I just came back from “Batman Begins,” a good show even though the men get to have all the fun.

No spoilers here, just two music notes: The opera young Bruce attends with his parents is Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele — the Faust story seems appropriate; and Mildred J. Hill and Patty S. Hill are credited (cached HTML of a .doc) for the “Happy Birthday” sung to Bruce.

For a weeklong tribute to Beethoven, BBC radio will not only be broadcasting his music non-stop, they’re offering all nine symphonies for download. Brilliant!

As
a column in The Scotsman notes, this is a terrific way for the BBC to introduce a new audience to classical music — an audience for which its recordings, not Karajan or Bernstein, are the standard.

It may turn out that Noseda’s Beethoven becomes the household version to computer-literate millions in China, India or Korea who have never heard of Karajan or Klemperer and could, in any event, never afford the price of a DG or EMI set.

To them, Noseda and the BBC Phil are the bringers of light and arbiters of art.

When, two or three decades hence, China is the world’s largest industrial power, it will be Noseda’s Beethoven that couples recall as their formative revelation, as our grandparents once savoured Toscanini’s.

The BBC recordings will apparently be offered for download for a week after they’re played on the radio next week. No no word yet on format or license, but I have high hopes for an organization that understands its role as promoting culture, not just commerce. (For more Beeb coolness, see also Creative Archive and BBC Backstage.)

Thanks Danny!

During a too-brief visit to Princeton, I got to see the terrific Art of Science exhibit. Gathered in a competition for “imagery produced in the course of research or incorporating tools and concepts from science,” the exhibit collected images from archaeology through zoology. They make fascinating art and engaging science.

The image at left, from Anton Darhuber, Benjamin Fischer, and Sandra Troian in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Microfluidic Research and Engineering Laboratory, “illustrates evolving dynamical patterns formed during the spreading of a surface-active substance (surfactant) over a thin liquid film on a silicon wafer.” Who knew? (Note, images in the gallery may be blocked by a default Privoxy install.)

In the same day, I also got to support the filibuster and debate Dean Garfield of the MPAA.

Thanks Daniel, Stacy, Harlan, Alex, Ed, and Dean!

These guys aren’t letting a cease and desist letter take them down. The Webmaster of Puppets has announced that Beatallica.org will relaunch on May 6, 2005, at 9 PM (Central US Time). While you’re waiting, catch the discussion (mp3) from the Berkman Center’s Signal or Noise? conference.

I just caught up with Suw’s terrific analysis of the spread of Free Culture: Something for Nothing: The Free Culture AudioBook Project. It’s a great illustration of the power of openness: because Free Culture was released under a license that allowed follow-on creativity, its readers became joint creators and disseminators.

In these new models, the new collaborators can also be the distributors and the consumer. Sometimes there is no need for a facilitator and the writer can communicate directly with the collaborators. But most importantly, these models provide flexibility in terms of how the reader accesses the product.

…

In addition to providing access to the product, these models facilitate the building of a creative community around a publication which helps to promote it via word of mouth. The key to making these communities - be they ‘flash’ communities that come together for a given project and then disband, or more permanent - succeed is to utilise an enabling licence such as those provided by Creative Commons.

Openness, of course can be provided in many ways: open formats like HTML, .txt, RSS, and atom, enable the building of artistic and technological derivatives — audio books, text search tools, aggregators; open licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons empower users to create these derivatives with minimal lawyering. In combination, open tech and law create value. Works move from isolated objects to parts of the culture, as the creation of derivatives recruits readers and new creators.

Matt Haughey riffs on Ernie Miller’s report on Congressional hearings on ClearPlay. ClearPlay enables DVD viewers to create or select cut lists that omit words or scenes as they play a movie, just as the Jay Z Construction Set allows audiences to re-mix the Grey Album. Some Representatives appalud the clean-up technology; others are outraged by it:

[S]ince the motivation behind ClearPlay technology is largely religious, it turns the [derivative works] argument on its ear to many participants and observers. It’s not hard to find folks that loved the Grey Album but see ClearPlay technology as something to be frowned upon, but the underlying technology and law is largely the same.

The speech that most needs defending is often the least popular. I may hate the modifications many make with ClearPlay, but I’ll defend your right to bowdlerize (or to add gratuitous profanity and violence) in your own home.

For some non-gratuitous profanity, in criticism of the FCC’s prudishness, listen to Eric Idle’s FCC Song (not safe for modern radio).

The New York Times reviews Jon Rouston’s movie theater videos, shots of the screen, audience, and ambience at various opening-day movie showings. Critic’s Notebook: When One Man’s Video Art Is Another’s Copyright Crime
. The problem is that this art has been outlawed in many states. That’s a side effect of the broad anti-camcorder statutes the MPAA has been pushing on many states, including California, despite the fact that its own insiders leak most movies to the public pre-release (study PDF).

It used to be the critics who’d tell us whether art was good or bad, original or imitative. Now it’s the lawyers. As the reviewer comments on art’s impoverished field:

It does not matter whether you think that Mr. Routson’s work is good or bad art; it is quite good enough, in my view. It does matter that the no-camcorder laws may not do much to stem pirating while making it increasingly difficult for artists to do one of the things they do best: comment on the world around them.

The terrific exhibit Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age has come to San Francisco. I caught it in New York, and look forward to seeing it again. (If you normally block pop-ups, don’t miss illegal-art’s EULA.)

Last night’s panel brought together a group of critics of the current intellectual property state. Just a few quotes:

Kembrew McLeod, who trademarked “Freedom of Expression” (reg. no. 2127381): After sending the trademark application to the PTO, he got an amendment from the examining attorney. “The problem was not that the PTO found a moral objection to trademarking FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, but that I hadn’t capitalized the phrase right.”

Lawrence Lessig: Fair use isn’t freedom. It only means “you have the right to hire a lawyer to fight for your right to create.”

Rick Prelinger: “What’s radical is not appropriationist art, but sending someone a bill when you’re quoted in a transformative way.”

As reported in today’s New York Times, ISP Verio is threatening to pull the plug on the Thing, a free-speech-friendly ISP. The Thing hosts numerous Internet artists, including Artforum magazine and the P. S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, Queens. It also hosts Net artists and activists RTMark, whose critical parody of the Dow Chemical website apparently provoked Dow into contacting Verio with a demand that the site be shut down. For a time, Verio silenced not only RTMark, but the entire Thing network. Now it’s threatening to terminate Thing.net’s hosting and the Thing is appealing for donations to help its relocation.

In all this, no court has determined that there was a copyright or trademark infringement. It seems Verio doesn’t require proof to make its judgment.