That's a great PR story, unfortunately it has just one major problem... It's major bull. I wonder which PR company handled that? Hill & Knowlton? Shandwick? It has their feel. I'm sure I'll read about it in a few months in PR-WATCH.
Private companies never did. Every single AIDS drug on the market was studied, researched, developed, and subsidized with public sector money. Every single one. Even the "manufactuing process" research was generally done with public money. The NIH usually gives away it's drugs & research to companies to make a profit with...but it's a rare event when they completely pay for the process to figure out how to mass produce them as well. They did this for just about all of the AIDS drugs in addition to developing them, and funding all of the research and testing. The private sector only spent money on "PR" to say what a nice bunch of guys they were. Nor did we put any restrictions on what they could charge for these drugs until very recently and we fought tooth and nail to keep other countries from manufacturing them at selling them at close to cost. The private sector didn't "lose any investment"...They simply lost a very small portion of their guaranteed profit on drugs they were handed on a silver platter from the public treasury.
How much subsidy can the truth take?
"As this article [jpost.com] points out, one reason big drug companies are stepping away from AIDS drug innovation, at least, is because of AIDS activists and other anticorporate do-gooders. By forcing companies to practically give away their drugs to the third world, these misguided crusaders have removed all incentive from Big Medicine to research new AIDS drugs. Any new drug development requires an immense amount of R&D capital before a cent of profit can be made; and no intelligent CEO is going to throw billions at a product that'll wind up being either given away or copied illegally by third-world manufacturers."
Just about every major drug development in the past 15 years has come from the public sector, not the private sector. Cancer drugs? Almost 100% public sector. AIDS drugs? 100% public sector. Antibiotic research?...Same thing.
What is the private sector doing? "Weekly" Prozac, "Extended Release" Acyclovoir, "Controlled Release" Pain Killer/Paxil...Or change one molecule, or change chilry slightly in the process... Or launch patent on what the drug becomes once it enters the body to extent patent...Lobby congress for patent extension... etc
I'm not saying that some of the controlled release drugs aren't quite useful -- but the mechanisms for making them controlled release are rarely innovative. Add Wax, or Cellulose to pill..That's 90%.
Add in captive market pricing (drug in US $212, same drug in Peru $7, same drug in Mexico $12, same drug in Australia $117)....And you have some real scum at work.
But drug companies have some some other shady things -- like using their influence at the FDA to keep new drugs from Europe off of the US market while they work on a one off version for release here. I'm sure some countries in Europe are doing the same thing. One of those areas that trade treaties don't really cover well.
After having a non-active KVM switch (and browsing in W2K w/Opera)for far too long. I got really good with keyboard shortcuts for most things. Turn switch, lose mouse... Now that I have an active switch I still use most of the shortcuts. I find them faster than using the mouse for most things.
My favorites in Opera: Ctrl-F4/Ctrl-W (closes window), Ctrl-N opens new window, 1 cycle backwards through windows, 2 cycle forwards through windows -- even with a scrollpoint I still prefer to page down or arrow key through the open window. Shift-click (open in new window), Ctrl-Shift-Click (open in new window in background). Alt-Tab (brings up list of all open pages and can cycle through them). Ctrl-Shift-W (Close all windows).
I played around with the gestures for a day or so, but never really got used to it. I appreciate the thought, but developers serve me better by making lots of keyboard shortcuts for various task and having some standization in them.
The most evil force on the planet isn't politicians, or armies, or even nuclear weapons. It's marketing. Marketing seeks to subjugate the will of all of mankind to its wishes.
The Internet has brought us a whole new world of marketing, and for once, users have some of the tools to filter it out. It's also a diverse enough media that it's beyond the control of a small group of people. This hasn't stopped them from trying, and the authors of that article are precisely the kind of people who would try to control it "for your benefit, because they know better than you".
"We need academics to be leaders not cheerleaders," he said.
"We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated."
Bah Humbug!
Why do people do this kind of research? They do it for marketing purposes & little else. They want to use it as a tool to control, enslave, and sell. Point, click, & buy - that is their vision of the net. This guy might as well of been talking about trend setters, selling Nike's, and managing information flows for public relations companies. The conversation would flow seamlessly if he did. Their goal isn't human understanding, it's how to use human understanding for branding, manipulating beliefs, keeping control of the rabble, and selling a bag of goods.
...The people who will benefit the most from his work will be the very same Public Relations & Marketing companies who twist & distort the other media but are having some problems learning to adapt to the new one. They are trying things, and learning to spin it as well.
"The tools to go 'beyond' the 10 or so sites most users visit are there. 90% of them wont do it. Thus you can concentrate your efforts on the 10 or 20 most common trafficked sites for maximum impact of story placement." --- From an PR Manual of a major PR company located in NYC. (company omitted as I can't afford the lawsuit right now). This is what this guy is really about.
The Taliban gave people trials too. They even had a process for appeal. Even "China" has that, though just like our 'enemy combatant' designation it's not very useful.
Military tribunals are used by all kinds of countries. For instance such sterling examples of human rights as Columbia, El Salvador (before the Maxist, and after the Marxist left), Panama, Peru, Bolivia. I'm sure you'll get a 100% completely fair trial there. Israel has a system for making people disappear as well, and far more people in it that we have here.
In all honesty, I don't see much different between what we are doing now and what the Soviets did, what China does, what the Taliban did. Do we have a process for forced psychiatric treatment and detainment? Sure. Is it subject to the same kinds of abuses? Yep. Can we designate anyone an enemy combatant? Yep. Can we hold people without informing anyone of their whereabouts? Yep. Can we hold them without legal council? Yep. Can we hold them under some material witness clause and not give them council, not tell anyone we have them, nor give them a process to get released? Yep. Is that any different that making someone disappear? Not that I can tell. Do we have secret courts? Yep. Do we have secret military tribunals? Yep. Do we have secret evidence and secret witnesses? Yep. Are we recording conversations with those lucky enough to fall under a process to have council? Yep. Do we have gag orders on searches, witnesses, council, and a ton of other things? Yep. Do people who violate that gag go to jail and or disappear? Yep.
I don't know where you get off saying we are so much more free than any of these other places. Stalin would be impressed.
It's damn near impossible to get your name off of them too. Have the same name as someone wanted by the state? That person use an alias similar to your name? An zip code match? An address match? Those things can flag you already. Worse, if "NO FLY" comes up on your name after you have gotten to your origional destination and you want to get back home -- maybe even back into the US. How do you resolve it? Currently there isn't a means to do it. You may have that haunt you for years.
