Former Secretary of Economics of France Jacques Attali argues for a new system of classification of music in his book Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Attali posits the need for new theories and forms to “speak to new realities”(4). Adorno’s “Culture Industry Reconsidered” criticizes the large industries of culture in ways that parallel and illustrate Attali’s category, an analogue to the postmodern classification, repetition. What happens because of repetition is both beneficial and detrimental to the modern music industry.

The main mark of Attali’s repetition is mass production. Adorno concedes that music, classified as a ‘cultural form’, already had the markings of a product as soon as it earned a living for the musician. The new reality created by the culture industry is that music now has the goal of making a profit translated directly onto it (Adorno, 4). The result is a commodity, a product mass-produced and replicated to absurdity. Mass production allows for higher profits, but replicated absurdity has a lower perceived value. This is easy to sell, but the value will consistently be degraded in the eyes of the more engaged consumer.

Adorno describes culture as something that does not normally adjust itself to peacefully co-exist with the needs of humanity, but rather it would by its very nature mount a dissent against the solidified relationships of power humanity labors under (4). Art, as a political animal created by people, cannot help but be informed by relationships of power and thereby criticize and acknowledge them. Adorno illustrates the conflict with creativity created by the culture industry’s standardization and conformity. Art, via the artistic processes, is generally reflexive towards itself and has a reflexive relationship with the viewer, but this product has only the process of reproduction from the outset (Adorno 14). Mass produced art is a copy of an image that was originally captured by the artist.

As a replicated commodity, music is unfettered from reality, floating meaninglessly as a mediated golem. As musical products are pushed, they are infused with a sense of individuality. This marketed individuality and artificially front-loaded authenticity argues against the reality of the situation; these products are a duplicated sameness, not examples of new originality. By means of advertising and literal repetition, the “industry intentionally integrates its consumers from above” (Adorno, 4). Attali describes what happens when music is turned into product and ‘fetishized’; it is sold “as spectacle”, its consumption generalized, and then “stockpiled until it loses all meaning” (Attali, 5). Again, this is good for business only in the short term, because the sales pitch implies a unique meaning inherent in the product, but that meaning is undermined through both replication and sameness

Further, this ‘commodified’ art, as product, must be nearly devoid of these critiques if it is to maintain the highest profit value. Advertising’s job is made easier when the products are devoid of the aforementioned type of criticism, allowing the idea men to simply create an artificial link to the ‘new’. What once had the opportunity to engage and challenge the audience becomes merely a soundtrack for a moment or activity. It is even likely the industry had a specific moment or activity in mind when it thought to produce and promote the music itself. The mass replicated art can be seen as an antidote to criticism of power relations inherent in art produced by more labor intensive means. The marketed form lacks true art’s critique of power therefore the critics are silenced.

These golems are masked behind false description and classification of genre, leading to a set of choices that are real the same choice. By marketing revolution, the industry contains it within acceptable parameters (read non-revolution called revolution) and maintains the self-satisfying order that a profit-driven machine desires. This results in an imposed order which is beneficial for sales and therefore to the industries, and commands people “to toe the line” (Adorno 8).

Attali’s repetition may be seen as the plight of music in the postmodern era. This complete commodity is, via replication and by definition of reproducible, disconnected from the relationships and circumstances that created it; hence the golem. Adorno sees the selling of these simulacra and the necessary elimination of choice as equal to (and leading towards) fascism. Attali sees it as a locus of control, a type and mode of silencing by means of repetition.

So what does this have to do with copyright violation and ownership? These golems have limited utility as art, but as an expression of an idea, no matter how useless or trite, are copyrighted. For most people however, the limited utility of these works creates a sense of little value. While there are many arguments that there was a failure on the part of the industry to capitalize on an opportunity (Burkart and McCourt, Vaidhyanathan), even if they had, there are many people that wouldn’t accept the industry’s involvement anyways with the implied and explicit suppression of genuine critique. The golems are crap. Unintellectual property.

Compounding this problem for an industry interested in controlling profits and tastes were the payola scandals in which radio DJ’s were being paid to saturate the airwaves. This problem continuously resurfaces in one form or another. Briefly mentioned in Digital Music Wars, Billboard’s charts, routinely published in magazines like Rolling Stone and posted in stores, had accounting issues that when rectified, suddenly showed the best selling artist to be an unknown Garth Brooks who played, god forbid, something as unhip as country.

This series of failures to ‘get it’ and to control the tastes of the mass market are for many proof that the industry has only its own interest at heart. Many see the copyright issue as a legal way to control dissemination and control the greater discourse. For the rebels, the industry itself must change. The mass culture industry lacks credibility in general, and the music industry does specifically.

