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By
Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up'
journalism from the pros August
2, 2002 CARP
fees dog Eargazm radio Bernie Larivee (photo)
of East Providence, an HVAC controls technician at Brown University, e-mailed
me this week to introduce himself and his labor of love, a tiny net radio station
called Eargazm, which boasts
as many as four simultaneous listeners. Eargazm is one of many hobby radio stations
threatened by the new
royalty rates established by CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel) of
.07 cents per song per listener. Here's Bernie: "Did you
know that there's a local internet radio station that stands to be annihilated
if these fees are realised? "Formed by two college radio veterans,
Eargazm webcasts 24/7 from
the 'Phantom Living Room' in East Providence. "Every other week, we
get together and assemble a four-hour show, record it to disk, rip it to MP3 and
let it play in rotation with other previously recorded shows. "We don't
make a single penny. In fact it costs us money to webcast, money that comes out
of our pockets. We're exactly the kind of station that would be swept away with
these new copyright fees, since we have no income whatsoever. We do it because
we love to. "We're not a business model, we're a public service, a
venue for artists that might not otherwise see the light of day." Have
you contacted lawmakers? Got a plan for what you'll do in the future?
"I've basically done my part to support legislation that makes payments
to the artist reflect the money made by using their product. Live 365, which carries
our Low-Res feed these days (they pay the ASCAP and now CARP fees, which will
cost us a small fee starting this month), made such a proposal on the first go-round
of the CARP legislation. They had a petition proposing that payments be based
on income, I believe that's the right way to go. "For example, If I
play your music to get you to come to my restaurant, I'm making money by using
your product. You deserve some of that. If I'm just playing your music because
I like to, and I don't make any money off it, well, you're entitled to
some of that too!" What's the technology behind
the show -- do you start from vinyl and burn mp3s to a CD?
"We use a mix of vinyl and CD, record the entire thing to disc on an old
Mac, then I edit out any screw-ups or dead air for future playings, rip the entire
4-hour show to MP3 and put it in the Jukebox which plays continuously. The jukebox
is a Linux machine that uses Icecast software to stream the audio. "We've
had as many as four listeners at a time on a Saturday night doing the live webcast." Is
there any action you'd like taken? "I'd like to
see a "public radio station" kind of legislation that would include
reasonable fees for little guys like us. Perhaps even use that model and make
the stations listener-supported. A 501(c)(3)
entity whose sole purpose is to provide a venue for music that would never be
noticed by mainstream media. We provide a venue, the artist provides the entertainment,
even trade. Or maybe just a reasonable cut. That would be fair. That would be
democratic." A final note from Bernie:
"Some quotes for ya.
I wrote this up tonight, finally committing to
disk what I've been mumbling to myself for months. "This is how I think
the internet radio/RIAA situation should be handled and a bunch of similar blather. "Perhaps
you'll find it usable. I had to get up on the soapbox there for a sec, but sometimes
I just can't resist the urge to try to make things better." Bernie
Larivee's thoughts on Internet radio law
Contact
Bernie at Eargazm
Sidebars:
• Hollywood
Steps Up Its Assault on the Net While Webcasting Death March Claims KPIG
•Web
Radio Law Changes Introduced ("In a last-ditch effort to protect smaller
Webcasters from what they describe as unfair royalty obligations, three influential
U.S Congressmen [last month] introduced the Internet Radio Fairness Act,a new
law seeking to change existing Web radio laws. )
Link
to this item | Comment
Woodstock
master tapes for sale(?): It must be August again. Woodstock's back in
the zeitgeist. A private collection of the original recordings, including
the soundtrack album master tapes of producer Eric Blackstead, are allegedly for
sale. A pdf of an appraisal values the "772 minutes representing 15 artists
and nearly 135 songs or performances" at $1.6 million. The contact
page has no link however, and "Said purchaser may not be ANYONE WHO COULD
OR WOULD REPRODUCE, DISTRIBUTE, PUBLISH, SYNCRONIZE, SIMULATE, DUPLICATE, MULTIPLY
OR SELL ANY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES INVOLVED WITH THESE TAPES." This
means you.
