What’s Right is Rights: Piracy is Theft

Word is getting around that the RIAA seems to be stepping away from lawsuits as a key strategy against piracy.  Lawsuits were never going to be the solution, as other major rights-holders, like those working together through Arts+Labs, will attest.

That’s not to say that we’ve all stopped believing in creators’ rights or that we no longer think piracy is a real problem.  On the contrary: the creative economy depends on creative rights.

We all understand the demand for easy access to inexpensive content, and the people who produce that content – artists, movie makers, journalists, musicians, songwriters and more – are eager to deliver it. But, as it turns out, they want their rights to be respected.

Unfortunately, some consumers get confused about the difference between demand and entitlement. A recent TechDirt screed illustrates this entitlement mentality.  Writing about Joel Tenenbaum, who was sued for pirating and distributing songs online (a jury found that he had willfully infringed copyrights and awarded a judgment far larger than had been asked), Mike Masnick wrote: (more…)

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Tags: artist rights, Music, Napster, piracy, RIAA
Posted Sep 8th 2009 at 5:03 am in Entertainment, Law, Music | 215926120 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mmckinnon/2009/09/08/what%e2%80%99s-right-is-rights/What%E2%80%99s+Right+is+Rights%3A+Piracy+is+Theft2009-09-08+12%3A03%3A34Mark+McKinnon

Daily Gut: Reponse to Pitchfork — The Really Bestest Songs of the Last Ten Years

So the music website Pitchfork unloaded its top 500 songs from the last ten years, and it was a mix of mainstream mediocrity, desperate hipsterism, and legitimate inspiration. For every great choice they made (say, Goldfrapp), they immediately canceled it out with some horrible wrist-slitting trash (Britney, Justin, more Britney). But, rather than rag on Pitchfork (I picture their contributors looking like homelier versions of Michael Cera), which is an otherwise pretty good site despite its easily mocked pretensions, I’ve decided to post my own list of the top songs from the last ten years.

It’s in some kind of order. Here we go:

“Civilized Worm,” The Melvins. A song Ozzy would have sacrificed his first, second and third born for. You kind of wish he had. How did this song not become a massive anthem? I ask again, how did this song not become a massive anthem? It should have been bigger than lingerie football.

“One More Robot – Sympathy 3000-21,” The Flaming Lips. Off the Yoshimi album, it’s the best thing the Lips ever did. One subtle note change by Wayne Coyne is enough to make you feel like calling everyone you know and telling them how much you appreciate their smell. (more…)

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Tags: decade, Music, Pitchfork, songs, ten years
Posted Sep 7th 2009 at 1:27 pm in Daily Gut, Featured Story, Music | 21927897 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggutfeld/2009/09/07/daily-gut-reponse-to-pitchfork-the-really-bestest-songs-of-the-last-ten-years/Daily+Gut%3A+Reponse+to+Pitchfork+--+The+Really+Bestest+Songs+of+the+Last+Ten+Years2009-09-07+20%3A27%3A28Greg+Gutfeld

Obama Czar Van Jones Cut Vile, Anti-American Album in 2003 (NSFW)

This is no youthful indiscretion, this is 2003. Will the ObamaMedia be able to ignore a Czar associated with lyrics like this:

The American way manufactured by white folk in office, by these rich men here to mock us. The United States; a piece of stolen land led by right-wing, war-hungry, oil thirsty… And when it’s all said and done still can’t [garbled] the wrong place cause they got people of color playing servant to do that shit for them; mother fuckers ready to wipe out soft targets on territories harboring terrorists?

Tragedy.

The true terrorists are made in the U.S.

Truther/Czar Jones himself at the 4:20 mark: (more…)

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Tags: album, Barack Obama, cop killer, czar, Green Jobs Czar
Posted Sep 5th 2009 at 10:33 am in Art, Music, Politics | 218486138 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bighollywood/2009/09/05/obama-czar-van-jones-cut-vile-anti-american-album-in-2003-nsfw/Obama+Czar+Van+Jones+Cut+Vile%2C+Anti-American+Album+in+2003+%28NSFW%292009-09-05+17%3A33%3A46Big+Hollywood

Do The Warhol—Part 4: The Manhattan Project of the Culture War

When preaching to the choir, one directs one’s lessons to those who already agree.  Conversely, those who otherwise might listen and gain something useful get nothing.  More on that as this inter-connected series of observations comes to an end.

