Hollywood 2.0

Image from muktware.com

YC has declared war on Hollywood.....sweet.

If ever there was an industry ripe for disruption, it is the media content industry. Don't get me wrong, disruption is underway, as clearly evidenced by the industry's spastic power grabs and hysterical fits. They know their days are numbered, and they just want it to go back to the way it was, before the VCR.

Ironically, the solution is simple. We don't even need copyright reform to fix it. A new licence for media content needs to be developed (or may already exist) that allows exclusive use for say, 10 years, with clear provisions for allowing the remix culture, broad fair use, and reverts to a creative commons licence after a fixed period. Other ideas, to reduce piracy issues would be concurrent free release licence at a lower resolution or frame rate, so that "cam's" would be irrelevant, or other similar limited free release provisions.

Make the licence as convenient as possible for content users, and provide a simple, inbuilt mechanism for upgrading the free content to full versions for a reasonable price.

With a good shot of investment capital, start alternative recording and film houses that release their works under these licences. Leverage technology and lean principals to reduce the cost and fixed overhead, and make sure that the artists are compensated better and retain more rights than in traditional models.

Distribute through traditional (theaters) and digital channels like Netflix, iTunes, and similar paid content services. Provide promotional services to aid fledgling stars.

You get the picture: Use 2.0 paradigms, a reasonable licence, and treat creators well. Lower the barrier to entry, choose a role of highway builder rather than gatekeeper for content. By treating the producers and consumers of media like human beings, and creating channels rather than barriers, entertainment 2.0 will prevail.

Viva la evolution!

MPAA's Chris Dodd publicly threatens congress in temper tantrum - Support the petition to launch an official inquiry

Bribe:

The offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of something of value for the purpose of influencing the action of an official in the discharge of his or her public or legal duties.

The expectation of a specific voluntary action in return is what makes the difference between a bribe and a private demonstration of goodwill.

Chris Dodd, in the wake of shrinking support for SOPA / PIPA in Washington:

"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"

Could this be an admission of bribery ?

It seems close enough that a reasonable person would understand Dodd's statement as a clear quid pro quo.

If you find the idea that our laws should be written for the highest bidder objectionable, you can take action on this at whitehouse.gov, where there is a petition to investigate Dodd and the MPAA for bribery. 

I urge you to sign the petition - it is time that we said enough is enough. We all want vitality for business and the economy, but the United States of America is a Democratic Republic, not a Corporakleptocracy. The blatant purchase of legislation has to stop, not only in the entertainment business, but in all segments of industry. An investigation, even if unsuccessful, will send a strong message to lobbyists: You can tender favor, but you cannot buy legislation.

sleep deprived airport rant....

Chicago, Ohare.....

As I sit patiently awaiting my flight, a cascade of ignorance pollutes my thoughts... Wave after wave of meaningless drivel bleats down upon me from the overhead monitors, the caricatured faces feigning emotion in the teleprompted ritual that is morning television. I feel as if my eyes are going to bleed. Issues of grave importance are  homogenized with the trivial in a soothing rhythm of hypnotic oration, a translucent veneer of humanity bluntly imparted by the flesh puppets speaking through curiously adhesive cakes of cosmetic filler and paint. The paint, I am reminded, is to simulate a sexual flush, in an attempt to capture my attention, while the filler hides imperfections in texture or shade that might be construed as disease or a less than ideal genetic compliment.... but this morning, the monkey within is unusually numb to this type of subtle manipulation.

Today I am pondering the difference between understanding and information. In artificial intelligence, this critical divide forms the focal point of study....but in organic intelligence the distinction is too often ignored, at our collective peril.

Watching television, for example, informs me. Because I am aware that I am being informed by a source that is projecting a manifestation of its financial agenda, I understand what i am being told within a context of bias, and consider the information accordingly.

Similarly, In the context of my role in security theater, I also am informed that ionizing radiation  damages cellular structures, including the critical code for cellular replication. This information is backed up by repeatable observation and theoretical analysis. I consider it to be reliable.

I am informed that backscatter x-ray technology uses 'soft' x-rays that  reliably impact organic structures  instead of x-rays that pass through soft tissue, mainly revealing bony structures and dense masses. I know this because I understand the theory of operation of backscatter x-ray imaging. I consider this information to be credible by virtue of demonstration of a functioning apparatus based on the theory.

