02.04.12
Posted in About Technology, Political Opinion at 12:37 am by Administrator
Is making a copy of a digital movie theft? How do content creators get paid for their work in the digital era? These questions have polarized people into roughly two groups; The status-quo group is of the opinion that people who don’t pay for digital content are “thieves”, The pro-free information group is of the opinion that “information wants to be free”. Occasionally, in the midst of the law suits, raids and fulminating polemics there will be the voice of reason, but not often.
Let us look dispassionately at the issues. I see the issue this way:
1. Artists need to be compensated for their efforts.
2. Consumers want content in a cheap convenient way.
I don’t think it is any more complex than that. Notice, I did NOT say “Middlemen need to make large profits off of creative content”.
The Middle Man
The real problem is the middle man. Before the digital era, the music and movie industry needed an infrastructure to create and distribute songs and movies. Let’s take the pre-digital production of a music album. A record label would identify a talented band, arrange for the recording of an album in an expensive studio, produce the album, market the album and arrange for the band to get advances on earnings. The band in turn would often sign away the rights to some or all of their music in consideration of the benefits of being sponsored through the then-expensive process of getting their music out to the public. Today, it is a different landscape. Let’s take the post-digital production of a music album. First of all, an album is no longer the quantum of consumption. Now consumers can and do buy one song that they like. The band can product their own music with low-cost off the shelf computers and software. The band can design their own art, put the music on a public web site for download and even process their own payments from customers. Most importantly, once the music is digital it can easily be passed from person to person at no charge. To be sure, the issue of marketing their music and making their product visible to the public is still difficult. But it is clear that the middle man no longer has the central role in the selection and production of music.
The now-obsolete middle man still has a formidable, yet dwindling, infrastructure and fortune to expend on trying to stop this change in entertainment consumption. It is something akin to the buggy whip industry using it’s resources to force each new automobile owner to buy a buggy whip. The auto owner doesn’t need a buggy whip! Eventually, inevitably, the buggy whip industry will die. It won’t matter how many congressmen they pay off, or how many law suits they bring against “criminal” automobile users. Buggy whips are no longer needed.
This Has Happened Before
What’s even more interesting is that this has happened before in the entertainment industry. Not once but several times! Before any recording technology existed a singer would sing to a live audience and get paid for that performance. Music was copyrighted and published on paper so people could play the music in their homes on a piano. Then the record player was invented. Some people certainly must have believed that this was the end of live music. In fact, quite the opposite happened. The dissemination of music allowed more people than ever to enjoy a performance. The sale of records brought even more revenue to the industry. The renown of a singer was enhanced so live performances were more lucrative. But what should not be overlooked is that the recording technology added value to singing. It made music portable, reproducible and available in locations previously impossible. This is important. The new technology brought new benefits. The new technology didn’t harm the music industry, indeed it made it more lucrative and ubiquitous than ever!
Following with our music example, next came radio. There was a concerted effort to prevent music from being played on the radio “for free”. Once again, the new technology had a positive effect bringing more music to more people in more places. The money poured in.
More recently, it became possible to tape music. Again, the industry was up in arms, warning that this technology would allow people to “steal” music. And again, the technology had the opposite effect. More people heard more music in more places arranged as they wanted to hear it and more money poured in. I won’t go through the tedious exercise of repeating how this process occurred when CD-roms, mp3s, iPods and now the Internet came along. Each of these new technologies does the same thing. It brings more music to more people in more places in the way the consumer wants to experience it AND more money will pour in. However, the money will not pour in to the obsolete middle men unless they embrace the new technology. The buggy whip industry is dead.
Substitute ‘movie’ for music, ‘television’ for radio, ‘VHS tape’ for cassette tape and one sees what happened in visual entertainment.