Link
to this item | Comment
Cell
phones assemble "smart mobs": "Social swarming involves
sharing your life with others in real time. It means pulsing to the rhythm of
life with one's posse. It means a nonstop emotional connection to one's swarm."
Link
to this item | Comment
Starved
for Food, Zimbabwe Rejects U.S. Biotech Corn Thousands
of tons of U.S. emergency food aid destined for crisis-stricken Zimbabwe has been
diverted to other countries, and a new shipload may be diverted within days, because
the donations include genetically modified corn that the Zimbabwean government
does not want to accept. ... If some of the corn seeds are sown instead
of eaten, the resulting plants will produce gene-altered pollen that will blow
about and contaminate surrounding fields. That could render much of the
corn grown in Zimbabwe -- a nation that in most years is a major exporter -- unshippable
to nations in Europe and elsewhere that restrict imports of bioengineered food,
because of environmental and health concerns. The United States could save
lives and avert a potential ecological crisis by paying to have the corn kernels
milled before they enter Zimbabwe, several experts said this week. But relief
officials said U.S. food agencies typically don't cover milling expenses, which
are estimated at $25 per metric ton -- a significant expense for a nation so poor.
That response has fueled suspicion among some observers in the United States and
Africa that Washington is using the food crisis to get U.S. gene-altered products
established in a corner of the world that has largely resisted them. Link
to this item | Comment
One
million pounds set to march on Ottawa
Obese people plan to protest
funding cuts to stomach stapling That gets my Headline of the Week nomination.
Link
to this item | Comment
Online
Music Catalogs Lacking: Despite a series of improvements that make legitimate
online music services more attractive, the major record labels still can't give
music fans something they've been getting from pirate services for more than three
years: a comprehensive catalog of songs. (L.A. Times, reg. req.)
Link
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Foil the mind control: If you do see Signs
(see below) , you might want to make
your own aluminum hat to foil mind-control efforts.
Link
to this item | Comment
July 31, 2002 Few
signs, no wonders: I saw a sneak preview of Signs
last night, a movie that I had hoped would pick up where Close
Encounters of the Third Kind left off. It's not that. Since crop
circles play a part, a lot of the action takes place in a house next to a
cornfield, incongruously recalling Field
of Dreams. (I'm open to the possibility that not all crop circles are
manmade; it seems arrogant, and historically unwarranted, to assume that human
knowledge c. 2002 is comprehensive.) This film goes downhill as it goes
along, thanks to a paranoid perspective, an implausible view of crop circles that
ignores the complexity of the imagery, and a subplot more worthy of Michael Landon
than Mel Gibson. Damn. Nevertheless, most critics seem to like it. (Except
Joe
Baltake at the Sacramento Bee, who echoes some of the same feelings I had.
Honest, I found this link after I wrote what's above.)
Link
to this item | Comment
"Hello
Providence": Wozz, the source of yesterday's "Open
Source Music" links, wrote to point me (and you) to a post today about
his New England roots and a site about Bands
That Allow Taping in the Grateful Dead tradition. Go get
your greetings from the man himself.
Link
to this item | Comment
Distributed music reviews: More than 70
bloggers responded to Eric Olsen's offer of free
CDs to bloggers who'll review them, and he's posted on Tres
Producers the first
and second
batches of items interested bloggers (I'm one of them) posted about the project.
It's an interesting ad hoc group.
