As you can see (if you’re viewing this through a browser and not an RSS reader), the site’s colors have changed temporarily to all grey and black. At the same time, you can download a copy of DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album from my site, as part of the Grey Tuesday protest. Please see below for background.
And enjoy the album. It’s really great.
Julian Sanchez writes a fascinating post about juries and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, which links to an empowering and inspiring essay on jury nullification. Jury nullification is the doctrine that juries are allowed to acquit someone accused of a crime if the jury believes that the law creating the crime is unjust. For instance, if you believe that laws on drug possession are immoral and don’t deserve jail time, you have a right to acquit someone accused of possession — even if the judge doesn’t tell you that you have this option. The nullification essay gives a very interesting collection of advice for potential nullifiers. It’s a good mini-course in democracy as well; I highly recommend it.
As I mentioned previously, tomorrow is Grey Tuesday — an online day of protest to fight EMI Records’ attempts to destroy DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album. The Grey Album is an innovative and exciting combination of The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album which EMI was probably within its legal rights to order destroyed.
And that’s precisely the point: copyright has gotten out of control when it takes creative works out of the public’s hands. Copyright then becomes an income-transfer program from the public to the record companies, when I’m pretty sure we all wish the law were balanced: it would give artists a livelihood, and give the U.S. a rich public domain from which to draw new music like The Grey Album. Copyright has become dreadfully unbalanced; Grey Tuesday is a way to drive that message home.
Tomorrow, 272 websites will either host their own copies of The Grey Album, or will turn grey for the occasion. Many more, I’m sure, will do so and just haven’t been listed on the official site; I know of at least one such website admin, and googling for “Grey Tuesday” turns up more than 800 links.
I want to mention, though, the latest salvo from EMI. I got this in an email from the Grey Tuesday people (hyperlinks added):
Well, things just got more personal. Downhill Battle has received a cease and desist letter from EMI’s lawyers and we’ve heard from many of you who have received something similar (probably identical). It ‘s a letter that’s intended to scare us and it really illustrates why this protest is so important. We’ve spoken with lawyers about this situation and we want to share with you the response that we’ve sent to EMI’s lawyers. It explains how we plan to proceed and why. Feel free to copy entirely or use portions of this letter in your response, if you choose to make one. You also may be interested in reading more about your fair use rights at: http://www.eff.org/IP/efffairuse_faq.html and more generally about the issue of censorship and cease and desist letters at: www.chillingeffects.org. Please let us know if your plans for tomorrow are changing (we completely understand if they are).
-Nick, Holmes, and RebeccaMr. Jensen and EMI:
We have received your February 23 email concerning our plans to make the Grey Album available on our website.
Despite your letter, Downhill Battle will be posting the Grey Album on our website tomorrow. Your efforts to suppress this music stifle creativity and harm the public interest; we will not be intimidated into backing down. Downhill Battle has a fair-use right to post this music under current copyright law and the public has a fair-use right to hear it. Opposing EMI’s censorship campaign is precisely the purpose of Tuesday’s protest and we won’t waiver from that goal.
The current legal environment allows the five major record labels to dictate to musicians what kind of music they may and may not create and allows them to prevent the public from hearing music that does not fall within their rules. For people to make an informed decision about whether the major record labels and existing copyright law serve the interests of musicians and the public, they need to be able to hear the music that is being suppressed. The Grey Tuesday protest is about ensuring that this music is widely available so that the public can make informed decisions. Copyright was created by Congress to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts.” Your actions violate that purpose. Any lawsuit against us will bring more attention to both the protest and the need for serious copyright reform, and we expect to win any case on fair-use grounds.
Our posting of the Grey Album on Downhill Battle is a political act with no commercial interest and fits well within fair use rights. Lawyers have advised us that we can ignore your demands number 2, 3, and 4 that are listed at the bottom of your letter. EMI has no legal right to make these demands and we will not comply with them. Furthermore, if EMI attempts to disrupt our protest by sending takedown letters to participating websites, ISPs of participating websites, or any upstream ISPs, we will file a counter-suit against you. We consider any attempts to stifle this protest to be an abuse under section 512F of the DMCA.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Reville
Holmes Wilson
Co-Founders
Downhill Battle (downhillbattle.org)—
downhillbattle.org
Also, see the cease-and-desist letter that the firm of Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman is circulating — even to those people who are only making their site grey for a day! (Link via the pho list.) This reminds me of Microsoft’s blanket attack on anyone who even pretended to have a copy of the Windows source code. They do it because it works: lawyers are scary.
