The Open Music Model

Shuman Ghosemajumder has a very sensible proposal for file sharing. Basically it comes down to unlimited downloads and sharing of music files for a flat monthly fee; the fee would compensate creators and copyright holders. This is more or less the model currently used by emusic, of which I am a subscriber. The emusic service is worth a lot more to me than the $10/month I pay as a subscriber; I can get albums I want easily, in unencrpyted mp3 format, without the annoying searches and problems of download times and falsely labeled files that I encounter on the services that the RIAA is trying to suppress. The sole problem with emusic is that it only carries music by certain (not all) independent labels. Shuman’s proposal would generalize this sort of model to all recorded music. I am inclined to think that the record companies would be better off in the long run if they adopted such a business model (together, perhaps, with a small tax on blank media such as already exists in Canada in return for the legalization of personal file copying). But the record industry will never do such a thing as long as they maintain their current gangster mentality (the current RIAA lawsuits are essentially shakedowns of people who can’t afford to pay; and I suspect that, if push came to shove, the industry would sacrifice profits in order to maintain absolute control over their “product”). I suppose we can only hope….

Shuman Ghosemajumder has a very sensible proposal for file sharing. Basically it comes down to unlimited downloads and sharing of music files for a flat monthly fee; the fee would compensate creators and copyright holders. This is more or less the model currently used by emusic, of which I am a subscriber. The emusic service is worth a lot more to me than the $10/month I pay as a subscriber; I can get albums I want easily, in unencrpyted mp3 format, without the annoying searches and problems of download times and falsely labeled files that I encounter on the services that the RIAA is trying to suppress. The sole problem with emusic is that it only carries music by certain (not all) independent labels. Shuman’s proposal would generalize this sort of model to all recorded music. I am inclined to think that the record companies would be better off in the long run if they adopted such a business model (together, perhaps, with a small tax on blank media such as already exists in Canada in return for the legalization of personal file copying). But the record industry will never do such a thing as long as they maintain their current gangster mentality (the current RIAA lawsuits are essentially shakedowns of people who can’t afford to pay; and I suspect that, if push came to shove, the industry would sacrifice profits in order to maintain absolute control over their “product”). I suppose we can only hope….

Behind the Blip

Matthew Fuller’s Behind the Blip; Essays on the Culture of Software (also available directly from Autonomedia) is not a very inviting read (its flashes of surrealism and delightful nastiness are not enough to redeem its clotted prose and its reified theoryspeak), but it raises important question about software, its meaning and its uses. What ideological assumptions, and what power relations, are built into the way programs work, and especially into their “interface” with the user? Fuller hammers away at this question, and convincingly argues that such things are never neutral. The book is less effective, however, at proposing any sort of alternative (isn’t that always the problem? it certainly is for me in my own writing). The things he does propose – free, open-source software on the one hand, and an interrogation, probably by artists, of the ideological underpinnings and hidden levels of code on the other – are not really satisfactory. Open source software, for one thing, tends still to be too demanding and difficult to be used by anyone who doesn’t already have a high level of technical skill; being able to read the source code doesn’t do me any good, since I can’t understand it; even the surface usage of such programs is difficult for computer users who (like my parents, for instance) have considerably less experience than even I do. As for Brechtian artistic strategies of unveiling the hidden substructures of code – one could include under this rubric the two software projects Fuller himself was involved in, and writes about, Web Stalker (an alternative browser) and Natural Selection (an alternative search engine) , as well as other celebrated web art projects like those of jodi.org, I can only say that the relatively meager results of such projects, compared with the theoretical sophistication that went into making them up in the first place, only suggests that our critical paradigms of demystification, alienation-effects, deconstruction, and so on, are far behind the times, because they were developed for print, or live performance, or other, older media, and simply do not work with the new (electronic, net-based) media we are experiencing today.

Matthew Fuller’s Behind the Blip; Essays on the Culture of Software (also available directly from Autonomedia) is not a very inviting read (its flashes of surrealism and delightful nastiness are not enough to redeem its clotted prose and its reified theoryspeak), but it raises important question about software, its meaning and its uses. What ideological assumptions, and what power relations, are built into the way programs work, and especially into their “interface” with the user? Fuller hammers away at this question, and convincingly argues that such things are never neutral. The book is less effective, however, at proposing any sort of alternative (isn’t that always the problem? it certainly is for me in my own writing). The things he does propose – free, open-source software on the one hand, and an interrogation, probably by artists, of the ideological underpinnings and hidden levels of code on the other – are not really satisfactory. Open source software, for one thing, tends still to be too demanding and difficult to be used by anyone who doesn’t already have a high level of technical skill; being able to read the source code doesn’t do me any good, since I can’t understand it; even the surface usage of such programs is difficult for computer users who (like my parents, for instance) have considerably less experience than even I do. As for Brechtian artistic strategies of unveiling the hidden substructures of code – one could include under this rubric the two software projects Fuller himself was involved in, and writes about, Web Stalker (an alternative browser) and Natural Selection (an alternative search engine) , as well as other celebrated web art projects like those of jodi.org, I can only say that the relatively meager results of such projects, compared with the theoretical sophistication that went into making them up in the first place, only suggests that our critical paradigms of demystification, alienation-effects, deconstruction, and so on, are far behind the times, because they were developed for print, or live performance, or other, older media, and simply do not work with the new (electronic, net-based) media we are experiencing today.

Mobile Phone Number Portability

According to Business Week (v ia Gizmodo):
“This Thanksgiving, America’s 147 million cell-phone users will indeed have something to be thankful for: On Nov. 24, we’ll all finally be allowed to switch carriers without having to change our phone number. It’s the chance consumers have been anticipating. Now, without any inconvenience, we finally will be able turn the table on wireless carriers that have been torturing us for years with dropped calls, inconsistent customer service, and complicated price plans that require an advanced degree in comparative analysis to comprehend. ”
I’ve never quite understood this reasoning. Because the biggest cost and difficulty in switching wireless providers is not having to change your number, but having to buy a new phone–since most mobile phones are locked to a single service provider. Buying unlocked phones is prohibitively expensive; while providers subsidize the cost of phones locked to their networks, usually only the cheapest models are provided actually for free. So it does cost more than it should to switch providers, even if the number stays the same.

According to Business Week (via Gizmodo):
“This Thanksgiving, America’s 147 million cell-phone users will indeed have something to be thankful for: On Nov. 24, we’ll all finally be allowed to switch carriers without having to change our phone number. It’s the chance consumers have been anticipating. Now, without any inconvenience, we finally will be able turn the table on wireless carriers that have been torturing us for years with dropped calls, inconsistent customer service, and complicated price plans that require an advanced degree in comparative analysis to comprehend. ”
I’ve never quite understood this reasoning. Because the biggest cost and difficulty in switching wireless providers is not having to change your number, but having to buy a new phone–since most mobile phones are locked to a single service provider. Buying unlocked phones is prohibitively expensive; while providers subsidize the cost of phones locked to their networks, usually only the cheapest models are provided actually for free. So it does cost more than it should to switch providers, even if the number stays the same.