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Newspaper Columnist to Readers: I don’t give a frick about what you think!

Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Dahl thinks there are too many know-it-alls in the world and the internet is to blame. The internet simply makes it too easy for anyone to express his or her opinion. And for Dahl, that’s a huge problem.

Sure, he loves to express his own opinions, but it’s different when he does it because he “had to work six-hour shifts in Bakersfield, Calif., to earn my stripes as a communicator.” And besides, his editor and advertisers filter his writings. (How many columnists admit that his advertisers impact his writing?! Heck, at the least the guy’s honest.) While those young whipper-snappers on twitter are free to say anything they want. Damn kids.

The column is horribly written. Mike over at Tech Dirt compares it to an old man ranting to kids, “Get off my lawn” and complaining, “When I was a kid, we had to walk up hill both ways.” He’s right, it’s nothing but a rant without any factual support or logical underpinnings. The entire argument is that things are different and he doesn’t like it.

What Mr. Dahl doesn’t seem to get is that the reason writers had to be weeded out in the good old days, was because there were technological and physical barriers to everyone having access to the world. Newspapers had a finite amount of space, so the editors and publishers had to be selective as to who could be published.

The internet does not have that problem. Heck, the internet solved that problem by allowing anyone to write to the world, and for some bizarre reason Dahl thinks that’s a bad thing? Seriously? That’s just bat-shit crazy as far as I’m concerned.

It’s also funny that he contradicts his own argument. He talks about how in his radio days they would allow listeners to call in and make comments. However, he’s aghast that “CNN, Fox News, Oprah and even the Tribune” gives watchers, listeners, and readers a voice. He says that in the old radio days he could hang up on callers.

Does he not understand that CNN, Fox News, Oprah and even the Tribune can do the exact same thing with the internet? Does he honestly think that CNN has to read every single twitter posing on a topic? Does he not know that the editors at CNN decide in advance which twitter postings to air, and if it is not appropriate, they simply do not air it?! What CNN does with twitter postings is the exact same thing Dahl did when he worked in radio. Give viewers and listeners a voice.

The fact that he does not understand the technological advantages that the internet offers or that this brave new world is not that much different from his radio days, illustrates perfectly how completely ignorant and out of touch he is. Does this guy even own a computer? Does he still use AOL? He’s a technological neanderthal and has the insight and imagination of a brick.

Mr. Dahl, everyone in the world being allowed to have a voice is a good thing. Censoring people for no reason other than your own selfish pride would be malicious and evil, if it was not so rooted in utter ignorance.

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Will the music labels bite the dust in 2013?

Way back in 1999 the music labels attempted to sneak in legislation which would have made all music mere works for hire. People who create copyrighted content for hire usually come from the literary realm. Think of those cheap and plentiful pulp fiction books or those romantic novels for lonely housewives. Publishers of those books hire out the writing under a general plot. To put it another way, the plot is already written, so all the writer has to do is fill in the blanks.

Most of the background music you hear on TV and in advertisements is work for hire. The producer orders a song with a funky uptempo bass line and the song writer regurgitates it.

But I find it hard to believe that Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music was somehow created at the direction of some drone at the label.

Anyway, the legislation did not pass because the musicians raised a huge stink about it and the labels backed down. People who create copyrighted content for hire do not enjoy all of the rights associated with copyright. But I still did not fully understand why the labels attempted what they did.

Now it’s all clear. Wired has a great write up about it. In a nutshell, the Copyright Act of 1976 gives song writers and musicians the chance to get their copyrights back. And the sand is running out. This will start happening in 2013.

Suddenly the labels won’t have their massive back catalog of music, which earns a lot of money not only in direct sales to consumers, but in licensing for movies and TV. So new music is not selling. They won’t have any successful old music to sell. The labels will be mere shells of their former selves.

And I just love how the labels are scheming to get around this law. Remember last week when a company called BlueBeat.com claimed copyrights to all of the Beatles music and started selling it online? BlueBeat.com claimed that had the copyrights to the music because it rerecorded the songs which gave them new copyrights. They were even allowed to register those new copyrights with the feds.