Because I understand these things, I can calculate that the entire dose of radiation received by a person from this machine would be concentrated within about 1kg of dermal tissue....making the common dose / body mass calculation that is given to support the safety of the devices off by two orders of magnitude....so, I choose not to voluntarily receive a radiation dose of 100 airline flights into my dermis over a 1 second period. (if the quip about being equal to the in-flight dose is to be believed)

Knowing this, I wonder how many people around me have anything more that an opinion about this, given to them by someone that they accept, having failed to consider, as a reliable source.

I fear for humanity, lest we be overcome by the stupid, wafting forth from every imaginable media orifice, engineered to sooth us from away from the impulse to think, to examine, to carefully consider.

For many, who do not make a habit of forming their own opinions, this is a succulent nectar of security, of effortless knowing, of wonderful clarity and simplicity. A sickly sweet mixture, like aspartame,   1000 times as sweet as any naturally occurring sugar, but decomposing into toxic byproducts -- the soothing cadence of teleprompted bobbleheads is insidiously hypnotic.

This is not some giant media conspiracy. This is merely the natural product of commercial entities, furthering their commercial agenda through the production and distribution of their product. This is not evil...this is what we want .... or at least what we are choosing with our dollars.

In the shadow of this false ambrosia of half-truth, the uncomfortable uncertainty of examination, the struggle of  analysis, of careful and critical consideration, these bittersweet products of knowledge -- simply cannot compare. Like processed food, preprocessed information, pre-opinionated and reconstituted in commercial form, is, for some, simply more compelling.

It bears remembering that, by definition, about half of the population is in the possession of cerebral equipment of sub average performance. It truly falls to those of that are able, to think with efficiency, accuracy, and clarity, not only on our own behalf, but for the entirety of humanity. We ignore this burden at our peril.

Our task is not simple, nor easy. It is a fundamental flaw of democracy that one only needs to convince the simplest 40 percent of your audience, as the middle ground will be divided, so that even if all of the brightest see with clarity, idiocracy will prevail.

There is no danger greater than laziness of mind.....those who do not exercise their right to think,  understand, analyze and choose risk loosing the right of voluntary action, not only for themselves, but for all of us.

Something to consider.

Testimony on internet piracy?

(Spoiler alert....if tl;dr, at least skip to the bottom!)

Mr. VALENTI. I am merely coming to start off by talking about the American film and television industry, not as an economic enterprise, but as a great national asset to this country, to the U.S. Treasury and the strength of the American dollar. And I am not just talking on behalf of people whose names are household words, like Brad Pitt and Megan Fox. I am speaking on behalf, as he is, as he will no doubt tell you on behalf of hundreds of thousands of men and women who without public knowledge or recognition, who are not besieged by fans, but who are artisans, craftsmen, carpenters, bricklayers, all kinds of people, who work in this industry, not only in this State but in the 50 States where American films are shot on location. And they deserve no less, Mr. Chairman, than the concern of the Congress for the preservation of their industry.

But more than that, which I think is paramount to the national interest, the preservation of a huge trade asset. American films and television dominate the screens of the world and that just didn't happen. It happened because of the quality and caliber and the imagination and the way people construct fragile imaginings that we call the American film.

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 Internet and its necessary companion called the computer. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. The Internet threatens 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.

Now, my first card, Mr. Chairman, deals with what I consider to be one of the essential elements that you cannot ignore and, indeed, you must nourish. The U.S. film -- and I will read this -- "The U.S. film and television production industry is a huge and valuable American asset." In 2009, it returned to this country almost $12 billion in surplus balance of trade. And I might add, Mr. Chairman, it is the single one American-made product that the Chinese, skilled beyond all comparison in their conquest of world trade, are unable to duplicate or to displace or to compete with or to clone. And I might add that this important asset today is in jeopardy. Why?

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 Internet piracy, 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 foreign industry are unable to duplicate the American films by a flank assault, they can destroy it by promoting and profiting from Internet piracy......

.... 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.

Now, these file-sharing websites are advertised for one purpose in life. Their only single mission, their primary mission is to copy copyrighted material that belongs to other people. I don't have to go into it. The ads are here. Here is the Pirate Bay, advertising a million free downloads.

Now, Mr. Chairman, how many people would go to these file-sharing websites if there weren't any copyrighted material on it. The site would be useless and this is what the Ninth Circuit said. They advertise their site blatantly and deliberately saying the way to use it is to copy somebody else's copyrighted programs. ..........

