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The political argument of people like the Free Software Foundation appears to me to be deeply dishonest - there is a reason why those people get contributions from the worlds largest companies.
by rootless2 on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 05:49:42 AM EST
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Do training in computer science or work in information technology breed libertarianism?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 05:54:54 AM EST
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FSF and similar are not libertarian.
They have a vaguely hippie ideology that, underneath, seems to me to be basically anti-labor.

For example - see this.

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism.html

by rootless2 on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 06:08:44 AM EST
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Stallman has an interesting biography. I don't think he's anti-labour, but I think he is an example of a not-quite dying breed - the old hyper-authoritarian, no compromise, top-down, cult-of-personality left.

What as dishonest was trying to co-opt creative culture with the rules of hacker culture.

Art is not code. You can't open source art in the same ways you can open source code. They're different media, with different social, personal and political functions.

You can't even map patent and copyright law from one to the other, because the traditions and history are so different.

Interestingly, there is an essay by Stallman or one of the other FSF people somewhere which acknowledges the concept of art as personal testament, which shouldn't be changed by third parties - any more than diaries or personal op-eds should be changed.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 07:05:04 AM EST
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"Hacker culture" was the ethos of graduate students employed by the military.

I find this article perversely fascinating.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010312/moglen

by rootless2 on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 07:09:15 AM EST
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Not quite. Hacker culture was a weird mix of engineering nerds, hippies, and people who were willing to do ARPA-ish research because the money was on the table - partly because during that period, the money was managed and disbursed by someone who was a hacker themselves.

Very little of that ARPA-ish research was militarily useful. A lot of it ended up in general domestic computing instead - which is likely a good thing.

What's depressing is the extent to which the free content movement has been driven by lawyers like Moglen and Lessig, who really know nothing at all about art, or what kind of work is involved in making it, but still seem to feel qualified to preach to working artists and musicians about how they should be trying to make a living.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 07:17:34 AM EST
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I told Moglen once that I'd listen to him when he gave up tenure and salary and contented himself with the free will offerings of his students.

However, I suspect, like many preachers, he would do well with that scheme.

by rootless2 on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 08:03:48 AM EST
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However, this insecurity, valuable though it seemed in principle, was cherished almost exclusively either in the second person or in the abstract. Its need was thought urgent for inspiring the efforts of other persons or people in general. It seldom seemed vital for the individual himself. Restraints on competition and the free movement of prices, the greatest sources of uncertainty for business firms, have been principally deplored by university professors on lifetime appointments. Their security of tenure is deemed essential for fruitful and unremitting thought.

- Galbraith, The Affluent Society

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 08:13:48 AM EST
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A distinction with many (thought not all) forms of music is that performers of music can use free distribution of music to advertise performances. And while there will be fewer multi-million dollar incomes with the demise of the big record labels, taking out the cut going to the record company has an upside as well as a downside.

Plus we get Pamplamoose Music ...

With publications (whatever the media), the publication is the performance.

One of the factors that pushes Japanese anime to focus on pandering to "otaku" culture, even where it may result in less mainstream appeal, is that in otaku culture, "buying all the stuff" from a favorite show is a way of showing off, so its possible to sell a series by the two-episode (25min episodes) DVD volume, then the boxed set with trinket to all pre-orders, then the collectors box set, all to the same customer. Plus a wide range of merchandise on top of that.

However, that is just one income stream for the anime producers. With other income streams under pressure, there's the risk of having all your eggs in one basket - and there also the question of just how much anime can be produced on the back of harvesting a large share of the income of obsessive otaku.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 09:59:46 AM EST
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For comparison, the original:

... in which I think Beyonce looks like some kind of hypersexualised cyborg freak, compared to that cover.

But the cover is a cheat too. The video performance has nothing to do with the recording, which is heavily autotuned and looped. It looks folksy and cute, but it really isn't.

Pomplamoose won't get any income for their time. It's an enjoyable cover that probably took a day or two to put together.

