Big media companies have been trying to catch pirates by trying to track down people trading the movies or music. But Paul Kocher is trying a different way. “Instead of trying to track everyone’s habits and patterns, Kocher’s code would create a forensic trail to allow law-enforcement authorities to hunt down criminals – but only after there is evidence that illegal copies have been made. Says Kocher: ‘We’re trying to create a system where there will be consequences if people don’t obey the laws, but anonymity will be protected if they do’.”
Tag: 05.29.03
A Potential Windfall, But With A Catch
“The Fund for the Arts has committed $900,000 in special support to the financially strapped Louisville Orchestra over the next two years, but only if the orchestra produces a balanced budget for that period. The orchestra continues to say it can’t balance the budget without substantial concessions from its musicians.”
Killing Florida Arts Funding
Florida takes a slice-o-matic to its state arts budget. “The Florida Legislature approved a budget that slices annual cash for the state’s arts facilities from $29 million to $8.7 million.”
Pasadena Shakeseare Takes A Break
The Pasadena Shakespeare Company is closing up shop for awhile. “In the last week things finally came to a head where I realized that unless something really changes in the near future there is no way the money is going to be there to get through the rest of the year,”
NEA Shakespeare Tour – A Good Idea?
NEA chairman Dana Gioia’s most visible initiative so far is a plan to tour Shakespeare around America. The plan would be “the largest theatrical tour of Shakespeare in American history. Indeed, no fewer than six American theatre companies would be funded to bring forth the Bard in over 100 small and midsized communities in every state. Yet not everyone in the regional theatre scene appears pleased with Gioia’s plans, and they’re speaking out.”
Is There Really A Harlem Renaissance?
“In the past few years, fueled by a real-estate boom and the $300 million budget of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a community-development organization, the arts as well as the neighborhood have been revived in Harlem. ‘Harlem is the new Greenwich Village. People are rediscovering it. It is what I remember the Village being in the ’70s – a little edgy with an element of danger, but exciting, full of life and soul’.”
Why Government Is Bailing Out Of The Arts
In America state governments are getting out of the arts business. State after state is slashing arts funding. Why now? ArtsJournal editor Douglas McLennan suggests that in trying to recover from the culture wars of the early 1990s, arts leaders may have unintentionally pursued an endgame strategy. “As the current arts-funding crisis suggests—the survival strategy might have topped itself out and ultimately killed public arts funding.”
The Closing Of The American Mind (Round II, College Edition)
The culture wars are raging on college campuses. “The left has been attempting to brainwash students for years, and it’s only now, it seems, that the intolerant tide is flowing both ways. Students are facing off, left and right, along the ideological divide, declaring hard and fast the prejudices of their respective political extremes. This, it appears, is how so many of them are leaving school: not eager idealists, fertilized with learning and rife with critical thinking, but blinkered ideologues and hardened partisans, indoctrinated in conflict, deaf to inquiry, groomed and ripe for politicking.”
Penn Lawyers Ask Barnes To Amend Its Request To Move To Philly
Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher has asked the Barnes Foundation to change its petition requesting that the Barnes be allowed to move to Philadelphia. Among the requrested changes are “a ban on selling any of the art that is on display in the Barnes gallery, and the preservation of founder Albert C. Barnes’ arrangements of the artwork in unique ensembles.”
What’s The Alternative?
“Ask the current generation of emerging artists what an ‘alternative space’ is, and you?ll likely get a vague response. Associated with the 1970s and the experimental art and installations of that period, such venues are no longer as much of an ‘alternative’ to commercial galleries in the content or opportunities they provide.”