Of course everyone laughed at the idea that someone could obtain copyrights over the entire Beatles catalog merely by rerecording them.

However, the joke might be on the musicians, because that’s the label’s plan. The labels are claiming that the new digital remixes deserve new copyrights. So even if the Eagles gets the copyrights back on their original analog recordings, the labels will still hold the copyright to the new digital recording. The courts will be sorting this crap out for decades.

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Apple vs. Psystar: Our first sale rights are safe

There are some who believe that reselling our legitimately bought CDs, games, and DVDs is somehow stealing and should be made illegal. However, the right of first sale gives us the right to sell and resell what we’ve bought without any interference from the original owner.

The company Psystar has been selling Mac clones. Apple does not like the clone market and sues any company that tries it. In part Psystar argued that they have a right to buy Apple’s OSX software and resell it to customers. The Court disagreed and completely rejected Psystar’s first sale defense.

Initially, I was troubled that our first sale rights were being eroded. However, the good news is that the Apple vs. Psystar case really has nothing to do with the right of first sale. From the opinion:

Even assuming arguendo that Psystar was the owner of a copy, the first-sale defense fails here. Section 109 provides immunity only when copies are “lawfully made.” The copies at issue here were not lawfully manufactured with the authorization of the copyright owner. As stated, Psystar made an unauthorized copy of Mac OS X from a Mac mini that was placed onto an “imaging station” and then used a “master copy” to make many more unauthorized copies that were installed on individual Psystar computers. The first-sale defense does not apply to those unauthorized copies.

In other words, Psystar was not buying and then reselling Apple’s OSX software. It was reselling an unauthorized copy. Psystar was likely buying licenses for each copy. However, the first sale doctrine does not apply to the right to resell and transfer copyright licenses, it only pertains to the physical copy. (Whether it applies to the MP3s bought on a site such on Amazon has not yet been decided.)

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Freeing news from corporate control will lead to "information anarchy"

I’ve written about the so called decline of the news industry before. E.g., Garry Trudeau seriously argues that we should toss out all of our antitrust laws and allow our “large media companies” to “form a gated Web collective” in order to more effectively charge people for access to the news.

Yes, even a liberal such as Trudeau thinks that our news, news about our lives, our cities, our politicians, should be locked up, controlled, and filtered by large corporations.

Former British home secretary David Blunkett is now saying that Australia is set to enter an age of “‘information anarchy’ if the traditional media don’t lift their game.” Here’s more,

The rise of the new media, such as online sites, blogs, and Twitter, has resulted in the demise of many of Britain’s newspapers, he says.

Australia would go down the same path unless the media and consumers choose to back traditional journalism, said Mr Blunkett, who has enjoyed a somewhat rocky relationship with the media during his political career.

“We are sleepwalking into a situation where people believe that the free-for-all for information and the uploading of information from iPhones … is actually the alternative to properly edited and moderated news,” he said in an address to Canberra’s National Press Club on Thursday.

This would result in “information anarchy”, said Mr Blunkett, who confessed to disliking social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.

“The challenge for all of us is actually to be able to do better than … something that rapidly erodes the standards and the professional commitment of the traditional media.”

News consumers also needed to challenge themselves not to rely heavily on non-mainstream media, he added.

Mr Blunkett said he believed many people were ignorant of the dangers of information technology

Yes he’s another person who thinks that unless our news is filtered through corporations it is worthless, and even worse, dangerous. Ooooh… I’m reading news on Twitter, Anarchy in the Midwest dude!

And I find it hilarious that he blames us. First, I’m not a consumer of news. I read news. I hear news. I analyze news. I interpret news. Never once have I ever consumed any news. Calling someone who listens to news a consumer demeans the entire system. It reduces our news to nothing more than a profit endeavor, no different than selling sugary carbonated drinks.

And the reason us “consumers” are dumping traditional safe media, is because it’s not filling our needs. Traditional news media is boring and out of touch.

A great example was the whole Birthers movement. There was not a single ounce of evidence that Obama was born outside the US. But because traditional news sources require the presentation of both sides to every issue, the Birthers movement received copious amounts of press it never deserved.