But it's free entertainment.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 11:14:19 AM EST
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I think the rules of the Video Song are given as:
This cover is a VideoSong, a new medium with 2 rules:
  1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).
  2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

So not every loop is on screen at the same time, but supposedly every loop shows up on screen sometime.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 12:00:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Also, I don't think it is auto-tuned ... any more than the Carpenters were, when they showed a single voice is often able to keep a tighter harmony with a tape of itself than with another voice live.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 12:16:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
... autotuner - according to the Video Song rules you can do any production trick you want to, as long as at some point you show it being done.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 12:18:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Melodyne is the tool of choice in the studios I visit. You can 'quantize'  a track i.e. autotune it, but to melodyne it means you retain the entire envelope of the sound as you shift it to any fraction of a note. Quite complex harmonies can be post-produced - for any musical sound source.

And loop technology is way past simple repetition.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 12:38:04 PM EST
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If they use it to manipulate the sound, its supposed to show up on screen sometime. I don't know anything beyond Audacity, so I wouldn't know what to look for.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 12:49:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Tricky to deconstruct. Although it is possible to record all actions upon a file. But retro-fitting i.e. analysis of a mixed down sound file is notoriously difficult. It's something I tried to do as a producer for analogue recordings: find out how someone else's musical 'effect' was achieved and reproduce it.

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 03:15:33 PM EST
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Thing is, if they are playing by the rules (have no idea whether they made up the rules), there's a shot somewhere in the clip of them doing whatever they are doing. EG, when they do the scratch effect with the patch box, they show it.

If they did the scratch effect with some other device or on the computer, and just pretended to do it with the patch box, that would be cheating. If they made a click sound electronically and showed it as closing a classic If they muffled the bass drum (their September cover) electronically but showed it being done with a muppet hand puppet, that would be cheating. And confer where they have the keyboard that is clearly computer filtered, they have both the keyboard and the laptop in one of the shots.

Its all samples mixed together, but they claim, at least, to show where all the of the samples come from in the video.

... though maybe La Vie en Rose is more apropos ...


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 04:21:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Recording, EQ and such which weren't shown - probably done in Logic, which has quite a good pitch correction plug-in.

I'd bet on the opening harmony being autotuned, because it's just a little too perfect and shiny. But after that it gets less clear. There's quite a bit of timing slop on the vocals, which suggests live recording for at least some of the harmony lines.

Not that I'd want to be too picky - it's a very good cover, and I like it a lot more than the original.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 04:11:32 PM EST
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Based on her Edith Piaf, which can't possibly be auto-tuned, I think the lass just has decent pitch.

And of course, there's no promise to show every sample they recorded, just the ones they used.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 04:24:32 PM EST
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I think there is a commonality. In both cases we are dealing with skilled labor attempting to control work product and capital attempting to keep labor as labor.
by rootless2 on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 07:14:10 AM EST
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But in collaborative publications, in whatever media, there is often multiple skilled labor / capital interactions and the capital tapped by the "producer" in a producer/director relationship at the start of a product may well be distinct from the capital represented by the distributor.

Breaking down distributor strangleholds sounds great, but if it is at the expense of killing off the production studios, its not so great.

Studio Rikka and Directions Inc., that produced Time of Eve seem to working on a "direct to stream" model, producing six shorter-then-television format episodes over the course of about a year, with Crunchyroll their American distribution partner. They also sold DVD singles of the episodes in Japan.

(They have also announced that they will release the series as a movie in Japanese theatres accompanied by a BlueRay release. So if the whole package does well enough for a second series, that is a "direct to stream/DVD-single, repackage as film for theatrical / Blue-Ray / DVD release" model.)

All English subs are available for free stream for the first season of Time of Eve (recommended), but I don't know whether there are European streaming rights restrictions. Part of Crunchyroll getting set up for all legit streaming was filtering streams by country of destination, which leads to constant complaints about specific series that are not available in specific countries.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Tue Oct 20th, 2009 at 10:57:30 AM EST
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