Let's Get Crazy?

More on the case from Lessig's book:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/dancing-tot-prevails-over-umg-in-youtube-fair-use-case.ars

Chat roulette

This is an interesting video about chat roulette, a new from of online communication that pairs random people together in a video chat forum

http://vimeo.com/9669721

Even in Internet Era, Artists Benefit From Record Label Support, Study Contends

NYT Media Decoder

By JOSEPH PLAMBECK

All you pop-star wannabes, take note: making it big isn’t cheap.

In order to break a new act in a major market, music companies must invest about $1 million and provide a host of services that haven’t yet been matched by new technologies, according to an industry report released Tuesday.

“One of the biggest myths about the digital age is that artists no longer need record labels,” says the report, released by the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which is funded by music companies. “The truth is that artists are generally much better served by a record deal. They want the funding and the specialist support that indie and major record labels provide.”

A typical new act in a major market receives a $200,000 advance from a music company, according to the report. The company spends an additional $400,000 for recording and video costs, $300,000 for promotion and $100,000 for tour support. Established artists cost even more, $4.6 million, largely because of bigger advance and marketing costs.

Over all, the report says music companies spend more than $5 billion each year on developing and marketing artists, about 30 percent of their sales revenue.

“In an age where there are more than 2.5 million hip hop artists and 1.8 million rock acts registered on MySpace, discovery, development, collaboration, marketing and promotion from music companies are more crucial than they ever were,” the report says.

Internet Addicition

It may be interesting to some people to take this test prior to my presentation tomorrow.

http://www.netaddiction.com/index.php?option=com_bfquiz&view=onepage&catid=46&Itemid=106

Pilfered Magazine Removes Infringements, “Re-Imagining Perspective”

The editors at Pilfered, the online magazine which invited readers to share “images pilfered from the web,” has announced they are “re-imagining our perspective” and will now accept only images submitted with the permission of the copyright holders.

More...

Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time

We'd like to think of ourselves as dynamic, unpredictable individuals, but according to new research, that's not the case at all. In a study published in last week's Science, researchers looked at customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time. These findings may be useful in multiple fields, including city planning, mobile communication resource management, and anticipating the spread of viruses.

More...

China’s Cyberposse

Human-flesh search engines — renrou sousuo yinqing — have become a Chinese phenomenon: they are a form of online vigilante justice in which Internet users hunt down and punish people who have attracted their wrath. The goal is to get the targets of a search fired from their jobs, shamed in front of their neighbors, run out of town. It’s crowd-sourced detective work, pursued online — with offline results.

More...