I have been thinking about the new internet radio fee structure. I think the Copyright Royalty Board is making a mistake by change. I am not saying that the fees cannot go up, but I think it is really early in the life of internet radio for the fee structure to change to radically. This is not the case where there are internet radio companies that are just raking in the revenue and the copyright royalty holder and being left out in the cold.
I am not sure who is lobbying for this change, but my guess is that there will be few winners here. I think that the record companies might win, but individual royalty holder might lose. Increasing the fee structure is likely to send small internet broadcasters out of business. There is a good chance that the increase payment from the other broadcasters will not make up for the revenue that will be lost by sending smaller companies out of business. It will be bad for smaller record labels and smaller artists. They will be losing the venue to be heard and the revenue from being played on smaller internet broadcasters.
If internet radio stations go away, I think this will encourage people to pirate music. A lot of these internet radio stations free to listen to. If they are not around many of those listeners will find other no cost ways to find music. What little money is going the the royalty holder would go away.
I find this to be a little funny in the light of the XM and Sirius merger. One of the arguments for why the merger would be fine is because there is so much internet broadcasting out there. My guess is the XM/Sirius will not change their stance.
I do not listen to much internet radio. I have way too much music to listen to already. I want there to be internet radio to be out there. The promise of the internet is that size does not matter. I will be able to find very specific niches out there. This change is designed to kill off some of those niches out there. That is a bad thing. In the end internet broadcasters will set up outside the US. In the US there is no door on the internet to block them. It is bad for business. That is reason enough for the US not to make this mistake.
I am turning off my RSS feed for a little while. I want to use the blogger label function to add tags to a lot of my old entries. The only way I can think to do this is to turn off my RSS feed. You will have visit Sad Salvation to get all of my blog goodness.
I use IM a lot at work. I try to only use it when I need a quick answer or find out if someone is available. Often I use IM to find out if the person is somewhere I can call them or to ask them when I can call them. I am a big fan of using IM to find out if it is worth me walking over to someone's cube. Sometimes I will get into a real conversation on IM, but that is not too often.
I was thinking about this when I saw M Roth's tips for work IM. These are pretty good tips. Reading this makes me want to examine how I am using instant messages.
I wanted to keep Eric Laine's comments so I put them in an entry.
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"24" will not change because its creator, Joel Surnow, is a radical right-wing torture enthisiast. He is capitalizing on Americans' fear of terrorism to make money AND advance a militaristic political agenda. Anyone who is "entertained" by watching a man torture his own brother to the sound of agonizing screams should seek counselling. "24" was good for about 6 hours in 2001; in 2007 its tired, predictable rhythms combined with its reactionary message make it suitable only for those who would slow down to ponder roadkill.
From the New Yorker:
"The series, Surnow told me, is “ripped out of the Zeitgeist of what people’s fears are—their paranoia that we’re going to be attacked,” and it “makes people look at what we’re dealing with” in terms of threats to national security. “There are not a lot of measures short of extreme measures that will get it done,” he said, adding, “America wants the war on terror fought by Jack Bauer. He’s a patriot.”
For all its fictional liberties, “24” depicts the fight against Islamist extremism much as the Bush Administration has defined it: as an all-consuming struggle for America’s survival that demands the toughest of tactics. Not long after September 11th, Vice-President Dick Cheney alluded vaguely to the fact that America must begin working through the “dark side” in countering terrorism. On “24,” the dark side is on full view. Surnow, who has jokingly called himself a “right-wing nut job,” shares his show’s hard-line perspective. Speaking of torture, he said, “Isn’t it obvious that if there was a nuke in New York City that was about to blow—or any other city in this country—that, even if you were going to go to jail, it would be the right thing to do?”
There is a reason I love Thomas Friedman. I see that reason again when he writes about The silence that kills. Not only is he a great writer, he also writes what needs to be written.
ON Feb. 20, The Associated Press reported from Afghanistan that a suicide attacker disguised as a health worker blew himself up near "a crowd of about 150 people who had gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to open an emergency ward at the main government hospital in the city of Khost." A few days later, at a Baghdad college, a female Sunni suicide bomber blew herself up amid students who were ready to sit for exams, killing 40 people.
Stop and think for a moment how sick this is. Then stop for another moment and listen to the silence. The Bush team is mute. It says nothing, because it has no moral authority. No one would listen. President Bush is losing a PR war to people who blow up emergency wards. Europeans are mute, lost in their delusion that this is all George Bush's and Tony Blair's fault.
Brian Greene has looked at the ways people think time travel can happen and had declared Time Travel is impossible. This does not surprise me. To be honest I never believed in time travel. I could never down with the idea that we could move through time at our leisure. It is that old saying about time travel not existing because we are not awash in thousands of time travelers from the future. On top of that no one from the future showed up at the Time Travelers Convention. Those things happen only in comics.
I heard a story today about the TV show 24 and its use of Torture. Agent Jack Bauer is known for doing what ever it takes to get information. He is always able to get the information that he is looking for by applying the right kind of pain. The idea is that he only has a matter of hours to save the world. Of course you would use torture in that situation. It is just too important not to.
Of course the real world does not work that way. Agents who have captives do not have a matter of hours to save the world from an over complex plot. They do not know that they have the guy who has the one piece of key intelligence they need. They do not know which of the people they capture have important intelligence and which have meaningless information.
