Tag: 09.22.05

Couldn’t This Have Been Settled On The Playground?

In what may be the most bizarre copyright lawsuit of the year, a Colombian painter is being sued by two marketing firms for interfering with their efforts to sell reproductions of his work. The fracas started when artist Fernando Botero donated a number of his works to a Colombian museum, which turned around and sold the right to produce and market posters of several of the works. Angered by the move, Botero told several media outlets in Miami that the posters were “unauthorized and illegitimate,” which the company producing the posters viewed as a deliberate effort to suppress sales.

ScotiaBank To Bail Out Giller Prize

“The Bank of Nova Scotia is preparing to unveil itself as the financial saviour of the Giller Prize, cementing Bay Street’s growing reputation as the deep-pocketed patron of the national arts community… The prize pays $25,000 to the best novel or collection of short stories written in English, but the cost of staging the extravagant black-tie event is said to be several times that amount.”

Attendance Low, Tensions High At Montreal Fest

For a festival that was supposed to put Montreal back on the international filmfest map, the New Montreal FilmFest has so far been a consummate disaster. “Fears about a high degree of festival fatigue in Montreal appear to have been founded, given the poor attendance reported at many of the venues. Several screenings have had as few as 30 people in attendance — one film even reportedly showed to just nine festivalgoers.” In addition, an embarrassingly public spat has broken out between the fest’s director and its corporate backers, and several high-profile screenings have been cancelled without explanation.

Arrest In “Scream” Theft

Police in Norway have arrested a woman and charged her with being an accomplice in the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream last year. “She was charged with handling stolen goods after allegedly being found to have banknotes from a bank robbery in which a policeman was shot dead. A police lawyer said the woman was suspected of being an accomplice to the Munch theft but gave no more details.”

Schorr: Bushies Are Too Smart To Make Nixon’s Mistakes

Journalist Daniel Schorr is 89, still producing daily segments for National Public Radio and unapologetically infuriating the American right wing. He insists he isn’t worried about the future of public broadcasting, but he has serious concerns about the Bush administration’s appproach to dealing with the national press. “Nixon hated the media and didn’t know what to do about it. This administration is much cleverer. They know what to do about it. They’re smart people.”

Crunch & Twang, Together At Last

That the gulf between rock and country music has narrowed in recent years is old news, and to a large extent, the sub-genre known as “arena rock” (hard-driving bands capable of filling arenas that seat tens of thousands – think Bon Jovi) has been replaced by ultra-popular country acts like Kenny Chesney and Toby Keith. But as country rises and rock continues to morph horribly into candy-coated pop, marketers are seeing serious potential in a crossover approach to selling old-fashioned arena rock. “There’s no reason, after all, why a pop song can’t crunch and twang at the same time.”

Are Copyright Hawks Shooting Themselves In The Foot?

Google has been sued by two authors over its plans to create a searchable archive of academic libraries, and the editors at Wired say that the lawsuit represents a short-sighted attempt to stifle a worthy program. “There are fundamental differences between copying analog works into a digital format for the purposes of piracy, and copying the same works to create a service that conforms to copyright laws in making that data available to the public. What happens on the backend should be of little or no interest to copyright holders, so long as rights are respected on the front end, where control over a work really counts.”

Blogging For A Living?

Can you actually earn a reasonable income from your blog? That’d be news to ArtsJournal’s bloggers, but according to some in the blog biz, ad revenue for high-traffic blogs has been going up steadily, and some bloggers are even getting paid directly for their work. “On average, Weblog salaries are about a quarter to half what a mid-level editorial job would pay, without the daily office commute… What do you have to do to earn $500? Publish 125 entries a month, monitor comments, respond to readers and delete offensive comments — all for about $4 a post.”

ITV At 50: Low Ratings, Lower Standards

Britain’s ITV channel, the country’s first commercial broadcaster, turns 50 this week, but not many in the UK view the milestone as worth celebrating. ITV’s ratings have plummeted in recent years, and so has the channel’s commitment to public service programming. “The days seem long gone when, in return for ‘a licence to print money’, it was made to produce an ambitious range of drama, documentaries, current affairs, religion, arts and children’s programmes.”