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"We're definitely a post-Napster band," said Casey Spooner, singer for the New York City-based Fischerspooner . The band's first album, "#1," has already spent several weeks on Amazon U.K.'s Hot 100 list of top sellers along with Eminem and Queen, even though its first single won't be released until July. "We've had responses from the French West Indies, from Russia, from Israel -- you name it," Spooner said. "It's not because the record is available, it's because people have found it on the computer. It's great because radio is completely dead for the most part in the U.S. -- the Internet is really radio now."
"We're definitely a post-Napster band," said Casey Spooner, singer for the New York City-based Fischerspooner . The band's first album, "#1," has already spent several weeks on Amazon U.K.'s Hot 100 list of top sellers along with Eminem and Queen, even though its first single won't be released until July.
"We've had responses from the French West Indies, from Russia, from Israel -- you name it," Spooner said. "It's not because the record is available, it's because people have found it on the computer. It's great because radio is completely dead for the most part in the U.S. -- the Internet is really radio now."
The Internet's potential for promoting expression and empowering citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash with the medium's long-standing culture of openness, some leading Internet thinkers warn. At the annual Internet Society conference this week, the engineers who built the Internet and many of the policymakers who follow its development urged caution as governments try to exert control and businesses look to maximize profit.
The Internet's potential for promoting expression and empowering citizens is under threat from corporate and government policies that clash with the medium's long-standing culture of openness, some leading Internet thinkers warn.
At the annual Internet Society conference this week, the engineers who built the Internet and many of the policymakers who follow its development urged caution as governments try to exert control and businesses look to maximize profit.
But as old-line media celebrates its return to power and to vogue, some analysts and executives caution that the Internet's capacity to change the rules should not be discounted too quickly. Investors may have repudiated the Internet, they say, but consumers have not. "The Internet may not be doing so great on Wall Street, but it's doing great on Main Street," said Marshall Cohen, senior vice president for research at America Online. "As far as the people who are online, they're using it more and valuing it more." For consumers, that may be a good thing. But for media companies looking to the Internet for profits, it remains a frustrating reality. The "digital revolution" that many traditional media executives were convinced would topple them or make them rich has not materialized.
But as old-line media celebrates its return to power and to vogue, some analysts and executives caution that the Internet's capacity to change the rules should not be discounted too quickly. Investors may have repudiated the Internet, they say, but consumers have not.
"The Internet may not be doing so great on Wall Street, but it's doing great on Main Street," said Marshall Cohen, senior vice president for research at America Online. "As far as the people who are online, they're using it more and valuing it more."
For consumers, that may be a good thing. But for media companies looking to the Internet for profits, it remains a frustrating reality. The "digital revolution" that many traditional media executives were convinced would topple them or make them rich has not materialized.
The president of media giant News Corp. warns that the Internet has become a "moral-free zone," with the medium's future threatened by pornography, spam and rampant piracy.
The senior's poem--a joking commentary on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) effects on programmers--is one of the unconventional ways the computer science community is expressing its bewilderment at Capitol Hill's foray into their field. A few years ago, the confluence of policy and technology seemed something for wonks far away in Washington to ponder. A preview of the clash was glimpsed in the late 1990s, when a handful of geeks successfully battled the Clinton administration to ease export restrictions on encryption technology. Now a series of legal actions has brought the debate into the labs, homes and offices of millions of programmers, prompting some of them to emerge from their cubicles and take action. This time, as they say, it's personal.
The senior's poem--a joking commentary on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) effects on programmers--is one of the unconventional ways the computer science community is expressing its bewilderment at Capitol Hill's foray into their field.
A few years ago, the confluence of policy and technology seemed something for wonks far away in Washington to ponder. A preview of the clash was glimpsed in the late 1990s, when a handful of geeks successfully battled the Clinton administration to ease export restrictions on encryption technology.
Now a series of legal actions has brought the debate into the labs, homes and offices of millions of programmers, prompting some of them to emerge from their cubicles and take action. This time, as they say, it's personal.
Of course, what some find charming others see as condescending. Back when Napster was still in the early stages of being sued for copyright infringement, its executives would publicly express their belief, with all sincerity, that Napster would one day be embraced by the music industry: the industry just didn't understand the technology yet. Alas, understanding never came. Despite credible studies suggesting that sharing music files online actually leads consumers to buy more CD's rather than fewer, the association pressed forward with its suit and Napster was shuttered, its remains subject to a fire sale just last week. Some 80 million Napster users were scattered to the wind. And digital music distribution has become a dead zone where investors fear to tread.
Of course, what some find charming others see as condescending. Back when Napster was still in the early stages of being sued for copyright infringement, its executives would publicly express their belief, with all sincerity, that Napster would one day be embraced by the music industry: the industry just didn't understand the technology yet.
Alas, understanding never came. Despite credible studies suggesting that sharing music files online actually leads consumers to buy more CD's rather than fewer, the association pressed forward with its suit and Napster was shuttered, its remains subject to a fire sale just last week. Some 80 million Napster users were scattered to the wind. And digital music distribution has become a dead zone where investors fear to tread.
That's why the CARP/LOC ruling is so awful and wrong. It's about maintaining the star-making machinery that starts with the recording industry and works its way through commercial broadcasting, mass market advertising, arena performance events, cross-promotion and all the rest of it. Music file sharing was the listeners' way of working around the failure of commercial radio to serve any form of passion or connoisseurship about music. When the RIAA killed Napster, it was understandable to the degree that Napster conceivably threatened the very revenues on which the industry depended. Internet radio is also a way listeners, as well as professional broadcasters, can work around that same failure of commercial radio. But this time the RIAA's attacks are not in self-defense. Through CARP/LOC, the RIAA and its allies are viciously and murderously attacking something that not only fails to threaten them, but actually serves the very artists they pretend to care about.