"Community ties". Okay, how stupid is this program? They said it would check for magazine subscriptions. Okay, can I raise my ties level +1 with every magazine I subscribe to? Or only the right kind of magazines? I assume it will check for a phone in your name, maybe even utility bills. That's not hard to do even if you don't have an apartment/home. It sounds like it's tied into Lexis Nexis -- if it is, order Pizzas *(they buy information from Dominos and Pizza Hut), fill out every single prize and contest entry form you possibly can - take every marketing survey you possibly can with same information given. Knowing what you can get on Nexis should allow you to raise your score many points for not much cost. Nexis is tremendously inclusive in what it will find, but it's not not "smart" in any way. Example: ordering a pizza in your name from a friends house and getting your name entered in the Domino's box could show up as a "hit" that you live there. Doing the same from a hotel may also do it. Paying for a pizza by check or credit card can also generate a 'hit' at that address if they use services to verify the check like CheckPlus, or CheckMate. Credit Card information is routinely sold to Nexis by a majority of bank card companies. What if the next person to rent that room and order a pizza...or the next person to live in any one of those apartments/houses/apartment buildings is a terrorist? Will you get flagged? This is the "quality" of information Nexis can give them. What if there are two Jack Taylors? How do you sort information about one Jack Taylor from another? Again, Lexis is inclusive, but not smart. Many collection companies use Nexis for "skip tracing" and I can tell you some real horror stories about harassing phone calls generated from them that no matter how many times you tell them "XXX doesn't live here" they just keep calling, sending threatening letters. Again "quality". Gods help the person named "Skip Tracy", or "Bill De'fault". ];-)
http://www.lexisnexis.com/
We already have plate readers at borders and certain toll roads. I'm aware of at least *one* toll booth that sells information to Nexis. Is where you drive going to be a factor? If you live in St Louis, but have family, a girlfriend (lucky geek!), an assignment in Chicago that requires you to use the toll roads there...Are your 50-80 hits going to make you flag as an inconsistent with your living arrangements when you claim your residence as St Louis? Border crossings are using their own database with flags for certain people to stop and harass now. Are they going to use stuff in CAPPS II as well?
If they use Nexis this is the kind of information that is going to be available, plus any government databases. Try challenging your information (or even getting it) from Nexis now. Good luck. Keep in mind, many policitcal and charity organizations sell your information as well. A good deal of this will find it's way into their database. Is that information going to be used?...It's already being used by certain companies in background checks for employment. Applicants are unlikely to know why they were rejected from a job. Pharmacutical companies like Servier are notorious for screening applicants for political views (French based, but US offices).
Being harassed by the police, detained by customs, having the FBI come to your door, being maked "No FLY" and denied your right of travel is a lot more serious than getting junk mail.Yet the information quality is no better.
YAY! This is great! Now all all of the spam will come from NASA.GOV, IRS.GOV, WHITEHOUSE.GOV, FBI.GOV...and we wont have a contact to them to fix their mail server. Groovy. Progress at every level.
I find the governments arguement less than compelling.
a document via sneaker net (for printing onto say camera ready paper at Kinko's..etc)...I don't use the floppy drive.
I suppose I could get away with not having one all together if I made a boot CD and every computer I was going to deal with had a CD/RW drive that got along with each other.
This is one of those stories where you have to consider the source, and realize a lot of it may *not* be true.
If the documents were secret, how does Business 2.0 get ahold of them? And even more to the point, how could you verify that they were?
Answer: The DEA (and Military Industrial Complex) is seeking a huge amount of cash right now. We're buying arms for one side in a military conflict down there -- regardless of what they say they are doing. You don't need blackhawk & apache helecopters with full arrays of missiles to do fly overs to look for coca. You can do that in a cheap Bell. You don't need tanks to drive down roads to look for coca.
This is typical of the planted story. Impossible to verify, no "source" listed, but you know the "source" has to come from the government, probably the DEA or an interested military contractor. It's only being released because they need a press release to stir support for coughing up about a billion and a half dollars..of which their agency will get the lions share of what doesn't go into direct military funding in Columbia.
They've been fighting a civil war down there for 40 years. Roughly since the time we wanted to build an oil pipeline through the middle of the country, but they decided not to compensate people for their land. Instead they used the military to clear indigenous people from their land. That's what started the war, and they've been fighting it ever since. So long in fact, that many people there don't even remember why they started fighting in the first place.
Despite press reports you see in the US -- most coca production, as well as processing is done in the North of Columbia, not the South. Which means it's being done in territory not controlled by the FARC -- but by the government we are supporting. Uribe's(the president "elect" )own campaign manager is the largest importer of cocaine processing chemicals in the *world*.
There is a lot more than meets the eye when talking about Columbia.
I'll be in a minority with this comment, and that's okay...
I've been a person of an "other" faith just about all of my life. I've taken offense every day to things like: the house and senate chaplin...
Now I'm not saying that our senators don't need some moral guidence (I know several that do!) -- but I strongly resent 110,000 a year for his salary, plus another couple hundred grand for his office.
I similarly resent the chaplin for my state legislature.
I also resent "In God We Trust" written on our money.
...and I have since the age of 5 always resented the words they added to the pledge of allegence in *1953* "Under God".
Seperation of church & state is the one thing I have going here that they haven't completely taken away in the Bill of Rights. Every day my faith IS under attack from right wing extremist christians. The very freedom which allows minds to explore other ideas is under attack in Overland Missouri. Every year for the past 10 years there has been a bomb threat (from the same right wing wackos who pass ordinances like the one in Overland) when we get together for our new years festival...and every year we have to have the FBI come out and sweep the place for bombs.
So, Yes, I do mind. I do take offense. I don't want to live in "Pat Robertsons America" any more than I want to live under the Taliban. You want to worship? Fine. Do it in your home, our and about, do it in your church, your cicle, your temple, what have you... But keep it out of our government and allow others the same "respect" you would ask when dealing with the government.
Christians would take just as much offense to the words "In Goddess We Trust" being on the dollar. Or how about "In The Gods We Trust".. Or better yet...One Nation Under Satan? How about One Nation Under Shiva?...
Re:It's a new world, folks, adjust your arguments
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Post-September 11th American concerns about liberty and safety are very different from the pre-September 11th concerns. I see a lot of arguments here that do not take this into account. A lot people here are talking about liberty first, safety later. You are not talking to the converted, folks, you are talking to a mob scared about covering their respective asses. So to them, the vast majority of the American public, y'all sound a little hollow, hear?::::
The American public are sheep. That I grant you. However, the odds that you will have to deal with a Muslim terrorist (or any other terrorist not currently sponsored by the US Government) are incredibly low. The odds that you will have to deal with the gestapo being created are near 100%.
I'll take my less than.0000012837912 chance on getting blown up by a terrorist over that.
Unlike the CIA -- the Office of Naval Intelligence has always been able to operate domestic. The ONI has been spying on Americans since it's inception. They may not seem as "spooky" because they don't have the public reputation the CIA does - but they do just as much, and they do it to Americans too.
The CIA has long been envious of the ONI's ability to operate domestic, and also envious of their position of already having established bases in 70+ countries of the world...Where the CIA has to create a cover for itself, the ONI can be there as just part of another US Military base. But don't let that fool you, they have their phony businesses, corrupt banks, and all of the other perks as well. Including a budget that makes buying stealth bombers look like federal library funding...
In other news, during the tenure of Ronnie "The Only Good Commie Is A Dead Commie" Reagan - the house & senate passed a bill allowing the NSC to kill Americans and foreign nationals with no accountability except to the NSC. We then proceeded to plant a terrorist style bomb to kill off a suspected Islamic terrorist which failed to kill him, but killed 41 other people (mostly school kids as well).