Update: the “Section 512F” to which the letter refers is Title 17, Chapter 5, Sec. 512(f) of the U.S. Code:
(f) Misrepresentations. — Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section —
- (1) that material or activity is infringing, or
- (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification,
shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
I had to finish Things Fall Apart before I went to bed, so that I could start fresh tomorrow with something different (probably The Human Stain). Things Fall Apart has more going for it than I initially gave it credit for, and discussing it during Sunday’s book-club meeting will probably bring out a lot of new insights. In particular, I can see reading it as a war between the gods — Christian and . . . animist? — but only in a few places does Achebe really support that interpretation.
It certainly documents the effects of colonization on African people, but quite often doesn’t really take a side; it’s not that this one way of life is worth preserving and this other one corrupt, or this one backward and the other modern; it’s just that the one has come in and destroyed the foundations of the incumbent. It’s dispassionate, and only at the end do we really get a sense of the author’s attitude: one of the (presumably British) colonists looks forward to writing about Okonkwo, but inside the colonist’s mind Okonkwo gets smaller and smaller, until he’s virtually a footnote in the Westerner’s diary of conquest. In this way, maybe Things Fall Apart looks in on itself: it’s a book whose goal is to document, one person at a time, the people who are disappearing under the Western thumb. Those in the West talk about History, whereas Achebe wants us to think about people. We needn’t hate anyone, but we need to remember the real people being destroyed.
And I acknowledge all this. But the book just didn’t grab me — as a novel — and I’m trying to figure out why.
You know those annual “tell us about yourself” emails? You know how you’re always getting them from people you’ve not spoken with in a long time, as some kind of first pass at regaining touch with you? Do you quite often NOT WANT to be touched? In general, do you consider yourself a “cold prickly” while those around you are “warm fuzzies”? Do you consider the word “mukluk” just endlessly cool? Have you ever wanted to have frosty beverages served to you in a STEIN by someone wearing a DIRNDL?
THEN THE FOLLOWING IS PROBABLY FOR YOU.
If you woke up this morning saying to yourself, “I want to watch a bottomlessly sad film à la Requiem For A Dream that has some amazingly great acting by Charlize Theron, but is otherwise sort of an empty experience,” then I’d recommend going right out and seeing Monster. Otherwise, go see Fog Of War.
It’s odd to see how an idea spreads, but the web helps.
There’s a textbook to help you learn the programming language Ruby. It’s pretty funny:
I’ll be straight with you. I want you to cry. To weep. To whimper sweetly. This book is a poignant guide to Ruby. That means code so beautiful that tears are shed. That means gallant tales and somber truths that have you waking up the next morning in the arms of this book. Hugging it tightly to you all the day long. If necessary, fashion a makeshift hip holster for Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, so you can always have this book’s tender companionship.
I found this link through Ben Hammersley, who found it through Andrew Losowsky, who found it through some guy named Barry (though apparently not through Barry’s website, which Barry says hasn’t been updated in nigh on forever; presumably Andrew and Barry are close, just like this). Barry, in turn, found it on Simon Willison’s blog.
There’s something really wonderful about knowing the genesis of an idea so precisely. Maybe, as the web evolves, we’ll be able to turn formerly specialized topics of information retrieval into jobs that anyone can do. For instance, etymology: if you want to find out who coined a phrase, just turn Google loose on the web, along with some rather sophisticated semantic-parsing algorithms; you’ll be able to find out who first used the term “boss” as a synonym for “very neat,” whilst you drink your morning coffee.
Speaking of which, back I go to mine. I can almost taste things being exchanged equally.
I’ve only discovered Elvis Costello within the past couple years, probably starting with When I Was Cruel on my friend Stevie’s recommendation. Now I just can’t get enough of his music. Last night I had a dream in which Costello’s songs “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” and “Tokyo Storm Warning” appeared, so this morning I can’t get them out of my head. Those two songs have some of the best lyrics ever, so I thought I’d reproduce them (below). Though reading the lyrics could never, of course, replicate the experience of listening to the songs. I’d recommend going out and buying Costello’s first album, When I Was Cruel, and Blood & Chocolate. They’re both fantastic.
