The filmmaker has come out in support of a Frenchman who faces €20,000 in fines for illegally downloading thousands of songs. Says Godard, “There is no such thing as intellectual property. Copyright really isn’t feasible. An author has no rights. I have no rights. I have only duties.”
Tag: 09.22.10
NYC’s Tiny Little Artists’ Competition
“150 winners will have their images printed on 5-inch-by-6-inch postcards and displayed at the Rush Arts Gallery in Chelsea or at three city-owned spaces on the Lower East Side, in Harlem and on Staten Island for 10 days. The city is spending $40,000 on the competition.”
The Joys of Creating Fake Performance Events
Tim Etchells: “Over the last year or so I’ve done a series of related works, creating pamphlets to announce – often in overzealous capitals and small print – the dates, times and locations for imaginary, scurrilous and often impossible events.”
Did John Milton Write Dirty Ditties?
A 1708 anthology includes a sexually frank little rhyme titled as “An Extempore Upon a Faggot, by Milton.” (“Faggot” meaning a stick of kindling; the poem is about aroused women.) Did the high-minded author of Paradise Lost, a minister in Cromwell’s government no less, produce such smut? Well, maybe …
How Britain Should Manage Its Arts Funding Cuts: Advice from a Briton Abroad
“Here’s some food for thought: an open letter to [UK Culture Secretary] Jeremy Hunt from Clive Gillinson, who was the respected, indeed visionary managing director of the London Symphony Orchestra before departing five years ago to take up one of the most important cultural roles in New York, director of Carnegie Hall.”
Pecs and Performance: Should Critics Ever Discuss How Hot the Performers Are?
Attractiveness “is, if we accept it as a tool at theatre’s disposal, a legitimate object within critical judgment. Appearance is a part of the casting process. If we talk of miscasting, it may be because we consider a performer too attractive – or not attractive enough – for a given role.”
DreamWorks Prevails in Disturbia/Rear Window Copyright Suit
“Director Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks movie studio on Tuesday won the dismissal of a copyright infringement lawsuit that claimed their 2007 thriller Disturbia stole the plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Rear Window.”
Metropolitan Opera Is Now a Profitable Media Empire
There are the hi-def simulcasts into cinemas (which subsequently appear on television and DVD), the company’s Sirius satellite radio channel, the Met Player online media library of 300 titles, and the good old Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts … Just last year, the Met’s net revenues from its media ventures totaled $11 million.