That's why the CARP/LOC ruling is so awful and wrong. It's about maintaining the star-making machinery that starts with the recording industry and works its way through commercial broadcasting, mass market advertising, arena performance events, cross-promotion and all the rest of it.
Music file sharing was the listeners' way of working around the failure of commercial radio to serve any form of passion or connoisseurship about music. When the RIAA killed Napster, it was understandable to the degree that Napster conceivably threatened the very revenues on which the industry depended.
Internet radio is also a way listeners, as well as professional broadcasters, can work around that same failure of commercial radio. But this time the RIAA's attacks are not in self-defense. Through CARP/LOC, the RIAA and its allies are viciously and murderously attacking something that not only fails to threaten them, but actually serves the very artists they pretend to care about.
In a recent visit to Stanford University and Silicon Valley, I had a chance to pose these questions to techies. I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone. I found a much keener awareness that the unique web of technologies Silicon Valley was building before 9/11 — from the Internet to powerful encryption software — can be incredible force multipliers for individuals and small groups to do both good and evil. And I found an acknowledgment that all those technologies had been built with a high degree of trust as to how they would be used, and that that trust had been shaken. In its place is a greater appreciation that high-tech companies aren't just threatened by their competitors — but also by some of their users. "The question `How can this technology be used against me?' is now a real R-and-D issue for companies, where in the past it wasn't really even being asked," said Jim Hornthal, a former vice chairman of Travelocity.com. "People here always thought the enemy was Microsoft, not Mohamed Atta."
In a recent visit to Stanford University and Silicon Valley, I had a chance to pose these questions to techies. I found at least some of their libertarian, technology-will-solve-everything cockiness was gone. I found a much keener awareness that the unique web of technologies Silicon Valley was building before 9/11 — from the Internet to powerful encryption software — can be incredible force multipliers for individuals and small groups to do both good and evil. And I found an acknowledgment that all those technologies had been built with a high degree of trust as to how they would be used, and that that trust had been shaken. In its place is a greater appreciation that high-tech companies aren't just threatened by their competitors — but also by some of their users.
"The question `How can this technology be used against me?' is now a real R-and-D issue for companies, where in the past it wasn't really even being asked," said Jim Hornthal, a former vice chairman of Travelocity.com. "People here always thought the enemy was Microsoft, not Mohamed Atta."
Update: Dan Gillmore reponds
A hundred, two hundred years from now, a historian of our mentalite might well want to investigate the role played by recordings of popular music. How did those four-minute songs, listened to while driving or walking, at gatherings or in the privacy of a bedroom, by youths especially (or those wishing to feel youthful); heard over and over again and then abandoned (but never forgotten) for new songs (and what heralds newness, exactly?); these songs, the tens of thousands of them: how did they bind people together culturally, and how did they resound in the deepest reaches of the self? That historian's work will be made a whole lot easier if Nick Hornby is still in print. Hornby's ''High Fidelity,'' published in 1995, is a great English comic novel, but also an extraordinarily perceptive inquiry into the ways pop music can shape and bend being. From the book's first sentence, it's frighteningly (and hilariously) clear that Rob, the 30-something narrator, has gravely internalized the habitudes of rock: he's essentially reduced the failed romances of his youth to ''my desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups.'' Records are more than his job, though he does own a not-quite-for-profit north London shop for the discerning collector of vinyl, and they are more than what keeps him company, though he is lonely enough to spend too many evenings reorganizing his own vast collection. Listening to records day in, day out, has, in a very real sense, reordered his temperament, as Rob himself comes to understand: ''Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy. . . . Maybe Al Green is directly responsible for more than I ever realized.'' That, as any music freak would acknowledge, is a No. 1 all-time insight.
A hundred, two hundred years from now, a historian of our mentalite might well want to investigate the role played by recordings of popular music. How did those four-minute songs, listened to while driving or walking, at gatherings or in the privacy of a bedroom, by youths especially (or those wishing to feel youthful); heard over and over again and then abandoned (but never forgotten) for new songs (and what heralds newness, exactly?); these songs, the tens of thousands of them: how did they bind people together culturally, and how did they resound in the deepest reaches of the self?
That historian's work will be made a whole lot easier if Nick Hornby is still in print. Hornby's ''High Fidelity,'' published in 1995, is a great English comic novel, but also an extraordinarily perceptive inquiry into the ways pop music can shape and bend being. From the book's first sentence, it's frighteningly (and hilariously) clear that Rob, the 30-something narrator, has gravely internalized the habitudes of rock: he's essentially reduced the failed romances of his youth to ''my desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups.'' Records are more than his job, though he does own a not-quite-for-profit north London shop for the discerning collector of vinyl, and they are more than what keeps him company, though he is lonely enough to spend too many evenings reorganizing his own vast collection. Listening to records day in, day out, has, in a very real sense, reordered his temperament, as Rob himself comes to understand: ''Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy. . . . Maybe Al Green is directly responsible for more than I ever realized.'' That, as any music freak would acknowledge, is a No. 1 all-time insight.
Mr. Wasserman might have had terrible taste in TV and movies, but his understanding of the progressive nature of technology, particularly as it applied to the distribution of mass entertainment, was without parallel. In an era of Napster and MP3's, it is easy to forget that only 20 years have passed since Mr. Wasserman's MCA/Universal was locked in a struggle with Sony over the VCR. Who won? Well, how many people watch movies on Betamax? Similarly, in the 1970's, it was Mr. Wasserman's MCA that cornered the market on crucial patents on small silver circles known as compact discs that would eventually replace the old familiar black vinyl of the long-playing phonograph record.
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