They also built camps for the detainment of potentially millions of Americans and initiated a disaster plan to be coordinated by FEMA for the continuance of government, compiled list of "those to be arrested"......And did it all under your eyes without anyone really noticing.
Add in the USA Patriot ACT, parts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which required all 'landed' communications to be routed to FBI offices so they could spy on communications without having to actually contact anyone at the Telco).
Sure, you think I'm a paranoid conspiracy nut. Believe that if you want to. Unfortunately, all of that really happened.
As we have seen, all of the data being collected by "private" companies for their databases has found ways to fall into the hands of the Feds. In fact, they may be required to turn it over (and keep their mouth shut about doing it) by sections of the USA Patriot act.
Re: FBI Subj: And the Constitution is...?
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Perhaps it's time to start watching the watchers.
Perhaps a year of organizing 20,000 people to go follow federal workers around with camera, tracking devices, and post all of their information for all of the world to see -- and all that can be culled from database services like nexus would change their mind?:)
Re:Nobody here is upset at the system crackers?
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The Hackers were not the ones designated to be in charge of the information... The tax payers were not "asked" to be in this database.. They were FORCED into this database by people incompetent to manage it.
You don't walk down the street in a bad neighborhood with $60,000 in 100 bills in your hand waiving it around either.
You have obviously never looked at your picture on a security camera before... Now move the camera 12000-30000 feet away - and have it move at 300-550 mph.
Then realize the image this thing actually transmits will probably have to be compressed in some way - take the resolution down even more.
Then add in the usual things: rain, clouds, snow, hail, ice, sand storms, fog, smoke, exploding shells of lead....
It's not that I don't trust technology... I just don't trust this technology to be better than human technology.
I would imagine that they use some kind of spread spectrum communications system, possibly with frequencies rotating at set intervals. Doesn't make it impossible to jam - just makes it more difficult.
You would have to do a lot of homework to fully take over a plane using that system. Or have inside information. However, you might be able to confuse it long enough to have a..hard landing.. without that. I wonder how well it can fly without information being streamed to it about what to do next ?:)
They list the carrying capacity of the X-45 as 1500lbs. This is fairly typical in military hardware bids though - take whatever it can actually do - and times that by 2 for the press release.
Doesn't like images of Palestinians being beaten, tortured, humiliated at check points daily -- to be televised. But they wouldn't be televised if they didn't happen....and even with them happening, they still aren't televised here (USA).
I'm sorry the internet isn't censored to his particular likes, but the reality is the internet may be even more accurate than the mainsteam news. At least the internet reports the stories that they don't because of omission. Even in the stories they do cover they simply omit the opposing view.
If TV news wants the internet to go away they have the means to do it -- do a better job.:)
Let's be honest, Christianity and Judaism haven't been as bad to us as many seem to think. When people insult Christianity and Judaism and proudly declare themselves to hate Christianity or Judaism, you don't see conservative Christians and Jews lining up to strap C4 to their bodies and suicide bomb their "enemies.">>>>>
Christianity and Judaism have been just as bad... when they are allowed to run a state. I don't want to live in Pat Robertsons America any more than I want to live under Sharia law. They aren't all that much different to be honest. We've seen that when any religion gets control of the wheels of state power they abuse others with it. Christians killed millions -- both in Europe, America, South America, and Africa. Jews are doing the same thing in Israel today.
The only solutions I see are keeping religious wacko's out of power.
Ronald Reagans first act as president .....
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Ronald Reagans first executive order as president of the USA was to have all 113 solar panels removed from the White House roof.
Government is filled with nitwits fighting over their own personal kingdoms like feudal lords. I think we can chuck the solar rooftop collection mandates....for at least the next 20 years.
That doesn't mean it isn't a decent idea..It just isn't going to happen.
Quote: It's an oft-repeated fact that record labels lose money on 90% of their roster of artists, and make it all up and then some on the 10% of artists and records that become blockbusters.::
Believing anything a Hollywood accountant says is like believing Enron financial reports....Just work in opposite directions.
A few Hollywood accountant tricks that get quoted in the 'press' too often as fact and what they really mean.
9 out of 10 films/albums don't make money in the "Domestic Market". --- What this means is - they didn't recoup their entire investment marketing a product world-wide from a single country. It does NOT mean they lost money. It does NOT mean they lost money on the product in the domestic market. It only means that while selling a million copies of something in 20/200 countries - a single country in the mix did not make up their marketing & distribution expense for all of the rest of them from THE PORTION OF CD/FILM sales ALONE.
Music & films have a second life. You get paid when the radio plays them, when they are used in films/commercials, when TV shows feature your music. And you get money every time they are rebroadcast! Did the Mighty Ducks of Aneheim movie make money? At the US theater? No. By the time it was released to cable and to 200 other countries? Yes. Then there is the publishing rights and all that stems from that.
There are peculitarites in the US tax law which allow you to write off promotional expenses for selling your product overseas - but not have to add the sales from those manufactured overseas to your bottom line as income! Of course, you can also locate your HQ in Bermuda and avoid the problem all together. A lot of Hollywood accounting on the profit and loss side stems from this.
While record companies don't always get "everything" on their wish list in negotiations, they tend to get most of it. Most artist make their money on concert sales, and if they are smart they hang on to the publishing rights. Not all are.
"Standard Oil got its monopoly because of technology that vastly lowered the price of oil,"
Umm. No.
Standard Oil got it's Monopoly by superior finance, collusion with the railroads to charge other companies several times the amount they paid to ship oil, eliminating supplies of essential materials (they would do things like buy every single wood barrel for 300 miles and sit on them, then have the railroad put that particular cargo item on a "waiting list" for other customers), by using that superior financing to get monopolies on refining, and secret trust arrangements with hundreds of companies to get around laws respecting corporations operating in more than one state.
While the price of "refined" oil products did drop eventually under Standard Oil - it would of dropped anyway. The market for oil was essentially one of vast overproduction at the time heavily front ended to drilling and not refining. When standard bought up all of the drilling operations around it's refineries - it no longer mattered if another company opened a refinery in the area because of the location, collusion with the railroad companies, and near monopolies on local distribution.
So, consumers actually paid *more* for Standard Oil than they would of in a free market. The factors by which Standard Oil was able to "lower" price all involved artifical and illegal collusion to set prices higher for competing companies. Had those not been in place, consumers would of paid less for the finished product, had more choice, and the oil market would of had vast fluctuations in the drilling side of it because of insuffient capitalization. Some consolidation was inevitible, but not on that level.
Microsoft & General Electric own NBC (and of course, MSNBC). You can bet your promotion routes are kind of cut off if you were to say report accurately that GE light bulbs have been rigged to have a shorter life than claimed, or that Windows XP... has security holes they don't want known or sucks entirely. Or any of the 100+ felonies General Electric has been convicted of, including: Selling government secrets, fraud in military contracts, civilian government fraud, financial fraud, environmental felonies, tax fraud, illegal arms sales to hostile powers, and a few others I might run the risk of a lawsuit to talk about.
CBS is owned by Westinghouse. The unwritten code there is not to report on issues which would affect their stock price. Very short career path if you do.
ABC is now owned by Disney and Co. I don't think you'll hear any stories of Disney employees getting crabs from lax laundry at Disney World, eh?
