thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

As many readers know there has been a internet blackout on a number of very large websites like wikipedia and WordPress.com and .org on 18th of Jan.

As Clay Shirky sees it – SOPA & PIPA are designed to “raise the cost of copyright compliance” for amateurs by changing the burden of proof so that pretty much all content not owned by “Big Media” is blocked.

The method – use the domain name system to block access – even though technically this is unlikely to work at all. Unfortunately there are other issues better explained elsewhere where the sides-effects and consequences will cause much confusion and collateral damage.

We are used to producing as well as consuming and digital technology allows us to do this when we share content that we originate, that we find and sometime what we change on the way through. (Creative commons licensing is an intelligent attempt to manage content rights.)

My summary – whatever the merits of copyright protection (and clearly that system is very broken) SOPA is not the way to fix it.

Also once a piece of legislation like this is passed it becomes much easier to foist it on smaller countries like NZ especially with the present government (via ACTA).  Remember the debate over the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011. Sadly many of the politicians in NZ had no real clues at the time but these issues need much smarter thinking as they are part of a much wider agenda.

John C. Dvorak on SOPA: Don’t Get Suckered by What Comes Next
John says SOPA is a sideshow for another bill

“This is so that the real bill, Senate S.968. The Patrick Leahy “Protect IP Act of 2011? will pass — while all the nuts argue about and then celebrate victory over SOPA.

The House will quickly agree and rubber-stamp the Senate bill which, according to those fighting these bills, is about 96 percent as terrible.

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

Nobody is focusing attention on this parallel bill. Watch this scam get executed like clockwork.”

One of the most fascinating chapters in Daniel Levitin’s book “This is Your Brain on Music” is about how musical tastes are often set early in life and become quite hard to change later on.

It has been a while since I read the book but Levitin goes into much more detail on why we like what we like. The question I was looking to answer though was “Is there a Way to flip people back into music Explorer mode?

It turns out that short answer is “no- not really”. The music that we like is very much connected to our own culture and identity and often from a particular time like our teenage years. I’m over simplifying here but we develop our own schemas which are like a musical map or filter that becomes part of our music processing brain.

Levitin also has this idea that we might be able to tune our music systems like tuning to a new radio station. In real life though many people go with what they are comfortable with and this extends to our expectations about new music from our favourite bands.

I’d say that Elvis Costello fans will be on the high adventure end of the scale since Elvis is clearly an explorer and new styles, sounds, ideas and reinvention is part of his brief.

OTH many bands almost get trapped into a particular “sound signature” where new songs often reference their earlier work. The art is to make new music but take your listeners with you on that journey.

I was struck by this when local faves ELEMNO P released a new song “Slow Down” which sounds very much like an old song (not a bad thing at all), much more like their 1st and second albums than their 3rd album. Listen for yourself as you can download it for a tweet from http://weareelemenop.tumblr.com/ But I digress

In the same chapter about musical likes Daniel muses about the possibility of an

“adventuresomeness knob …that will control the mix of old and new etc.”

In this time of sharing and socialising our likes and activities it is no surprise that Spotify is launching in NZ soonish. Spotify socialises the sharing of musical playlists with your friends. It is very closely tied to facebook as there are some common shareholders.

For more background read – Spotify’s Daniel Ek: The Most Important Man In Music – Forbes

For a alternative service check out LetsListen and their site is http://letslisten.com/

However I tend to think that most people know someone in their extended group who is a tastemaker of sorts and for those who like to explore new music there are many that are very well established now.

The Hype Machine is one of the better ones and as the PBS video below shows there are many other great “tastemaker” sites out there. Maybe this is the real “adventuresome” music button?

Off Book: The Evolution of Music Online from PBS Arts on Vimeo.