Finalint

I stumbled across an article hosted on Slate today written by Jacob Weisberg. The article, entitled “Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?” does a really good job of outlining some of the reasons we’re not seeing as many anti-war protests lauding our presence in Iraq in comparison to the many protests that were seen during the Vietnam era.

In a time where the war in Iraq is often compared in many ways to the war in Vietnam I thought it was nice to see some fairly objective observations as to the differences between then and now in both the wars and our personality as a society. Enjoy!

This article actually started about three years ago, when a coworker and I were discussing the move by the French government to outlaw the word “e-mail.” At the time, in 2003, I found it very odd that a government would be taking such drastic measures against a seemingly low payoff end (there’s no way to enforce it and people are going to call it what they call it, regardless of what they should call it). During our very casual lunch conversation, I mentioned how odd I found this and a discussion began that intrigued me even more than the French government’s seemingly misplaced energy.

As it turns out, this coworker’s father was a very, very high ranking official in the U.S. military (yes, I verified it). As part of his responsibilities he maintained contact with officials from all European countries, including France. Not long before our discussion my coworker’s father had been discussing with his son the sad shape the French government was getting itself into.

According to him, France was losing all cultural identity. The constant concessions shown to special interest and minority groups had begun to give those groups powers which far outweighed their position within the society. In turn, the majority of the society was bearing the brunt of the loss of their power. The minority and special interest groups were holding much more sway than would normally rightfully be theirs.

After our discussion, my coworker revisted the issue with his father and mentioned our discussion. His father’s take on the issue was… again… interesting.
More >

Who is Ray Beckerman? He’s a lawyer attempting to defend people against the blanket, John Doe style lawsuits the RIAA is perpetrating all over the place. I’ve only kept up with this information in a general sense (compared to some others I know) but haven’t seen any information on the lawsuit side as detailed as what he provided in an interview he did with DefectiveByDesign.org.

Probably about 10 minutes of reading that will enlighten you to some pretty interesting stuff:

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/404

In what can only be described as unsurprising the U.S. Government has released a document which outlines a new relationship with the Russian government that will rule how the two interact based on intellectual property.

I didn’t provide a link, because the one I found was a PDF. Check here if you would like to read it.

I’ll summarize as best I can without causing an unnecessary loss in interest to those who are barely hanging on anyway, but nothing beats reading the original for yourself if you are someone who is interested.

The gist of the document is that Russia has agreed to begin to more aggressively chase down and penalize the people who would allow others to gain what the U.S. government would consider “intellectual property.” The most interesting thing about the document, of course, is that on page two, the first bullet point specifically names allofmp3.com as a target. Among other interesting, valid and needed points it seems questionable that allofmp3.com would be specifically targeted. Anyone who has ever been to Russian can tell you about the rampant illegal CD sales that go on, surely there were factories making these illegal CD’s which could be named as well? Instead, those points are glossed over and vague enough to actually allow continued violations while allofmp3.com takes the brunt of a direct reference, assuring that they will be specifically targeted and made an example of.

While I would be hesitant to say that the negotiations are in direct response to RIAA’s repeated demands even in the face of Allofmp3′s repeated justification it is hard to ignore the constant crowing the RIAA does about the site. Why would the U.S. government have any interest in specifically naming allofmp3.com as an enemy unless it is because of the constant complaints from the RIAA?

Now don’t get me wrong. While I like the idea behind allofmp3 much better than the blatant ripoff (I’ll write an article about that soon enough) that is our DRM overlords, I think the idea has been taken to an extreme and as such doesn’t compensate artists properly (or at all, actually). As such, it isn’t an acceptable solution to everyone and some changes should be in order.

I guess this is just another case, building on the suing of minors and people who don’t even own computers, which points out the complete and utter failure which is the RIAA. At some point artists are going to realize that they can make much, much more money by selling the bandwidth to download their songs rather than paying the RIAA and its minions to market the songs for them. I, for one, will be glad when the money I spend on music goes directly to the artist who created it instead of the executives who greedily mark up the prices to distribute the music.

Do the math… the DRM controlled music you buy is a ripoff.