(Aside from having defense contractors owning networks and the disincentive that gives to report news accurately.) All of these companies are huge conglomerates. Many of them own large radio networks, film companies, record labels, magazines, and newspapers as well. It really comes down to 6 companies that control 80% of the media,...add in the other 2 (with only a few billion in assets) and you get 87% control. And not just of the media here. They've branched out to control much of the media in other countries as well.
Curiously enough these 8 major media companies all sit on the WEF. Wonder why 99% of America doesn't know what those protest were really about?
Probably 90-99% of Americans would be shocked to learn that the Sandinistas were not communist. They had a stock exchange, anyone was free to open up a business there and set their prices at will, they had banks, still used money, still allowed private schools, universities, open markets where you could buy & sell whatever you wanted. (They did nationalize a few properties owned by Samozas crew that had fled the country and used them for communal farming -- in a country where the majority of people do not own land and starvation was the #1 killer at the time.) You know why no one knows these things in America? It wasn't in the corporate interest to report them.
It's like any other business. Your boss doesn't have to tell you what to do 99% of the time. You know your job, you know what not to say. No one has to tell reporters what not to cover and if they make the mistake of covering something in a way that isn't becoming to the corporate controlling interest - editors and owners can always kill it. There are other things wrong with the media as well, like the extensive PR hits filling the news... Of course, corporate lawsuits play another large role in why even 60 minutes is doing stories about puppies now instead of real issues.
Buy a copy of a Gannett newspaper (odds are your newspaper is owned by them!)...Buy a copy of it from another city. Notice any similarities? Hey, reporters are lazy too. You'll see the same PR hits, the same newswire hits, word for word much of the same recycled stories from any of the hundreds of papers they own, and you'll discover than just about every single one of them endorses the same candidates. Coincidence?:)
It's actually possible to be a reporter and never leave your desk. You can simply run the PR hits supplied to you. They come complete with opposing view, all typed up nice and neat for you. TV has video news releases which essentially are the same thing. Media companies love them (and never talk about them). It saves them having to go out and cover stories at their expense. If it's a major network they can afford for their unpaid interns to edit the raw footage version and splice their own talking head in. It's not just corporate interest supplying them either. Much of Datelines recent reporting on Ecstasy was in fact filmed by the DEA's public relations dept. They simply edited in their own people from the raw footage and did one interview. The military has an astronomical amount of people who do nothing but send out flack to newspapers, radio, TV. They even provide 'experts on call'. Ever wonder who those people are that keep appearing on PBS/NPR/Nightline/CNN...How they come to be on there?
Add in sensationalism & stories about puppies to get ratings and the "freak of the week" human interest story. The pandering done to advertisers (for instance, the Post Dispatch allowed Tyson foods and entire page to run their version of events when they had been busted for smuggling undocumented Mexican workers into the country and keeping them in horrible conditions. [They did have the courtesy to put in the smallest possible font size that the article was writen by a Tyson employee.]
One other thing. It's now illegal for you to get DSS from foreign countries. So even if you tried to escape the bias that way, you wouldn't "legally" be able to. Thank The Gods for the internet and translation services, eh?
I tend to find the more TV people watch the less they truly understand what is going on in the world. Maybe people couldn't deal with knowing. More likely it would make those spinning it uncomfortable.
I guess you end up with Attica is Attica. Best media sources I've found are BBC World, Indy Media, Narco News, CNB (yep, the religious nuts..their bias is plain and simple), TBN (the other religious nuts), PR Watch, Democracy NOW, and Off The Hook.
I would expect a slight bit of coverage on CDBTPA from MS. You can bet their PR people will work overtime to get their side of the issue out. Technology companies have lobbies and PR flacks too. -- It's only when you don't have the resources to hire a Fleishmen Hillard at 11 million a month to do your dirty work - that no one hears about your issues.
Granted. Nor of the RIAA. My brothers band has a gold record, and a stack of silvers. Of course, the gold took more than 10 years to go gold. They did this without any play from Clear Channel stations. (Most of their record sales were outside of the US. #1 hit in Australia, #4 in New Zealand and distribution by Geffen and Sony at another point, split between 4 different "labels" in total.)
Here is what playola can do for you: A single bit of Playola to Clear Channel can get your music broadcast on: 1000+ stations across America. (*Note: Not all Clear Channel stations broadcast music. They own a fair number of AM talk radio as well as owning 860 FM music stations).
Here is what pissing off clear channel (and their affiliate Contemporary productions) can do for you: Your record never gets played on the 1100+ stations Clear Channel owns, nor 1500 stations they produce content for, and your act is banned from 65% of concert venues in North America *(owned in whole or controled by Contemporary productions).
It's a powerful enough force that even big powerful rich record companies give in to it. When you back it with other forms of playola: MTV/VH1...You can even turn an like Hanson & Menudo into a gold record. (I'm sure they are broke from the playola..but trust me the record company made money even if the musicians didn't).
My own disappointments with things like Napster was not that someone may of traded a copy of the music I made. (I've sold arond 40-50,000 copies of everything I've done in 15 years of doing music.. Yep, less than 4000 copies a year.) Hell I was touched to find that someone liked my band enough to put it's conent online. I wasn't worried about a lost sale. My disappointment was in losing an alternative means of distribution which drove people to come to concerts. How many people go to a concert for a band they never heard of?
I have one other comment about major labels. Southern Culture on the Skids sold a ton more records on Geffen than they did on their indie. They made more selling records on the Indie than they did selling 3X as many through Geffen. Be it major label accounting practices, playola, promotional fee's, an expensive tour bus..what have you, the bottom line was it was more profitible for them to go with a small label and work out a distribution deal with a major label than be represented by them. A lot of bands who are not quite in the ballpark of U2, but not unhead of find it's better for their bottom line to stick with an Indie.
Even Nirvana - and the multiple platinums, was making a ton more off of their indie deal (their indie got bought by someone else, thus, they entered the deal through the back door) than they did on the majors. They walked away from their first major tour damn near broke.
There is plenty enough blame to go around in the entire industry. Blame the government for failing to properly regulate radio, enforce antitrust laws against concert promotion/venues, blame greedy and crooked movie and record company accountants for robbing artist, blame artist for not consulting with really good attorneys when entering into contracts, blame the RIAA & MPAA and the record and movie companies for their crooked dealings with legislators here and abroad. The amount of reform needed is huge. Just going after one element of it wont change it. Nothing is going to get better without attacking all of it.
I'm not even sure that it can get better just by actions in America alone any more. Corporations already have hijacked the WEF/IMF, they exert undo influence over NAFTA/GATT councils. It's ultimately going to come down to a battle for freedom worldwide, and I hate to tell you, we aren't winning.
The DMCA was shopped in a treaty. One it was passed in a treaty it was a foregone conclusion it would be implimented in US law. The SSSCA may die in the legislature now, but be similarly shopped in a treaty elsewhere only to get in through the backdoor. I've seen the process happen enough to know this is the most likely outcome.
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That's a great PR story, unfortunately it has just one major problem ... It's major bull. I wonder which PR company handled that? Hill & Knowlton? Shandwick? It has their feel. I'm sure I'll read about it in a few months in PR-WATCH.
