Never mind that digital audio broadcasting is not significantly greater in quality than regular, analog radio. Never mind that its music quality is vastly less than than that of audio CDs. In spite of these inconvenient facts, the RIAA is hoping that the transition to “digital audio broadcasting” will provide enough confusion and panic that they can persuade Congress or the FCC to impose some kind of copy-protection scheme or regulation on digital radio broadcast.

Immediately below is the text of the joint resolution by RIAA and other groups, asking Congress to copy-protect radio (which has never been copy-protected before). Following that is RIAA’s “one-pager” outlining for Congress the reasons RIAA offers for Congress to authorize the FCC to put in place a copy-protection scheme for radio. (Note the use of the term “HD Radio” — implying that there’s something “high-definition” about digital audio broadcasting, even though everyone who knows anything about digital audio broadcast content knows it’s of much lower quality than that of audio CDs.)

RESOLUTION [of “Music United,” which includes RIAA and the other undersigned groups]

Requesting Congress to grant authority to the Federal Communications Commission to promulgate rules protecting digital music transmitted over digital broadcast radio.

Whereas American arts and entertainment industries account for 6% of the American Gross Domestic Product and employ 2.6 million Americans;

Whereas digital theft of music has caused extreme harm to the American music industry over the past five years;

Whereas the digital theft of music stifles the careers of new artists, betrays the songwriters and recording artists who create it and threatens the livelihood of the thousands of working people—from recording engineers to record-store clerks—who are employed in the music industry;

Whereas the United States Supreme Court ruled in MGM v. Grokster that it is illegal to engage in digital theft directly or to encourage or induce digital theft;

Whereas Korean and Australian courts followed with similar rulings preventing the establishment of business models predicated on digital theft;

Whereas public broadcast spectrum is granted by the U.S. government to be used in the public interest;

Whereas the public interest is not served by the allowance of digital theft;

Whereas Congress has stated that radio broadcasts should not facilitate or result in the digital theft of music;

Whereas the Federal Communications Commission promulgated rules to protect digital video broadcasts from illegal redistribution over digital networks;

Whereas the Federal Communications Commission is examining the promulgation of rules to protect digital audio broadcasts from illegal copying or redistribution over digital networks;

Whereas the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently vacated the Federal Communications Commission’s ruling on digital video broadcasts based on a need for a direct Congressional grant of authority;

Whereas given the breadth of this decision regarding the Commission’s scope of authority in this area, any direct Congressional grant of authority should include both digital video and audio broadcasts;

Whereas Congress is considering efforts to expressly grant such authority to the Federal Communications Commission;

Resolved, That the Members of Music United–

(1) Request that Congress grant express authority to the Federal Communications Commission to protect digital broadcasts from illegal copying and redistribution; and

(2) Request that Congress include the protection of digital audio broadcasts in any express grant of authority to the Federal Communications Commission to promulgate rules to protect digital broadcasts.

The American Association for Independent Music (A2IM)

The American Federation of Musicians (AFM)

The American Federation of Television and radio Artists (AFTRA)

The American Society of Composers, Artists and Publishers (ASCAP)

The Church Music Publishers Association (CMPA)

The Country Music Association (CMA)

The Gospel Music Association (GMA)

The Harry Fox Agency

Jazz Alliance International

The Music Managers Forum – U.S. (MMF-US)

The Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI)

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS – The Recording Academy)

The National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM)

The National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA)

The Rhythm & Blues Foundation

The Recording Artists’ Coalition

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)

SESAC

The Songwriters Guild of America (SGA)

SoundExchange

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[Here’s the “one-pager” that RIAA is handing out to Congress.]

HD RADIO: The Need for Content Protection

The FCC is considering final adoption of a digital radio standard that is a proprietary technology developed by a private company, iBiquity. While the recording industry is excited about the rollout of digital radio (“HD Radio”) as a new way for fans to listen to music, it is concerned that the iBiquity standard does not protect the music even though safeguards could easily be implemented without unsettling consumers’ expectations of how they listen to radio. Without such content protection, users could redistribute and copy recordings. The result could be widespread piracy, similar to or greater than that from illicit file sharing on peer-to-peer systems, especially given the ubiquity of radios and the use of radios by all parts of the American public.

