|
Donkeyphant Summer 2002 |
||
| Talk Back | Common Dreams |
|
|
In this Issue:
Racism? We don't got no stinkin racism! Racism has gone underground in the United States. It's everywhere. It's nowhere. It's invisible. A white hood is no longer needed to identify the racists in the US. If you're white (and preferably driving an SUV), you're part of the club. Last month, Michael Moore visited Berkeley, California on his book tour, where he made the following the statement:
Is there racism in America? If you watch television, you hear these words a lot: melting pot, diversity, and democracy. Do these words accurately describe America or is this the corporate media's attempt to placate its audience into feeling good about themselves? After all, happy people like to shop. Whose America is it anyway? Are there two Americas: one for those who "fit in" and another -- separate and unequal -- for everyone else? What purpose does racism serve, and, more specifically, who does it serve? What is racial profiling about? Is it only a good idea to those who are unaffected by it? Rather than wax further on this subject myself, I enlisted an expert on the subject, Bill Ong Hing, author and Professor of Law and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis:
Now that you're back, I'd like to point out two heinous crimes against humanity committed in the not-so-distant past that many of us benefited from:
The United States of America was founded on racism. The "pursuit of happiness" was not intended for everyone, not even women. We can't move forward as a nation without addressing these two crimes. We can continue to hope for the best, using flimsy words like "opportunity" and "job training" and "minimum wage." But these are just band-aids on top of a bleeding open wound that continues to drain the life out of the City on the Hill. With these crimes alive and well in the American psyche, justifying the killing of Arabs and "others" is simply too easy. How should we deal with these crimes that we've inherited? I'd like to hear your thoughts. Terrorist Gang Members I find it disturbing that the Bush administration are associating terrorists and gang members. This dangerous precedent will generate even more bias against Afro American and Latino youth. To see where the US is headed with this association, we merely need to look at Israel. The threat is everywhere when poverty is the status quo. We need to follow the goodness of our hearts and support programs like Habitat for Humanity and drug treatment rather than pouring billions of dollars down the industrial prison injustice system. Are gang members terrorists? I'd like to hear your thoughts. Napster: Candle in the Wind As the saying goes, the light that burns brightest burns shortest. Nothing is more true than the Napster debacle. May 2002 was the end of the line for Napster as the world knew it. Back in 1999, I was certain that a record company would buy Napster and shut it down. But to my surprise, Napster kept going like the Energizer bunny on speed. Eventually though, lawyers and judges prevailed. Like the title of a bad Johnny Cash song, The Law shut Napster Down, but not before several competing networks sprung up like weeds. Like the mythological Hydra: cut off one head, and two more grow in its place. First, let's get one thing clear: I am not a sixteen year old music thief (sorry to the sixteen year olds out there who aren't thieves). I am concerned, just as I am with regards to the Patriot Act, about the Bush administration's propensity to restrict my ability to do what I want as long as I'm not harming anyone. I like my mp3 player and WinAmp and would like to play to the music I own on the device I choose, thank you very much. While I understand that the effects of piracy have the potential to harm everyone in terms of higher prices and loss of new artistic works, I am equally concerned about our loss of liberties to powerful corporations who already enjoy billions in revenue and really aren't concerned about the plight of artists or consumers for that matter. Anyone who depends upon their own creative works for their livelihood should be concerned about Napster and the other file sharing networks. But whether that concern translates into a rational fear is a matter of debate. Who does file sharing threaten, and why? At the risk of veering off course for a moment, please consider that this is a relatively trivial matter. Life on planet earth is quickly diverging into two extremes: the physical "real" world, which is as harsh (if not more so) as it was 100 years ago, and "cyberspace" which is unreal and exists for the entertainment of a small fraction of the population that control most of world's natural resources. The most profound philosophical questions of our present day ask where our societies and civilizations are headed in the long term. Cyberspace is conveniently devoid of the poor, hungry, and homeless majority of the six billion people on the planet. Those who spend the majority of their lives in cyberspace are likely to become even more ambivalent toward