The truth of the matter is that torture does not work. Most of the time when people are tortured they say whatever they think will get the torture to stop. It is not a matter of truth at that point, it is a matter of getting the pain to stop. It is like beating a confession out of a criminal.
In the story they talked about the effect of shows like 24 on soldiers. Without clear guidelines from the leadership, soldiers looked to shows like 24 on how to get information out of prisoners. The producers of the show say that this is not their fault. They say people in the real world have to know the difference between fact and fiction.
To be honest I am not too worried about the effect on US soldiers. If they are looking to shows like 24 as a guideline, we have much deeper problem with the military and military leadership. I am worried about what people from the middle east thing when they see this show. I am worried because it is hard to pull apart fictions and truths when you do not live in a society.
Charlie Rose asked Kiefer Sutherland about the use of torture. Kiefer said that torture dramatic device. It is a way to show the viewers how dramatic the scene is. This bothers me more than anything else. I think that torture is a weak plot device. I think it is lazy writing.
One my problems with the torture in 24 is that it is always okay for Jack Bauer to do whatever it takes. He never lives with the moral weight of torture. The audience would always choose to torture the person who has the information. The stakes are always so high that it is always worth torturing the prisoner. I think this is a bad thing. I think that it effects the kind of hero that Jack Bauer is.
I have the feeling that 24 will only change if there is a dip in the ratings.
I have not thought about gender and work in a while. In the Merc news today there is a story about how jobs are divided by gender. This is pretty interesting. I wonder if this has anything to do with women settling for less in salary negations. I wonder if this might pull a whole profession down.
I also wonder if it is something else all together different. This stat really stood out to me.
About 42 percent of the nation's working women are employed in just 20 occupations out of 450 on the government's standardized roster of jobs, including preschool and kindergarten teachers (98 percent female), secretaries and administrative assistants (97 percent female), receptionists (93 percent female), registered nurses (91 percent female) and maids and house cleaners (88 percent female).
It makes me wonder about the labor supply and demand in these fields. I wonder if this is more than just labor the difference. Is there a difference in the competitive nature of these fields? Is like fields for a men more dangerous or dirty. I think looking at the top five might give us some insights.
1. Logging workers 2. Automotive body and related repairers 3. Cement masons, concrete finishers, terrazzo workers 4. Bus and truck mechanics, diesel engine specialists 5. Electrical power-line installers and repairers
To be honest I do not hear feminists yelling for more women to be in these fields. I think you need to see longer lists to see what is happening. I am not sure that these things are going to change any time soon. I am not saying that sexism is not at work here, but there are forces more powerful than just regular men being sexists here. Unless those forces are understood nothing with change.
To draw an end to the Marvel Civil War plot line, Captain America has been killed. This has just happened, so it is very early to see what will happen. I have not read Captain America lately or the Civil War plot line. I have not read Captain America for more than 10 years now. I cannot say if they are doing a good thing or not. I am not sure if this is a cheap plot or not.
Joe Simon, one the the creators of Captain America, is upset about his death. Captain America was created in March of 1941. This was well before 9 months before America got into World War II. On Nightline Simon said that March of 1941 was more like right now that people want to remember. Lots of people did not want to get into the war. Everyday Simon had protesters or hate mail at the way the comic depicted Hitler. He said, "We really need him now."
I agree that we need Captain America right now, but the question is how to we use him. I think that since Captain America is so iconic, he is whatever people want him to be. People on both the right and the left can both see him as an icon.
Meanwhile, at the time Captain America died in the comic, nobody was any longer quite sure what he was supposed to stand for. "All the really hard-core Left-wing fans want Cap to be giving speeches on the street corner against the Bush administration, and all the really Right-wing fans want him to be over in the streets of Baghdad, punching out Saddam," said its writer Ed Brubaker.
Growing up, Captain America was my favorite character. He seemed to be more complex than Spider-man, more interesting than Iron Man, and more human than Wolverine. Even at a young age there seemed to be something there that was interesting to me. I found out that Captain America is a very hard character to write correctly. It is easy to make him jingoistic. It is easy for him to be an out of touch crew cut.
Captain America is a character that has to have an absolute moral compass. He has to stand for not want America is but what it should be. He has to be what we want to be even if we call short. The Best Captain America stories are when he struggles with those things. To write good stories for him you need to give him moral conflict. You need him to question the actions of his government. You need him Steve Rogers to bring Humanity to the character of Captain America.
I am not too upset that Marvel Comics is killing Captain America. I have to give them point for Captain America being assassinated. That is how icons die in America. I like that the Red Skull was behind it. I hope that there are conspiracy theories and people who keep on saying he is still alive.
If I was cynical, I would say that Marvel Comics has killed Captain America just to get press. They have got more press then the new Spiderman movie. It is possible that they only let this to get press and money. It would not be the first time this has happened.
I also know that death means nothing in comics. The only character to stay dead is Uncle Ben. Another character can dress up in Captain America's uniform. They can always bring Steve Rogers back to life if they have to. I hope that the death of Captain America leads to a really good story line. I hope that Captain America's death is good for his canon.
I will admit that this might get me to read Captain America again. I guess that would make me a mark for this whole event.