Being dogmatically unbiased is not the way people operate in the real world. That’s why Fox news is so popular. That’s why blogs are so popular. That’s why the internet is so popular. People are allowed to find news that fits their beliefs without being forced to wade through crap.

If you read a newspaper, the writing is so fricken sterile you swear it was written by a machine. It makes the music of Brittany Spears seem soulful.

The internet has changed news. We are no longer obligated to follow the news we’re supposed to follow. We can find information about the stories that interest us. And even more interestingly, we can publish stories and views that interest us. We’re in control now, not the media. And unless some very draconian laws are put in place, we’re never going back to the old ways.

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How can people afford cell phones?

I was considering getting the hot new smart-phone the Droid. Apparently, it’s quite awesome. But whenever a company is selling a service along with a product, the price of that service seems to never enter polite conversation. “Don’t look behind the curtain, just admire its awesomeness.”

Well, to use the phone you have to pay $300 up front and hope you get back $100 via a rebate. To me rebates are synonymous with lotteries. Heck, at least with a lottery you know your exact probability of winning. With a rebate you’re never quite sure until the check mysteriously turns up months later or until you’re denied because you forgot to cross an “i” and dot a “t”.

I’d also have to sign up for a voice plan. Right now I’m paying no more than 9 bucks per month on my TracFone. With Verizon’s cheapest plan I’d be paying $40 per month for 450 minutes, which are not actual minutes but mere subjective and mutable units of measurement (yes I realize that’s a contradiction of terms). Still, it’d be a enough for me a month. I use less than that for 6 months.

Regardless, even though that’s well over four times more than I’m paying now, the Droid is awesome. You can check email, write documents with Google apps, check out videos on YouTube, use it as a GPS… fricken wow man!

But wait, to use all of those cool features I’ll also need a data plan. That’s another $40 per month. I know this next statement will date me, but I remember when car payments were about $80 per month.

Who are these people that can afford this crap each month? I know I’m neither rich nor wealthy, but I see people with much less income than me using such phones and I cannot understand how they can afford them.

Update – Nov. 13, 2009: If I need more evidence to confirm my choice, there’s this story from Slashdot:

“If you buy a smartphone through Verizon, be prepared for an increase in the early termination fee. Verizon is doubling the phone-subsidy to $350. What’s more, is that Verizon also actively charges customers for accidental data transmissions of as little as 0.02kb. ‘They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. [...] The instant you call the function, they charge you the data fee. We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.’”

It looks like I’ll be sticking with my 1100 Nokia for a long time.

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Green Bay Packers’ fans are f#cktards

I’m not a huge football fan, but I like to watch it every so often. Most of the time I don’t even care who wins. Maybe it’s because I live in Lion country, that I’ve never known what’s it’s like to have a local team worth supporting. So when I watch I usually only watch it for the game.

That didn’t happen last night. When Brett Favre entered Lambeau Field the Green Bay fans booed him. At that point I wanted Minnesota to win.

Brett Favre did not quit the Packers. He was essentially forced out. I have no problem with the Packers’ decision. No matter how great Favre is now, they needed someone long term, and that someone was and is Aaron Rodgers.

Still, Brett gave the Packers 15 years of his life. He never missed a game in all of those years and started every single one. He didn’t even miss the game the day after his dad died. He took the Packers to the Super Bowl twice, one of which he won. And for that he’s booed.

Nearly the same thing happened to former Packer kicker Ryan Longwell back in 2006. He played for the team for 8 years and was their all time leading scorer. Yes, he did more for the team than any other player in the franchise’s history. So when his contract was up he asked for more money. He was shown the door. And for that he was booed.

How many people in the stands who booed Ryan or Brett work for less than they deserve solely because of some duty and loyalty owed to their employer? To those Walmart greeters in the audience, did you forgo wage increases because you owe it to the Walton family to be paid less? To those former factory workers in the audience, did you thank your former employers for taking your job overseas?

Sure, when you play for a team you have to have loyalty. But that loyalty ends when the team no longer wants you. It’s asinine to expect someone to give loyalty to a team when the team refuses to give it back. And it’s simply beyond mean-spirited to boo someone who gave their all and best to you and your team.

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