Link
to this item | Comment
Wireless
town: "University of Georgia ... has joined with local government
to create WAG,
the Wireless Athens Group. They're building a "cloud" over several
blocks of the downtown area where anyone with the right equipment can have free
Internet access. The cloud now covers about three blocks, and it will soon expand
to 24." via Slashdot What
does this mean? Think of it as sending and receiving email, web pages, etc. as
radio waves. If I lived in Athens, I could just put a network adapter on my desktop
PC, plug it into a USB port, and slip a PCI card into it. Then I'd cancel my cable
internet subscription and surf via the Wi-Fi network. I don't live in Georgia
though (too hot!). I'm about to buy a laptop with Wi-Fi (keyword: 802.11b)
and set up a wireless network at home. I'll need a laptop with built-in Wi-Fi
or I could buy a $100 card to stick in its PCI slot. This would let me blog live
from anywhere with wireless net access -- and the whole "Warchalking"
movement (see next item) is about leaving symbols on buildings with open access
available to anyone in range. The home network is a little different. That
would let me plug in the laptop on my cool backyard screen porch and reach my
desktop as though it were simply another drive on my laptop. I could then put
my desktop system -- the computer itself, keyboard, monitor scanner, printer and
external hard drive -- upstairs, or even in a ventilated closet, since it heats
up the den, and my low tolerance for sweating limits my Net time on these hot
nights. Read more: Link
to this item | Comment
Deep-geek Pedantry: "Warchalking"
-- leaving chalk symbols to indicate where you'll find open wireless net access
-- is in our future, but the "War" part of the word gives pause. Doc
says, "And why bother when we can defuse rhetorical complaint bombs by simply
making WAR an acronym? Here ya go: Wireless Access Reconnaissance." Oops.
"Reconnaissance" says "war" to me, too. (American Heritage
Dictionary: reconnaissance
An inspection or exploration of an area, especially one made to gather military
information.) My favorite among the suggested alternatives: WiFiti, like graffiti Sidebars:
A pdf (free
Adobe Acrobat reader required) of the warchalking
symbol card ; from ZDnet UK, "Warchalking
marks the Wi-Fi 'hot spots' "; the hobo
signs that gave rise to the concept.
Link
to this item | Comment
Toying
With Musical Instruments at Wired (very cool):
"If traditional concert performances leave you sighing for more, you can
look forward to an opera where musicians squeeze squishy embroidered balls, play
soundless violins and bang on glowing bugs with antennae. "These hyper-instruments
were developed by Tod Machover of MIT's Media Lab in an attempt to break free
of conventional musical instrument design. Building on technologies developed
for Machover's groundbreaking Brain Opera, these music toys enable children to
engage in sophisticated listening, performing and composing activities normally
accessible only after years of study." Link
to this item | Comment
Fair
Use under fire: From the Chronicle of Higher Education,
"When Congress brought copyright law into the digital era, in 1998, some
in academe were initially heartened by what they saw as compromises that, they
hoped, would protect fair use for digital materials. Unfortunately, they were
wrong. Recent actions by Congress and the federal courts ... have demonstrated
that fair use, while not quite dead, is dying. And everyone who reads, writes,
sings, does research, or teaches should be up in arms. The real question is why
so few people are complaining." Link
to this item | Comment
Come to Poppa: And just as Doc
Searls was getting grumpy over turning 55, he's become a babe
magnet. "You don't always get what you wa-ant, but if ya try sometime,
ya just might find, ya get what ya neeeeeed...." You go, guy!
Link
to this item | Comment
July 30, 2002 Dog
story: I missed our former Providence Journal colleague Dan Barry's week-old
NYT story on Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, creator of the most famous rug-on-the-wall
painting of all, the poker-playing dogs (Artist's
Fame Is Fleeting, but Dog Poker Is Forever). The painting's formal title is
A
Friend in Need, and Dan has a fine time with it: "Through his art,
he created a fairer world in which opposable thumbs were not required to hold
a beer bottle, button a shirt or lift that glorious ace off a card table's felt.
" Thanks to one of the new Salon blogs -- A
blog doesn't need a clever name -- for the link.
Link
to this item | Comment
The truth is out there: Another Salon blog, Pru's
Psychic Spy Training Facility, brings a new dimension to blogging, perhaps
literally: "My
name is Prudence Calabrese. I am a Psychic Spy, trained and skilled in the art
of Remote Viewing - a secret set of techniques developed by the CIA and the military
by which ordinary soldiers were trained to use their minds to travel to any time,
person, or place, and describe it with accuracy.... in this diary, I will teach
YOU how to Remote View." And that was just the first post.
