In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Sat, 30 Jun 2007 05:47:41 +0100
<2124446.bTH1EdYhHf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> ____/ The Ghost In The Machine on Friday 29 June 2007 17:12 : \____
>
>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
>> <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote
>> on Wed, 27 Jun 2007 04:26:44 +0100
>> <2129387.3mjyhJ0z4Z@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>> ____/ [H]omer on Wednesday 27 June 2007 01:44 : \____
>>>
>>>> Verily I say unto thee, that The Ghost In The Machine spake thusly:
>>>>
>>>>> BTW, my understanding is that "Happy Birthday To You" in commercial
>>>>> settings needs a royalty payment of 1 cent a singing.
>>>>
>>>> "Happy Birthday To You" is a copyrighted song!!!
>>>>
>>>> That's just perverse.
>>>>
>>>>> Welcome to the New World Order.
>>>
>>> Who will police? Either way, maybe it's time to produce some 'libre' songs.
>>> When even 'culture' becomes patentable (own-able), then we're in serious
>>> trouble.
>>>
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/music/free-software-song.html
>>
>> :-)
>>
>> Clever, actually. Apparently "Sadi Moma", the original
>> tune, is public domain (it's a Bulgarian folk song);
>> Richard Stallman merely had to write the lyrics. The
>> above page suggests several already-done adaptations.
>>
>> Unknown whether there's also a free dance, but the
>> Wikipedia entry suggests open-circle dancing.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadi_Moma
>>
>> And of course there's a Youtube entry.
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSkCny-HtTw
>
> I'm telling you, Ghost, I'm getting freaked out when I
> see what America's Big Media is doing to culture.
> Hours ago I saw an article that said they now retaliate
> against Prince because he gave free CDs to the Brits.
The story on Prince also includes the fact that his
copyrighted name (Prince) is now owned by him, and not
by the media moguls (hence that funny-looking symbol for
awhile and the phraseology "the artest formerly known
as Prince").
Bizarre at best. I'm not a fan of Prince, myself,
but one can't help but wonder how many other artists
have vaguely similar issues, and what they might be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_%28musician%29
> They kill Web radio, they kill P2P, they tax the Web,
> they crack down on barber shops that play some music...
Can't be too careful. That music might upset the
haircutter or something. :-)
> they want to dry up /any/ kind of music (no matter how
> legitimate it is) so that every person (no matter how
> poor) is forced to pay for.... folklore.
> This is outrageous, don't you think?
Not sure what to think at this point. It's certainly not
something the Founders could have envisioned, at least
as far as I can tell anyway. (The telephone, which
is arguably the progenitor of most modern PA systems,
communications hardware, and other such, wasn't invented
until 9 or so decades after the US Revolution, in 1871.
The telegraph was possible as early as 1775 (Francisco
de Salva), but most people, at least here in the States,
remember Samuel Morse's 1837 patent. Such a device would
be at best marginally useful for actual performances,
though one might have transmitted sheet music by using a
proprietary letter code or a variant of Morse code.)
The Internet is corrupting speech -- Usenet is arguably
one of the bastions thereof, and is not speech as
such but certainly isn't commercialized. (Yet.)
Presumably speech includes, to some extent, music --
protest songs of the Vietnam era and some songs of this
era, protesting our involvement in Iraq come to mind.
But that was pre-Bush-court.
It gets weirder when one throws in broadcast TV, which is
mutating horribly; I'm frankly not sure what is going to
happen in that realm, what with current offerings such as
Youtube (Google video), Comcast, and Direct TV. Nor am
I sure what's happening to George Karlin's "7 little words".
And then there's the VoIP/telecomm mess. Who's required
to pay what when? On an orthogonal note, ringtones are
an interesting submarket.
I consider record and book contracts at best weird, and
would have to thorougly research a fair number of aspects
before my brain stops hurting.
> Greed does not know any bounds.
We are inherently greedy. I'm not quite sure why, though
it's probably easier to be greedy and lazy than industrious
and thriftful, despite studies that suggest altruism makes
many feel good.
Capitalism thrives on enlightened self-interest, but does
require an educated buyer willing to take the time to do
research (or, as many might put it, shopping). Failing
that, one contemplates various failures of the system;
music ogliopolization or monopolization may be one of them.
> Maybe they'll start charging you to enter shopping malls
> because there's some background music too.
More likely a transfer payment by the mall operators,
tacked on to merchandise sales (via rental increases [+]).
That hides it very well...and would be difficult to
eradicate unless the mall switches to "all free all the
time" songs. I'd have to research SCA [*] marketing and
such outfits as Muzak, Inc.
> Meanwhile, it seems like digital radios
> adopt some freaky DRM 'features'.
Between Microsoft and Sony I suspect a lot of chip
manufacturers, which have a lot of excess die capacity
(the current size of a transistor is about 65 nm, which
means over 10 billion can be placed on a die the size
of one's thumbnail -- in an odd twist, metal gates are
apparently now once again being used, after polysilicate
ruled the roost for many years), will include license
verification technology, if they're not doing so already.
> It may seem harmless now,
Define "harm". Granted, I'm far from sure exactly
how one would approach this from a proper perspective,
but there's quite a difference between a feather touch,
a pin prick, a scratch from one's cat or a sharp corner,
cutting off one's finger, and plunging a sharp instrument
through one's heart.
Even the feather touch might be dangerous -- consider a
fighter pilot attempting to land who gets distracted.
And I certainly wouldn't want my pet cat in there, were
I a fighter pilot with one.
Yes, the DRM pinprick (?) might seem harmless now. Will it
stay that way? A troubling question.
Will people notice when that pinprick becomes a large
needle injected into one's aorta? There are probably
some out there who compare business to a meat grinder.... :-)
> but I hate to think what will/might happen 10 years
> from now. If back in 1980 someone told you that all
> popular software would be binary, expensive, and
> suitable for one single architecture, you would not
> have believed him/her, right?
>
Hard to say. It's so long ago now I'm not sure what,
if any, the prevailing mindset was at the time, though it
was rather more free than the PC is today. However, this
sort of thing has happened before the Computer Revolution:
radio and TV history initially started out as small,
individualistic affairs, and are now big commercial
unidirectional business, with the usual commercials
and bland pap thrust out at users, with some mildly
interesting exceptions.
George Orwell might be horrified at the modern Web,
and the state of media in general.
Welcome to the New World Order.
[+] There are various issues here, one of which is the
elasticity of the market. Briefly put, if a business
has a "must have" item (e.g., an iPhone, or perhaps land
or gasoline), any cost additions to production thereof
(taxes, rent increases, material costs) will simply be
transferred to the user, via a price increase (in the
case of land, that's rent). That's inelastic, broadly
speaking. However, if the market is either "soft" or
highly competitive, increases in cost may have to be eaten
by the corporation, lest the users go to a competitor who
doesn't have those cost factors. (If the costs are high
enough the corporation goes out of business, of course.)
There is a more precise formulation but I'd have to
find it. There is a metric -- the slope of the classical
economic supply-demand curve is a good first approximation.
[*] The FM band of 88-108 MHz in the States is capable
of broadcasting at least two additional signals on the
100 kHz (symmetric sideband with carrier) bandwidth
available per station. The standard signal is filtered
through a 19 kHz lowpass -- for simple mono radios,
the most logical choice is the sum of the channels.
A subcarrier of 38 kHz is also provided, for stereo;
this provides the channel difference. Total bandwidth:
38 kHz. However, two additional subcarriers are possible.
A lot of commercial enterprises use these for, among other
things, Muzak-provided music.
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/radio/sca.html
http://www.muzak.com/
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
fortune: not found
--
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