Corporations are Rarely Creators

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XXXLawrence Lessig’s 2004 book Free Culture is even more depressing 8 years later. But it is really worth reading, even (or perhaps especially) now.

He starts the book by talking about the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane. I had never read Lessig, so I thought he was going to start talking about patent protection. (Really, I don’t know how I decided to get this book, so I didn’t know what it was about.) But he wasn’t going anywhere so obvious. Instead, he jumped ahead to 1945, when two farmers from North Carolina sued the government for flying airplanes over their airspace.

Until that time, common law said that property owners owned all of the space above their property. The Supreme Court threw out the case, stating that to hold on to this view of property rights would destroy the technology that the Wright brothers had made possible.

Lessig then goes on to talk about the fight between Edwin Howard Armstrong, inventor of FM radio, and RCA. RCA wanted to stop FM radio because they made so much money off AM radio. This all led to FM radio being delayed for decades and Armstrong killing himself.

These two cases are the same in that they both deal with how the law responds to a new technological innovation. They are not the same in that when those who would stifle innovation are just individuals with little power, the technology is allowed; when those who would stifle innovation are powerful corporate interests, the technology is stifled.

This brings us to today where corporate content owners are trying to stifle innovation on the internet. The book is important reading.

I’m very concerned about all this. Over the last 30 years (although it’s been going on longer), I’ve watched as copyright is expanded. This has done nothing for creators. It has done everything for corporations. Who would ever think that a 95-year copyright would be intended for a writer? Only corporations think in terms of these kinds of time frames. But it was one thing when copyright laws did no harm to creative activity. Increasingly, they do harm it. When everything becomes a commodity, someone will own everything.

Jack’s Amazing Healing Scars

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In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Blackbeard abuses Jack Sparrow by carving something that looks kind of like a pitchfork into his voodoo doll, and thus onto the right side of Jack’s chest. But there’s a problem. We know from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, that Jack already has two scars there. Check out this video:

Now, I understand that the scene from the first movie was deleted and is therefore not canonical. But really: couldn’t they have been consistent? The deleted scenes from the island are the best, and this particular one is my favorite. What’s more, the deleted scenes are more than just discarded. They were in the final script—the shooting script. They were shot. Surely they can be considered back story. As far as I was concerned, Jack had those scars all the way through the first 3.5 films. Sudden gone! Perhaps it was voodoo?

Doing My Part for Romney

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Dogs Against RomneyJust as with gay rights advocates and Rick Santorum‘s name, animal rights advocates are associating Mitt Romney‘s name with something unpleasant. Because I don’t deal well with scatological matters, I will leave it to you to click on Santorum to find out what it means. However, I am happy to tell you that Romney means “To defecate in terror.” This is because… Wait! I can’t tell you. Just read this article about Dogs Against Romney.

Currently, a Google search on Santorum will bring up the right definition as the number one result. Use “I’m Feeling Lucky”! Sadly, a Google search on Romney only brings up the right definition as the number two result. But this article is my attempt to be a good netizen and bring Romney to number one! (Not that number two isn’t appropriate.)

Huge in Canada

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CanadaI sent a link to a friend up in Canada, and she could not open the page. I asked her if she could see the home page. Yes she could, but it was out of date. The most recent post was my article on the MPAA. I went and looked at it, and I noticed that it was the last article I posted before moving to a new hosting company. I’ve posted 65 articles since then!

It turns out that no one else is having this problem. No one else that I know of. If you’re reading this, you aren’t having the problem either. I think I’ve figured out what’s going on.

My old hosting company is still hosting my site—I’m paid up through the end of this month. When I moved the site to the new host, I changed the name servers for the franklycurious.com domain name. These name servers used to point to the old host and now they point to the new host. (You understand that the network doesn’t work with names but rather numbers; what’s going on here is like someone putting the wrong address on a letter to you; you’re name might be right, but it will be delivered to the wrong house.) For whatever reason, my Canadian friend’s name servers are currently pointing to the wrong hosting company.

I hope this is not a problem throughout Canada, because I am huge in Canada!