Now E-Books Join the Fray
Now we are seeing the same thing with books. I love books! I like to hold them and collect them and read them. But, e-books offer enhancements that are impossible with bound books. For example, I can immediately get the definition of a word I don’t understand. I can instantly translate a foreign language passage or I can link to Wikipedia and get details about an historical character. I can carry hundreds of books with me on vacation. I can loan a book to all my friends instantly. Yes, I just wrote that! Is it stealing to take advantage of the flexibility of the new technology? To my mind it is not stealing just as listening to a song on the radio is not stealing.
Digital Benefits
Here are more benefits of e-books (and e-music and e-movies). If I like a song (or book or movie) I can easily find similar works and procure them instantly. I can share my opinions about a song (or book etc.) with my friends. And, this is interesting, I can share my opinions about a song (or movies) with strangers. As a consumer I can find out what other people think about a work. I can find out what other works the artist produced and I can download them. I can even sample a bit of those works to try and determine if I find them entertaining.
For a producer, the barriers to creation of new art have been significantly lowered. Will this mean that more crummy art will be produced? Certainly. Tell me you haven’t watched a crummy commercially produced movie! Now, in the digital realm, I can read reviews, sample and otherwise vet the quality of an entertainment product without going to the effort of going to a movie theatre and paying to see the movie. The nature of digital media make sorting through the content very easy.
Certainly, all of these systems for determining the quality of music, book and movies have been available for years. After all we have had critics for as long as the human race has existed. What we haven’t had is the brutal efficiency of the digital realm. I no longer have to depend on a handful of critics in the press. I can be my own critic and I can find friends and strangers who are critics I trust. I can also sample a product in the comfort of my home, as I sit in my PJs.
In short, digital products offer extensive new benefits. Sound familiar? So did every other new technological innovation throughout history. Each time a new technology appeared, a different revenue model had to be worked out. Which brings me to the next item; How does the artist get paid for his or her creation?
How Does The Artist Get Paid?
How then does the artist get paid for his or her creation? Again, we need to cleave off the obsolete middle-man. Apple Computer came up with a viable system for music, which they are expanding into video and books. By using iTunes, and allowing customers to procure music instantly at an impulse-buy cost, Apple has created a vast working market place. The money is pouring in, just like it did with each new innovation: vinyl records, radio, television, VHS tapes, CD-roms, DVDs, MP3s, iPods, iPads, laptops and now The Internet.
As a customer I no longer need to drive to the record store, the book store, the library, or the movie theatre, unless I really want to. As a customer I no longer am paying for expensive distribution and production, unless I really want to. As a customer I select that which is pleasing to me and I no longer have to pay for content that is bundled on an album, unless I want to. Why then, as a customer, shouldn’t I benefit from the lower cost associated with putting digital content on the internet where I can get it? I no longer have to pay for the paper, the book binding, the bookstore, the trucking of books, the overhead of unsold remainders and so on, unless I want to.
The artist can sell me product directly now. Or select a low cost new middle-man, such as iTunes. The irony is that more money than ever is to be made. The only loser is the middle-man who is unwilling to provide the consumer with the new benefits from the new technology. The only loser is the middle-man who insists that things shouldn’t change. Things will change.
Piracy
The existing dying infrastructure in entertainment is going under kicking and screaming. Their ill-advised prohibition of digital music worked just as well as the prohibition on beer. It forced law abiding consumers underground and pushed the new profits directly into the hands of criminals who provided the obvious. Pirated music is no bargain, really. What the customer really wants is a high-quality well-organized digital product at a fair price. If it is easy and priced as an impulse-buy, then most people will take the path of least resistance and pay. And, here is the interesting part; when the digital consumer is better able to evaluate more music, and find music similar to his or her tastes that they might normally never encounter, more music will be sold.
There will be a limited amount of piracy when music is well organized and all the benefits of the digital format are available at the fair price. When this happens the volume of music sold and the increased satisfaction of the customer, will more than replace any losses associated with the new technology. Substitute the word ‘book’ or ‘movie’ for music and the same thing is true.
