A lack of discipline is apparent these days in just about every aspect of American society.

Why Are American Kids So Spoiled? : The New Yorker

In mid-February, Alec Empire of the iconic digital hardcore band Atari Teenage Riot got a call from Sony. The company was creating a commercial for their new handheld game console, the Sony Vita, and they wanted to use the song Black Flags from ATR’s most recent album Is This Hyperreal? for the score.

ATR tricked Sony into basically donating money to a legal defense fund for Anonymous members. I haven't listened to ATR in years so this connection is interesting.

ATR describes their new album as "a protest album for the Google age".

Atari Teenage Riot Goes for the Lulz With Anonymous | Threat Level | Wired.com

It used to be we valued music for its ability to help us escape, and its ability to help us define an identity for ourselves.

We now control both of these aspects of our lives, to a greater degree and in a more self directed way than ever possible before.

What was once valuable is now color.

This is the most intelligent thing that I've read yet about Lowery's post.

Are We Really Still Discussing This? – Or: My Response to David Lowery - blackrimglasses.com

One recalled that the labels “don’t license you if you don’t have traffic” but once enough footfall is achieved then “they want to get paid for ‘infringement’ and the longer it takes to license you, the larger the ‘infringement’ number they can justify charging you.”

Another described a litigation “Ponzi scheme” whereby settlements and other fees extracted from startups were used to fund the labels’ ongoing litigation strategy. However, like all Ponzi schemes there was a problem – maintaining momentum. “Once you stop suing new people there are no new settlements to pay for the ongoing litigation,” one interviewee reported.

This paper was funded by Google.

How Big Music Threatened Startups and Killed Innovation | TorrentFreak

I thought Lowery's piece was so badly flawed, with its conspiracy theories and sloppy appeals to emotion, that it didn't warrant a response. But others didn't feel the same way. Techdirt's Mike Masnick has posted a guided tour of the best rebuttals, including Jeff Price from Tunecore on the real data on musicians' income in the Internet age; Steve Albini on the false picture Lowery paints of a golden age of the labels that never existed; Jonathan Coulton on the perversity of mourning for a loss of scarcity; former Warner Music CTO Ethan Kaplan on how the labels cut their own throats by fighting innovation; Travis Morrison from Dismemberment Plan on how access to music and compensation for artists are separate issues. Taken together, it's a series of bracing reads and a strong tonic.

Rebuttals to David Lowery's indictment of "free culture" and its alleged murder of musicians - Boing Boing

• We see patterns where none exist.

• We have difficulty conceptualizing long arcs of time.

• We selectively perceive what agrees with our pre-existing expectations, and ignore things that disagree with our beliefs.

• We tend to forget our losers and over-emphasize our winners.

• Our inherent optimism bias turns out to be hard-wired as well — our brains are better at processing good news about the future than bad.

• We actually get a greater thrill from the anticipation of a financial reward than the actual reward itself. (Think what this means in terms of Buy the Rumor, Sell the News)

• We seek stimulus for the dopamine high — regardless of how. Whether you are a Gambler, Alcoholic, Sex Addict, Shopaholic, or Hyper-Active Trader — its all the same buzz.

• Story-telling is how Humans evolved to share information (Pre-writing). Thus, we are vulnerable to anecdotes that mislead or present false conclusions unsupported by data.

Top 10 Investor Errors: Cognitive Deficits | The Big Picture

Although the critics of Citizens United might well be right to condemn it and to call for a constitutional amendment to overrule it, they are misguided in their reliance on the refrain that "money is not speech."

Of course, money is not "speech." Money is money, a car is a car, and a ribbon is a ribbon. These are objects, not speech. But all of these objects, and many more besides, can be used to facilitate free speech. Consider a car. The government can lawfully impose all sorts of restrictions on how, when and where we can drive a car, and no one would argue that those restrictions implicate the First Amendment.

But suppose a city enacts a law prohibiting any person to drive a car in order to get to a political demonstration. Such a law would clearly implicate the First Amendment, not because a car is speech, but because the law restricts the use of a car for speech purposes.

Similarly, a ribbon is a ribbon. A ribbon is not speech. But a law that prohibits anyone to wear a pink ribbon for expressive purposes would clearly implicate the First Amendment, because it restricts the use of a ribbon for speech purposes.

Like a car or a ribbon, money is not speech. But when government regulates the use of money for speech purposes, it implicates the First Amendment.

It would be helpful if advocacy around Citizen's United was a little less radical.

Geoffrey R. Stone: Is Money Speech?

Decius wrote back in November:
Congress can tax you, and spend that money buying you things you might not want, like milimeter wave scanners at the airport. If they can tax and spend, why can't they just have you give your money directly to the vendor?

Zing!

RE: Debate continues on recusals of Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Kagan (and no knock-out blows have yet been thrown)

A second case, however, was a bit more problematic. It involved an Iranian student properly in the United States on a student visa who wanted to buy an iPhone. The writer at the Consumerist, naturally being an expert on export law, quickly disposed of this issue.

In the second case, of the man here on a student visa, you might be able to make that argument, though it’s really just the exporting of goods to Iran — and not the sale of items to Iranians in the U.S. — that is embargoed.

Well, we must give the Consumerist guy some points for effort, but the issue is just a little more complicated than that. First, you can’t sell anything to an Iranian in the United States if you have any reason to believe that the item might be exported back to Iran by the purchaser. In the case of an iPhone, which is probably locked to a U.S. carrier, the export of that item seems unlikely.

Second, you can’t forget about the “deemed export” rules which could forbid transfer of certain technology to Iranian citizens in the United States, even on a legitimate visa.

ExportLawBlog » If You Speak Farsi, Well, You Can’t Have an iPhone

This painting of the entire technology industry as an evil conspiracy seems to have it's memetic origin with "Free Ride" by Billboard editor Robert Levine, which appears to have been timed to coincide with the push for SOPA and PIPA.

Creative Commons is pushing Google's agenda. The mother-in-law of Sergey Brin [co-founder of Google], who has no background in law and no background in copyright, is Vice of their board. She is there because Sergey Brin gave a lot of money. This is not serving the best interest for artists this is serving the best interests for Google. People say that Creative Commons is doing important work and what they're trying to do is great, but if you want to have a serious, respected organization it needs to have a serious respected board. What you have now is a joke, so if you want to be taken seriously, put artists on the board.

What are your feelings about the tech companies' opposition to the PROTECT IP Act?

People on the other side don't say, "Hey, we have certain problems with these certain parts of the PROTECT IP Act." They say, "We don't want any legislation at all, things are fine." I think it's time for the other side, if they don't like this act, to come up with another solution to protect our rights.

It is, of course, enormously frustrating to hear PIPA supporters complain that no one raised specific objections. That is utter bullshit. Specific suggestions regarding due process for takedown requests were rejected vocally by PIPA supporters because they weren't "efficient enough."

The recording industry is engaged in a well funded, multifaceted campaign to discredit anyone who objects to the maximization of their power. This is going to get worse before it gets better.

ASCAP - How “Digital Parasites” Have Hurt Songwriters and What Songwriters Can Do To Fight Back