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I’ve been talking about the evolution of content distribution in my last couple of posts, and I’ve pulled together some thoughts about how this has affected the music industry specifically. Continue Reading »

The concept of an artist’s “right to get paid” for their efforts inevitably arises in any discussion of filesharing and the future of the web. The thought is that artists have worked hard for what they’ve produced and as a result, should be guaranteed some kind of compensation. Following this is the idea that if this compensation is taken away, the artist will have no motivation to produce their creative works. Thus, if we want to continue to enjoy culture, we must expect to financially compensate these people. I think this idea is fundamentally flawed. Continue Reading »

For those of you who missed it, Michael Lynton is the venerable Charmain and CEO of MPAA member studio Sony Pictures entertainment who said, in words that are destined to be etched on the monument to the Days That Were, that “I’m a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period.” He’s recently written an article for Huffington Post entitled Guardrails for the Internet that attemtps to clarify his position. I’m willing to put aside the monumental and willful ignorance of his previous statement to give his article a fair reading, accepting that what he said was simply for the purpose of making “a larger point.” Continue Reading »

As a follow-up to my previous post, Dollhouse’s companion show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has been canceled instead. According mouthpiece Kevin Reilly,  “It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]…ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that’s it for [Sarah Connor]…” Of course, that’s doublespeak for “We had a choice between two failing shows, and we picked the newer one.” Continue Reading »

Don’t get me wrong, I’m almost as happy Dollhouse got picked up for another season as are the acolytes of Joss Whedonism. It had some real downers (I’m not sure I could really accept the “blind girl with camera eyes infiltrating a cult for ATF and FBI” plotline), but I think all but the querulous viewers will agree the show showed significant improvement in the second half. I think the ideas of personality and ethics it explores are fascinating, especially when extrapolated (see Morgan’s Altered Carbon for one potential conclusion). Continue Reading »

Ever since I started digitizing my music library, I’ve struggled with the pronunciation of the word “genre.” I started out saying John Ree, perhaps imagining him as a pioneer in the field of music classification; sort of a spiritual ancestor to the Music Genome Project. Continue Reading »

A while back (2006, to be exact) Coke started My Coke Rewards, a semi-digital version of those frequent customer reward programs. It’s supposed to be very simple – you buy Coke brand drinks and enter the code under the cap online. Apparently now you can even text the codes in on your cell phone (how delightfully 21st century).  Continue Reading »

It’s been raining a lot around here lately, which means a lot of driving around with windshield wipers. A while back I replaced my broken wiper blades with new ones by Rain-X, followed quickly by replacing my blue windshield washer fluid with bright orange product also from Rain-X. Continue Reading »

This was an excellent book – I especially loved the way Ray Bradbury ended it with the Afterward and Coda. Both of these bits have a confrontational anti-censorship edge that makes me smile, and continues to be relevant today Continue Reading »

I just finished watching the season finale of Heroes, and it seems like they’ve managed to botch things up once again. They continue to rely on the standby plot devices of “kill a main character” and “bring back an old bad guy” in lieu of truely creative writing. They also feel compelled to set up “cliffnangers” with ridiculously predictable outcomes – as if Sylar-as-Nathan isn’t going to slowly emerge and resume his former “bad guy” activities?

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