Summary
It makes no sense to make criminals out of your customers! The way out of this mess is for music, movies and books to be made available for a reasonable impulse-buy price. Indeed this seems to be happening with outlets like iTunes and Amazon.com. The distribution mechanisms need to provide every benefit of the digital realm, such as crowd-sourced criticism, instant availability, product sampling, the ability to locate similar pleasing products and, it has to be said, no Digital Rights Management. The existing industry needs to resist the temptation to sue their customers for simply obtaining a desirable product the industry is unwilling to provide. And the existing industry needs to understand that this new technology is making the old distribution and revenue models obsolete. A new way of selling entertainment to the public is happening and the smart content owner will take advantage of the enhanced revenue the digital technology can provide.
Take a lesson from history and see how each new generation of technology was actually a positive development for the entertainment industry. Digital media is a positive development for music, books and movies.
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08.29.11
Posted in Travel at 5:47 pm by Administrator
Hello,
We’ve had the most incredible three days in recent memory! Our friend and host Gerard not only lives in the most mellow place I’ve ever been, but he also loves to cook and bake and eat in the Tuscan style. We’ve sucked down life-changing wines, packed away cheese, prochuttio, wild boar and a memorable thin crust fungi pizza that made we want to sink to my knees and weep with gratitude! As I write this the kitchen is animated with the sounds and smells of the preparation of bistecka Florentina to go with freshly-baked bread. Two bottles of local white wine are nestled in ice.
Earlier, in the cooler morning air we ambled down the dirt road with a cheerful little fluffy white dog named “Attila” to the earth-toned medieval village nesting on the hilltop over the valley. We joined the locals sitting at the outdoor cafe in the cobblestoned piazza and lingered over our €1 capuchinni. Back at the villa, during the hottest part of the day we cooled off in the pool, dried ourselves in the sun then read in the shade.
A restored stone Tuscan farm house, the villa sits on a hillside surrounded by heart-breakingly stunning rolling wheat fields with patches of woods full of a very tasty variety of wild boar. There is a deep quiet here and warmth that makes one want to walk about naked. A wooden table outside is where we dine in the warm night by candle light. We enjoy those long rambling wine-fueled discussions under the brilliant constellations.
The culture here is about living well; things should be beautiful, food must be excellent and everyone seems happy. What’s more Gerard and his wife Heddy have designed the place to be rented out, which means that anyone can come here. In my opinion this is what an enlightened Renaissance society engineered as proper living. Who are we to argue?
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08.23.11
Posted in Travel at 3:18 pm by Administrator
Hello,
We are sitting by the pool with Mt. Vesuvius (of Pompeii fame) glowering at us with dark menace just across the Bay of Naples. One burp and it would fry us where we sit, although I’m not sure the oily tourists grilling nearby in the brutal sun would even notice.
Whoever said “It’s the journey, not the destination”, has clearly never flown Iberia Airlines. I’ve registered a few complaints with various airlines over the years, but this was the nadir of the genre. I’d rather pull out my molars with a pair of rusty pliers then ever put myself at their mercy again. Things went right to hell starting with the checkin – where an angry clerk took our bags and only once they were safely out of our reach, announced with undisguised glee that we were 17 kilos over some limit specified in the fine print and at 10 € per Kilo that would cost us the equivalent of almost $250 – And “no” we couldn’t have the bags back and in fact she was “doing us a favor by not charging us more”! After a few moments of distress where I almost blacked out with rage, I got the supervisor who dismissed our petty complaint with the infamous Gallic “fuck you” shrug of the shoulders.
Once aboard, the duct tape holding together parts of the interior did nothing to improve my mood (yes I have photos). With our knees up near our chins, as if preparing to give birth, we sweltered in the un-airconditioned craft while the Spanish speaking crew tried to communicate with the French tourists heading to Italy. The drink cart flashed by without stopping which was a small kindness considering the bloated prices.
Short of crashing I can’t imagine a worse flight. But I digress.