When some of these notions are applied to the software industry, some of the same things are visible. Microsoft has proposed (in court, I believed) that a license is non-transferrable. There is no first sale doctrine to protect someone reselling software. Microsoft maintains that a user purchases the right to use software, that this right is non-transferrable, and that it can even be temporary. There have been explorations into subscription service software that is in the cloud, which you access via the web with a password. Apple argues that to modify the operating system on an iPhone is a violation of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). What I have done on my computer, modifying software, is a violation of the agreement I made when I checked yes and installed it. It’s mine to use, not modify.

In a class blog, a fellow student mentions how he feels he only has temporary rights to a song. In many ways, the music industry agrees. I’d argue it was never what you wanted your music to be to begin with. This issue of temporary and limited ownership isn’t likely to go away. Speaking on behalf of BMG-Sony, Jennifer Pariser said “when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song” at the trial of Jamie Thomas. She has now been tapped to be senior VP of Litigation and legal affairs for the RIAA. Your rights are temporary and defined. Just last week, a writers guild spokesman argued that the text-to-speech function on Amazon’s new Kindle reader amounted to a ‘performance’, violating copyright and should be viewed as threat to the audio book industry. These kinds of logical gymnastic stunts should be viewed for what they are; power grabs on the part of a threatened, morally corrupt industry that is failing to see an opportunity instead of a threat.

Technorati Tags:
music, RIAA

Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block has been a moderate success for the network. Riding the momentum created by the cult late night Space Ghost Coast to Coast talk show, Cartoon Network created a niche for itself showing badly produced (or well produced to appear low budget) programming featuring drug humor and off color irreverent jokes. As this block of late night programming became more popular, the schedule expanded to weeknights, and then to a Saturday night themed more on anime, and now runs seven nights a week.
Unlike the other nights, which often feature shows as short as fifteen minutes in length, Saturday night is often completely half hour anime programs, dubbed into English. The night analyzed here included a rerun of Boondocks (a show originating from a comic strip about two inner city black children living in a quiet suburban or exurban environment), which interestingly started as a show for ABC’s Family network and was dropped unaired and then snatched up by Cartoon Network, the show Blood, the debut of a newly acquired show Death Note, and finally the classic of the genre’s second television series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig.
The scheduled formula goes like this; abstract ‘bump’ promoting the block, show starts and runs uninterrupted for half the episode, seven or eight commercials, another bump, the rest of the episode and credits, then another round of commercials plus a content advisory, followed by another bump, then the next show. Every half hour this repeats. The bumps are typically innovative and unusual. Some are simply white text on a black screen while hip hop plays gently in the background as the texts harangues someone who posted on their web site or brags about ratings for a show. On of their shows, Robot Chicken was nominated for an Emmy. That was fodder for a whole week of bumps.
The block is clearly for animation lovers. The ads run indicate an internet savvy audience base, in need of fast food, interested in action and superhero DVD releases, who occasionally go out to eat or watch a World Series game (honestly, in seven years of watching this block, I’ve never seen another ad for sports). Likely white, middle class, 18-38 year-olds are watching this, which means disposable income, even if discretionary. There were two different ads run that promoted other shows in the programming block on different nights.
This block (treating the identity of the network as separate) sees itself as a purveyor of cool, hip, irreverent, and violent media. The advertising for a movie based on a program from this block resulted in the Boston Bomb scare, and I’m sure it did wonders for the show. I originally emigrated to the block because of the use of recycled animation from the glory days of Hannah Barbara 1970’s programming, feeling vindicated as they ripped into detritus from a cultural machine that fed me garbage on Saturdays and didn’t see fit to give me anything on Sundays except for a clay-mation show featuring a boy and his dog each week learning to be good Christians, proselytizing. They’ve responded to this too, serving up Moral Orel as an answer to David and Goliath. Admittedly, until Space Ghost came back, I had begun to think nobody else remembered those days.

1 they help maintain the illusion that the town isn’t rife with corruption

2 the university continues spewing pro American imperialist economic drivel

thats it, thats all.

We recently added one more, simple request…

3 the Governor quietly appoint a reasonably capable democrat replacement for Obama

They have failed miserably on two counts, and truth be told they have increasingly been failing at number one for a while…

The state is unreliable.

The proposal of a master signifier by Lacan indicates the existence a kind of hierarchy among signifiers (of at least two levels) set by the ability of some signifiers to affect a bum rush of subjective rules and a cultural framework into the mind of the beholder.

Lacan’s theory that subjectivity is built by a kind of dialogue is the ultimate structuralist argument in that he argues language is fundamental to the formation of the self.