Link
to this item | Comment
Artemis
Records waives Internet royalty fees. "Artemis Records has
agreed to issue licenses to internet radio for one year for the master use of
songs by all Artemis recording artists. This announcement was made today [July
29] by Danny Goldberg, Chairman and CEO, Artemis Records and Daniel Glass, President,
Artemis Records. During this period, beginning August 1, 2002, Artemis will waive
the royalty payments that would otherwise be due them. " Artemis artists
include Kittie, Steve Earle, rapper Khia, Marah, Josh Joplin Group, Graham Nash,
Boston, Rickie Lee Jones, Jimmie Vaughn, Peter Wolf, Warren Zevon.
Link
to this item | Comment
"Open
Source Music": Links to some artists who follow the old Grateful
Dead model of allowing fans to tape and trade recordings of live shows. "All
of these artists are signed onto major labels of one type or another, but they
allow their fans to tape them live and trade the shows freely."
Link
to this item | Comment
"The
tragic ineptitude of the English male" from The Spectator (U.K.):
"The acknowledged beauty Leah McLaren (photo)
has been on 12 promising dates in London. Nothing, as they say, happened. Here
she meditates on the English man’s curious lack of libido." McLaren
thinks sending the boys to boarding school is to blame.
Link
to this item | Comment
Minor Barrington
blue cow update. July
29, 2002
Journal / Steve Szydlowski | | Cow
Express: Is it art, or just a sign? Click
to enlarge | Silly season
blues: From
Saturday's Providence Journal, "BARRINGTON
-- A life-sized, rainbow-colored cow at Maple and Wood Avenues has town officials
udderly upset, its owners refusing to cower under threats, and an 8-year-old vowing
to chain herself to the figure if it is removed." "...
It has a sky blue head, black curved eyelashes, and
fluorescent orange sunglasses. A frog and nesting raccoons are painted on its
ears. An elephant tipped on its backside and other animals are pulled in a red
wagon on its body. Created by artist Shu-Inn Jenny, the figure is called Cow
Express. "It's the color," Bobbie
Moreau said. "If it was tan and holding golf clubs, it'll be fine." There's
more, much
more...
And a minor
update July 30.
Link
to this item | Comment Say
it, brother: Dan
Gillmor, San Jose Mercury News technology columnist, writes,
"If you or I asked Congress for permission to legally hack other people's
computers, we'd be laughed off Capitol Hill. Then we'd be investigated by the
FBI and every other agency concerned with criminal violations of privacy and security. "Then
again, you and I aren't part of the movie and music business. We aren't as powerful
as an industry that knows no bounds in its paranoia and greed, a cartel that boasts
enough money and public-relations talent to turn Congress into a marionette. "That's
why I don't doubt that the just-introduced bill, dubbed the "Peer to Peer
Piracy Prevention Act'' and co-sponsored by the representative from Disney, will
get a respectful hearing. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills, whose campaign coffers
are loaded with money from Disney and other entertainment companies, wants to
confer on the entertainment cartel the legal right to hack PCs it believes are
part of file-sharing networks..." Related: Reclaiming
the Commons (I'm getting surly about being called a pirate
by record labels that want to send cyberthugs to invade my computer and delete
anything they think I might not have paid them for. Now that's piracy.
Further reading: The
Cold, Hard Truth About Recording Contracts: Indentured Servitude at The Austin
Chronicle.) Appropriately, the IBM ad intruding into Dan's story blared,
"Hackers are knocking; click to set the locks and protect your vital systems."
Link
to this item | Comment
Arlo and Dylan: This weekend's Newport
Folk Festival schedule is now final.
Link
to this item | Comment
Blogger rock critics: Eric Olsen at Tres
Producers is looking
for 100 bloggers: "...we are going to give you free
CDs if you are a blogger, love music, and agree to write about it on a regular
basis. I will need from you in the form of an email: your name, your blog, your
email address, your approximate monthly traffic, your favorite genres or artists.
That's it for now. We will be your conduit to the record labels, who will be thrilled
to have another publicity outlet in these grim days (for them). You can write
CD reviews, essays, think pieces, overviews, eventually interviews, but you must
somehow incorporate the music you will receive into your blog on a regular basis.
