New Year and All That Jazz

On July 4th we had a bunch of USians over to show them what jolly good sports we were reasoning that our terrace and balcony in downtown were a great location to watch the Fireworks.  Er...  well, as luck would have it they weren't and they looked better on the TV on account of a large high rises blocking our views of all 3 major displays.  So as we do have a pretty good view of the Space Needle (site of the New Year fireworks) we agreed to host the same bunch for New Year.

So in a few hours we're having a 70s themed get together to see in the New Year.  I have nothing to wear and have been ordered to go and find something, and prepare some solid 70s style food.

From what is painfully drilled into my skull, my mother would prepare pineapple and cheese on sticks for party food, with volauvents, sausage rolls, party sausages and crisps.  Well, we'll probably do some of those.  M drew the line at the volauvents and sausage rolls (but I might do that anyway).  I have been allowed to hire a disco ball which should be fun.

Anyway, I have errands to run.  Later all!

Record industry practices revisionism about music recording - Boing Boing

Record industry practices revisionism about music recording
Record industry practices revisionism about music recording - Boing Boing 

Nothing particularly new here but one of the comments caught my eye.

"CDs changed from being products to promotional tools for your music career. What you're asking is: "Why should I make business cards if people can just scan them and get them from friends?" People sharing your business cards is good for business. If you want to continue to sell product, you can sell CDs and t-shirts at your live shows."

I actually do have a problem with this concept.  It's been put to me before in various forms about FOSS and I still don't really get it.  Firstly, it presupposes that all people involved in the chain of music delivery perform live, second, it supposes that consumers want to consume the live act.

I don't mind the occasional concert and some have been excellent, but generally I'm pretty so-so about the whole live music thing.  It's ok, but I'll not necessarily go out of my way for it.  I also wonder about the music creation process.  The performer isn't the only part of the musical experience, anymore than the actor is the core of a movie or play.  Moving the cost recovery for the generation of IPR to a particular slice of the consuming market is going to have an overall negative effect on quality.  I can see a future of more music produce (and video for that matter) of a more uniformly low quality.

While I like Cory Doctorow's work, generally (some of the stories in Overclocked were, in my opinion, awful), there's a lot more crap online than I find published through the traditional model.  While I could, in theory, put up my current block of, as yet, unpublished novels online under a Creative Commons License (and maybe I will), I'll not kid myself that the early stuff really isn't all that good at all.  The publishing systems, and the associated support mechanisms aren't all bad, and aren't all evil. 

Like with many polarising debates, the problem is that both sides are fighting for the wrong causes.  The music and, by extension, TV and Movie businesses need to lighten up about DRM and make their stuff more accessible through legal means and accept that there are more effective ways of sharing things now; and conversely the anti-DRM "it should all be free except for the people performing their work live" groupies also need to accept that having a professional class of writers and producers is actually preferable to having a lot more amateur stuff.