Once we made good our escape from Iberia we proceeded on the next leg of our Batan Death March to Sorrento. Without boring you with the hideous details, we wound up pulling our (overweighted) suitcases down the dark cobblestone streets of Sorrento, sweating like marathon runners, as we plaintively begged people (none of whom seemed to speak English like God intended) on the street if they knew where our hotel was.
Even though we finally arrived we’ll need years of intensive psychiatric therapy to be fit for public society.
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08.17.11
Posted in Travel at 7:51 pm by Administrator
Hello,
Its a miracle that French people aren’t keeling over dead in the streets from lung cancer! If a French person isn’t smoking, (s)he is either tossing a smoldering butt into the street, stylishly poking a coffin nail into his or her mouth, blowing smoke into someone’s face (preferably a non-smoking foreigner, but anyone will do in a pinch) or hand rolling another death stick. Naturally, the best seats at the numerous Parisian Cafes, namely the ones outside in the sun and fresh air, allow nicotine addicts to blanket the area with the foul cancerous stench of tobacco as one attempts to tuck into his gourmet meal and delicate wine. But, we are visitors in a strange land so we say nothing, smother our hacking and dab at our watering eyes to be polite. Which begs the question; why exactly does French cigarette smoke unerringly make a twisting blueish thread directly to my nose? I just chalk it up to one of life’s unanswerable deep mysteries.
And speaking of mysteries, who are these tourists dumb enough to play three card montey with greasy-haired hulking scar-faced men working off the top of a cardboard box? This laughably transparent sleight of hand scam draw clouds of out of towners here in Paris, even taking into account the “shills” acting as accomplises who disguise themselves as players who win. I thought anyone with the IQ greater than that of a flush toilet would know to avoid such rank knavery.
Well, thats the news from Paris. Oh yeah, we saw some museums (they seem to have an awful lot of pictures of Jesus), old churches (I mean, come on, can’t they afford some new churches?) and had some good meals too.
Cheers,
Fred
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08.11.11
Posted in Travel at 6:49 pm by Administrator
Hi,
Edinburgh, Scotland is a beautiful city with much of its medieval architecture intact. We arrived to celebrate our 25th anniversary of wedded bliss – for you see we were married in Edinburgh and haven’t been back since. By coincidence we were there for The Military Tattoo (a bunch of marching bands as far as I could tell). Imagine our joy when we found out that at the same time the far more to our taste Fringe Festival was being held. The latter we had never heard of and were charmed to find Operas, plays (over 2 thousand of them!), symphony performances (including one by San Francisco conductor Runnicles), jazz, comedy, and street performances – all on an “open source” basis!
Every night the castle on the hill had torches flickering ‘or its parapets, with the plaintive humming wail of bag pipies drifting on the breeze. Then, explosions and fireworks – but we barely noticed as we wandered the dark rain-slicked cobblestones led about by Adam Lyle (deceased) looking very much dead as he showed us the places witches were burned, bodies dug up from fresh graves for the medical school, and the ever popular hangings. The Scots, polite to a fault, would allow the condemned a final fortifying drink at the “The Last Drop” Pub before the neck stretching, which was a popular form of entertainment in the “good old days”.
At the-still operational Palace of Holyrood, we saw the exact spot where the hapless Mary Queen of The Scots found her closest advisor stabbed 52 times by her new husband (one Lord Darnly). She returned the favor by blowing up a house with her husband in it, but when that proved insufficient to dispatch the poor fellow he found himself mysteriously strangled in the smoldering wreckage (talk about your marital spats!). Enraged, the good citizens of Edinburgh ran her out of town (she 9 months along with the fetus of the future James 1st) on horseback. She escaped to England where Queen Elizabeth had her head chopped off! Who says they didn’t know how to show a lady a good time back then?
On to England!
