Hellooo blog!

I'm feeling rather gewd this morning, although I'm not entirely sure why.

I can say that I was very pleased to see the return, at least in some form, of my former MSTU2000 tute-hijacker & fellow blogger Paul Curtis. He is the man behind Valve records and also behind the stunt - teetering between cheese & big brother (um, wait a moment...) - it's the 'band in a bubble'. Regurgitator is the eponymous band & ...look! The bastards have been given a copy of Halo 2. Huh...I hope it sux.

Paul deserves a band like Regurgitator - check out all the awesome names on his label roster - most of those are unlikely to make any money. Check out that essay on music downloads (1st link), too: Gah, that's what an essay should be like; very informative. Although it doesn't explicitly target what I consider to be the major (and largely unheralded) issue raised by the whole hoo-ha, that is: While illegal downloads are exactly that - and really, no matter what you say, in some sense you are ripping off the artist - this is matched by the (sadly legal) exploitation which major record labels engage in, where artists receive something less than 3% of any record sale proceeds. Paul's essay is so detailed that it manages to say this, at least obliquely, anyway.

The debate on digital downloads is unavoidable as Internet accessibility for music consumers has dramatically expanded. The home recording cassette tape issue of the 1970s, saw the gatekeepers panic in the face of what they thought was a potential loss of income. This issue has escalated dramatically with the advent of computers, digital technology and the Internet. Here is a vastly superior system whereby quality reproductions can be made with much greater ease, exchanged in a globally accessible set-up to anyone who has a computer – a threatening proposition to record labels who’s existence is premised on the commercial exploitation of the copyrights they license from artists.

I don't think this explicitly calls them slavemasters - but it's a very easy conclusion to draw. There's also an example of a nearly utopian solution:

“One of the things needed for the market, and perhaps missing from it, is a system geared towards the bottom end – those who self-distribute or are not commercially successful” (Mackenzie), noted by Brett Cottle from APRA (Australian Performing Rights Association) in regard to Sydney composer Charlie Chan. After selling 65,000 CDs from her website she has invested in developing an independent online music platform, ‘Martian Method’, which “ allows musicians to publish and sell their songs, and collect payments, either on their own website or from a central website” (Mackenzie). This approach exemplifies disintermediation whereby the “intermediaries between the creative artists and their audiences” (Flew 106), traditionally part of the production, distribution and circulation process, are dismantled. At present the process involves multiple layers, from content creation to content reception, but what the potential of the Internet offers is a more direct relationship between artist and consumer mediated only by the download service. A particular facet of the rhetoric surrounding the more radical potentials of the Internet regards the prospect of bypassing corporate record labels and taking independence to its purest form.

Hey, I should really get around to blogging some reading related stuff. There was one other thing I wanted to mention that caught my attention. I've found all manner of interesting stuff relating to protests by players in the massively multiplayer online role-playing-game (mmorpg) Star wars: Galaxies. That first link tells it differently from what I originally heard: Players started trading fake currency (umn - that's fake, virtual, game money) & this, understandably ticked off those who weren't behaving fraudulently. Sony (to whom the game is licensed by Lucasarts) took a while to step in and when they did it was a cause for even greater unhappiness among many players: Punishment was severe - those trading the fake currency were banned for life - but the real sting was those who had (even unwittingly) received fake currency were banned too, just for having it in their possession. Then what amounted to an exhilarating layer of 'reality' was added to the online star wars experience: Players congregated in huge numbers in popular locations - jamming the servers with protests and sympathy for those unfairly banned. Sony (read Evil galactic empire) stepped in again, sending suspiciously bland looking avatars (read Sith lords in disguise) on to the affected servers and announcing immanent shutdown of those servers (read destruction of your planet by the death star) if protest did not cease. Not only did this occur, but, notoriously, players were randomly teleported across the star wars universe - some unlucky enough to end up in outer-space. Sadly, a lot of the screen shots and forum dialogue has gone (again, suspiciously) MIA: The shots of the Sony avatars & their paradoxically bland yet terrifying advent I liked especially. Please follow this link to the (note it is reworded) blandest of the bland statement about protests. Ah, Sony, never send tech-support nerds to do the work of diplomats. Even the news links from Penny arcade have gone missing - but at least this cartoon survived. Here is an interesting if slightly hyperbolic article about other such behaviour online; note the innocently prophetic line about SW:G.
Please also follow this link to the latest hilarious P-A cartoon about Star Wars cash-ins and bumbles - way to go George.
Umn, I think I've worked out what we're supposed to be writing about class-wise this week. Well, I got all Marxist about Tom O'Regan's analysis of the film industry. Actually, I turned off all my 'anti-rant' safeguards in the tute & just frothed, gnashed & yelled about free-trade-agreements, economic exploitation, destruction of culture & made dire prognostications about Australia becoming Mexico.
I know Tom is off on his whole 'engagement with the policy-makers' thing - & what seems too 'right' in one context seems too left in another. I've spent a lot of time hanging out with the smaller end of the film-making business, where Fox studios is a place you will never make a film while all the government policy is directed towards propping it up & stopping you from making films.
Typifying those who stand against the 'global-trend' in film finance & production is Australian-European filmmaker Paul Cox. There is a famous incident from the time Paul resided in South Australia (I think): He received a letter from the ministry of the arts which asked, matter-of-factly, "it's all very well that you make artful, critically acclaimed films, but why aren't you giving us big box-office returns?" Now Paul lives in Europe. Paul describes the Americanisation of film industries around the world as 'a necropolis': Steam-rolling fragile, genuinely-local films out of existence.
Sure, I know that the majors have their 'indie arms' & I know that they produce non-English language films, like the Donald Sutherland one Tom mentions. This does not really make the industry OK. Hearking back to Marxism - it is all part of the brittle superstructure; the base is finance & that rules all: Whatever the money says, goes & government policy is pandering to that. 'Partial industries' are not very good for local filmmaking - while international productions can use the 'partial' local facilities and then make the rest of their film (eg post-production) elsewhere, what do the locals do? More than this, the specialised local facilities are often priced out of the reach of impoverished local filmmakers.
Indie filmmakers (and this includes some quite successful folk) are always picking up what they can, where they can. Hell, a lot of people who wouldn't consider themselves indie are doing the same thing.
Studio finance, when you get it, is like a deal with the devil anyhow. The studio has to justify why it's spending x-million dollars on the project by attaching hundreds of 'due-diligence' personnel - & they aren't earning their money unless they're making revisions to the script each and every day - giving it that ol' dollar magnetism - so what started out as a subtle, insightful drama ends up with a hilarious talking donkey as the star.
All the time the majors are spending larger and larger chunks of money (& not just on movies, either) & are so concerned for their bottom line they are becoming less and less creative, while at the same time crushing those elements of the industry that are capable of being innovative.
Hmm, I should probably give my rant gland a rest - it's kinda glowing red-hot. I get the feeling like I'm trying to justify myself over and over again, too - & I'm not sure if I'm doing a great job. Oh well. I wuz gonna put some more stuff in this & post it later - but I think I'll just post this now & do another later.

That being the case,

Biacondios blog,

C.

PS - Something funny happened while I was spell-checking this - Blogger has a really terrible - and quite American - spellcheck. It flagged 'Americanisation' & asked me if I wanted to replace it with 'Americanization'. He he haaaaaugh.