those funds collected, then holds onto those funds unless those people pay for them. In fact, if you remember last year’s massive list of artists who had not collected their royalties yet, SoundExchange has a very sweet deal. If you don’t collect the royalties by the end of the year, you don’t get those royalties ever – they pocket whatever they don’t disburse. Every year.

I recently used a service recently to put all of my music on the digital net services. In that time, my songs have been streamed from those stores 61 times, and purchased 13 times. The amount of money I saw from it definitely isn’t going to break the bank. But it is mine – and it’s my music that earned it. And SoundExchange shouldn’t be able to appoint itself the lord and master of when and where my royalties are paid without my giving them that power in the first place.

Somewhere, something’s gotta give.

Every now and then, you hear about something so bizarre, you realize that you must see it to believe it.

I heard about this in Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’s “Bluff the Listener” challenge. And I knew I had to find the video.

A better communications scholar than I should be able to point out the original theorist and the name of the theory I’m about to spout. There is a finite amount of “talent” in a given society, the word “talent” to me representing the skill and ability to exploit resources to create something worthwhile.

There are twenty-four hours in a day. That means that in the old days of three major networks, there were 72 hours a day to be filled from that finite amount of talent. That is actually a relatively easy amount of time to fill. With the rise of cable and satellite, however, that number grows. A cable system that offers twenty channels effectively represents 480 hours of time that must be filled from that finite amount of talent. The Dish Network offers over 280 channels in its America’s Everything Plan. That represents 6,720 hours that must be filled – a number which, theoretically, begins to outstrip the supply of talent. And if you start to figure in the other channels not on that list along with the millions of pages of print produced a day and the 24-hour broadcast schedule of your typical radio station, the number only gets higher. That’s why you wind up with reruns, network premieres of The Butterfly Effect, and Dr. Phil.

In other words, the quest to fill time leads the gatekeepers of television programming (as well as other media) to go past the people with talent and find the people who are capable of just filling space. Ultimately, this leads to punditry. Which brings me around to Jack Thompson.

Remember Thompson? He’s the one who wants to convince you that violence in America did not exist prior to the release of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He wants to sue video game manufacturers, and files suits trying to keep their product off the shelves. And apparently he managed to get a place as a time-and-space filler on – you guessed it – FOX News. Home of the Culture War (as well as many, many whoppers).

Kotaku responds by pointing out that Jack just can’t stop lying. Many of the cases he quotes as fact have actually been tossed out of court or cannot be traced to any source other than Thompson himself.

The sad thing is that while the media seems to feel its talent pool is exhausted, creating televisual real estate for Jack “Tragedy=Attention” Thompson, I’m fairly certain that there are talented people out there who would disagree. And many, many more people – both talented and un – who would rather watch almost anybody else.

Dear Wolf Blitzer,

I already intensely dislike The Situation Room’s presentational style.

Watching what it does to coverage of the Virginia Tech shooting is making me consider throwing my television off of my apartment’s balcony. And my television is big. And heavy. And I have nobody to help me move it.

Please tell me – whose idea was it to re-run Jamal Albarghouti’s footage with the words SHOTS HEARD in big white letters and a running count of the shots in the audio?

Surreal moment. I never imagined that the next time I saw the Hokiestone walls of Virginia Tech, it would be on CNN as the site of multiple shootings.

Shooting at VT

(CNN)—A lone gunman is dead after police said he killed at least 21 people Monday during twin shootings on the Virginia Tech campus—the worst school shooting incident in U.S. history.

“Some victims were shot in a classroom,” university police Chief Wendell Flinchum said during a news conference in Blacksburg.

Police believe there was only one gunman, Flinchum said.

“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” said university President Charles Steger. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.” (Map of Blacksburg)

The shootings mark the deadliest school shooting incident in U.S. history, topping attacks at Columbine High School in 1999 and at the University of Texas in 1966.

The Associated Press quoted officials saying more than 20 people were wounded. A hospital spokeswoman told AP that 17 Virginia Tech students were being treated for gunshot wounds and other injuries.

Jamal Albarghouti is i-Reporting for CNN and sent in footage he took outside of Norris during the event. You can clearly hear a steady stream of gunshots in the film.

It apparently began with a shooting at West Ambler-Johnston, where a few of my friends lived during my time at VT. I used to pick up my mail at East AJ when I lived in the dorm next door that didn’t have its own mailroom.

Reporters say the shooting did not appear completely random. That the shooter had a clear idea of what he was doing and where he was going.

And now I’m glued to CNN…

Thanks for the advice, Dale – great stuff. And I’ve got a head start, at least.