...but it's a rare event when they completely pay for the process to figure out how to mass produce them as well. They did this for just about all of the AIDS drugs in addition to developing them, and funding all of the research and testing. The private sector only spent money on "PR" to say what a nice bunch of guys they were. Nor did we put any restrictions on what they could charge for these drugs until very recently and we fought tooth and nail to keep other countries from manufacturing them at selling them at close to cost. The private sector didn't "lose any investment" ...They simply lost a very small portion of their guaranteed profit on drugs they were handed on a silver platter from the public treasury.
Private companies never did. Every single AIDS drug on the market was studied, researched, developed, and subsidized with public sector money. Every single one. Even the "manufactuing process" research was generally done with public money. The NIH usually gives away it's drugs & research to companies to make a profit with
How much subsidy can the truth take?
"As this article [jpost.com] points out, one reason big drug companies are stepping away from AIDS drug innovation, at least, is because of AIDS activists and other anticorporate do-gooders. By forcing companies to practically give away their drugs to the third world, these misguided crusaders have removed all incentive from Big Medicine to research new AIDS drugs. Any new drug development requires an immense amount of R&D capital before a cent of profit can be made; and no intelligent CEO is going to throw billions at a product that'll wind up being either given away or copied illegally by third-world manufacturers."
Just about every major drug development in the past 15 years has come from the public sector, not the private sector. Cancer drugs? Almost 100% public sector. AIDS drugs? 100% public sector. Antibiotic research? ...Same thing.
...Or change one molecule, or change chilry slightly in the process ... Or launch patent on what the drug becomes once it enters the body to extent patent ...Lobby congress for patent extension ... etc
..That's 90%.
...And you have some real scum at work.
What is the private sector doing? "Weekly" Prozac, "Extended Release" Acyclovoir, "Controlled Release" Pain Killer/Paxil
I'm not saying that some of the controlled release drugs aren't quite useful -- but the mechanisms for making them controlled release are rarely innovative. Add Wax, or Cellulose to pill
Add in captive market pricing (drug in US $212, same drug in Peru $7, same drug in Mexico $12, same drug in Australia $117).
But drug companies have some some other shady things -- like using their influence at the FDA to keep new drugs from Europe off of the US market while they work on a one off version for release here. I'm sure some countries in Europe are doing the same thing. One of those areas that trade treaties don't really cover well.
After having a non-active KVM switch (and browsing in W2K w/Opera)for far too long. I got really good with keyboard shortcuts for most things. Turn switch, lose mouse ... Now that I have an active switch I still use most of the shortcuts. I find them faster than using the mouse for most things.
My favorites in Opera: Ctrl-F4/Ctrl-W (closes window), Ctrl-N opens new window, 1 cycle backwards through windows, 2 cycle forwards through windows -- even with a scrollpoint I still prefer to page down or arrow key through the open window. Shift-click (open in new window), Ctrl-Shift-Click (open in new window in background). Alt-Tab (brings up list of all open pages and can cycle through them). Ctrl-Shift-W (Close all windows).
I played around with the gestures for a day or so, but never really got used to it. I appreciate the thought, but developers serve me better by making lots of keyboard shortcuts for various task and having some standization in them.
The most evil force on the planet isn't politicians, or armies, or even nuclear weapons. It's marketing. Marketing seeks to subjugate the will of all of mankind to its wishes.
The Internet has brought us a whole new world of marketing, and for once, users have some of the tools to filter it out. It's also a diverse enough media that it's beyond the control of a small group of people. This hasn't stopped them from trying, and the authors of that article are precisely the kind of people who would try to control it "for your benefit, because they know better than you".
"We need academics to be leaders not cheerleaders," he said.
"We must save the internet from its founding myth that it is good for democracy and is open and cannot be regulated."
Bah Humbug!
Why do people do this kind of research? They do it for marketing purposes & little else.
They want to use it as a tool to control, enslave, and sell. Point, click, & buy - that is their vision of the net. This guy might as well of been talking about trend setters, selling Nike's, and managing information flows for public relations companies. The conversation would flow seamlessly if he did. Their goal isn't human understanding, it's how to use human understanding for branding, manipulating beliefs, keeping control of the rabble, and selling a bag of goods.
...The people who will benefit the most from his work will be the very same Public Relations & Marketing companies who twist & distort the other media but are having some problems learning to adapt to the new one. They are trying things, and learning to spin it as well.
"The tools to go 'beyond' the 10 or so sites most users visit are there. 90% of them wont do it. Thus you can concentrate your efforts on the 10 or 20 most common trafficked sites for maximum impact of story placement." --- From an PR Manual of a major PR company located in NYC. (company omitted as I can't afford the lawsuit right now). This is what this guy is really about.
The Taliban gave people trials too.
They even had a process for appeal.
Even "China" has that, though just like our 'enemy combatant' designation it's not very useful.
Military tribunals are used by all kinds of countries. For instance such sterling examples of human rights as Columbia, El Salvador (before the Maxist, and after the Marxist left), Panama, Peru, Bolivia. I'm sure you'll get a 100% completely fair trial there. Israel has a system for making people disappear as well, and far more people in it that we have here.
In all honesty, I don't see much different between what we are doing now and what the Soviets did, what China does, what the Taliban did. Do we have a process for forced psychiatric treatment and detainment? Sure. Is it subject to the same kinds of abuses? Yep. Can we designate anyone an enemy combatant? Yep. Can we hold people without informing anyone of their whereabouts? Yep. Can we hold them without legal council? Yep. Can we hold them under some material witness clause and not give them council, not tell anyone we have them, nor give them a process to get released? Yep. Is that any different that making someone disappear? Not that I can tell. Do we have secret courts? Yep. Do we have secret military tribunals? Yep. Do we have secret evidence and secret witnesses? Yep. Are we recording conversations with those lucky enough to fall under a process to have council? Yep. Do we have gag orders on searches, witnesses, council, and a ton of other things? Yep. Do people who violate that gag go to jail and or disappear? Yep.
I don't know where you get off saying we are so much more free than any of these other places.
Stalin would be impressed.
...I think a lot of people forget this.
...or the next person to live in any one of those apartments/houses/apartment buildings is a terrorist? Will you get flagged? This is the "quality" of information Nexis can give them. What if there are two Jack Taylors? How do you sort information about one Jack Taylor from another? Again, Lexis is inclusive, but not smart. Many collection companies use Nexis for "skip tracing" and I can tell you some real horror stories about harassing phone calls generated from them that no matter how many times you tell them "XXX doesn't live here" they just keep calling, sending threatening letters. Again "quality". Gods help the person named "Skip Tracy", or "Bill De'fault". ];-)
...Are your 50-80 hits going to make you flag as an inconsistent with your living arrangements when you claim your residence as St Louis? Border crossings are using their own database with flags for certain people to stop and harass now. Are they going to use stuff in CAPPS II as well?
...It's already being used by certain companies in background checks for employment. Applicants are unlikely to know why they were rejected from a job. Pharmacutical companies like Servier are notorious for screening applicants for political views (French based, but US offices).