American Icon: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.”

Vast, determined, highly successful forces and superior technologies dominated the theaters of WWII prior to America’s entry into the conflict after Pearl Harbor in 1941.  The Manhattan Project began in August of 1942, a couple of months before General George Patton invaded North Africa.  Character, strategy, and tactics played as large a role in dealing with Panzer and Tiger tanks as did Patton’s Shermans, of course, because firepower alone was insufficient in itself.  But the defeat of one totalitarian threat by 1945 was not apt to make much difference in taking down another in a place where school children were being trained to fight to the death for the Empire— with sharpened sticks.  The Manhattan Project, through funding, research, experimentation, design, development and production, met the challenge and made the difference. (more…)

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Tags: Art, breitbart, capitalism, consumer culture, Culture
Posted Jul 26th 2009 at 6:55 am in Art, Classic Hollywood, Featured Story, Politics | 18482232 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/07/26/do-the-warhol-conclusions-the-manhattan-project-of-the-culture-war/Do+The+Warhol%E2%80%94Part+4%3A+The+Manhattan+Project+of+the+Culture+War2009-07-26+13%3A55%3A12Scott+Graves

Do The Warhol—Part 1: The Business of Vision

Your correspondent, as absorbed by the Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky Street, Pittsburgh, PA.

A dance craze— like “freaking”— it is not, but rather, a point of view.

Back in January of this year, Andrew Breitbart announced “Big Hollywood’s modest objective: to change the entertainment industry”.  The announcement is as important as it is radical, assessing the power of Pop Culture in shaping global attitudes and standing athwart contemporary assaults on Western values, yelling, as did William Buckley in 1955, Stop.

Ask yourself: Is a vision of the world that is contrary in almost every way to the prevailing cultural paradigms a difficult “sell”?  Given this is always so, how is such a challenge overcome? (more…)

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Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Art, artists, classical liberals, Conservatives
Posted Jul 23rd 2009 at 6:56 am in Art, Classic Hollywood, Politics | 17912639 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/07/23/do-the-warhol%e2%80%94-part-1-the-business-of-vision/Do+The+Warhol%E2%80%94Part+1%3A+The+Business+of+Vision+2009-07-23+13%3A56%3A47Scott+Graves

On Michael Jackson

By happenstance, I was in Hugh Hewitt’s studio yesterday when the news about the one-time Prince of Pop (that’s all I’ll give him, sorry) broke.  We spent much of the next three hours talking about his death and what it meant.  You can scan through and hear me jousting – all in good fun – with Hugh, James Lileks and others.

I focused on his creative output and what it meant to musicians and culture as best I could in our impromptu conversation.  In other words, we didn’t dwell on the fact that it SURE seemed like he was a serial molester of male children.  His music will stand alone.  HUGE talent, obsessive artist, stratospheric career from childhood into his thirties.  Iconic images and motion pictures of him, dancing and performing unforgettably at his peak, will probably always be tainted for our generation by what he became, by what many of us now know he was for a long time.  His strange celebrity outran his music, but maybe now it will stop running… all this will be said better over the next few days and probably weeks by others. (more…)

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Tags: death, Michael Jackson, Music, Neverland, scandal
Posted Jun 26th 2009 at 5:47 pm in Celebrity News | 17157812 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jude/2009/06/26/on-michael-jackson/On+Michael+Jackson2009-06-27+00%3A47%3A29Jude

The Vandals – The Day Farrah Fawcett Died

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Tags: Farrah Fawcett, Joe Escalante, Music, Vandals, Video
Posted Jun 26th 2009 at 4:35 am in Celebrity News, Video | 170922No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jescalante/2009/06/26/the-vandals-the-day-farrah-fawcett-died/The+Vandals+-+The+Day+Farrah+Fawcett+Died2009-06-26+11%3A35%3A49Joe+Escalante

Rock Is Still Dead

It used to take decades and even centuries of cultural transmission by storytelling, theater, ballad, and a general diffusion of knowledge by processes unknown to bring myth and legend into being.  That may be another way of saying that people once had brains, and then came television, Video’s killing of the Radio Star, and the genteel cultural virtues obtained through 24/7 media immersion.