the plight of those who have no access to food, education, labor, or even safety. The gap between the haves and the have-nots will therefore continue to widen. Larger and larger armies will be needed to keep the masses (aka "terrorists") down. But as ancient Rome has tried to teach us, this situation does not last forever. At some point the masses will refuse to keep the wheels turning, the cheap food supply will dwindle, and, like the Pharaohs, the powerful and their supporters will be executed in great numbers. But, quite expectedly, this issue is not debated by the elite media that controls our airwaves and, soon, cyberspace. Media conglomerates like Sony, BMG, and Vivendi are understandably threatened by technology that makes it easy to redistribute their intellectual property. The fat and rich are worried, and since they own the vertical and the horizontal, everyone must hear about their suffering. Each year, the profits of the media giants tumble. Of course the Internet is to blame, not their over-produced soulless and irrelevant products. Record labels, the pimps that they are, have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde relationship with recording artists. On one hand, the labels assume the role as fierce protectors of artists' financial livelihoods, spending with abandon on public relations, attorneys, and court fees. On the other hand, they resort to devious business practices to cheat naive musicians. They support insidious laws like the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which, among other things, rips off the artists' families indefinitely. It is hard to read the RIAA's press releases without seeing the irony and hypocrisy in almost every sentence. Taking money out of artists' pockets was business as usual when media conglomerates were running the scams. If record labels truly cared about recording artists, they would do everything in their power to boost music sales. Such as increasing airplay on radio stations. Unfortunately, a small number of corporations own most of the radio stations in the US. The majority of radio stations play a minimum number of songs that fit between the advertisements, and with a firm grasp of capitalism, most commercial radio stations expect to be paid for their "promotional" services. One promising avenue to break the choke-hold of corporate-owned radio is the Internet. However, the music industry is doing all it can to destroy Internet radio. Mr. Hyde once against shows his ugly head. Rather than shun technology, media corporations now depend upon computer scientists and electrical engineers to protect their treasure chest of recorded works. If they have their way, media conglomerates will entice, via bribery, Congress to ban CD burners and even $10 tape recorders. In their ideal world, these contraband appliances will be replaced by devices that check for "watermarks" and other buzzwords that, ultimately, will not work. The result? Music will be even more expensive, sales will continue to drop, and consumers will tire of bland over-produced music that they can't listen to on their favorite device. Meanwhile a handful of technologists will enjoy a lifetime of gainful employment. Of course, computer software is equally at risk, as is everything else that can be digitally copied. This includes movies, photographs, essays, news, sporting events, novels, paintings, cartoons, drawings, etc.. Interestingly, the rise of "open source" software coincides with the meteoric rise of the Internet itself. Could it be that hundreds if not thousands of computer programmers have already conceded defeat? Are musicians next? Should the Internet be shut down? Naturally, attorneys don't want to see that happen. The Internet is the Mother Lode for firms that specialize in copyright law. They will continue to support the two antagonists -- copyright law and the digital age -- until both are sufficiently bloodied and penniless. Digital technology like the Internet make copyright law impossible to enforce without enormous resources. Those with a considerable war chest will be able to slow down (but never stop) illegal copying, at least until the money to pay attorneys' fees runs out. The copyright cops will continue chase the pirates, as long as it's profitable to do so. Technology can be used to slow down copyright violators. There are many ways to license software over the Internet, the proof of which is in Microsoft Windows XP and Office XP. The licensing in these Microsoft products is probably the best thing that ever happened to Linux and Star Office. Record companies could release music in a format that CD players, and therefore CD burners, couldn't play. Sounds stupid, but it has already been tried. Similarly, authors could shun HTML, PDF, and Microsoft Word formats and release their works exclusively for eBooks. Of course, nobody owns an eBook. Let's face it: this is a very difficult problem. There is a fine line between protecting content and pissing off consumers. If it is true that illegal copying will eventually eliminate profits, that's a sad