Cheers,
Fred
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08.06.11
Posted in Travel at 8:14 pm by Administrator
Hello again,
In the pouring English rain we tramped to the British Museum. I had a mental image of myself quietly posing before The Rosetta Stone as my lovely wife took a snap. The reality was closer to being stomped to death in a mosh pit during a Sex Pistols concert. My arms were pinned harshly at my side by pushy tourists bellowing in rapid-fire dialects from all over “The Continent”. Collectively they all seem to exude a sweaty beery sort of garlic miasma, and each one comes equiped with a sniveling toddler and a sullen teenager. Finally I caught a brief glimpse of the fabled rock before being ejected from the scrum like a seed out of a stomped grape.
Pushing through the throng, I was squirted out into the magnificent presence of the famed Elgin Marbles, pried off the Parthenon by the eponymos Sir Elgin in the early 1800s. Carefully, I framed a camera shot of an exquisite horse carved into the sugar-like marble. In the brief moment I let my attention focus on the camera, I was swept up into a rushing torrent of stampeding Asian tourists charging after a guide with a flag. Ten meters downstream my finger was shoved against the button providing me with an excellent image of the floor. On my next attempt a sturdy woman wearing a festive Mumu stepped into my carefully composed shot, her back to the Elgin Marbles, staring off into space with bovine stupidity.
There was nothing to do but muscle our way out of the museum – our targeted destination being Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub -recently rebuilt in 1667 after a spot of bother when London burned to the ground. There I enjoyed a pint of bitter ale (or two) in the same spot frequented by Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Dickens, and lots of other dead guys. In fact it looks like they just left, as the furniture and such haven’t been upgraded in several hundred years.
London is full of Europeans off on holiday. I mean really full, swinging from the chandeliers full! And when it rains apparently all of them go to The British Museum. As one woman succiently put it when asked where all the museum visitors came from, “It was the rain what done it”.
Cheers,
Fred
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08.01.11
Posted in Travel at 10:50 am by Administrator
Hello,
There something sobering about looking over the railing of one of the world’s largest ships (The Queen Mary 2) as “The Commodore” announces that we are 500 miles from the nearest land and The Titanic lies moldering roughly 3 miles below us. We are 4 days into a 7-day crossing of “The Pond”. What was once an endless expanse of stolid steel vessel has contracted in our minds into a flimsy cork bobbing on an endless expanse of pitiless heaving main.
Fortunately, there is much to keep our minds off the emptiness of the Atlantic; a 10,000 volume library, movies, those execrable pseudo-Broadway musicals cobbled together by the off-duty crew members, a gym, shops crammed with over-priced shiney baubles, and even a production of Hamlet! But most unbelievably, along with the shuffleboard, the pools and the bars, this ship has a planetarium! Yes, a planetarium. And there is, of course, the food. Lots of food. Acres of food!
Despite the fact I am required to cut off my air supply with a necktie at the formal Britannica Dining Room, our fellow passengers at the table provide us with ample diversion, such as the lady who offered to “slap” Ada when the latter had the temerity to disagree with her. One senses immediately how amusing the evening can be. There is of course dancing and drinking and gaiety (in both the classical as well as the contemporary sense of the word) late into the evening.
There is in fact Internet service aboard, and after signing away exclusive rights to my right arm and my first born son (should I ever produce one) – they allowed me a few precious moments to shoot off this epistle. Soon we shall arrive at Southhampton and proceed into the wilds of Great Britannia and The Continent from whence we expect great edification and adventure. So stay tuned . . .
Cheers,
Fred
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Posted in Travel, Uncategorized at 10:46 am by Administrator
So we get to New York, see. I always want a “New York” moment, you know when someone yells something like: “Yo, Vinee, dis mook wants a cawfee ovah heah.” or the like. We didn’t have long to wait!
Picture this: Penn Station, first we help a fellow passenger who fell backwards on the escalator and was being dragged feet-first upwards. We emerge into the sticky hot night. It’s brutally hot, I feel like I’m being grilled alive. In fact it’s a new record.
