The FCC is delicately stepping into the fray over two touchy issues: spam and “fair use” of copyrighted material. The regulatory agency issued a ruling banning some spam messages from wireless devices (phones, PDAs, and the like), but has left a large loophole through which spam can travel directly to individual phone numbers. “In another order, the FCC approved 13 different technologies that digital TV equipment makers can put into devices designed to work with new copy controls, known as the ‘broadcast flag,’ for digital broadcast signals.”
Tag: 08.06.04
At Least Someone’s Finally Making Money From A Blog
“Fark.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Net, has been accused of selling out — joining a growing list of new-media outfits willing to bend old-media rules. According to a veteran new-media publisher, Fark has been selling preferential placement of story links without informing its readers… There is a growing trend in publishing, online and off, in which the walls between advertising and editorial are breaking down. Last year, Ford paid British novelist Carole Matthews to feature the Ford Fiesta prominently in her next two novels. And Forbes.com recently began including paid-for keyword links in news and feature stories.”
Cambridge School Gets An Unexpected Windfall
A doctor from East Essex, England, has donated a box containing 88 works by prominent composers including Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg to Caius College in Cambridge. The contents of the box, which sat undiscovered until Dr. Philip Marriott inherited it recently, could be worth millions of dollars. The college is expected to sell the manuscripts to raise money.
It’s Still A Long Way From “Hollywood Squares”
The long-running BBC game show “Mastermind” has been catching a great deal of flak lately for abandoning its traditional focus on intellectual topics for a lighter mix of pop culture and current events. In fact, one Conservative politician has even leaped into the fray, accusing the show of dumbing down in a blatant ratings grab, saying “It used to be about Jane Austen novels and Beethoven symphonies.”
A Gesture Worth All The Marbles? (Probably Not.)
“It’s not quite the Parthenon marbles, but Oxford University is sending back to Greece a small cultural treasure with roots almost as ancient, in honour of the Olympic games. At the closing Olympic ceremony in Athens on August 29, a British former Olympic fencer, Dame Mary Glen-Haig, will recite lines in a poetic form first heard there 2,500 years ago… The treasure is a Pindaric ode – a strict verse form which is regarded as one of the most perfect and most imitated in poetry.”
The Great Pink Way
A stage version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” may be headed for Broadway. Roger Waters is currently working on the book, and will arrange and orchestrate the music for the show, which will be produced by Harvey and Bob Weinstein of Miramax.
A Photographer’s Legacy
“Henri Cartier-Bresson invented the grammar for photographing life in the 20th century,” says Robert McFarlane. “From his earliest photographs, Cartier-Bresson captured life in flight, sometimes literally. In perhaps his most famous picture, ‘Behind the Gare St Lazare, Paris 1932’ a man leaps to the right, taking off from a wooden ladder lying in a shallow puddle near curved metallic debris. Cartier-Bresson’s reflexes are so precise his Leica’s shutter records the leap at the exact moment before the man’s right heel descends to the mirror-like surface of the water. It is a moment pregnant with possibilities and as if to add visual value, Cartier-Bresson’s camera records a poster in the background showing a dancer leaping in the opposing direction.”
Grotesque Beauty
This year’s Site Santa Fe Biennial is notable for its focus on art that is, well, decidedly ugly or disturbing. “The intent is to make a case that what is grotesque can also be beautiful, if viewed from the proper perspective. There’s nothing really new or even strange about that concept. The grotesque is just a fuzzy catchall for what might also be called anticlassicism. It encompasses distortions of the body, hopped-up colors, cartooning, horror, the gothic, camp, burlesque — all forms of envelope-pushing, convention-busting expressionism, with its implicit strain of dark comedy. It has been around forever.”
Alpine Bliss Vs. Southern Pride
“In terms of museums, the only thing better than an outstanding exhibition is an outstanding exhibition with a worthy opponent, a second show that energetically counters and contradicts its position. Such is the fruitful overlap, in time if not in space, achieved by ‘Austria West: New Alpine Architecture,’ at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan, and ‘Samuel Mockbee and the Rural Studio: Community Architecture,’ at the National Building Museum in Washington. These shows reflect very different worlds, literally and philosophically, and are also housed in buildings that enrich their individual focus while accenting their differences.”
Ken Sprague, 77
Ken Sprague, who has died of cancer aged 77, once said that his aim was “to build a picture road to socialism, to the Golden City or, as Blake called it, Jerusalem”. A painter, sculptor, muralist, banner-maker and sometime television presenter, he was, for half a century, a regular, if dissenting, cartoonist for the Daily Worker, its successor, the Morning Star, and for papers like Tribune and Peace News.