People once heard, told, acted out and retold these tales, taking active roles in creating visions of life and its possibilities in imaginative ways, instead of flopping on couches with a Monster Burger in one hand and a Bucket o’ Suds in the other, passively awaiting the predetermined outcome of one steroid-based extravaganza or another. This says something disturbing about the contrast between ancient and modern civilizations and the ways the perception of reality can either be generated by humans or imprinted upon them, unless you’re the CEO of an international fast food conglomerate or a viewer engaging in a fierce wind-breaking competition during a broadcast’s inevitable male-enhancement advertisements or rain delays.  (more…)

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Tags: 99 Red Ballons, Beatles, Crystal Method, Flyleaf, Gary Numan
Posted May 12th 2009 at 3:13 pm in Entertainment | 131842No Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sgraves/2009/05/12/rock-is-still-dead-scott-graves/Rock+Is+Still+Dead+2009-05-12+22%3A13%3A21Scott+Graves

Bob Dylan and the Haunting of America

The new Bob Dylan CD Together Through Life comes in a bright, plastic jewel case, but it may as well be cuneiform scratched on a baked clay tablet.  Sure enough, though the shrink-wrap crackles and snaps at the unwrapping, the dust of a century and half of American music blows up into your face:

“Beyond Here Lies Nothing” shambles to life like a dusty corpse shuffling to a slow and sloppy rumba.  Dylan oversees the proceedings: part funeral director, part carnival barker, commanding ancient instruments and sentiments with a wink and a throaty growl.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, tonally, musically, lyrically, is “I Feel A Change Comin’ On”- imagine a sunny spring stroll down a country lane with your heart subsumed with thoughts of a new and tender love, and you have an idea of what this tune will do to you.

That Dylan can command these two diametrically opposite songs (on the same album, no less) is testimony to his expansive talent – he is large, he contains multitudes, and is frighteningly comfortable with all the sides of his protean and encompassing nature. (more…)

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Tags: Bob Dylan, cuneiform, Music, Together Through Life
Posted May 10th 2009 at 7:03 am in Featured Story, Reviews | 130534One Commenthttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/mpatterson/2009/05/10/bob-dylan-the-haunting-of-america/Bob+Dylan+and+the+Haunting+of+America2009-05-10+14%3A03%3A49Matt+Patterson

Music Sets the Mood

When I was a kid, my favorite show was PBS’s NOVA. As a child I expected to be on the show as an astronaut – I can imagine my youthful disappointment that I was to appear on NOVA as a politician.

NOVA’s “Big Energy Gamble” aired January 20th to rave initial reviews in the DeVore household. The show detailed California’s effort under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in 11 years while the state is expected to grow by 20 percent.

I was the show’s skeptic. I maintained that it is physically impossible to reach the governor’s lofty goals without first lifting the state’s obsolete ban on the construction of modern, safe, and reliable nuclear power plants. (more…)

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Tags: Music, nova, pbs
Posted Jan 27th 2009 at 5:15 am in Entertainment, Featured Story, Media Criticism | 3014524 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cdevore/2009/01/27/music-sets-the-mood/Music+Sets+the+Mood2009-01-27+13%3A15%3A33Chuck+DeVore

When Elvis met Nixon

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, who was born on this date in 1935. Elvis died of a life of excess and drug abuse at an absurdly young age.  He had been a superstar for more than 20 years by the time he died, entombed in his own celebrity.

When Elvis, Scotty and Bill found their way to the heart of American music with their recording of “That’s Alright, Mama” in 1954, they (and Sun Records owner/producer Sam Phillips) knew they had done something special. Elvis found the heart of America — the place where country, blues, and gospel meet — many times over in his music. Indeed, after his artistic decline in the ’60s, he willed himself to a second period of creative genius and genuine accomplishment at the end of the ’60s and early ’70s. Am I wrong in thinking that listening closely to the music all by itself can make us love our country more?

With his superb two-volume biography of Elvis, Peter Guralnick has made himself the essential chronicler of Elvis’s story. Guralnick of course tells the true story of the day in December 1970 when Elvis met Nixon in the White House. The story of the visit provides insight into Elvis’s patriotism as well as comic relief in the denoument of Elvis’s life.

(more…)

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Tags: elvis, Music, Politics
Posted Jan 8th 2009 at 4:00 am in Celebrity News | 1146912 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sjohnson/2009/01/08/when-elvis-met-nixon/When+Elvis+met+Nixon2009-01-08+12%3A00%3A23Scott+W.+Johnson