When desire, unconscious because it has ‘slipped beneath’ need, becomes a demand on the other, it places a locus of power over the subject because only the other can fulfill the need and the accompanying unconscious desire, thereby creating a defining boundary between the subject and the other.

Believing loss is inevitable, Kristeva sees depression as a time to renegotiate object relations, often through creative expression, and thereby step out of a relapsed ‘depressive position’ or worse yet, a schizoid one.

Kristeva’s notion of the abject and the accompanying required adherence to prohibition and law combined with her fixation on the biological elements of life cause Drew Carey’s nightmare of late night hog dog eating at Denny’s and the ensuing race home to haunt me when I drive.

Zizek’s theory of the gaze and voice gives me an excuse for my endless blathering at my wife (which she calls pseudo-intellectual inane chatter) because with the loss of my earliest frameworks of reality including maternal and partial objects I have to do this in order to stem the repressed fear of non-existence.

Kristeva believes that the processes of signification stem from a natural sate of affairs within the body and rises of its own accord, before the type of structuring Lacan describes takes place.

Abhorring any distinction between man and nature, Deleuze and Guattari argue that all reality is production, composed of binary machines linked in a ‘connective synthesis’ that is the production of production and is in and of itself identity production.

The RIAA is fighting a request for nearly $300,000 in attorneys’ fees after it was told to pay Tanya Andersen’s legal bills. The RIAA says that her attorney should get at most one tenth of that amount.

Read More…

Hah! Reactionary monetary attacks in the form of excessive legal tactics seemed to have been in vain in the lawsuit I commented on previously…
Typically reprehensible behavior used as a flailing response from panicked animals. I think Ars Technica sums it up very well.

Technorati Tags:
Andersen vs RIAA, Piracy, RIAA

Andersen attorney on RIAA suit: ‘They can’t run now’
By Eric Bangeman | Published: March 13, 2008 – 11:00PM CT

Friday may mark a significant milestone in the RIAA’s legal campaign against file-sharing, as it is the deadline for exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the record labels. Soon afterwards, discovery will begin, and all sorts of unsavory details about the RIAA’s legal campaign against suspected file-sharers are likely to emerge.

Andersen is a single mother living in Oregon who was sued by the record labels in February 2005. She eventually filed a counterclaim against the RIAA, and when the labels voluntarily dismissed their case against her last June, she filed a malicious-prosecution lawsuit. In it, Andersen accuses the RIAA of fraud, racketeering, invasion of privacy, libel, slander, deceptive business practices, and violations of the Oregon state RICO Act.

Last month, a federal judge dismissed Andersen’s original complaint, saying that she had “not adequately stated claims for relief,” but gave her a one-month window to refile. Her attorney, Lory Lybeck, told Ars that he plans to file a new 80-page complaint tomorrow. “The focus of the amended complaint is essentially the sham litigation and abuse of the federal judiciary to operate this criminal enterprise that has harmed Tanya Andersen and thousands of other people,” Lybeck said.

With a new complaint, the case is certain to move forward into the discovery phase, as the judge has told both sides that she would not entertain any further motions to dismiss this case.”

(Via .)

Andersen attorney on RIAA suit: “They can’t run now”

Ars Technica has become one of my favorite feed as of late…

The situation has completely gotten out of control. The rhetoric war being waged by the entertainment industry is starting to border on insane and untenable. The box office numbers last year were smashing, piracy was up at the same time, and the industry is still blaming piracy for a loss of revenue (like in the previous years). Hmmm. Profit down, piracy goes up, and then profits go up. Yep. Solid logic argues piracy is causing profit loss…you bet.

On the net neutrality front, the MPAA is supporting Comcast. Now this is just plain stupid. Does anyone really think that when the large broadband providers finally get it together on the bandwidth front that the won’t screw legal providers of entertainment? If Comcast gets what it wants, they will be free to throttle any traffic they do not have a financial stake in. Hollywood will be looking to distribute large, even HD, content. Direct downloads use too much bandwidth and P2P applications seem to be the way to go. Ooops, Comcast also distributes media content already on its ‘On Demand’ services. I wonder what P2P applications they might be developing to distribute via the web? Probably not something they’ll give out for free for hollywood to implement and compete directly with Comcast’s business. Once again, the entertainment industry is showing that amazing foresight they’re so famous for….

