Monday, August 5, 2002

Part of my continuing quest to be the oldest among the youngest

We're going to see Alicia Keys in a few minutes. Here's her blog.

Infrastructure at work

Demand was so high for the Infrastructure presentation I gave at JabberConf and the O'Reilly Open Source Convention that it was exceeding the traffic limits at my ISP.

So now, thanks to the gracious folks at O'Reilly, its up at their place. Here it is.

The next real world Jerry Bruckheimer movie

Yes, Virginia, there is a Sector 5. Complete with ominous sounds. Scary.

Blog of the Day

Mitch Ratcliffe, one of my favorite writers/thinkers/talkers, has a new Radio blog. Dig it.

The good (copy)fight

Donna Wentworth at Copyfight and Arnold Kling at The Bottom Line have both weighed wth in very thoughtful and interesting responses to my Linux Journal piece last week.

Here's Donna's and here's Arnold's. I'll try to respond to both soon, but I'm kinda max'd out with real work today. The brief meanwhile is: I'm in basic agreement with both of them.

Janis' Ian's Modest Proposal

Janis Ian is our hero.

First she writes The Internet Debacle — an Alternative View, for the May issue of Performing Songwriter Magazine (credits where due). Then she writes Fallout — a follow up to The Internet Debacle.

They are required reading. If you haven't read them yet, go read them now. Each is a 100-car freight train packed with Grade A clues.

The second piece makes a modest and brilliant challenge to the record companies: Create a giant download site filled with everything out of print, charge a quarter per download, share the proceeds with the artists, composers and heirs, and see what happens.

She's betting that all kinds of good discoveries — even whole new sub-industries — will come out of it.

I'm sure she's right.

This is where I'd normally add some snarky remark about the record companies. But I won't this time. I'm curious to see what their response will be.

Thanks to Dean, Dave and many others for the pointer.

[Later...] The contrarian views are coming in. Here's Arnold Kling's. I agree with him that "in the next 5-10 years we will have bypassed the music industry entirely." But there is still a fight going on now, and it's good to welcome Janis and her ideas to it.