meta-roj

someday, you will be free

at the very beginning, i ranted a bit about the hecklebot and it’s potential as a weapon of mass accoutability (yeah, that’s a sweet phrase).

well, before there was a hecklebot, there was just a regular heckle, and quite honestly, the hecklebot (and it’s distributed model) isn’t quite ready for primetime. there’s a lot of work to do on the hecklebot, and i think you should all be doing some of it. in the meantime, there’s the power of the heckle. whether it’s true or not, with or without spin, i think we have just seen the power of the good old-fashioned heckle checking the “most powerful man on earth.”

in october, president bush went to visit our dear allies and old friends down in australia, only to find himself, accidentally, in a free speech zone. bush thought he was just going to address parliament, but he wound up in a place where some people speak up. shock and horror! the president delivers probably his best off-the-cuff comment in a public speaking engagement ever – while the outrageous hecklers are escorted from the room. whew. close call.

well, today, bush will be arriving in london, on invitation of the queen, for an official, serious, bigtime tour of america’s greatest and most adamant ally in the new war in iraq. bush has decided not to address that parliament.

my read is that a little heckle downunder was enough for bush, and he’s just not going to risk another. i don’t think bush gets british humor, and anyone who’s seen the prime ministers question period in british parliament knows that bush is way out of his league in this environment.

blair came to america back in july and spoke before a joint session of congress, and great britain has been very supportive, to the point of sending several of her native sons to their deaths in iraq. bush should be bending over backwards to make prime minister blair’s life easy at this point, so, of course, it’s unfortunate that this visit will likely do more harm than good.

but at least there won’t be any heckling….

sometimes, it’s good to stumble into a decent storyteller. i might’ve found one. you might agree. i think you should check your fridge and start here.

reuters has a piece (via cnn) on microsoft’s plans to enter the online music fray in 2004 (yeah, that could be several weeks away).

this, of course, sets up the battle of microsoft vs. walmart vs. apple vs. all the other little upstarts and spinoffs and reinventions.

as usual, my concern is for the musicians. as the only group without power in this exchange (labels have their catalogs and copyrights, microsoft has money, walmart has money, apple has ipods), i have to assume that as these services rush to cut deals and squeeze pennies, the most likely squeeze will be the musicians.

a lot will depend on the particular terms of the contacts, of course, but since the “standard industry contract” is already a pretty major screw to the musician, i don’t expect many of them to get a decent shot at this generation and mode of music distribution.

just one more reason i haven’t paid much attention to the back catalog, despite the huge pile of dollars locked up in there.

good luck, man

in other itunes news (and i am compelled to comment on this), itunes is one of time’s inventions of the year.

this smells like proof that “invention” is now more about style than function. and that will be very interesting with the new players in town. does “apple cool” beat “walmart prices”? can they get along with each other, or will one or both of them resort to [questionable?] tactics to eliminate the competition?

several days ago, the new york post and usa today mentioned walmart getting into the online music business.

at that time, the wall street journal (couldn’t find a link) pegged it at about 200,000 tracks, mostly country. walmart being walmart, you can imagine they are likely to break the “99 cent” barrier that has become the universal per-track price point. and you can bet that they will use a little leverage to get those terms. and i think they aren’t going to be happy with the itunes economics (they apparently expect to make money on this, and they aren’t selling ipods).

with itunes (mac) launched in april (i think) and itunes (windows) launched in october 2003, it’s taken very, very little time for this field to get crowded enough to make it interesting to walmart.

now we might get to see just how much blood you can squeeze out of an artist.

update (2004.01.02): professor lessig has a very important review of the walmart terms.

update (2005.05.08): maybe these will help

update (2005.06.08): congratulations, applicants. you’re getting famous. for my commentary, you can check here and here. for other perspectives, see Comments around the net… on another subject, google is NOT doing very good at targeting this page. i also spotted myself an “r” for “leverage.” that was annoying… hey. maybe that’s the reason for all the confusion…

learned to read, then write.. and banned

peart

They say there are strangers who threaten us
In our immigrants and infidels
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves
That those who know what’s best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves

use the knowledge that they fear (2).

… who played with everyone