Music Distribution Royalties: a solved problem

It's been pointed out to me that I really need to write more about my thoughts on distribution royalties. With luck I may have some time this evening; until then people will have to settle for an old essay I've recently dug out of my "incomplete" file, Forward to the Past, and the following brief notes:

The problem of electronic distribution of copyrighted material, which is currently causing so much bad blood between Web users and file-sharers on the one hand and the music and film industries on the other hand, is a solved problem, and has been for ninety years! That's when ASCAP was founded, to collect those royalties.
( not all that brief: look behind the cut-tag for details )

So Joe Pirate sharing files full blast on his cable connection is roughly the equivalent of a radio station with an audience of 100. Yes, I know that there's a difference: Joe Pirate lets everyone in his "audience" pick the songs they download, while a radio station, even if it takes requests, sends the same songs to everyone in its audience. That's probably what frightens the big record companies: people can choose the music they're getting rather than having their choices made for them.

Anyway, that's the short version. Comments welcome -- especially on the numbers, which I haven't checked recently.

Testing...

This is posted using the ljupdate-3.3 package for Emacs, my editor-of-choice.

Back from Lamplighters

The Lamplighters have been putting on G&S operettas in San Francisco since 1952 -- they're incredibly good. We've been season ticketholders for about half that time.

Their production of Iolanthe this season was up to their usual standards. Iolanthe and the Lord Chancellor were particularly good in their own ways. One of the things I like about Iolanthe is the way their relationship sort of sneaks up on you after you've spent most of the first act thinking it's mainly about Phyllis and Strephon.

We started taking each kid at age 7; we're now taking chaoswolf's girlfriend as well. Emmy still has a tendency to be bored, as chaoswolf did at that age (11), but grudgingly admitted that she enjoyed it once it was over. After we got home, Emmy stayed and made herself dinner, since she wanted to be sure to be at home for a TV show she particularly wanted to see at 8pm. The rest of us went out for ribs at Tony Roma's.

It's also likely that Emmy wanted the house to herself for a while. I always used to take long walks in the woods when I was a kid, but that was 40-odd years and 3000 miles away, and isn't at all feasible here in San Jose. Kicking her parents and older sister out of the house for a while will just have to do, I suppose.