Painful to Watch

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VaselineMany years ago, when I was paying a fortune to put down my ideas on 16mm film (Forty bucks to develop and print 100 feet of film—less than 3 minutes!) I had the idea of doing a video of just a guy talking into the camera, saying interesting things. At least I thought they were interesting: comments about life and stuff. This was before YouTube when everyone was (or tries to) do this. There was a time when I at least thought a talking head was interesting. One example I remember:

I don’t know much, but I do not that if you need to go to the store to buy a cucumber and a jar of Vaseline, you are best to make two trips.

I’ve been trying to put together a series of 5 minute videos that will not be painful to watch. It is potentially for the website Blifaloo. But who knows depending upon just how far I go with the cucumber/Vaseline jokes. It turns out, it is really hard to make a 5 minute video that is not painful to watch.

I’ve come up with something that I think works. Unfortunately, I’ve been too sick to record the stuff. But there’s a good side to this. It’s forced me to write a script. Because I respect people a lot, I will not print it here.

The basic idea—admittedly stolen from Beckett’s Endgame—is that there are two twins: Frank and Joe. Frank is never let outside the house and Joe is never let in. A stupid conceit, you say? I don’t think so. I could go on and on explaining thematic elements about how they represent a single person’s inner and outer personas, but I don’t even buy that shit. The main thing is that it allows me—Frank Moraes, bad actor—to do really short takes as well as allowing me—Frank Moraes, bad director—to switch scenes to different locations so that the stuff written by me—Frank Moraes, bad writer—isn’t painful to watch.

Ha cha cha cha!

The series is called “Good Bad and Uglies” and thus has three segments. The cucumber/Vaseline is the ugly part. The good part is about how Mr. Ed was the same show as ALF, except that Mr. Ed was funny. And the bad part is a little how-to about using Samuel Beckett to avoid panhandlers.

You can’t wait, can you?

I’ve been wrong all these years. It isn’t that Wilbur won’t tell anyone about Mr. Ed, it is that Mr. Ed will only talk to him. Of course, Mr. Ed is always calling people, so the show’s not exactly consistent. Here is the first half of the pilot episode. It is very funny.

Byron Dorgan’s Crystal Ball

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One of the main things that the Banking (Glass-Steagall) Act of 1933 did, was to separate banks as most of us know them (places where you have a checking account) from investment banks. The act had already been cut back in 1980 with the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act. This led to the Saving and Loan Crisis. And then it was repealed completely in 1999 with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. This led to today.

It is not that no one saw what this all meant. Here is Byron Dorgan in 1999 (mostly). It is remarkable. I’m amazed it hasn’t gone viral.

Jack ‘n Black

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Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger TidesI just watched Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. As entertainments go, it is an excellent film—the best of the series. It is everything that it tries to be.

Gore Verbinski, who directed the first three films, likes his action sequences long—far too long. Rob Marshall, like the good musical-loving fag he is, knows just how long to push a scene. His instincts (or his editors’ or producers’) are dead on. (In his defense, Verbinski directed Rango, which was also an excellent entertainment.)

By this time in the series, it is impossible for Barbossa to be a villain. (That was always true for me, given how much I love Geoffrey Rush.) This time, they bring in the wonderful Ian McShane (who I also can’t help but like after 36 hours of Deadwood) as the villain Blackbeard. I don’t know anything about pirates, so I looked Blackbeard up on Wikipedia.[1] It said:

A shrewd and calculating leader, [Edward] Teach [AKA “Blackbeard”] spurned the use of force, relying instead on his fearsome image to elicit the response he desired from those he robbed. Contrary to the modern-day picture of the traditional tyrannical pirate, he commanded his vessels with the permission of their crews and there is no known account of his ever having harmed or murdered those he held captive.

That really struck me: he sounds just like Jack Sparrow.

[1] Do I need to provide a link? Just go to Google, enter “blackbeard” and click, “I’m Feeling Lucky”!

Understanding Falstaff

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Robbie Coltrane as FalstaffWhen Kenneth Branagh made Henry V and threw a bit of Henry IV in with Falstaff, he used the most famous speech of the character. Kind of. The whole truth is that he cut it savagely.

