There's something for everyone in the "Seems like good news.... wait a minute" crowd in the new Twitch announcements about partnering with the music industry.
My accounts got this letter from Twitch last week. You can hear Professor Farnsworth's GOOD NEWS EVERYONE
In summary, Twitch (Amazon) negotiated with one of the music industry groups to make it that there's now a special shim in between usual DMCA takedowns and anarchy; Twitch gets to Mall-Cop-Level issue a ticket saying "hey, you left Hootie and the Blowfish on in the background."
Since this is all made-up arrangement, it's hard to say how it'll be in practice, but basically it'll theoretically cause less situations where streamers (some of whom depend on the income) don't get knocked out for a DMCA strike.
I mean, if you're generous.
Of course, this sets aside the fact that the robots get false positives all the time, that fair use is absolutely crumpled and thrown into the trash, and that this sort of "sweetheart deal" comes only when someone like Amazon is backing up the negotiations, an asset few have.
Gets better, though.
Left alone, this new shim gets a B-. Typical "we have a special deal worked out".
But a few days later, this arrived in the mail.
Oh, you didn't just negotiate with the fox about being in your henhouse. You have decided to add a "fox section" to your henhouse. You're going to add for-pay music programming.
So, the thing about this genius move.
How long before Warner comes by, blackjack gently slapping in open palm, noting that numbers are down for people viewing the premium Warner content on Twitch. How long before they start demanding VERY intrusive ads and banners to throw people into the Warner Section.
Little known fact (I find) is that those "Science Behind The TV Shows" exhibits at science museums and similar venues come with huge restrictions on what else can be at those museums, displayed, etc.
These deals, always, ALWAYS come with a price. One that shows up over time.
No action items at the moment for the world, but I'd be the opposite of surprised when the music companies start indicating musicians on Twitch have new "rules" on them, and get demonetized for covers, etc. And a bouquet of other surprises.
Good luck.
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Buried in all sorts of collections of zines, anarchist/collectivist mirrors, and everywhere else, the Internet Archive houses a whole bunch of fascinating documents on Squatting.
Besides the items themselves, the collections they live among are fascinating too.
Here's a 2010 book on squatting in Brisbane and Queensland, Australia. "SQUAT!"
PM Press has a whole range of books you can check out from their catalog, including "The City is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present". Link here:
First month and change is paid for. I'll be getting the office! It'd be nice to have the six months socked away but I'm sure I can prove it was worth it through September. Here's some of what's to be done.
Munchy, the CD-ROM reading robot, will be at the ready for any CDs coming in, either from my backlog or from people sending them in. (Random boxes come to me all the time.)
I've got literally hundreds of videotapes to rip, which I'm able to do in the background constantly. These range from obscure to historically one of a kind, to completely off the charts weird.
The moment of stunned silence after someone suggested the ad copy. The two days of trying to come up with alternatives and failing.
If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people stopping by, go visit the place I work at, The Internet Archive, which has dozens of petabytes of, I must stress, amazing stuff, including floppy disks:
The collection spans 1997-2004, which feels about right. 151 of them right now.
Press Kits have been a part of movies for many, many years - a gathering of promotional materials so press didn't have to think too hard, and they didn't need to let too many people on set asking the same things.
And of course, ensure the images were Just Right.
Most of these are ISOs. to look at the insides, click on SHOW ALL link on the right, then "VIEW CONTENTS" for the .ISO file (where available). Or download it and mount it locally using a utility. Each disc is a junk drawer of Hollywood PR. (This one has 22mb .TIFF Files!)
Some days at Internet Archive, I bump into people who were part of legendary companies and endeavors, who played a role, major or minor, in products that still hold warm feelings for a generation of people.
I bumped into one, and mentioned I'd love to interview him. He said no.
He told me that he wouldn't ever go on record about the company (a prominent one, believe me) or anything about it, because he was ashamed of his role in the success of it and the costs associated with it. He didn't like rosy looks back that forgot that.
He did tell me a story.
During a particularly difficult and intense amount of work at this company, what we'd call crunch now, one of the main engineers of the project had a breakdown. Complete and total, and was checked into a psych ward on observation because he was suicidal and spiraling.