Hey everybody - thanks for waiting, and happy Canada Day. Everyone may remember the War of 1812 and the only invasion onto the continental US soil by another nation’s army (Canadians, as a British colony), but did you know we also fought between Maine and New Brunswick in the Aroostook War in 1838? It was a bloodless war, so I guess no harm, no foul - and I’d forgive Canada on behalf of Americans everywhere, but I’m not altogether certain if my family had moved to Massachusetts from Newfoundland yet, so it’s entirely possible it should be me asking forgiveness of my neighbors. Be it as it may, Canada runs deep in my blood and I hope you can take some time to hug-a-Canuck today.
I’m going to do a quick news brain dump for now, and get into some more quality writing a little later today. Here’s some of the stuff I missed while spending time with some of my favorite people up on Mount Desert Island (the land mass with an identity crisis):
As a followup to what I wrote in early June, the House Subcommittee on the Courts, Internet, and Intellectual Property approved the Performance Rights Act on Thursday. The act requires radio stations to pay royalties on sound recordings as well as compositions, as does webcasting since 2007’s Copyright Board ruling. Reactions abound from the ruling from the two major parties involved, musicFIRST and the National Association of Broadcasters, and analysis from Coolfer and Ars Technica, where Nate Anderson does an excellent job laying out the issues and showing how the merits of the cases are obscured by strange lobbying and PR tactics.
Alex Leavitt, a young man I met at Berkman@10, delved into ethnomusicology on Friday with an analysis of enka music mixed with hip-hop. Enka was a popular early-20th-century form of pop music, best known in the US for its frequent inclusion in Tarantino films. It’s an interesting case of East mixing with West, then mixing again, such as what you see in Ghanaian Highlife (and more recently, Hiplife) music. Both enka and Highlife are favorites of mine, and on this balmy humid Boston day Nigeria Special! is one of the only things keeping me cool.
Public Knowledge signals the importance of today (aside from this being Canada Day and all) as the first day in which Copyright claimants can register online, with a reduced fee. PK is well-known for their backing of the current Orphan Works bill, which inverses my opinion of the aforementioned Performance Rights bill - whereas the latter represents an issue I typically oppose but can appreciate the compromise in the details, the current Orphan Works bill represents an issue I usually support (that is, letting unrepresented works pass into the public domain) that loses my support in the details. Be that as it may, Alex Curtis does a great job showing how an online copyright registry can be opened up with a little API love to help users navigate the records easier.
Copyright guru William Patry put on his Constitutional scholar cap on Friday and drew some fascinating parallels between the DC Handgun decision and Constitutional interpretation of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 - the sentence that gave us copyright. His point, and I heartily agree with him, is to cast serious doubt in the majority’s opinion of dismissing the first part of the Second Ammendment (”Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State,”) as a mere prefatory clause, and cutting to the second part (“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”) as the actual “right.” It’s dense and referential reading, but shows quite cleanly that if we are to agree with Scalia that this first part was just fluff, it would be the first time we ever regarded any part of the Constitution as prefatory.
Aquarium Drunkard gives us their take on a curious release from this year that seems to be slipping under the radar: Stax Does the Beatles. Included in their assessment is a curious anecdote: Did you know the Beatles were originally slated to record Revolver at Stax, but for security reasons the band opted to stay at Abbey Road in London?
I recently reconnected with an old friend and performing buddy Brian Bergeron. He informed me of his blog, which is now added to the blogroll on right. Today’s post is a deeply personal and excellent read about how the slumping economy is impacting street performers like Brian, who you can see frequently up at Faneuil Hall. Brian also fed me a story that I’ll be writing about a little later as well. Stay tuned.
Over the weekend came the Solstice, and I spent the majority of the day out and about, enjoying the charm of Boston in the summer. This will be my fourth and perhaps final summer living in Boston (though I’m not ruling out returning by any stretch), and I do plan on doing something in July with a camera and a monthly T pass to document the city as I’m leaving it. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’d like to echo the sentiments of fellow music blog Funeral Pudding by wishing you a happy summer through the voice of the greatest band of all time, The Modern Lovers. Frontman Jonathan Richman is a muse that has influenced an untold number of artists, my self most certainly included. He’s a quirky and wild force to reckon with, and constantly surprises and delights even almost 40 years after the Modern Lovers first formed (for example, did you know that he did a live accompaniment to the Sweedish silent film the Phantom Carriage last year?) Here’s Jonathan doing a classic off of his quiet 1992 album “I, Jonathan.” It’s the perfect summer song.
Perhaps this stems from my love of Watchmen, but were I to get a tattoo right now, while it wouldn’t be on my arm, I’d probably get this somehow, somewhere.