reality indeed. High-quality creative works will eventually disappear. No more new music, no more new movies, no more new books. Just disco and reruns for all time. (Unfortunately, nothing can stop Spiderman II.) But perhaps the real problem is having to drive to a theater to pay $9 for a 90 minute movie. Perhaps the real problem is paying $16 for a metal disc when the consumer only likes one song. Perhaps the entertainment distribution system of yesterday has become too inconvenient, too limiting, and too expensive. Instead of funding the FBI to raid the homes of peer-to-peer nodes, perhaps advertising is the answer. Commercial movies today advertise all kinds of goods -- Levis, BMW, Coke, Marlboro, etc.. Producers don't do this because they like the brands. They do it because product placement is as profitable as selling tickets. If I could listen to "on demand" internet radio on my portable wireless mp3 player, I would gladly suffer through a few ads every 10 minutes. In fact I'd give up my personal information of what I like to listen to and I'd even pay a monthly fee to make the ads go away. The same goes for movies and other content. The media giants could leverage the same technology that they slander and disdain to enrich themselves and artists while keeping their customers happy. Profits would likely soar due to the larger audience and additional revenue sources. But the old white men who run these operations simply can't stomach changing anything. It's their bald heads that will be severed in case something goes wrong. Instead of solutions, instead of pleasing consumers, we have to put up with their whining and complaining that they're just too incompetent to fight the bad old Internet, the wolf at the door who'll huff and puff and blow down their fragile business. The handful of rock stars such as Metallica and pulp authors such as Jackie Collins will not be affected by the Internet in their lifetimes. For future generations, the deck is already stacked against creative individuals, with or without Napster and its look-alikes. The path to riches is fraught with road blocks, thanks to the media corporations that seek to control all modes of distribution. Who will win: consumers, media conglomerates, artists, or the Internet? It's clear that nobody, except perhaps Ralph Nader, cares about consumers. Similarly, artists already stand to lose, because they have little choice but to take whatever they can get until they wise up and use the Internet as a weapon. And finally, now that Time-Warner owns one of the Internet's few pillars, AOL, the Internet itself is at risk by the rabid jackals that call themselves publishers. Of course, the Internet will survive, but expect most of the high-quality content to flee the Internet to the safe haven of the closed for-pay networks owned by cable and satellite operators. Which means no more free mp3s. That's fine with me, as long as I can continue to rip my CDs to mp3 format, because last I checked, this is still a free country, no thanks to the Bush family. How will artists make money in the future? I'd like to hear your thoughts. Read the latest issue of Donkeyphant Dear Senator Feinstein,I am deeply concerned about the Bush administration's foreign policy,
especially with regards to the Middle East. Recent events in
Afghanistan are an example of how not to go about this process.
Afghanistan is likely to be ruled by a regime that is just as brutal, racist,
sexist, and undemocratic as the Taliban. Replacing Hussein with another
CIA-trained dictator will not result in a long-term solution. Regards, DonkeyPhant.com Do you agree? Is this totally off-base? I'd like to hear your thoughts. The Hitler Youth also Pledged their Allegiance I'm relishing the fact that the ridiculous and unnecessary words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance have come under official scrutiny by some members of the justice system. This certainly won't last long. So close yet so far. The entire "pledge" is offensive, unconstitutional, and un-American. Publicly pledging one's allegiance to anything that should be self-evident can only be beneficial to those who wish to deceive. This was well demonstrated by the Senators and Representatives last week on the House steps as they recited the pledge, yelling "under God" as loud as possible, like school children. These evil and deceptive politicians are far from the patriots that they pretend to be. They openly take bribes for votes in an age when technology could completely dismantle the representative form of government in favor of a real democracy. They will do all they can to make sure that doesn't happen. Forcing children to parrot phrases that they can't possibly understand is something that our grandparents died fighting against in World War II. It's an affront to their memory and their brave deeds. But, I fear this is merely a smokescreen by the Supreme Court to push their radical right-wing agenda. Let the people get in a tizzy about religion, patriotism, and education, while their corporate-thieving contributors go Scot-free. |