Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

Colleagues,

The group called “Nine Inch Nails” is coming to the Philippines for a concert. The Philippine news website Inquirer.net emailed the group’s lead Trent Reznor a few questions, published on the Inquirer website. What Reznor thinks of record label CEOs is an eye-opener for the public that is heavily being bombarded via “intellectual property rights” (and anti-”piracy”) campaigns that copyright benefits the artists. In reality, copyright is power by a handful of big media giants over the distribution of creative work done by artists. Copyright is power by a few media conglomerates over the artists and over the people.

Thanks to Danny E for the alert on the news article, pertinent section quoted below.

For more on the economics, politics and ideology of copyright, see http://www.copysouth.org/

Cheers!

Fatima

Q. You’ve been very vocal about the state of the record industry and how labels have been greedy about the whole business. How do you think it can be improved, if at all?

Trent Reznor: It’s a kind of Mafia-type run business .. They have systematically taken advantage of artists over the years from The Beatles onwards. You [the artists] do all the work, they loan you money to make records, then you pay them back and they own everything. To see that system collapse is an exciting thing. There isn’t a clear answer on what the right thing to do is right now, and as a musician you’re up against a pretty difficult scenario: most kids feel it’s OK to steal music, and do freely … The good news is that people are excited and interested in music …

As an artist it’s your job to capitalize on that. It means generally swallowing a bitter pill and saying, ‘Hey, people don’t want to buy music, so let me give it to you. I’ll find another way to make money but I want you on my side and hearing my music. So let’s get rid of this walled garden of having to pay to hear it, here it is, give it to your friends. Hey, try to come to our show if you can, or you can buy this T-shirt of ours if you like, and that will help us out. Or, here’s a nice version of our album that we put in a cool package for a premium price and we’re only selling a couple thousands of them.’

There are ways that you can monetize your business, but the traditional way of going to a record store and having to pay for it, those days are over. In the States, there aren’t any record stores left. The only place … is like a Best Buy where you go to buy a washing machine and there’s a tiny rack of DVDs and CDs. I think we’re in between business models right now …

I’m trying everything I can to contribute to when that next model does come up, whatever it might be, whether it’s subscriptions or whatever, where the artist is more fairly represented and has a say and is compensated, and you’re not paying for jets for record label CEOs … They’re in their last moments of death and I’m happy to see them go ’cause they’re all thieves and liars.

From this news report

PS. It’s interesting that Trent Reznor uses the term “stealing” when referring to sharing music (legally “copyright infringement”), but he does not make a moral judgment on “stealing music.” In many other places, the cultural context for sharing (and thus “stealing” and “copying”) can vary, and often sharing (as well as “stealing” and “copying”) are not seen as criminal; (the moral requirement for something to be called  “stealing” is quite high, and it is often ridiculous to steal a copy). This is especially true in places where the concept of private property either does not exist or is not important.

Hi Social networkers and ex-newspaper readers everywhere,

If the Guardian article “With friends like these …” is correct then Facebook (and perhaps other such organisations) should face very intense scrutiny from MI6 (etc.) and not be used by them (or others) even for “personal” use. See MI6 chief’s Facebook details cut

Indeed, if one wishes to seriously investigate the complexity of the problems we are now confronted with by the internet, then I can recommend an article (unfortunately in Dutch) “Nieuws for niks” (news for nothing) by Francisco van Jole in “de Volksrant” dated 27th June 2009.

The article starts off discussing the “Brinkman report” (by the Dutch ex-culture minister who promoted culture because it was “the oil that kept the export industry running”). His current report is now looking for solutions to the global demise of the (printed) news industry. The Brinkman report apparently wishes to introduce an “internet surcharge” (a bit like the BBC funding perhaps) to subsidise the (Dutch?) “print” media. According to the article, it seems that the internet model (both generally and specifically for “news”) doesn’t
really work commercially and yet the news media are being forced directly into that model, like it or not.

Basically, the few successful Internet companies parasite on the traditional news media (something that is still taboo under internet supporters). So the question (according to van Jole) is: Why can’t the internet model support a (hard) news system?