Found on the personal webpage of solo1. I’m entertaining ideas for tattoo designs, if any of my more creative minded friends want to take a pass. Naturally, I’d compensate if I went with a design.
Also, I don’t know if you live in Boston and/or need a 130 watt Peavey guitar amp, but I’m selling.
Two years ago this week I started this blog as an effort to chronicle my travels quite literally on the road, touring as an assistant tour manager and percussion technician across the country. These days the “road” is a lot like what my anonymous friend from Yale told me a little under a year ago, when I dusted off the blog to start writing again.
Here on my cotton anniversary, I’d like to simply say thanks for reading, and hope I can keep this a good space as travels take me elsewhere.
For the next two days I’ll be on the Harvard Law campus discussing the past, present and future of the internet as part of the Berkman@10 conference. The conference, as the name suggests, honors the ten year anniversary of the Berkman Center, and features a host of the web/tech/law superstars that played a role in the center’s (and, by extension, the Internet’s) development. I plan to write a recap of each night not only as an exercise in retention, but in the hope that one or more of you, dear readers, will care to see what is on the mind of internet visionaries today.
This may evolve substantially into deep discussions, and in that light I’m adding the tag “Berkman@10″ to this and related posts, for the sake of future navigation.
There’s a whole slew of stuff that I’ve been writing and hoping to release for almost a month now. I’m going to push a few of those through this weekend. Until then, I’ll leave you with another couple episodes of Endless Feature.
Next Friday I’ll fulfill a lifelong dream - I’m playing the Boston Garden, so to speak. It’s Commencement at Northeastern. For the remainder of the summer I’ll be in beantown, working on several exciting projects, but come early August I’ll be moving on to the next big thing, in Washington DC. I’ll be starting to observe fun goings on down there as well, and anyone who is down thataways say hi.
I’m on the road, so to speak, at Matthews Arena working on Springfest, with Ludacris, Toots and the Maytals, The Roots, and DJ Knife. Writing from behind the stage, as I’m watching 8 one-ton chain lifts hoist array speakers and trusses of lights into our old shed of a hockey rink. The stage is built; the sound is live; the lights are rising. All we need now is a few thousand Northeastern kids and a few good acts. It’s good to be back.
It occurs to me that I should get a camera, or get my old one fixed up. Pictures would be good for these sorts of posts.
Next week: prepare for the battle of the themes. The Blogagauntlet starts Monday. Taylor is going down.
Normally, most of my rants about RIAA cases would fall under my “Copyleft” tag, and indeed many still do. But I want cluster these strange RIAA cases together for easy reference in the future. Aside from the “Making Available” string that’s started (and no doubt will continue), there’s this wonderful little chestnut.
As reported now on Boing Boing, Slashdot, NetworkWorld, Coolfer, Consumerist, and Ars Technica, The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a brief in a case that’s sure to make your stomach turn. Universal Music Group seems to think that you don’t have rights over the promotional CDs sent out by UMG and others by the thousands. The case stems from a lawsuit filed against Troy Augusto, aka “Roast Beef Music” - a rare promotional CD reseller on EBay. UMG, and I’m not making this up, claims that they have total rights in perpetuity over those promotional CDs, and insist that the CDs should be returned upon demand. That means that not only are you prohibited from selling them, you can’t even throw them away
This is totally absurd, and goes against one of the guiding policies in US Copyright Law, the First Sale Doctrine, which explicitly states that you can do what you want with a purchased copy of a creative work, short of copying it yourself for sale or distribution. It explicitly grants this sort of permission, to a degree that I wouldn’t be surprised if the case is dismissed outright and with prejudice.
Hardcore cross-referencing pingback trackers will note the bubbling feud between myself and petty two-bit thief Taylor Bettinson. Seems my coworker Taylor sees it fit to theft the very pretty Dusk theme by Beccary as his WordPress layout after I clearly had it first. But since I can see the value of not having my high integrity brand diluted with his popculture and “hopester” politics, I agree to settle this once and for all. TBett suggests we do a Blogalauge on a myriad of subjects. This is acceptable; I can’t wait to crush him with death-defying rhetoric. But I seek to perhaps even the tables and make it a little more fun
I suggest a combination debate and scavenger hunt. A Blogagauntlet (TM), if you will. A moderator will post every day for the rest of this week a topic of discussion an a posting challenge (e.g. “I want your opinions on Catholicism in the 21st century and the best LOLCats post you can find”). We post both, in the same post, before midnight, and are given one additional post as a rebuttal before 9AM the following morning. The moderator (perhaps by committee) selects the winner, an the winner keeps Dusk. The loser goes back to websites that look like this.
I propose Ryan Kelley moderate this debate. He can post the challenge topics on his blog