It’s rare for me to think of a novel as “pedantic.” Indeed, I can’t remember the last novel that felt like this. But Things Fall Apart does.
Perhaps it’s just that I need to get out of the mindset of a Western novel featuring characters with definable personalities. The characters in Things Fall Apart — notably Okonkwo, the main character (“protagonist” hardly seems right) — have no personalities. They’re allegories, each of them. Okonkwo is violent, brooding, with a worthless father. Whenever he does anything, it is in keeping with that single-sentence description. He rarely talks. There’s hardly any dialogue in this book thus far. It reminds me of the juvenile writing that Philip Roth mocks in I Married A Communist; rather than letting his characters do things, the young Nathan Zuckerman writes (paraphrasing here), “My name is Joe Everybody. Where I’m from doesn’t matter: could be Anytown, USA . . . ” Things Fall Apart has a very similar feel. I’m about halfway done, and I can’t wait for it to end.
This is totally fascinating:
The puzzle about the current employment situation is that the unemployment rate has declined even though job creation has been sluggish. The reason this has taken place is that the number of people who consider themselves in the work force has declined. No one knows why this is the case.
I didn’t realize that such a huge economic question was sitting around unanswered. Dan points us to an article on Marginal Revolution that cites The Wall Street Journal list of some possibilities:
I might need to read Marginal Revolution now. One of its cofounders is Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason and contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy. Generally I avoid anyone on Volokh whose last name is not Volokh and whose first name is not Eugene, but I may need to make an exception.
I’m really glad I read smart people’s weblogs. Both Brad DeLong and Josh Marshall pick up on a new class of White Housespeak: trumpeting a low job-growth number as though it were hopeful. Here’s Brad:
Let’s get George W. Bush a copy of the 2004 Economic Report of the President!
IHT: Bush backs off a jobs forecast: “Bush said Wednesday that the economy was growing and getting stronger, and he cited figures showing that the economy has created 366,000 jobs since last summer.”
If we got him a copy, he could read p. 94: “Because the labor force is constantly expanding, employment must be growing moderately just to keep the unemployment rate steady. For example, if the labor force is growing at the same rate as the population (about 1 percent per year), employment would have to rise 110,000 a month just to keep the unemployment rate stable, and larger job gains would be necessary (and are expected) to induce a downward trend in the unemployment rate.”
And then he could divide 366,000 jobs since last summer by five months, and discover that it is 72,000 jobs per month—which is less than 110,000.
(Internal block quote omitted.)
I.e., we’re not even replacing jobs at the rate that we’d need to in order to accommodate people entering the labor force. And yet this “366,000” number is the new talking point for the Bush Administration. Will the mainstream media pick up on what intelligent folks like Brad DeLong — people who certainly have the reputation and education to back up their economic claims — have been saying for months? Or will it continue to parrot the Bush line?
The Economic Report Of The President is on the web, if you want to see for yourself.
Josh Marshall brings us still more press-secretary fudging:
QUESTION: Scott, on taxes and jobs, your campaign chairman, Marc Racicot this morning said that the job prediction or the job forecast in the CEA report was a “goal.” You indicated to us yesterday that it was simply a figure that was based on economic modeling. So what is it? Is it an objective analysis of the current state of the economy, or was that a political document?
Scott McClellan: John, I think it is what it is. The data is a snapshot that economists use at a point in time for economic modeling. That’s what I said yesterday. So it is what it is —
QUESTION: Right, but Racicot —
Scott McClellan: — and it’s based on the data available at that point in time.
QUESTION: So was Racicot wrong in describing it as a goal?
Scott McClellan: I haven’t seen those specific remarks. I’ll be glad to look at them, but it is what it is, and it is how I described it yesterday.
[Here there’s a short and snappy back-and-forth between John and Scott on the difference between predictions and goals, and what the definition of ‘is’ is.]
Scott McClellan: John, I’m giving you the facts. It is what it is.
QUESTION: And the meaning of the word “is” is?
