We live in two different countries, Tom. I'm not about to compare what goes on in Ontario with what goes on here in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc. I can't speak to Canada; I'm sure the education is much better up there. (Except for in Quebec which underfunds the English language schools in favor of the French ones, and passed a law dictating what kind of school you can send your kids to.)
But let's put aside Canada for a minute and stick with The States For instance, Los Angeles and California in general have one of the worst standards for education in the country. The drop out rate is atrocious. The level of science and reading comprehension is worse so the 'typical' states such as Alabama and Mississippi. And yet we have the largest budget going towards "education." Keeping in mind, California's budget is larger than a lot of countries. Have you ever wondered why that is? Why do you think with all the money California throws at education, the education is still bad? Is it really that we're not spending enough?
Where does the money go? I can tell you it sure as hell doesn't go to anything regarding real education here. They already raised our taxies again last year, so they are throwing more money at the issue. And yet it doesn't change? I'm not naive enough to believe we're not spending enough. Instead I'm following the money.
Here's something else: We have had multiple, and I mean multiple teachers in Los Angeles who have recently been imprisoned for child molestation after getting away with it for years. And guess what? Thanks to the teacher's union, they keep their pension. Their reward is the same as a law abiding teacher who actually does their job well. By the way, these arrests only came after years of being sheltered by the school baord and the union. They were still allowed to teach while under investigation in some cases. For molestation! Excuse me if I don't think the teacher union is God's gift to education.
If you are anything like your wife, and I'm willing to bet that you are, then I am absolutely sure that she is a fantastic teacher. And she should be. Actually, all teachers should be. But that's the problem. There are plenty of bad teachers out there, too. Not just on the "I molest your kids," scale like the ones her but in "i don't give a rat's ass about your kids' education," too. We don't like to talk about them for fear it undermines the good teachers. But we need to. We need to shout about them, as much as we put the good ones on pedestals because they are an issue. We absolutely need to kick the ones who aren't up to the standard out of the school. Until this happens nothing will change. And if I were a good teacher, I'd be screaming about it, too.
If you haven't seen it, you should watch the documentary "Waiting for Superman," to see what I mean. Whatever the education is like in Canada, it's nothing like the cesspool that is American education. Period.
Here's the thing, PSY supposedly made $837,000 on his youtube views. Now, that sounds like a lot but consider his video had to be viewed a BILLION times before he saw that kind of money. 7 million views isn't going to bring in that much.
Also it is a big assumption that those views were organic. If these people have no qualms about infringing upon artists, they probably have no qualms about buying youtube views to make themselves look more important than they are. I haven't really seen any article talk about that, though. Perhaps because either no one knows about the practice of paid impressions, or it's a dirty little secret that everyone knows but no one talks about.
We're all familiar with Campbell VS. Acuff-Rose because everyone has been quoting from it. They are however, leaving out a crucial sentence from the decision: 'the use of a copyrighted work to advertise a product, even in a parody, will be entitled to less indulgence' under the law than 'the sale of a parody for its own sake'.
Meaning, that case set a precedent but the decision was not without qualifiers.
The thing is, the person who created GoldieBlox is herself a marketer. She saw the 'girl power' opportunity and ran with it. Can't blame them for trying.
The tactic of "girls love narrative play," however, is backfiring as much as any goodwill they lost vis a vis the Beasties. Feminists are upset about it, 'geeks' are upset about it, and people who are pro-content are upset, too.
Spotify is in part owned by record labels, yes. They don't give a toss about making Spotify solvent, nor do they care about the artists on their roster. They're just looking out for their own best interests as always. Robber Barons 4 Eva
I'll explain it then, and see if you come back on the train.
If you don't like the word racism, substitute it with imperialism, or colonialism. But it's the same thing. One elite power asserting its will over another.
It's either a group of elitists who don't want to pay for content, in the case of GoldieBlox, or it's the cloud storage owners of Big Data who want all information to be free-- including the information created by people in developing nations, African Americans, and those who by and large cann't afford to give their content away but find they have no choice.
Big Data, Big Tech, and Torrent sites are by and large owned and run by white males who understand whoever owns content is king. By and large they do not create content, themselves. They store it and distribute it. This is how Kim Dot Com became a billionaire. There is very little diversity in this group of content storage owners. It's the same as in advertising. It's not the world of Benetton. And this is a crying a shame.
But think about it for a second:
Who are the ones perpetuating the "information should be free," mantra? The group of people who can most afford to buy it.
Again, they don't see infringement as a problem because they don't create content. Their livelihood isn't dependent upon someone actually buying it. Instead they tell the content creators to "sell t-shirts," at the merch table or "find another job and adjust to our business model." This case happens to be the Beastie Boys and you may well argue they can "afford to give up their music." Yeah they can, but should they is the larger question.
Now tell me, what if instead, we substituted the Beasties with say, an unknown but aspiring African American musician, struggling to get by, or a group of aboriginal singers in a developing nation. Do they have the luxury to adapt to the "information should be free" business model? Of course not.
To fit Spotify's business model means you accept a terms of service that makes content creators broke, and content storage owners rich. How many struggling musicians and artists around the world can do this? Certainly not ones coming from backgrounds that are different from Northern California.
Remember, most of the these music streaming business models (let alone big tech models in general) aren't yet financially effective. Spotify is not an effective business model; it stays solvent by paying out much less to the people who create the content. And content creators have no choice but to to go along with this.
Racism, imperialism, colonialism of content. Choose your word, but either way its' still oppression.
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