Month: June 2007

Rare are the times that a comment on a blog post makes you stop dead in your tracks. Such was the case this morning as I was getting my daily fix of Matt Asay’s posts over at InfoWorld’s Open Sources blog.

One of Matt’s articles this morning called out the RIAA’s influence peddling in Congress. Nothing earth-shattering, but informative nonetheless (he calls out his state’s senator, Orrin Hatch, who received $6,000 from the RIAA…an amount I suspect is more than Hatch has made as a songwriter).

Then I started reading the post’s comments. The third comment, by Peter Sysko, may be the single-most provocative comment I’ve yet to read in the blogosphere:

…i think its better that people in the world listen to the music that they want to listen to, rather than what they can afford.

Think about that for a second.

As a society, we’ve chosen to abdicate the value we place on art and culture to corporations — lawyers, really, when you think about it in the context of the RIAA and MPAA. We’ve chosen to let others determine the cost of admission to our exposure to cultural advancement.

Peter’s statement says as much about what’s happening today in software as it does about music. Proprietary companies — most notably Microsoft — are the RIAA/MPAA of software, clinging to business models that look backward instead of forward and seek to levy taxes on those that dare to challenge what they view as their monopolistic right to print money. The open source movement is doing to proprietary companies what MySpace, YouTube and other social media sites have done to the RIAA/MPAA: giving artists (in this case, software developers) a foundation to communicate, collaborate and sell to their customers without the arbitrary and outdated overhead imposed by those who are unable to adapt to the changing demands of their customers.

Well said, Peter.

Scrolling through my RSS feeds this morning, I notice there’s considerable buzz in the ether about 18 year old high school pole vaulter Alison Stokke. In a nutshell: she’s shattering state records, happens to be photogenic, and is now plastered all over the ‘net, i.e., American Idol hottie Antonella Barbra.

In one heavily-linked article, her father, defense attorney Allan Stokke, talks about how he surfs the web to protect her from potential stalkers. Well, that’s all fine and good…and what most of us would do to protect our children from society’s detritus if it were our daughters. However, maybe Allan Stokke should seriously reconsider resigning from his current profession (excerpted from feministing.com):

…Stokke’s father is the same guy who earlier this year defended a cop who jerked off on a stripper during a routine traffic stop. “She got what she wanted,” Al Stokke said, of the stripper. “She’s an overtly sexual person.”

I can imagine the dinner conversation at the Stokke table: “Yes, honey, I realize you feel this is an invasion of your privacy and you are hurt and offended, but, you know, it’s not really their fault. You are pretty and you did show the bare skin of your belly when you were breaking the records…and, I mean, c’mon, a “pole” vaulter? You pretty much deserve the attention.”

As the father of two daughters, it disgust me that I’m partly defined in the same demographic as Stokke.

Somebody get Reuters and its reporter, Martha Graybow, a Pulitzer. Heck, pull an old Nobel out of the closet and give it to them. They deserve it.

This morning, I was reading a story written by Graybow about the U.S. courts rejecting the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) broadcast decency limits. Basically, they said the FCC was “arbitrary and capricious” in defining (for all of us) what it thought was indecent. Well, no kidding.

But, unlike every other mainstream media outlet, Reuters had the cajones to include the verbatim words in dispute. In print. In a major media outlet. Against the wind of the puritan way most would’ve handled it.

And it’s a good thing, too. Because you only have to read the Republican FCC Chairman’s reaction to see the Crisco-lined slope this is headed:

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin angrily retorted that he found it “hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that ‘shit’ and ‘fuck’ are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.”

“If we can’t restrict the use (of the two obscenities) during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want,” Martin said in a statement.

Kudos to Reuters and Graybow.