Scott McClellan: Well, John, I think that where the discussion of policy should be — or the discussion should be is on policy. And the President is a decision-maker. The President leads by making policy decisions. And the policies we are implementing are working to strengthen our economy and create an environment for robust job creation. New jobs are being created. The unemployment rate is declining. The policies this President has advocated and passed are working. And I think the American people think the discussion should be there on the policy decisions that are being made. Some don’t want to discuss the policies. But it’s important for a President to lead and make decisions, and then defend those decisions.
QUESTION: You understand the difference between a forecast based on economic modeling and a stated goal. Racicot just seems to indicate that this is a stated goal.
Scott McClellan: It is the economic forecast for our annual Economic Report. That’s what it is.
QUESTION: So it’s not a goal?
Either a) they’re fools and they’re shooting themselves on the foot by so clearly hiding their own flaws, or b) they think the American public won’t notice.
Via Jason Kottke: the Viagra prank, leading to the best nickname for Viagra ever.
GreyTuesday is an effort to protest EMI’s crackdown on DJ Danger Mouse’s amazing Grey Album.
Tuesday, February 24 will be a day of coordinated civil disobedience: websites will post Danger Mouse’s Grey Album on their site for 24 hours in protest of EMI’s attempts to censor this work.
(internal block-quote omitted). I’ll definitely be joining in this protest, and I invite my readers to do so as well. I’ve listened to this album, and it rocks. If you want to hear it before next Tuesday, and you’re having a hard time getting it off the overworked Illegal Art site, email me and I’ll send you a link.
Josh Marshall excerpts another contentious debate between perennial press maven Helen Thomas and White House press secretary Scott McClellan. I include his excerpt below, because it’s not available in the White House news-briefing archive (and Josh explains why).
Jack Balkin has a great post attacking Antonin Scalia’s use of “originalism” — the doctrine that a judge must interpret the Constitution by hewing to the original intent of the Framers. To divine this original intent, the doctrine says that the judge must use only what the text of the original document says. Presumably the judge is also free to use texts from before the Constitution, such as Blackstone’s Commentaries, any transcripts from the Constitutional Convention, the Articles of Confederation, and so forth. The judge’s goal is to infer what the Framers meant at the time that they wrote the Constitution; he is not free to reinterpret the Constitution according to modern desires.
That’s all right as far as it goes, but
None of this argument is new. The view that the Fourth Amendment attaches to people is central to the Katz decision, whereas the view that it attaches to property is central to the Olmstead decision. Katz overthrew Olmstead, in a pretty major shift for the court.
So then we run into one of the problems that Balkin mentions in the link above: we have two competing judicial principles. On the one hand, stare decisis, which tells us that we should let earlier decisions stand; on the other hand, Scalia and his ilk occasionally run up against decisions that they believe conflict with the original intent of the Constitution. What do they do in that case? Scalia believes that there are serious problems with the Katz decision, for instance, notably circularity: we have a constitutionally protected right to privacy whenever we have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” but the Constitution defines what that right to privacy is. So what should Scalia do, as an originalist and as someone who also must adhere to stare decisis? Overturn Katz, or continue to base decisions on it?
Via Jason Kottke: You should not, in fact, shake it like a Polaroid picture. Because you shouldn’t even shake a Polaroid picture like a Polaroid picture.
You have been informed.
Today’s sentence of the day comes to us via Chris Genovese’s link to a great review article studying bee dances. The context is that bees do a little dance to indicate where they’ve found food, and the dance contains elaborate signals about how far away the food was, how much work it took to get there, and whether the terrain on the way there changed all that much (what the paper’s authors call “optic flow”). So the paper reads, “Bees loaded with lead weights signal greater flight distances than unloaded bees.”
I consider this the best sentence I’ve read all day. And it’s within a paper that is otherwise fascinating. Highly recommended.
I’m reading We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, a book about the Hutu massacre of Tutsis in Rwanda. In one part, it mentions the U.S.’s nonintervention in Rwanda, even though the U.S. admitted there were “acts of genocide” happening there, and even though the U.S. was legally obligated to intervene. As Philip Gourevitch, the author of We wish to inform you . . . puts it, “Washington didn’t want to act. So Washington pretended that it wasn’t a genocide.” He cites in part the transcript of a State Department press briefing, which I found easily on the web. I include the relevant part below because it is remarkably evasive.