How you do so is up to you." If you blog and want to participate,
there's more info here. (I volunteered.) Interestingly, Eric blogs
and responds to a dissenting crosscurrent from Josh
Kortbein: "...(Eric) doesn't talk more about the economics involved,
that is, about how the overwhelming majority of the "real" journalists
(that's not a word he used, but it's one I sense) are paid for their work, as
well as receiving free music (and the extra income that comes from unloading it,
however slight that is). I'm not sure whether the fact that bloggers doing this
would be doing unpaid work is an improvement or not." Sidebar:
A note about that "extra income from unloading it": A side business
in reselling books and music is considered unethical here at The Providence Journal,
so we have, roughly monthly, a "Book and Music Grab" to dispose of the
unreviewed books that weren't distributed to libraries and CDs that didn't make
the cut. At 3 p.m. on the appointed day, the doors to the fourth-floor
auditorium are opened, and anyone in any department is welcome to take 3 books
and 3 CDs from the hundreds laid out on tables and on the auditorium stage. After
4 p.m., you can take as many as you like from what's left. If you have niche
interests, or such wide musical knowledge that you can spot a rare "before
he got famous" reissue, you might score. But after years of these free-for-alls,
most of us come away marveling at the dreck that gets published, and our homes
are full of truly bad books.
Link
to this item | Comment
Out of Florida: Miami Herald's Very Famous Columnists
Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen rang the same bell yesterday: Barry:
Invest more, and replenish:
"Wall Street is in trouble. This is
your fault. "Yes, I am talking to YOU, Mr. or Ms. Small Investor. Wall
Street is getting sick and tired of your namby-pamby ''wait and see'' attitude
toward the stock market. Wall Street wants you to show some courage and resume
handing your money over to Wall Street..." Hiaasen:
Arrest CEO, buy stocks, watch Dow Jones go up
"Americans are so infuriated
by business scandals that they're aching to see crooked executives prosecuted
and sent away like common bank robbers, or worse. The sentiment has not been lost
on Congress, which is raising prison terms for certain corporate crimes to a maximum
20 years. "While the likelihood of any board chairman doing hard time
is laughably remote, politicians are feeling pressure to act outraged and talk
tough. "This time they're in a particularly sticky situation. Big political
campaigns are bankrolled heavily by corporations and business groups. Locking
up too many CEOs could result in a precipitous decline of campaign contributions..." Link
to this item | Comment Flog
that trend: CBS
MarketWatch reports today that the
iVillage group of websites will eliminate pop-up ads by October — in
response to user complaints about the intrusive form of Web advertising. via
Steve
Outing
Link
to this item | Comment
Just another rock 'n' roll night:
The story (Getting
Their Vibe Across in Unconventional Ways) starts off gingerly enough: "If
a band wants to transmit energy from the stage to the audience, perhaps tunes
and lyrics and songs merely get in the way. That seems to be the conclusion reached
by Arab on Radar, Lightning Bolt and the Locust, three noise-rock groups that
came to Northsix, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Thursday night." Times
reporter Kelefa Sanneh followed the old-time reporters' rule: Don't leave till
the end. Here it is: "Things got even uglier when the
(Locusts) drummer, Gabe Serbian, seemed to succumb to heat and exhaustion: as
he clambered over his kit toward the audience, his stomach started contracting;
what happened next was incontrovertible proof that he wasn't feeling well. "He
recovered and gamely attempted a few more songs, but it became clear that the
insect militia had been vanquished by an even stronger force of nature. Mr. Serbian
leaned over for another demonstration of ill health, and Mr. Pearson approached
the microphone to admit defeat. 'Oops,' he said. 'It's over.' " And
you thought the wild and crazy days were gone forever. Kudos to Sanneh --
and/or his editors -- for the graceful "Show it, don't tell it." Link
to this item | Comment Fun
with Mozilla: Drag your Bookmarks icon into the browser window and find the
secret level. I stumbled on this one all by myself. So have thousands of others.
Link
to this item | Comment
Subterranean Homepage News
by
Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com | 