.......The permission of the copyright owner is required for the use of their programs in all markets. Now, I those markets include theaters, cable, pay cable, pay television, network television, syndicated television, video discs. Every one of those markets is going to be competing for Mr. Cruise's new film "MI4" They are going to license that film at a negotiated price.

Now, we cannot live in a marketplace, Mr. Chairman -- you simply cannot live in a marketplace, where there is one unleashed animal in that marketplace, unlicensed. It would no longer be a marketplace; it would be a kind of a jungle, where this one unlicensed instrument is capable of devouring all that people had invested in and labored over......

......Now, that is where the problem is. You take the high risk <that a film will not recoup its investment at the box office alone>, which means we must go by the aftermarkets to recoup our investments. If those aftermarkets are decimated, shrunken, collapsed because of what I am going to be explaining to you in a minute, because of the fact that Internet piracy is stripping those things clean, those markets clean of our profit potential, you are going to have devastation in this marketplace.

Now, is this all? Is it going to get any bigger? Well, I assure you it is. …...... We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry that is able to retrieve a surplus balance of trade and whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of the Internet.

Now, the question comes, well, all right, what is wrong with the Internet. One of the Internet lobbyists, Mr. Ferris, has said that the Internet-- well, if I am saying something wrong, forgive me. I don't know. He certainly is not MGM's lobbyist. That is for sure. He has said that the Internet is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had.

I say to you that the Internet is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.


Now, for a reality check...., everything in bold has been changed from the original text. Where it says Internet or Internet user, put in VCR or blank tape. For download, substitute record. For file-sharing website, put in VCR manufacturers. For China or foreign industry, put in Japan. For a date, put in 1982ish. For star 'x' put in Clint Eastwood and co. For 12 Billion, put in 1 billion. It would appear that the VCR didn't hurt their growth that much....

The certain destruction of the entertainment industry and the loss of countless american jobs, circa 1982

You see, this is a redacted, but not otherwise edited except as noted above above subset of a hearing before the house on the Home Recording of Copyrighted works, circa 1982. That bill didn't pass, and there was no VCR apocalypse. They are using the same tired arguments, but this time to wreak havoc on an economically critical industry infrastructure that brings in hundreds of times their revenue, not just pesky Japanese VCR makers.

It would be such a sad commentary on the state of the union if these same, rehashed arguments succeeded this time, when so much more is at stake.....Do your part to fight SOPA/PIPA!

Obama Administration to close Guantanamo bay, end extrajudicial detention!

Oh, wait....that was before he got elected.

"A lawful nation, especially in a contest against the lawless, must act within the law, and to the greatest extent possible, be above reproach. To do otherwise is to lose the war, even as we win our battles. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the world."

"ON Wednesday, America’s detention camp at Guantánamo Bay will have been open for 10 years. For seven of them, I was held there without explanation or charge. ...." excerpted from NY Times, follow the link to read more of this alarming cautionary tale of justified injustice...

Undoubtedly, some of the most wanted, heinous criminals from the losing side are in, or were in detention at Guantanamo Bay. Undoubtedly, some of these people are guilty of countless killings, and crimes against humanity. Undoubtedly, they should not be set free.

However...there are also, undoubtedly, people in detention that are innocent, or guilty perhaps, of much much lesser things. These people also will not be released....about 90 of them, whom we (the USA) have cleared for release, but because of the stigma of Guantanamo bay, or the political status of their country, or some other extrajudicial reason, can not go home.

The problem here is the very existence of extrajudicial detention. Regardless of the circumstances, once the fight moves off of the active battlefield, we must observe some kind of well conceived due process, to operate within a transparent framework of law. To do otherwise is to abdicate our responsibility as a proponent of human rights, a lawful state, and a protagonist on the global stage.

The end does not justify the means - thousands of years of history bear this out.

Facebook Hates People with Disabilities?

Apparently in an effort to get their new years resolutions off to a good start, Internet giant Facebook took a stand against people with disabilities and elderly, asserting that a helper program that assisted people by minimizing the complex (and sometimes painful) clickthroughs required to play many of their online games violated their terms of service.

One saddened user comments:

"Thank you for running this as long as you could. Makes me sad it has to stop. I won't be playing any FB games anymore, I have serious typing injury and every click hurts, you saved me so many clicks. FGS was the only reason I played any games still and even dropped $5 here & there on them sometimes."

