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elfs
The State of The Music Industry and the Delegitimization of Artists
TuneCore brings us the good news: the music industry is doing better than ever. Revenues are up 50% over 5 years ago (that's 10% growth each year, exceeding inflation!). But you would never know: the noise machine that surrounds, supports, and derives revenue from the music industry only tells us that labels are suffering.
Who gives a shit about the labels? The labels do, and they have lawyers, money and attitude. The bad news, TunaCore reports, is that the labels are working harder than ever to de-legitimize musicians you've never heard of, describing unlabeled music as "noise" and even denying "undeveloped" musicians the label of "artist." Worse, your rights as a musician are poorly articulated and frequently missed by those who just want to get their music out there, leading to your being screwed by those with the lawyers, guns and money.
An excellent article for any artist, in any medium. I hear similar arguments from the gatekeepers to the Nook or Kindle every day.
Judge in Xbox-Modding Case Berates Prosecution, Puts Trial on Hold
U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez berated the prosecution in a case involving the modification of the X-Box. Matthew Crippen was arrested for selling his skills as an X-Box modder to people who wanted their boxes hacked and the security circumvented. Guiterrez went all-out on the prosecution, saying that one of their own witnesses was himself a modder, something the prosecution fought to keep from the record, and that another witness had violated California's privacy laws to obtain evidence. (If true, the evidence is tainted; why is it even being considered?)
The judge even reversed himself and decided to permit a "fair use" defense at the trial. Now that's actually interesting, because I feel that if you own something, it's yours, and you ought not to be "protected" or prevented from modifying it in any way you see fit.
NASA announces discovery of new form of life
Although not as Earth-shaking as the discovery of alien life, this one blows my mind. I mean, the very basis for life on Earth is phosphate groups, isn't it? All DNA is made of phosphate groups. The idea that there's a bacteria that uses arsenate groups for its encoding is mind-boggling. It also implies that abiogenesis may have happened more than once.
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 05:44 pm (UTC)The internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it. The vast majority of music I have bought in the last ten years has been private-label of some variety... a few of those (like, say, Jimmy Buffett) have big-time distribution arrangements, but it's still Mailboat Records, not SonyBMG or other evil like that. What with CDBaby's deal with Apple, and Bandcamp, and such like, the days of the cigar-smoking, Caddy-driving record company rep are so very 20th Century.
As for arsenate DNA? wow. Is its environment arsenic-rich? Or could these be proto-little-green-men? One wonders...
no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 08:13 pm (UTC)It's a type of bacteria that was found in an arsenic-rich lake and has adapted to replace some phosphorus with arsenic in its DNA. I think they're going a little too far with the "completely new form of life" stuff, but it's still pretty nifty.
Number 127
no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 04:55 pm (UTC)Yep. Arsenic-rich lake in California. Also, the subtle detail that's under-reported in the coverage of this story: They don't necessarily use arsenic when in the presence of phosphorus, but under lab conditions, they can be induced to replace most, possibly all, of their phosphorus with arsenic. (As far as I've read, there is some technical limitation to determining whether they are truly zero-phosphorus. The experimenter kept transferring the bacteria to lower and lower phosphorus environments, but any phosphorus transferred in the cells as they're moved would persist. All that can be said with certainty is that they're using way less phosphorus than any other cell would need, and they're certainly using arsenic in key places - like DNA.) This stuff still has common ancestors to us.
But this does indicate that worlds might harbor life with very different chemical compositions than we were previously looking at. Phosphorus, at least, is replaceable.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 04:21 pm (UTC)The day that a copyright attorney decides to start his own firm, selling, "artist anti-ripoff insurance," to music makers and writers, it's all over for the RIAA conglomerates.
{N.B.: I wanna explain "artist anti-ripoff insurance". For a monthly or yearly fee, an artist would purchase certain services. First, they'd get a "violation search" a certain number of times a year, checking that nobody has violated his/her copyright on his/her creations. The artist retains ownership of their creations. Second, if a violation occurs, if someone mass-pirates an artist's work or copies and pawns it off as theirs, the firm goes after them. The artist and the firm split the damages according to a ratio set out in the service contract.
So, and artist would be able to buy a plan for a 1-per-year check and 50%-of-damages. Another artist could buy a plan with a 6-per-year check and only 10%-of-damages. Or any mix thereof.
The firm providing these legal services would make their money off of monthly fees and volume. Obviously, it'll be financially rough-going for the firm for a bit, until word gets out and musicians start signing on. But once enough join, it'll take off.}