The Problem

Without content protection, users of new digital radio receivers could become owners and worldwide distributors of a personalized collection of recordings. In particular, they could:

• Freely redistribute recorded songs over the Internet or on removable media;

• Automatically copy particular recordings of the user’s choice, thereby transforming a passive listening experience into a personal music library often without even listening to the original broadcast; and

• Do the above for all recordings played on local stations, including new releases before they are available in stores.

The Consequences

If HD Radio does not include content protection, economic damage may be severe:

• Record companies, artists, songwriters and music publishers will suffer from a decline in sales;

• Broadcasters and retailers will lose the opportunity to provide “buy buttons” to satisfy impulse purchases;

• Broadcasters will experience a decline in audience, and therefore advertising revenue, as listeners substitute their free music library for radio.

• Advertisers will find diminishing returns from advertising on radio; and

• On-demand download music services such as iTunes and Rhapsody will suffer. Why pay 99 cents for something you can get for free?

What we are NOT trying to do

The recording industry is not seeking to (1) stop or delay the rollout of HD Radio; (2) prevent consumers from listening to radio as they do today; (3) prevent time-shifting of radio programming; or (4) prevent a consumer from hitting a record button when a song comes on that they like.

The solution

The recording industry has proposed that the FCC (1) prevent redistribution of recordings onto the Internet, removable media or to other devices; and (2) limit searching and automated copying such as by artist or song title so that individual recordings cannot be separated from surrounding content. Congress should grant the FCC the narrow authority to accomplish these tasks through the proposed rulemaking that is pending at the Commission.

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No, I’m not just adding to the zillions of blog postings concerning whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with other government agencies, deserves blame for mishandling the Hurricane Katrina crisis. (You may assume that I assume that the federal government in general, by failing to spend appropriated money on reinforcing New Orleans’s flood protections, deserves plenty of blame.)

Instead, I’m focusing here on one thing FEMA has unquestionably succeeded at — publishing the single silliest federal-agency web page I have ever seen. Yes, it’s the FEMA Rap! For Kidz! (Note the hip use of the letter “Z”!)

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I took two weeks off in August, and spent one of those weeks performing Shakespeare dowin in Texas. Yes, I know, it’s not exactly the traditional vacation, but it was definitely something I needed to do. Twenty-five years ago, or so, I discovered the Shakespeare-at-Winedale program at the University of Texas, and over the course of a ten-year period, I performed there for four summers.

There’s nothing like the Shakespeare-at-Winedale program, so far as I know. It’s a total-immersion, Outward Bound-like experience. All participants in the program will not only perform, but they’ll also direct other students, make costumes (I learned quite a bit about sewing during my summers there), do the lighting, and so on. It all comes together after weeks and months as a series of performance weekends, doing three plays (all by Shakespeare or a Shakespeare contemporary) in rotation.

What I participated in this summer was not the full, months-long summer class (I’m a little long in the tooth for that now), but a weeklong reunion event, during which I got to work with 17 other alumni of the program to put on a series of scenes in the Winedale Theater Barn. (Yes, it’s an actual barn, converted to function as a theater space.) (You can see us gathering outside before performance here and here.)

What surprised me is how easily my body and mind rediscovered what it was like to perform in that empty space, with those people, under those conditions. It all came back, “just like riding a bicycle.” (Here’s a picture of me as Sir Toby Belch, with the Austin Chronicle’s Arts Editor Robert Faires as Andrew Aguecheeck, and Lynn McGuire as Maria — from “Twelfth Night.”) It was a good experience for me, emotionally and spiritually. Best of all was performing with my 12-year-old daughter in the audience — she’s a Shakespeare fan herself, and has participated in the kids’ version of Shakespeare-at-Winedale, Camp Shakespeare.