A volunteer who declined to be identified for fear of reprisal against her Facebook account, commented:

"I work with differently-abled clients on a daily basis, and the Friendly Gaming Simplifier was instrumental in our technology exposure activities. Many of our clients just won't be able to play now, and an important part of the services that we offer will be hampered by this shortsighted policy. I even had this set up for my grandmother at home, she has really painfully arthritic hands so it's hard to use the mouse, but with the Simplifier helper, she really used to enjoy social games.... she lives alone, you know."

More reports of people with disabilities or chronic pain are rolling in...:

"I also am disabled & FGS has been the only way I could advance in this game without spending lots of real money which on my limited (SSD) income I can't do. All that clicking is just too painful & I am too slow in my reactions to collect most stuff anyway. I think Zynga doesn't realize just how many disabled & homebound are on their sites. Taking FGS away will more than likely make many of us quit. I've loved the game & made many wonderful friends around the world. Why punish us for being longterm players who needed the gift that Flies has given us?"

.....
"In my personal experience, the browser extension offered by "Flies" has been the mitigator of tendonitis pain, among other things. It has also allowed me to participate in the game(s) in a fair and equitable manner, given the number of "neighbors" required to proceed in these games."

To make matters worse, Facebook even banned the talented developer of this groundbreaking accessibility work from developing any more Facebook applications, or even signing into facebook - ever.

Wow, Facebook.




Edit:

"disabled" and "handicapped" replaced with "people with disabilities" , more testimonials added

De-spinning the NDAA

KA CLUNK, KA CLUNK, KA CLUNK - thats the spin cycle, getting a little out of balance...read on....

So we all (hopefully) know that the NDAA has been signed into law....but the spin would have you believe that the Obama Administration was reluctant to sign the bill due to the provisions on indefinite detention (aaaawwww...isnt that adorable!)....but that is really only a fraction of the story.  If you -read- the official Obama Administration response to the NDAA, you would probably come to the same conclusion that I have...which is that the administration was hesitant to pass the NDAA as written, not because it codified indefinite detention (which has already been made de-facto legal, as shown below) but rather because it specifically classifies these detainees as “Military Detainees”, thus giving them Geneva Convention protections.

Excerpts from the administrations response :

(STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY S. 1867 – National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2012 ):

“Section 1031 attempts to expressly codify the detention authority that exists under the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) (the “AUMF”). The authorities granted by the AUMF, including the detention authority, are essential to our ability to protect the American people from the threat posed by al-Qa'ida and its associated forces, and have enabled us to confront the full range of threats this country faces from those organizations and individuals. Because the authorities codified in this section already exist, the Administration does not believe codification is necessary and poses some risk. ”


“The Administration strongly objects to the military custody provision of section 1032, which would appear to mandate military custody for a certain class of terrorism suspects. This unnecessary, untested, and legally controversial restriction of the President's authority to defend the Nation from terrorist threats would tie the hands of our intelligence and law enforcement professionals. ”

To their credit, the administration goes on to raise questions about the military detention of American citizens, which by my reading of the bill is pretty shaky anyway, though it does carry provisions for citizens engaged in hostilities in concert with Al Queda / et al (pretty vauge, really - not good) .


As stated in the Administrations response, the concern is that the Geneva Convention will restrict the handling (or mis-handling) of these detainees, and the protections could hinder the techniques that we have become accustomed to using (extraordinary rendition, anyone?), and would also bar things like summary execution, which was being pushed for earlier in the case of confessions, as a way of dealing with the "what do we do with them now?" problem. Also, Military detainees can only be held until the “end of hostilities”, not forever, which means that if / when we end the “war on terror” we would have to set them free. Also, the holding of inmates would have to meet specific conditions, and could be subject to international scrutiny....so, check it out, and decide whether or not you have been spun! 

I have a copy of the administrations response here : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3595202/saps1867s_20111117.pdf

Please Dl it and read it in its entirety for yourself!!!!

 I also addressed NDAA Issues here before the bill was signed, so follow this link for more analysis and information...

Citizens legal 068

....What every person should know before graduating high school.... But very few of us do.

Set aside a little time and watch this video.  If you do, you will problably learn something...and may save yourself or someone you know a great deal of trouble someday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6wXkI4t7nuc