A disorderly mob of sweaty pissed off people is milling around the cab queue. Apparently the uniformed cab director quits at 9:00 PM and some *ahem* freelance gentlemen are offering an opportunity to jump the line for a modest fee. We are offered this arrangement and decline – somehow this is interpreted as being “disrespectful” – never one to pass up an opportunity to put my diplomatic skills to use, I offer the gentleman in question a one time opportunity to “kiss my ass”. After a few choice epithets and my yelling for a cop, a cab pulls up. A large angry cabbie barges out, mad as a bull! He starts shouting at the freelance guys who pocketed his previous fare by convincing a passenger that (s)he could pre-pay the fare with them. We pile in, the driver speeds into traffic in a rage. In his haste we sideswipe a car, which results in a colorful interchange with the civilian driver who takes the cab number inferring darkly that dire consequences await.
I turn to Ada and say, “Welcome to New York”!
Then it got weird.
More later,
Fred & Ada
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07.17.11
Posted in Travel at 8:38 pm by Administrator
We grabbed a cab – at the crack of the Miami dawn – driven by a Russian guy who had thick Mr. Magoo glasses that magnified his eyes to the size of saucers. I was flailing my arms wildly in the back seat holding up the iPhone map and shouting “You’re going the wrong way!”. He craned his neck and mumbled “Nyet, nyet, is okay” as the vehicle took a sickening swerve toward the guard rail. The meter was up over $40 and we were stopped at the end of a dead-end street facing a gator-infested canal before the driver conceeded we might be lost. With firm but kind instructions I insisted on directing us and we arrived at the Miami Amtrak Station with enough time to complete some complex bi-lingual re-negotiations of the bloated fare.
In China there is a new high-speed train between Shanghai and Beijing that can go as fast as 200mph! In The Good Old USA, Amtrak loaded us into railroad carriages that appear to have been purchaced from Pancho Villa’s troop train after the Mexican Revolution, and haven’t been cleaned since. However the air conditioning worked . . . with a vengence! We huddled in our parkas for the 12 hour ride to Savannah, GA. Arriving two hours late because the train has to “go slower in the rain”! For all that, it was cheaper, faster and more comfortable than flying, and there are no TSA agents to grope you before you board.
Now, in Savannah, a beautiful city we have visited before, we expect to dine like Pashas and wallow in the Cee-ment pond to beat the heat.
Remain calm, more information to follow.
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07.11.11
Posted in Travel at 1:30 am by Administrator
Hello,
I know by now that you are frantic, searching the intertubes for word of our status. Rest easy ’cause here is a SitRep:
After being stripped down by the TSA then unceremoniously stuffed into a titanium cylinder and propelled at un-natural speeds through the clouds, we arrived in Miami. We are now comfortably installed in Al & Bryon’s dee-lux condo in Miami Beach where we can see the Miami downtown skyline from the balcony.
The fourth of July celebration was vaguely reminiscent of “Shock and Awe” over Baghdad! Uneasy at this display of jingoistic abulia we felt we had no choice but to flee North to The Everglades where we boarded an airboat and tried to blend in with atavistic Jurassic-era carnivors. However, the way these beasts started eye-balling us did nothing good for my jet-lagged neural tissue. Nothing to do but to race back to Miami and start packing away the Cuban chow. Plantains, black beans, rice, grilled fish with an iced cold beer is tough to beat!
In a hyperactive Cuban cafecito fueled buzzing daze we have been flailing about in the swimming pool. My sunburn is coming along nicely. Down on Ocean Ave. We sat outdoors under the awning in the tropical rain watching slack-jawed at the Black Film Festival beautiful people crowd as they were furiously cutting deals while wearing stiletto high heels and bikinis.
Naturally, I had to drain a margharita the size of a buick to regain my wits, but I’m happy to report we’ve reached a sort of chemical compromise between the jet-lag, alcohol, and Caffeine.
Stay tuned – film at 11.
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