It's damn near impossible to get your name off of them too. Have the same name as someone wanted by the state? That person use an alias similar to your name? An zip code match? An address match? Those things can flag you already. Worse, if "NO FLY" comes up on your name after you have gotten to your origional destination and you want to get back home -- maybe even back into the US. How do you resolve it? Currently there isn't a means to do it. You may have that haunt you for years.
"Community ties". Okay, how stupid is this program? They said it would check for magazine subscriptions. Okay, can I raise my ties level +1 with every magazine I subscribe to? Or only the right kind of magazines? I assume it will check for a phone in your name, maybe even utility bills. That's not hard to do even if you don't have an apartment/home. It sounds like it's tied into Lexis Nexis -- if it is, order Pizzas *(they buy information from Dominos and Pizza Hut), fill out every single prize and contest entry form you possibly can - take every marketing survey you possibly can with same information given. Knowing what you can get on Nexis should allow you to raise your score many points for not much cost. Nexis is tremendously inclusive in what it will find, but it's not not "smart" in any way. Example: ordering a pizza in your name from a friends house and getting your name entered in the Domino's box could show up as a "hit" that you live there. Doing the same from a hotel may also do it. Paying for a pizza by check or credit card can also generate a 'hit' at that address if they use services to verify the check like CheckPlus, or CheckMate. Credit Card information is routinely sold to Nexis by a majority of bank card companies. What if the next person to rent that room and order a pizza
http://www.lexisnexis.com/
We already have plate readers at borders and certain toll roads. I'm aware of at least *one* toll booth that sells information to Nexis. Is where you drive going to be a factor? If you live in St Louis, but have family, a girlfriend (lucky geek!), an assignment in Chicago that requires you to use the toll roads there
If they use Nexis this is the kind of information that is going to be available, plus any government databases. Try challenging your information (or even getting it) from Nexis now. Good luck. Keep in mind, many policitcal and charity organizations sell your information as well. A good deal of this will find it's way into their database. Is that information going to be used?
Being harassed by the police, detained by customs, having the FBI come to your door, being maked "No FLY" and denied your right of travel is a lot more serious than getting junk mail.Yet the information quality is no better.
YAY! This is great! Now all all of the spam will come from NASA.GOV, IRS.GOV, WHITEHOUSE.GOV, FBI.GOV...and we wont have a contact to them to fix their mail server. Groovy. Progress at every level.
I find the governments arguement less than compelling.
a document via sneaker net (for printing onto say camera ready paper at Kinko's..etc) ...I don't use the floppy drive.
I suppose I could get away with not having one all together if I made a boot CD and every computer I was going to deal with had a CD/RW drive that got along with each other.
This is one of those stories where you have to consider the source, and realize a lot of it may *not* be true.
If the documents were secret, how does Business 2.0 get ahold of them? And even more to the point, how could you verify that they were?
Answer: The DEA (and Military Industrial Complex) is seeking a huge amount of cash right now. We're buying arms for one side in a military conflict down there -- regardless of what they say they are doing. You don't need blackhawk & apache helecopters with full arrays of missiles to do fly overs to look for coca. You can do that in a cheap Bell. You don't need tanks to drive down roads to look for coca.
This is typical of the planted story. Impossible to verify, no "source" listed, but you know the "source" has to come from the government, probably the DEA or an interested military contractor. It's only being released because they need a press release to stir support for coughing up about a billion and a half dollars
They've been fighting a civil war down there for 40 years. Roughly since the time we wanted to build an oil pipeline through the middle of the country, but they decided not to compensate people for their land. Instead they used the military to clear indigenous people from their land. That's what started the war, and they've been fighting it ever since. So long in fact, that many people there don't even remember why they started fighting in the first place.
Despite press reports you see in the US -- most coca production, as well as processing is done in the North of Columbia, not the South. Which means it's being done in territory not controlled by the FARC -- but by the government we are supporting. Uribe's(the president "elect" )own campaign manager is the largest importer of cocaine processing chemicals in the *world*.
There is a lot more than meets the eye when talking about Columbia.
I'll be in a minority with this comment, and that's okay ...
...
...and every year we have to have the FBI come out and sweep the place for bombs.
... But keep it out of our government and allow others the same "respect" you would ask when dealing with the government.
...One Nation Under Satan? How about One Nation Under Shiva? ...
I've been a person of an "other" faith just about all of my life. I've taken offense every day to things like: the house and senate chaplin
Now I'm not saying that our senators don't need some moral guidence (I know several that do!) -- but I strongly resent 110,000 a year for his salary, plus another couple hundred grand for his office.
I similarly resent the chaplin for my state legislature.
I also resent "In God We Trust" written on our money.
...and I have since the age of 5 always resented the words they added to the pledge of allegence in *1953* "Under God".
Seperation of church & state is the one thing I have going here that they haven't completely taken away in the Bill of Rights. Every day my faith IS under attack from right wing extremist christians. The very freedom which allows minds to explore other ideas is under attack in Overland Missouri. Every year for the past 10 years there has been a bomb threat (from the same right wing wackos who pass ordinances like the one in Overland) when we get together for our new years festival
So, Yes, I do mind. I do take offense. I don't want to live in "Pat Robertsons America" any more than I want to live under the Taliban. You want to worship? Fine. Do it in your home, our and about, do it in your church, your cicle, your temple, what have you
Christians would take just as much offense to the words "In Goddess We Trust" being on the dollar. Or how about "In The Gods We Trust".. Or better yet
Post-September 11th American concerns about liberty and safety are very different from the pre-September 11th concerns. I see a lot of arguments here that do not take this into account. A lot people here are talking about liberty first, safety later. You are not talking to the converted, folks, you are talking to a mob scared about covering their respective asses. So to them, the vast majority of the American public, y'all sound a little hollow, hear? ::::
.0000012837912 chance on getting blown up by a terrorist over that.
The American public are sheep. That I grant you. However, the odds that you will have to deal with a Muslim terrorist (or any other terrorist not currently sponsored by the US Government) are incredibly low. The odds that you will have to deal with the gestapo being created are near 100%.
I'll take my less than
Unlike the CIA -- the Office of Naval Intelligence has always been able to operate domestic. The ONI has been spying on Americans since it's inception. They may not seem as "spooky" because they don't have the public reputation the CIA does - but they do just as much, and they do it to Americans too.
...And did it all under your eyes without anyone really noticing.
The CIA has long been envious of the ONI's ability to operate domestic, and also envious of their position of already having established bases in 70+ countries of the world...Where the CIA has to create a cover for itself, the ONI can be there as just part of another US Military base. But don't let that fool you, they have their phony businesses, corrupt banks, and all of the other perks as well. Including a budget that makes buying stealth bombers look like federal library funding...
In other news, during the tenure of Ronnie "The Only Good Commie Is A Dead Commie" Reagan - the house & senate passed a bill allowing the NSC to kill Americans and foreign nationals with no accountability except to the NSC. We then proceeded to plant a terrorist style bomb to kill off a suspected Islamic terrorist which failed to kill him, but killed 41 other people (mostly school kids as well).
They also built camps for the detainment of potentially millions of Americans and initiated a disaster plan to be coordinated by FEMA for the continuance of government, compiled list of "those to be arrested"...