The scene is one where Falstaff and Hal role play Hal’s upcoming meeting with his father, Henry IV. At first, Falstaff plays the king, but as is his way, has nothing but praise of himself come out of the acted King’s mouth. Falstaff and Hal switch roles, with Falstaff playing Hal. Falstaff, as Hal, says:

But to say I know more harm in him than in myself were to say more than I know. That he is old, the more the pity, his white hairs do witness it. But that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster, that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned. If to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh’s lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff. Banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.[1]

This speech is one that I’ve memorized. It is rather easy to do so, either because of the repetition or because I’ve heard it so much. As I’ve noted before, memorizing something really allows you to get inside it. In this case, what’s really bothersome is the repeated line, “Banish not him thy Harry’s company.” Why?

Here is Branagh’s edit from Henry V:

If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked. If to be old and merry be a sin… If to be fat be to be hated… No, my good lord, [when thou art king] banish Pistol, banish Bardolph, banish Nym, but… sweet Jack Falstaff… valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff. Banish not him thy Harry’s company… Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

You see what I say about Shakespeare getting a lot of help from editors, writers, and actors? This is barely Shakespeare anymore. Whatever: it works.

But how are we to interpret these last sentences? I think the speech, starting with “But for sweet Jack Falstaff” should be divided into three parts. At first, Falstaff is boastful. He is sweet, kind, true, and valiant. But then, he slips and falls into self-pity when he notes that he is old. This self-pity continues through the first “Banish” line. To me, it should be broken in two: “Banish not him” and “they Harry’s company.” Here the pause would be a small choke, as though almost crying.

At this, or even as he says the second part of the line, Falstaff catches himself. He instantly becomes the boastful Falstaff and says the last lines with gusto: banish plump Jack and banish all the world!

This, of course, is not the way the lines are normally delivered. Robbie Coltrane, in Branagh’s film, is almost pleading with Hal, reading his face for clues. Orson Welles, in Chimes at Midnight, does the whole speech in full-tilt braggart. He gets going so fast that the second line slips past almost without notice. For Welles, the sadness of the character seems tethered to his soul: Welles in many ways was Falstaff. Regardless, both great actors manage the part using their great skills. I’m trying to figure it out with an empty acting quiver.

More and more, I prefer my Falstaff complex. This is certainly not how he was written. I’m sure that audiences in Shakespeare’s time saw him as simply an object of ridicule to be laughed at, much the same as Don Quixote. But the modern viewer wants more. We realize that people strike more than one or two notes. For my part, as a writer of fiction, I cannot write a character I do not understand. I can’t write a character who is simply bad. The whole process of writing characters is about discovering how they came to be. This was not true of Shakespeare, and so people like Coltrane and Welles must go through this process themselves.

Update

Here is Robbie Coltrane:

Here is Orson Welles:

[1] These last three lines are in iambic pentameter, but given that they are part of prose dialog, it doesn’t seem important to write them line by line. Some of Moby Dick is in iambic pentameter, but it isn’t written that way.

Image taken from Henry V. Licensed under Fair Use.

Bill Gates, Sr?

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This is from Paul Krugman’s Playboy Interview:

Bill Gates Sr used to say this: suppose you were given the choice of being born in America or in Ethiopia. What proportion of your eventual fortune would you be willing to give to be born in America? Given the great good fortune of getting to live and run a business in this country that has all the advantages an advanced country with a decent system provides, how can you think it’s all you? And then, how can you feel you don’t have any obligation to pay it back?

The Redemptionless Story

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The Tenant of Wildfell HallThe great affliction of the 20th century was the redemption story. You know it, because you’ve seen it during every episode (and I do mean every episode) of E! True Hollywood Story and Biography. Mr. Neutral does something bad and becomes Mr. Bad. Mr. Bad stops doing bad thing and becomes Mr. Redeemed. And the crowd goes wild!

I despise the redemption story for many reasons. Just on its face, it is artificial: anyone’s story can be cast in this way and that is why the aforementioned TV shows use it. Who has not been led astray, willingly or unwillingly? But even more offensive is the the idea that redemption is even possible. It isn’t. You’ve done what you’ve done. You live with it as best you can. To take an extreme example: there was nothing Hitler could have done to redeem himself. Of course, by Christian dogma, had he found Jesus in the bunker, he’s in heaven right now, enjoying pure ecstasy in the beatific glow of God’s love. How about that?

