Category: issues

With arts organizations closing and others languishing, arts leaders sound the alarm that “Wales is in serious danger of being relegated to the second division of arts and culture.” – Ananova 09/15/00

“Copyright, a lot of people are saying, is obsolete. It’s a concept outmoded by technology. And good riddance to it, say those who work in advertising or Web site design. The fat cats in New York who sell ‘content’ are gouging us already with their ridiculous fixed prices. Everyone knows a CD costs something like 35 cents to produce; why does it retail for $23.99?” – The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/14/00

A long parade of lawmakers testified before the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday in response to this week’s FTC report attacking Hollywood’s marketing violent content to children. VP nominee Joseph Lieberman decried a “culture of carnage” and urged the industry to self-regulate itself, or face government intervention. – CNN 09/13/00

• BUT WHAT IF YOU HELD A HEARING AND NOBODY CAME? Not one of the film industry executives invited to participate in Wednesday’s hearing showed up. John McCain was livid, demanding the absentees (including Michael Eisner, Rupert Murdoch, and Harvey Weinstein) show up for a follow-up hearing in two weeks. – Salon 09/14/00
  
  
• NO, YOU’RE RUDE: Hollywood execs, meanwhile, said that Senator McCain “showed his absence of manners by inviting them Friday night to show up on short notice without ever having had time to study the report. A spokesman for one of the studios, in fact, said no invitation to appear was ever received.” – Variety 09/14/00

Arts institutions are into education big time these days. So how long before some of those programs become formalized?  Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History and John G. Shedd Aquarium have become so far-reaching in their educational purposes these days it would not be a stretch to see the three facilities, individually or as a consortium, become degree-conferring institutions. – Chicago Tribune 09/13/00

Attorney General Janet Reno said Tuesday that organized crime’s intellectual property infringement should be prosecuted as vigorously as other serious crimes like drug trafficking and money laundering. Recent busts (like last week’s in New York in which 35,000 counterfeit CDs were seized) have shown organized crime’s turn from drugs to software for profits. – Wired 09/12/00

Divisions between high and low culture (or “art-” and “popular-” culture) are increasingly irrelevant. “How are we to judge what more powerfully influences us and, hence, what is stronger or better? See Schoenberg’s ‘Moses and Aaron’, ‘Madam Butterfly’, ‘Phantom of the Opera’ or Elvis Presley at Las Vegas, and how do we set about judging differences? The cultural diktat of our day still tells us that Schoenberg is superior to Presley; many people go along with that. But is this any more than obedience to hierarchies laid down before popular culture gave itself a true chance to be compared? – The Guardian 09/12/00

A pair of Finnish scholars have scored success with a weekly worldwide radio newscast broadcast in Latin. “Based on the 15 to 20 letters the program receives every week from listeners, the producers say Nuntii Latini listeners also include Latin scholars and students around the world as well as the residents of various monasteries, who almost all, naturally, keenly scrutinize the show’s word usage and grammar.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada) 09/12/00

• Al Gore and Joe Lieberman issue an ultimatum to the entertainment industry: “Mr. Gore said he would give industry officials six months to ‘clean up their act.’ If they do not, and if he and Mr. Lieberman win the November election, the vice president said he would encourage the Federal Trade Commission to move against the industry by using its power to prohibit false and deceptive advertising. – New York Times 09/11/00 

Why are Berlin’s cultural institutions in such difficult financial straits? Trying to support the culture of the former East Berlin has taken its toll. Now the city will get an extra 100 million DM a year from the federal German government  on condition that certain elite Berlin institutions come under national control. – The Art Newspaper 09/11/00

This week Congress is due to release a report on violence and the entertainment industry and accompany the report’s release with hearings. In advance, retailers are clamping down. “Kmart said Thursday that it will refuse sale of mature-rated games to anyone under age 17, using a bar-code scanner that will prompt cashiers to ask for identification from young people. After Kmart’s news conference in Washington, Wal-Mart said it will enact the same policy, and in a letter last month, Toys R Us officials said the practice is in place at their stores.” – Chicago Sun-Times 09/10/00