Add in the USA Patriot ACT, parts of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (which required all 'landed' communications to be routed to FBI offices so they could spy on communications without having to actually contact anyone at the Telco).
Sure, you think I'm a paranoid conspiracy nut. Believe that if you want to. Unfortunately, all of that really happened.
As we have seen, all of the data being collected by "private" companies for their databases has found ways to fall into the hands of the Feds. In fact, they may be required to turn it over (and keep their mouth shut about doing it) by sections of the USA Patriot act.
Perhaps it's time to start watching the watchers.
:)
Perhaps a year of organizing 20,000 people to go follow federal workers around with camera, tracking devices, and post all of their information for all of the world to see -- and all that can be culled from database services like nexus would change their mind?
The Hackers were not the ones designated to be in charge of the information... The tax payers were not "asked" to be in this database.. They were FORCED into this database by people incompetent to manage it.
You don't walk down the street in a bad neighborhood with $60,000 in 100 bills in your hand waiving it around either.
Identification is easier?!?
... I just don't trust this technology to be better than human technology.
You have obviously never looked at your picture on a security camera before... Now move the camera 12000-30000 feet away - and have it move at 300-550 mph.
Then realize the image this thing actually transmits will probably have to be compressed in some way - take the resolution down even more.
Then add in the usual things: rain, clouds, snow, hail, ice, sand storms, fog, smoke, exploding shells of lead....
It's not that I don't trust technology
I would imagine that they use some kind of spread spectrum communications system, possibly with frequencies rotating at set intervals. Doesn't make it impossible to jam - just makes it more difficult.
..hard landing.. without that. I wonder how well it can fly without information being streamed to it about what to do next ? :)
You would have to do a lot of homework to fully take over a plane using that system. Or have inside information. However, you might be able to confuse it long enough to have a
They list the carrying capacity of the X-45 as 1500lbs. This is fairly typical in military hardware bids though - take whatever it can actually do - and times that by 2 for the press release.
The 1500 lb figure is by the way -- their own.
Whenever I come across a place that has a keypad for entry with 9 digets I usually try:
..an X ..
7913. Which is a Z.
7931 A box.
7319
Unless there is a single key with the number rubbed off.. Then that's a pretty easy guess.
Human nature being what it is those usually work.
Doesn't like images of Palestinians being beaten, tortured, humiliated at check points daily -- to be televised. But they wouldn't be televised if they didn't happen. ...and even with them happening, they still aren't televised here (USA).
:)
I'm sorry the internet isn't censored to his particular likes, but the reality is the internet may be even more accurate than the mainsteam news. At least the internet reports the stories that they don't because of omission. Even in the stories they do cover they simply omit the opposing view.
If TV news wants the internet to go away they have the means to do it -- do a better job.
Let's be honest, Christianity and Judaism haven't been as bad to us as many seem to think. When people insult Christianity and Judaism and proudly declare themselves to hate Christianity or Judaism, you don't see conservative Christians and Jews lining up to strap C4 to their bodies and suicide bomb their "enemies.">>>>>
... when they are allowed to run a state. I don't want to live in Pat Robertsons America any more than I want to live under Sharia law. They aren't all that much different to be honest. We've seen that when any religion gets control of the wheels of state power they abuse others with it. Christians killed millions -- both in Europe, America, South America, and Africa. Jews are doing the same thing in Israel today.
Christianity and Judaism have been just as bad
The only solutions I see are keeping religious wacko's out of power.
Ronald Reagans first executive order as president of the USA was to have all 113 solar panels removed from the White House roof.
....for at least the next 20 years.
Government is filled with nitwits fighting over their own personal kingdoms like feudal lords. I think we can chuck the solar rooftop collection mandates
That doesn't mean it isn't a decent idea..It just isn't going to happen.
Quote: It's an oft-repeated fact that record labels lose money on 90% of their roster of artists, and make it all up and then some on the 10% of artists and records that become blockbusters. ::
...Just work in opposite directions.
Believing anything a Hollywood accountant says is like believing Enron financial reports.
A few Hollywood accountant tricks that get quoted in the 'press' too often as fact and what they really mean.
9 out of 10 films/albums don't make money in the "Domestic Market". --- What this means is - they didn't recoup their entire investment marketing a product world-wide from a single country. It does NOT mean they lost money. It does NOT mean they lost money on the product in the domestic market. It only means that while selling a million copies of something in 20/200 countries - a single country in the mix did not make up their marketing & distribution expense for all of the rest of them from THE PORTION OF CD/FILM sales ALONE.
Music & films have a second life. You get paid when the radio plays them, when they are used in films/commercials, when TV shows feature your music. And you get money every time they are rebroadcast! Did the Mighty Ducks of Aneheim movie make money? At the US theater? No. By the time it was released to cable and to 200 other countries? Yes. Then there is the publishing rights and all that stems from that.
There are peculitarites in the US tax law which allow you to write off promotional expenses for selling your product overseas - but not have to add the sales from those manufactured overseas to your bottom line as income! Of course, you can also locate your HQ in Bermuda and avoid the problem all together. A lot of Hollywood accounting on the profit and loss side stems from this.
While record companies don't always get "everything" on their wish list in negotiations, they tend to get most of it. Most artist make their money on concert sales, and if they are smart they hang on to the publishing rights. Not all are.
"Standard Oil got its monopoly because of technology that vastly lowered the price of oil,"
Umm. No.
Standard Oil got it's Monopoly by superior finance, collusion with the railroads to charge other companies several times the amount they paid to ship oil, eliminating supplies of essential materials (they would do things like buy every single wood barrel for 300 miles and sit on them, then have the railroad put that particular cargo item on a "waiting list" for other customers), by using that superior financing to get monopolies on refining, and secret trust arrangements with hundreds of companies to get around laws respecting corporations operating in more than one state.
While the price of "refined" oil products did drop eventually under Standard Oil - it would of dropped anyway. The market for oil was essentially one of vast overproduction at the time heavily front ended to drilling and not refining. When standard bought up all of the drilling operations around it's refineries - it no longer mattered if another company opened a refinery in the area because of the location, collusion with the railroad companies, and near monopolies on local distribution.
So, consumers actually paid *more* for Standard Oil than they would of in a free market. The factors by which Standard Oil was able to "lower" price all involved artifical and illegal collusion to set prices higher for competing companies. Had those not been in place, consumers would of paid less for the finished product, had more choice, and the oil market would of had vast fluctuations in the drilling side of it because of insuffient capitalization. Some consolidation was inevitible, but not on that level.
>>
... has security holes they don't want known or sucks entirely. Or any of the 100+ felonies General Electric has been convicted of, including: Selling government secrets, fraud in military contracts, civilian government fraud, financial fraud, environmental felonies, tax fraud, illegal arms sales to hostile powers, and a few others I might run the risk of a lawsuit to talk about.
...add in the other 2 (with only a few billion in assets) and you get 87% control. And not just of the media here. They've branched out to control much of the media in other countries as well.