The 19th century had a different affliction: the redemptionless story. In it, the world is divided into good people and bad people and rarely the twain shall meet.[1] And so it is, in the surprisingly good The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by the lesser Bronte sister Anne.

Make no mistake, I hated this novel. And yet, it was hard to put down. I really think that Anne was the most talented writer of the sisters. She combines the power of Emily with the detail and cunning of Charlotte. Added to that, she doesn’t stick with convention, organizing the novel as a long letter with someone else’s diary stuck in the middle. Although I think that everyone should read Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights if for no other reason than that everyone should know who Rochester and Heathcliff (not the cartoon cat) are, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is probably a better read.

My biggest complaint about the book is that Bronte spends 200 pages—200 pages!—on “my husband is awful!” Yeah. I figured that out. He’s debased, debauched, degraded; perverse, perverted, and decadent; unclean, sick, and rakish; depraved, unwholesome, dissolute; slutty, demoralized, and warped. He’s a libertine, a reprobate. Yes, yes, yes! He’s all this and more synonyms. Get on with it already!

And another thing that really bugged me was in Chapter 15, Graham gives Gilbert her diary, saying, “Bring it back when you have read it; and don’t breathe a word of what it tells you to any living being. I trust to your honor.” Understand: Gilbert is the good guy. What does he do? Only reprint the entire diary for his pen pal! Perhaps it didn’t count because it was written and therefore not a word was literally “breathed”?

The primary annoyance of this really very capable novel is the rigidity of the characters. The only thing the reader has to look forward to is how the good people will finally end up together. In this way, I can see why after years of Jane Austen (who I love) and the Brontes, George Eliot was such a refreshing change of pace. In the end, it must be admitted that English Literature of the 18th century is what we now get from Hollywood. Cervantes and Homer it ain’t.

[1] Sydney “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done” Carton is kind of an exception.

Your Authoritarian Brain on Power

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The 1950sTalking Points Memo had an article yesterday: How The GOP Went Back To The 1950s In Just One Day. In it, Evan McMorris-Santoro discusses the three big events that the Republicans, who are amazingly tone deaf for politicians, managed to cram into a single day:

First, Darrell Issa’s hearing on contraceptives—I mean “Religious Freedom”!—that not only didn’t hear any women, but refused to allow one woman, who the Democrats wanted, to testify because Issa said she was “unqualified.” Apparently, only men are qualified to talk about women’s health. Second, the CPAC kerfuffle over the slutty way women at the conference were dressed. And third, Foster Friess, Rick Santorum’s billionaire, who joked all women need for birth control is an aspirin held between their knees. (Friess is almost charming in how funny he thinks he is. He reminds me of me.)

The article says:

Democratic women say this is all part of a general pattern that began in 2010 when the tea party helped Republicans win a congressional election based on jobs and deficits and the Republicans then set about passing new anti-abortion legislation and declaring war on Planned Parenthood once in office.

A lot of people wonder about this, but to me it is quite simple. The modern Republican Party is authoritarian. They cannot dictate that the economy be this way or that. And anyway, they are ideologically opposed to doing anything that works to help the economy—even monetary policy! But they can dictate what women can and cannot do. They can dictate who can and cannot marry. The modern Republican Party is not interested in anything but helping those (the 0.01%) who keep them in power and using that power to disenfranchise the poor in every way imaginable.

This is your authoritarian brain. This is your authoritarian brain on power. Anyway questions?

Tuba Tuba Tuba

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Most people think of the tuba as a slow, ponderous instrument. In fact, in the right hands (And lips!) it is as light and facile as any instrument in the orchestra. But don’t encourage your child to play the instrument. Student model instruments cost about $7000, whereas you could pick up a flute for as little as a hundred bucks.

To give you some idea of just what a tuba can do, check out Øystein Baadsvik:

Given this, it comes as no surprise that Los Angeles is having a tuba crime wave. According to NPR, the string of thefts are going to supply the needs of banda groups who are all the rage. What is banda? It’s a Mexican brass band that plays German polka-derived music. Stranger things have happened.

But their loss is your gain. Enjoy: