“Congress approved the recopyrighting, limited to foreign works, to align U.S. policy with an international copyright treaty. But the Golan plaintiffs—a group that includes educators, performers, and film archivists—argue that bigger principles are at stake. Does Congress have the constitutional right to remove works from the public domain? And if it does, what’s stopping it from plucking out even more freely available works?”
Tag: 06.25.14
Jazz Bassist’s Bow Missing After Flight And TSA Search
“Now that it’s confirmed, I can tell you that good ol’ TSA confiscated (aka STOLE) my brand new bow right out of my hard case yesterday. I arrived in Saskatoon only to find the bow missing inside the case to my Lemur Travel Bass. Maybe they thought it was a weapon (idiotic), or they were looking for ivory, of which there wasn’t any. I will get to the bottom of this.”
Metropolitan Opera House Vandalized By Paint
“A vandal is wanted for spray painting obscenities on sculptures and paintings inside of the Metropolitan Opera house at Lincoln Center, cops said. It appears to be an inside job stemming from labor issues at the opera house, a police source said.”
US Supreme Court Did The TV Industry No Favors Squashing Aero
“If Aereo were around to make them move faster, it could be better for them — and their customers — in the long run. But they’ll be sticking with lucrative business as usual for now. Pretty sure we’ve seen this show before.”
Barnes and Noble To Split, Spinning Off Nook
“Barnes & Noble unveiled plans Wednesday to break apart into two companies, separating its retail unit from its struggling Nook Media business. The bookstore operator said it plans to complete the separation by the end of the first quarter of 2015.”
John McClure, 84, Master Classical Record Producer
“He made strong-selling recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir; worked with Dave Brubeck, Joe Williams and other jazz artists; recorded Peter, Paul and Mary; and helped engineer the string parts for Pink Floyd’s … The Wall. But he made his biggest mark in the classical world, … [where] helped shape some of the most celebrated classical recordings of the 20th century, including acclaimed sessions with Bruno Walter, Igor Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein.”
The Problem At The Heart Of ‘The Death Of Klinghoffer’
Alex Ross suggests that the opera’s ongoing role as a controversy magnet is rooted in “its pensive, ambivalent attitude toward present-day issues about which a great many people feel no ambivalence whatsoever.”
How ‘Frozen’, Of All Movies, Conquered The World
Who’d have predicted that a cartoon about a pair of princesses would become the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time – and win a slew of awards, too? Maria Konnikova and some research psychologists look at what makes Disney’s latest hit so beloved far beyond its expected demographic.
T.S. Eliot And Groucho Marx’s Touchy Friendship
With a 1961 fan letter, the WASP mandarin poet began a famous three-year correspondence with the wisecracking Jewish comedian. Re-reading the letters while researching a book, Lee Siegel found some significant and complicated tensions beneath the mutual admiration.
George Lucas’s Museum Will Be In Chicago
The choice of Chicago over San Francisco and Los Angeles for the institution – to be called the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art – “reflects both a bungling of the billionaire’s legacy project by the board of a national park in San Francisco as well as an aggressive lobbying effort by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.”