The RIAA is possibly in trouble because the company they’ve hired is facing violations in NY for acting as a private investigator without a license, besides the ethical implications of figuring its okay to snag a few “dolphins” in their net. More info:here

The RIAA is so out of touch, they officially maintain that mp3′s are illegal:
here

Threat Level at wired has this to say about the suit as of today:

here

Canned pirate meat, its what’s for dinner

Stay alert, watch the government, and watch your neighbor…

Technorati Tags:
Piracy, RIAA, Andersen vs RIAA

Over the years, many idioitas and sociopaths have utilized religious rhetoric which relies on selective quoting and understanding of scripture. The truth is, however, is that most canonical, non-canonical, and apocalyptic literature of the (so-called) Judeo-Christian traditions does not justify or intentionally promote violence.

The Bible itself, while at times naming names (which to an ancient type may itself be a form of violence) and portraying massacres, does not attempt to inspire the reader to take up arms. The bloody slaughter in the old testament, especially in the texts 1 and 2 Maccabees, in which a Taliban-like insurgency against hellenistic Selucid overlords, complete with a post-revolution ‘cleansing’ of the flock and and an ensuing ‘mob rule’ army lead by Judas Maccabee against any people that ever looked sideways at their Jewish neighbors, served the purpose of either justifying resistance to culturally assimilative forces or the suffering of the chosen people at the hand of God, or in the case of apocalyptic materials, laying out a promise vindication through a final adjudication.

In exploring this further, lets look at a couple of examples. The stories of resistance found in Daniel and Maccabees (all) were expressed during oppressions that occurred after the stories took place. Daniel, describing resistance to assimilation under captivity in Babylon, circulated during the Maccabean revolt, and similarly the Maccabees texts were popular at various times in Jerusalem and among the diaspora under Roman authority.

These stories are articulating a sense of historical separation between the Jews and the gentiles. Rene Girard has written about what he calls generative scapegoating, in which a people define themselves through stories that contain an ousted or destroyed other that comes during a time or crisis for the community. The other is blamed for the crisis and then destroyed or driven away. As the other is exorcised, the society is reunited and reunified through the process. Something similar is occurring here. During crisis, either in Babylonian captivity or under the Selucids, the Jews felt their sense of social difference and identity slipping away.

Returning from Babylon after the Persian armies overthrew the empire in existence there, the cultural elite that had been deported to Babylon returned, bringing with them rules of correct behavior and adherence to the law that served to preserve a cultural identity amid a sea of (arguably friendly) assimilating forces. Oddly, these people who had been far away suddenly come home with a strict interpretation of ‘Jewishness’ and proceed to establish the definitions of faith and devotion for the rest of society. The text describing their resistance to Babylon is Daniel.

Daniel was popular during the Maccabean uprising, when Judas Maccabees lead his holy armies and expanded the kingdom of the Jews to a size that rivaled the kingdom of David. The truth is, however, there is no historical evidence of the massive slaughter of the Canaanites tantamount to holy human sacrifice in faith to God on a grand scale. We must apologize to those who have spent the last several hundred years or more attempting to justify the destruction of the Canaanite people by arguing that they were morally corrupt on a level beyond comprehension as its just not likely to have happened. These stories are helping to define the chosen people as different from their neighbors and as inheritors of a freedom to be Jewish purchased at a great cost.

Apocalyptic literature from the Qumran community, Daniel, and later, The Book of Revelation, paints visions of the end times. In the documents from Qumran such as The Community Rule and The War Scroll are scenes of regimented formations replete with the pomp and circumstance of hellenistic ideals of military strength. These are followed by portrayals of a violent and bloody war of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness. All the powerful civilizations know to these people crumble, one by one, under the unmitigated power of God’s divine plan as the righteous finally are victorious over the evils of the world.

These texts are literature that were to be read by indoctrinated people from a small community of religious adherents the felt persecuted by an impure society. The Qumran community was established by devout Jews who saw the Hasmonean (inheritors of the Maccabean dynasty of power) rulers as oppressive and wicked. The were awaiting the end times. The idea of these people having written these texts to inspire a military uprising among themselves is laughable especially in light of the code of conduct laid out in The Community Rule itself as military drills do not seem to fit into the strict schedule.

Rather, these are descriptions of a holy cosmic adjudication which justifies the pious lives of members of the community and the pure adherents of God’s law. The described war is cast as God’s work, and he alone can start and win it. There is simply no evidence of a call to trigger eskaton.

While appearing violent, these images are creating pictures of power, authority and military strength for more than vindictive revenge. Our rhetoric today is marked less violent, but we have different notions of symbols of authority and strength.

Ultimately there is one aspect to all of this that is very violent however, and that is the objectification of the enemy. This is the piece of rhetorical style picked up and used by those that continue to cite scripture to inspire hatred. By turning your enemies into monsters, you dehumanize them, turning them into monsters. You kill them off as humans. This changes them from a subject into an object. Object are not human.

Technorati Tags:
Bible, Religion

Background: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/02/16/taser/

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

March 13, 2008

Press Contact: XXXXXXX@riseup.net

RNC WELCOMING COMMITTEE ORDERS TASERS FOR EVERY PROTESTOR

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL – The RNC Welcoming Committee (RNC-WC), an anarchist
and anti-authoritarian organizing body based in the Twin Cities, announced
today that it has ordered tasers for each of its members and friends. The
announcement comes on the heels of last month’s St. Paul City Council
approval of a St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) request for 234 tasers.
Due to a unique corporate-anarchist confidentiality agreement, the exact
number of tasers or documentable evidence of this new order will not be
disclosed.

Both the SPPD and RNC-WC taser orders are scheduled to arrive before the
September 1 so-called Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul.
However, “The RNC Welcoming Committee’s order of tasers has absolutely
nothing to do with the upcoming Republican convention,” said Ann O’
Nymmity of the RNC-WC. “These deadly, yet humane, weapons are needed
simply to protect the safety of members of our community on a day-to-day
basis. The timing is purely a coincidence.”

Last month, St. Paul police spokesperson Tom Walsh made similar statements
to the Associated Press, saying that in regards to the RNC, his
department’s purchase is “in no way related [to the timing of the RNC in
St. Paul]. It simply isn’t.”

During scheduled protests of the RNC, local police and federal agents are
likely to get violent. In Minneapolis last August, police used tasers and
pepper spray to attack a nonviolent Critical Mass bike ride which
coincided with the “pReNC”, a weekend of radical organizing in preparation
for the RNC.

The RNC-WC does not have state-approved funding revenues. O’ Nymmity
explained: “Our plan is to finance the purchase through raids on local WMD
manufacturers, such as Alliant Techsystems.” The SPPD is funding their
taser purchase through $210,000 from drug raids. O’ Nymmity added:
“Through their website, the RNC Welcoming Committee is also accepting
contributions from the public.”

Tasers, manufactured by Taser International, Inc., range from $300 to
$1,000 and the fashionable weapons come in a variety of styles, including
“black pearl,” “electric blue,” “metallic pink,” “leopard print,” and
“forest camo.” O’ Nymmity noted, “We imagine St. Paul police will be
visiting us soon, and now we’ll have something to talk about when they do.
For instance, I can’t wait to compare my leopard print model to St. Paul
police deputy chief Matt Bostrom’s metallic pink one!”

Once the RNC-WC order is finalized, the St. Paul Police Department will no
longer have a monopoly on the weapons that have been implicated in
hundreds of deaths nationwide, including the killing of a Fridley man by
Minnesota State Troopers in January.

The Welcoming Committee has no plans to purchase machine guns, rubber
bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, concussion grenades, batons, water
cannons or helicopters, all of which will be at the disposal of local
police and federal agents in September.

O’ Nymmity concluded, “Convention delegates and attendees should feel free
to enjoy their five-star hotels, three-course meals, and “gentleman’s
clubs” without fear of protest or disruption. After all, if they follow
the law and don’t start any illegal wars or anything, what should they
have to worry about?”

Technorati Tags:
Republican National Convention, Tasers, St. Paul Police

The alternative to evolving is to adopt protectionist policies. Personally, protectionists have historically fraternized too much with isolationists for me to be socially comfortable in their presence. That aside, state-imposed trade deficits (read: barriers) can only lead to a stagnation or an opium war. These behaviors are likely to cause industrialized neighbors to blast through our border defenses and force narcotics and the accompanying dependency upon us all. It happened to China over a hundred years ago. Market forces will correct, even if it is ugly.

Technorati Tags:
NAFTA, Campaign, Hillary Clinton

So here’s my take on this:

Eichmann defence.
Plain and simple.
No, the telecom industry didn’t massacre Jews and claim they were following orders. Instead, they went followed the instruction of governmental authority engaged in the war on terror.
They engaged in illegal activities at the behest of the government, and since they feel they should be protected by this rationale, they can sue the government.

If we grant them immunity, we will never get justice on this issue. They should have held the authorities to a higher standard and made them produce legally binding proof of authority to give these orders and make these requests. If the telecom industry giants are sued, they will in turn seek redress from those that said they had the authority to do this. The government as a whole surely did not authorize or request these activities, and like a company sued for the action of rogue employees it can either offer up the employees or pay out big.

I would prefer the government pay out big and then seek redress in turn from the people that gave the illegal orders. Mad dog killers.

I may be dreaming, but I’m right.

Another thing I’m right about is that the members of Congress and the Executive Branch took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.
Period.