Wednesday, August 28, 2002

TAFKA Prince Speaks Out on Music Biz Great to see a musician of such stature post a well-thought (yet oddly formed) commentary on the current state of the music business. Makes me think of the time that musicians rose up to eliminate the cardboard boxes around music CDs, and how music stores fought back because of the inconvenience of rebuilding their store shelves! Prince on the music industry: "A Nation of Theives". Prince has posted an excellent (if irritatingly spelled) (yes, I know I published a novella today with a bunch of potentially irritating hacker spellings, sue me) rant about what's wrong with the music industry. Something happened on the way 2 the 21st century. Media and entertainment companies started "converging" and "shareholder value" became far more important than customer service and respect 4 company employees ever managed 2 b. Compensation packages 4 company xecutives hit the stratosphere -- while holding them accountable 4 their company's results became nearly impossible. These xecutives r indeed very naive if they think that people haven't noticed. People r noticing that something isn't quite right -- that something is indeed very wrong. After a decade during which the stock market gained apparent respectability as a legitimate, sensible 4m of investing, the recent slew of huge corporate scandals reveals that it is still what it has always been: a sick place where neurotic, puerile gamblers get their kicks off the backs of millions of "anonymous" workers and individuals, who have no control over what happens 2 their hard-earned retirement savings. Link Discuss (Thanks, Alan) [Boing Boing Blog] 10:52:49 AM    comment

Fight the Broadcast Flag! What should we be doing at a grass-roots level to fight this crap? Broadcast Flag becoming a treaty obligation. The fight against the Broadcast Flag just got harder. The Broadcast Flag is a regulatory proposal that's nominally about digital TV, but it's a Trojan horse for taking over the whole technosphere, putting consumer electronics and IT companies under a Hollywood veto to keep them from building devices that challenge the MPAA's business model. Now, the Broadcast Flag is the subject of a mandate embedded in a proposed WIPO treaty, so that governments will be obliged to make this happen, even if voters manage to convince their lawmakers to keep technology free. This treaty would require national law to grant to broadcasters: * "the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the fixation of their broadcasts;" * "the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the direct or indirect reproduction, in any manner or form, of fixations of their broadcasts;" * "the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit the retransmission, by wire or wireless means, whether simultaneous or based on fixations, of their broadcasts;" * and other rights, including the rights to control the exhibition and distribution of fixations (recordings) of broadcasts. Link Discuss (Thanks, Seth!) [Boing Boing Blog] 10:41:29 AM    comment

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