Apparently, Rupert Murdoch is (also) promoting the end of “free” internet use -which is perhaps slightly strange because 10-15 years ago he was promoting the idea that “paid” media were finished and that advertising would make everything free. Now it seems that his prediction has actually proven to be correct -however, the relevant “business model” seems entirely wrong. The reason apparently lies in the metastructure -because (nearly) all the (press) advertising has been sucked up by “free” advertising sites -which make their money through paid “banner” ads.

Indeed, at one point the journalist claims that Google’s strategy is more “colonisation” than business model (and Holland is an “advanced” country -so how much worse must it be in the less powerful “developing” countries?).

So the domain of the problem then shifts (once again). Because the essential banner ads only bring in money for very large scale (meta) sites (such as Facebook, Google, etc…). At this point, van Jole talks about the monopolisation of the internet/IT industry: One company for searching, one company for software, etc….. Apparently, even the Dutch market leader for “free” advertising (marktplaats.nl) is actually owned by US giant eBay. However, this (US) monopolisation process is clearly not limited to the internet -because almost every main street (or shopping mall) in almost every town (in almost every country -on almost every continent) is beginning to look like every other one.

Van Jole, then describes Google (in the words of Murdoch -which is perhaps itself rather ironic) as a “Digital Vampire” -because Google sucks out all the content from the traditional news media while refusing to contribute financially to the industry it relies upon. In the meantime, it (supposedly) has a 20 million turnover based on advertising. None of this is apparently ever given to those who actually produce the content that Google commercially exploits (according to van Jole).

Then we run into the flaw in the article (probably based on the above mentioned “professional blind spot”) because van Jole’s conclusion is that Google should become a giant “collecting society” for the printed media that it parasites on.

This might sound quite convincing, if the same author hadn’t just earlier written about the failure of the music and film industry (which indeed imposes and defends copyright issues so jealously worldwide) and yet is still facing decline. Apparently, the “paid” sector of the “commodified” (electronic?, digital?, broadband?) economy isn’t doing too well iether -despite the apparent early success of iTunes. (See Fatima’s post on “Nine Inch Nails”).

So, all in all, there really does seem to be something truely rotten in the metaphorical internet state of Denmark! Perhaps the Emperor really does have no cloths at all! For more insight in problems arising out of Copyright issues (the “paid” economy) in the developing world, caused by the problems of the developed world, do check out CopySouth copysouth.org . Indeed, one may suspect that the apparent need of the (US) industry to impose stringent copyright rules worldwide is actually having a disasterous effect on the industry itself (to say nothing about human culture) both in terms of financial income and creative ability.

The Internet is for all the Sharks!
Trevor Batten
July 18, 2009

Some of you may have participated in security training seminar where we were resource persons. We probably showed you how to use Hushmail from a Canadian company. Basically, you visit their website and you get to download their Java applet. The applet does the encryption and the e-mail gets sent to the Hushmail, encrypted.

Surprise! Hushmail turned over some of its records to the US Federal government! So, for those who are using Hushmail, “Caveat lector!”

- From a list correspondence

This is very unfortunate. The first and last time I used a nym server was back in 1998, and a few years earlier I’ve been using PGP. But I never really felt secure with the technology (esp the nym server because of the very thought that the server was at a remote location I had no control/access/knowledge of). Although one could be confident insofar as encryption strength is concerned, but there are other dimensions to human
use of technology, for example the social and the political. I think this was part of Trevor’s objections to the topic on promoting the use of encryption/security tools at the LinuxWorld conference last year (or was it 2005?).

It also isn’t fair of Hushmail to not include in their TOS (or am I wrong?) that they could be compelled by U.S. Federal Government to turn over records under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty signed with the US. But of course, that would completely undermine the secure email idea irregardless of encryption strength or whether or not passphrases are intercepted/stored in Java or non-Java versions.

Anyway, the socio-political dimension should always be considered in such advocacies on the use of software/technology. By simply focusing on the technical and beneficial, we end up proselytizing technology rather than encouraging a critical and informed position.