...Buy a copy of it from another city. Notice any similarities? Hey, reporters are lazy too. You'll see the same PR hits, the same newswire hits, word for word much of the same recycled stories from any of the hundreds of papers they own, and you'll discover than just about every single one of them endorses the same candidates. Coincidence? :)
Microsoft & General Electric own NBC (and of course, MSNBC). You can bet your promotion routes are kind of cut off if you were to say report accurately that GE light bulbs have been rigged to have a shorter life than claimed, or that Windows XP
CBS is owned by Westinghouse. The unwritten code there is not to report on issues which would affect their stock price. Very short career path if you do.
ABC is now owned by Disney and Co. I don't think you'll hear any stories of Disney employees getting crabs from lax laundry at Disney World, eh?
(Aside from having defense contractors owning networks and the disincentive that gives to report news accurately.) All of these companies are huge conglomerates. Many of them own large radio networks, film companies, record labels, magazines, and newspapers as well. It really comes down to 6 companies that control 80% of the media,
Curiously enough these 8 major media companies all sit on the WEF. Wonder why 99% of America doesn't know what those protest were really about?
Probably 90-99% of Americans would be shocked to learn that the Sandinistas were not communist. They had a stock exchange, anyone was free to open up a business there and set their prices at will, they had banks, still used money, still allowed private schools, universities, open markets where you could buy & sell whatever you wanted. (They did nationalize a few properties owned by Samozas crew that had fled the country and used them for communal farming -- in a country where the majority of people do not own land and starvation was the #1 killer at the time.) You know why no one knows these things in America? It wasn't in the corporate interest to report them.
It's like any other business. Your boss doesn't have to tell you what to do 99% of the time. You know your job, you know what not to say. No one has to tell reporters what not to cover and if they make the mistake of covering something in a way that isn't becoming to the corporate controlling interest - editors and owners can always kill it. There are other things wrong with the media as well, like the extensive PR hits filling the news... Of course, corporate lawsuits play another large role in why even 60 minutes is doing stories about puppies now instead of real issues.
Buy a copy of a Gannett newspaper (odds are your newspaper is owned by them!)
It's actually possible to be a reporter and never leave your desk. You can simply run the PR hits supplied to you. They come complete with opposing view, all typed up nice and neat for you. TV has video news releases which essentially are the same thing. Media companies love them (and never talk about them). It saves them having to go out and cover stories at their expense. If it's a major network they can afford for their unpaid interns to edit the raw footage version and splice their own talking head in. It's not just corporate interest supplying them either. Much of Datelines recent reporting on Ecstasy was in fact filmed by the DEA's public relations dept. They simply edited in their own people from the raw footage and did one interview. The military has an astronomical amount of people who do nothing but send out flack to newspapers, radio, TV. They even provide 'experts on call'. Ever wonder who those people are that keep appearing on PBS/NPR/Nightline/CNN...How they come to be on there?
Add in sensationalism & stories about puppies to get ratings and the "freak of the week" human interest story. The pandering done to advertisers (for instance, the Post Dispatch allowed Tyson foods and entire page to run their version of events when they had been busted for smuggling undocumented Mexican workers into the country and keeping them in horrible conditions. [They did have the courtesy to put in the smallest possible font size that the article was writen by a Tyson employee.]
One other thing. It's now illegal for you to get DSS from foreign countries. So even if you tried to escape the bias that way, you wouldn't "legally" be able to. Thank The Gods for the internet and translation services, eh?
I tend to find the more TV people watch the less they truly understand what is going on in the world. Maybe people couldn't deal with knowing. More likely it would make those spinning it uncomfortable.
I guess you end up with Attica is Attica. Best media sources I've found are BBC World, Indy Media, Narco News, CNB (yep, the religious nuts..their bias is plain and simple), TBN (the other religious nuts), PR Watch, Democracy NOW, and Off The Hook.
I would expect a slight bit of coverage on CDBTPA from MS. You can bet their PR people will work overtime to get their side of the issue out. Technology companies have lobbies and PR flacks too. -- It's only when you don't have the resources to hire a Fleishmen Hillard at 11 million a month to do your dirty work - that no one hears about your issues.
Granted. Nor of the RIAA. My brothers band has a gold record, and a stack of silvers. Of course, the gold took more than 10 years to go gold. They did this without any play from Clear Channel stations. (Most of their record sales were outside of the US. #1 hit in Australia, #4 in New Zealand and distribution by Geffen and Sony at another point, split between 4 different "labels" in total.)
Here is what playola can do for you: A single bit of Playola to Clear Channel can get your music broadcast on: 1000+ stations across America. (*Note: Not all Clear Channel stations broadcast music. They own a fair number of AM talk radio as well as owning 860 FM music stations).
Here is what pissing off clear channel (and their affiliate Contemporary productions) can do for you: Your record never gets played on the 1100+ stations Clear Channel owns, nor 1500 stations they produce content for, and your act is banned from 65% of concert venues in North America *(owned in whole or controled by Contemporary productions).
It's a powerful enough force that even big powerful rich record companies give in to it. When you back it with other forms of playola: MTV/VH1...You can even turn an like Hanson & Menudo into a gold record. (I'm sure they are broke from the playola..but trust me the record company made money even if the musicians didn't).
My own disappointments with things like Napster was not that someone may of traded a copy of the music I made. (I've sold arond 40-50,000 copies of everything I've done in 15 years of doing music.. Yep, less than 4000 copies a year.) Hell I was touched to find that someone liked my band enough to put it's conent online. I wasn't worried about a lost sale. My disappointment was in losing an alternative means of distribution which drove people to come to concerts. How many people go to a concert for a band they never heard of?
I have one other comment about major labels. Southern Culture on the Skids sold a ton more records on Geffen than they did on their indie. They made more selling records on the Indie than they did selling 3X as many through Geffen. Be it major label accounting practices, playola, promotional fee's, an expensive tour bus..what have you, the bottom line was it was more profitible for them to go with a small label and work out a distribution deal with a major label than be represented by them. A lot of bands who are not quite in the ballpark of U2, but not unhead of find it's better for their bottom line to stick with an Indie.
Even Nirvana - and the multiple platinums, was making a ton more off of their indie deal (their indie got bought by someone else, thus, they entered the deal through the back door) than they did on the majors. They walked away from their first major tour damn near broke.
There is plenty enough blame to go around in the entire industry. Blame the government for failing to properly regulate radio, enforce antitrust laws against concert promotion/venues, blame greedy and crooked movie and record company accountants for robbing artist, blame artist for not consulting with really good attorneys when entering into contracts, blame the RIAA & MPAA and the record and movie companies for their crooked dealings with legislators here and abroad. The amount of reform needed is huge. Just going after one element of it wont change it. Nothing is going to get better without attacking all of it.
I'm not even sure that it can get better just by actions in America alone any more. Corporations already have hijacked the WEF/IMF, they exert undo influence over NAFTA/GATT councils. It's ultimately going to come down to a battle for freedom worldwide, and I hate to tell you, we aren't winning.
The DMCA was shopped in a treaty. One it was passed in a treaty it was a foregone conclusion it would be implimented in US law. The SSSCA may die in the legislature now, but be similarly shopped in a treaty elsewhere only to get in through the backdoor. I've seen the process happen enough to know this is the most likely outcome.