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| Thursday, August 8, 2002 |
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While I wasn't looking 
| | In 1974, I moved to a commune-like community of rental houses in the woods surrounding a pond north of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. The place was called Oxbow. I've stayed close with a lot of people I knew there, but many others have vanished into the mists. |
| | One of the vanished was a kid named Jim Lauderdale, who went to Carolina Friends School at the time, and was on his way to the North Carolina School of the Arts. Something like that. It's been a long time. |
| | What I can't forget about him was what a good picker he was on both banjo and guitar. He also had a warm, deep voice and a calm demeanor that made him seem older than he was. |
| | I pretty much forgot about him, though, until I was paging through this morning's Wall Street Journal and ran across this item. |
| | Anyway, it's great to see the kid done good. |
Memorializing one of the few times that copyright paranoia lost the day
| | You gotta read Jack Valenti's testimony against the VCR back in '83. That's when Jack famously said, I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. |
| | But there's more. So much more... |
| | But now we are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright... |
| | Because unless the Congress recognizes the rights of creative property owners as owners of private property, that this property that we exhibit in theaters, once it leaves the post-theatrical markets, it is going to be so eroded in value by the use of these unlicensed machines, that the whole valuable asset is going to be blighted. In the opinion of many of the people in this room and outside of this room, blighted, beyond all recognition. It is a piece of sardonic irony that this asset, which unlike steel or silicon chips or motor cars or electronics of all kinds -- a piece of sardonic irony that while the Japanese are unable to duplicate the American films by a flank assault, they can destroy it by this video cassette recorder... |
| | Now, I don't have to tell anybody in politics -- I have spent most of my adult life in politics and you learn one thing. Nothing of value is free. It is very easy, Mr. Chairman, to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled. That is what it is all about... |
| | And my favorite exchange: |
| | Mr. VALENTI. Now, let me tell you what Sony says about this thing. These are not my words. They are right straight from McCann Erickson, whom you will hear from tomorrow, who is the advertising agency for Sony and here is what they say. They advertise a variable beta scan feature that lets you adjust the speed at which you can view the tape from 5 times up to 20 times the normal speed. |
| | Now, what does that mean, Mr. Chairman? It means that when you are playing back a recording, which you made 2 days or whenever -- you are playing it back. You are sitting in your home in your easy chair and here comes the commercial and it is right in the middle of a Clint Eastwood film and you don't want to be interrupted. So, what do you do? You pop this beta scan and a 1-minute commercial disappears in 2 seconds. |
| | Mr. RAILSBACK. Is that all bad? |
| | What got me started on all this was a signature in an email this morning: |
| | Jack Valenti is to the American film viewer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. |
I gotta get one
| | I'm sure Sharp will be at Linux World Expo next week, and that the air will be full of wi-fi there. It'll be fun to check it out. |
What we don't now, etc.
Ignorance is strength
| | Says here the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill was attacked by state legislators for including a book about the Quran among required summer reading assignments for incoming Freshmen. "The requirement has sparked intense criticism from people who say teaching about Islam undermines national unity in a time when the United States is at war," the story says. |
| | "Just think of what it costs to protect ourselves from this faction, and here we are promoting it," said Wayne Sexton, a Rockingham County Republican. |
| | "I see this as insensitive, arrogant and poor timing to allow students to read about our attackers," said Rep. Gene Arnold, a Republican from Nash County. |
| | "It's unfortunate that people have misinterpreted this reading assignment as a form of indoctrination," said James Moeser, the University's Chancellor. "We are offering the summer reading program this year in the spirit of seeking understanding, not in advocacy of Islam over Christianity or Judaism or any other religion." |
| | The best line goes to a guy I voted for every chance I got before I moved away from Chapel Hill in '85: |
| | Rep. Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said lawmakers shouldn't complain about a summer reading assignment that seeks to broaden students' understanding of the world. |
| | "What we ought to celebrate in this country is the freedom to read and speak about anything we want," he said. "We all need to learn more about Islam. We need more study about Islam, not less." |
| | Glad to see he's still there. |
| | With the recent news (printed this morning) of the NC House panel baring any public funds to be used by the university for this reading project, my head explodes with outrage at the ignorance that performed by so many house memebers yesterday. The very idea that white, christian, xenophobic people steer the political platform of the state is sickening, not to mention the free choices of students, who trust in UNC for a quality education. |
Way2go, Brent
ReDefinitionTV
| | Yesterday I said there would be electrical cost savings involved. While that's true, the capital outlays are a killer. |
You had to be there
| | Bruce Sterling's talk at OSCon was sit-down comedy: funny from front to back. Bruce's style is playful and snarky, and he delivers every line with no less sarcasm than we get from Dennis Miller. Pulls it off real well, too. Not easy. Enviable, even. |
| | But the trascription doesn't convey that, naturally, which accounts for so many off-base responses on Slashdot. And, to be fair, more than a few on-base ones too. |
| | It's just interesting to see what happens when a performance is transcribed. Big difference between reading lyrics and hearing Sinatra deliver them, no? |
Light fare
| | The illusion persists that the attempted destruction of Internet radio by the RIAA is a copyright issue. I say one more time why it's not, in the comments section of Electrolite, Patrick Nielsen Hayden's blog. His wife Theresa's blog is Making Light. The subtitle of Patrick's blog is "Growing Luminous by Eating Light." Not sure exactly what that's about, but they're both primo blogs. So is Forwarding Address: OS X, to which they also contribute along with a lot of other familiar names. Check 'em out. |
One is less appealing than the other
| | Says here two dozen Internet broadcasters and the RIAA are both appealing the new CARP/LOC rates and rules. |
discuss
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