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It’s clear from several stories on CNET this week that the security technology variously known as “trusted computing,” “Palladium,” and “NGSCB” will be deployed to some extent in the next iteration of the Windows operating system, now code-named “Vista,” due to be shipped sometime next year. In a nutshell, this technology creates secure areas of your computer that you can’t access, touch, or control, except to a limited degree. It’s sometimes referred to as a separate “sandbox” for you to work and play in on your computer — a sandbox that may be used to isolate viruses and to thwart hacker attacks, but that is primarily designed as space for playback of entertainment media in ways that keep that content safe from you, the user.

What it will mean is that, in order to have access to the entertainment media you purchase, you may have to load it into this separate sandbox, which is under the control of somebody other than you. Controls built into entertainment content may determine that your computer isn’t a safe enough environment for the content to be viewed in, and may shut playback off if, for example, you are piping the content out through analog rather than digital connections. (Analog connections are famously more difficult to control than digital ones are.) Alternatively, it may shut off analog connections altogether while the content is playing.

I am less troubled by Microsoft’s impulse to develop a new approach to digital-rights management than I am about what this new DRM, if it becomes the norm, may mean for the computer revolution. Twenty-five years ago, the impulse that kicked off the development of the personal computer — and all the related markets that have sprung up since then — was the ability PCs gave to any user to control and inspect every aspect of the computer’s hardware and software. This openness was a huge source of innovation and exploration, and it fueled the digital economy. What happens when we turn the personal computer, even to a limited degree, into just another conduit for someone else’s content, aimed at your eyeballs? I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question, but I will say that limiting my ability to tinker with and control my own computers is disturbing to me, to say the least.

I will say I am amused at this description of Vista’s potential for “downresolution” of high-definition content:

Alternately, Vista will include a “constriction” feature that can decrease the resolution of high-definition video on the fly, outputting a version that is slightly fuzzier (about the same as today’s DVDs) than the pristine original. This can be used as an alternative to blocking a connection altogether, if a content company won’t let high-definition video play over the lower-security outputs.

I’m afraid I’ve reached the age where downresolution to “mere” DVD quality doesn’t strike me as very frightening, since I might not even notice the difference.

Of course, my primary complaint here is about the closing of what used to be the open architectures of personal computers. Cory Doctorow makes a different, equally important point about what this change in the personal computing platform may mean for copyright and consumers.

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I’ve always said that the Recording Industry Association of America and its member companies are perfectly within their rights to sue those they think are infringing on music copyrights through peer-to-peer file-trading of songs. At the same time, it seems obvious that the RIAA should pick the lawsuits prudently, based on solid evidence, so that when the cases are publicized it will be clear that the defendants deserved what they got.

That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening, however. Instead, the RIAA notifies potential defendants that they are subject to a lawsuit that may result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability, and then gives them the option of settling the claim for only a few thousand dollars. It ought to be needless to say this, but sometimes an innocent defendant might still opt to take the settlement, because the risk of going to court and losing is so great.

Occasionally, however, you find a defendant who is troubled enough that he or she is willing to stand up to RIAA regardless of the risk. That seems to be the case with Patricia Santangelo. I urge you to read the transcript of Ms. Santangelo’s court appearance here. It is fun to read, and it has made me an instant admirer of Judge McMahon, who refused to be a mere conduit steering Ms. Santangelo to the RIAA’s “conference center” (which should properly be called a “surrender center”):

MR. MASCHIO: No, all I was suggesting, your Honor, is that, if she doesn’t come with an attorney, that the more direct way of doing this — and this is just to facilitate things — is to deal directly with the conference center.

THE COURT: Not once you’ve filed an action in my court.

MR. MASCHIO: Okay.

THE COURT: You file an action in my court, your conference center is out of it. They have nothing to do with anything.

MR. MASCHIO: Okay. I’ll give her my card.

THE COURT: If you are here, you are here as an officer of the court. You’re taking up my time and cluttering up my calendar, so you will do it in the context of the Court. Maybe it will be with a magistrate judge, but you will be representing your client, not some conference center. And if your people want things to be done through the conference center, tell them not to bring lawsuits.

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It’s been most of a week, and I still find myself awfully touched by
the “Six Feet Under” finale. I realize that I have grown to love the Fishers’ extended
family, including Brenda and Rico. I will miss them all.

I think “Six Feet Under” did what so many shows, both comedies and dramas, try but fail to do — it gave us a sense of connection to another family. Ideally the family connection is so strong that it makes us feel this fictional family is just another branch of our own. The strength of the show is that it relentlessly showed us the flaws as well as the strengths of every character — there were no archetypes, and there was no schtick either. Just like real people.

And of course wrapping the show around the ever-present issue of mortality was no small bit of brilliance, either. It reminds me of the resonating line from THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER: “In the midst of life, we are in death.” I don’t pretend to know everything that line means, but I do know that it gives me a longer-term perspective when my life is filled with short-term distractions. “Six Feet Under” did that too.

The closing montage of the final episode was beautiful, and its soundtrack was the lovely song “Breathe Me,” by Sia. You can find a pretty cool music video of the song here.

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I see that El Paso, Texas, has built a “Mike Godwin Drive” without even asking me. I’d have thought they’d be more respectful of a good ol’ Texas boy.

See the evidence of massive trademark infringement here:

Map of
3340 Mike Godwin Dr
El Paso, TX 79936-2763

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Every few years I’m drawn back to rereading one or more of the great
scifi novels by Alfred Bester. If you don’t know Bester, you should –
he wrote pyrotechnic, passionate prose that channelled huge narrative
drive.

He credits some of what he calls the “attack” of his narratives to his
work as a comic-book writer. Bester certainly made a mark in his comic-book
writing, notably producing the famous “Green Lantern Oath” that various
incarnations of the emerald-ray-wielding superhero still utter to this day.

THE DEMOLISHED MAN was Bester’s first scifi novel, and it’s very good, but
to my mind his greatest achievement was THE STARS MY DESTINATION. That book
is lying face-down and open on my bed right now, waiting for me to get back
home and dive back in. There is nothing in modern science fiction that really matches the bravura of these two books, now about half a century old.

His non-scifi works, such as TENDER LOVING RAGE and THE RAT RACE are also
worth reading too, although each is a product of its time to a greater
degree than the early scifi novels were. But you may find that once you’ve
read a little Bester you’ll want to read all you can get your hands on.
(Bester wrote some other scifi novels later in life — pleasurable to read,
but not quite in the same league as the first two.)

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There was a flood of media coverage surrounding the recent release of the sixth Harry Potter novel, so it took me a while to come across this piece, in which J.K. Rowling reveals that she hasn’t finished either Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy or C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. Hardly anyone had an Inkling that Rowling was no great fan of England’s biggest pre-Potter (and pre-Pratchett) fantasy exports — even though Rowling has done her own bit to improve the United Kingdom’s balance of trade.

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Cory Doctorow outlines his objections in the face of recent determinations that the versions of Mac OS compiled for Intel microprocessors use those CPUs’ built-in “trusted computing” features.

There are lots of things that bother me about “trusted computing” initiatives generally. First and foremost is this: the whole microcomputing revolution has been built on the idea that users have control over the machines they buy and use. “Trusted computing” is a way of turning over that control — at least to some degree, but perhaps irrevocably — to someone else. I understand why software vendors and content companies would like to be able to implement this, but I think it runs counter to the philosophy that gave rise to the personal computer in the first place.

Will Apple adopt the “trusted computing” features that Microsoft and Intel (in different forums and to different degrees) have been promoting, simply because Apple is moving to Intel microprocessors? I’m comforted to some degree by the fact that Apple has never been rigorous in imposing copy protection on OSX, and because the DRM in iTunes (despite some folks’ objections) is pretty minimal (that is, it’s trivially easy to sidestep, if you care to).

UPDATE: There’s a useful Wiki focusing on the transition of Mac OS X to x86 architectures here.

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