This month’s Computer Arts magazine has Stitcher 3.1 cover-mounted, and I’ve been having some fun creating those 360 degree QTVR images. I was rather pleased with an effort I created based around our tent at the V Festival.
And then I was looking at some of the unfailingly fabulous images at Panoramas.dk and noticed that they had an Apollo 11 panorama (you will need Quicktime installed), which includes audio as well. Stunning. And follow the links from that to really large images of the Lunar Module and the famous image of Buzz Aldrin (they refer to them as “super resolution). In fact this site is amazing. You should also check out the linked Apollo 17 panorama too – it’s even better. (And then later you can look at the Mars imagery from earlier in the year, and many many other amazing panoramas).
And over at Space.com they’ve got lovely wallpapers.
And while I’m a science theme (and I must warn you that I’ve just finished the glorious A Short History of Nearly Everything) it was good to note today that MPs are getting onto the outrageous costs of journals at universities. Vast amount of funds for higher education line the pockets of the likes of Reed Elsevier who get all their content free, get it peer-reviewed free and then charge the earth for access to essential data – which for the most part, some other body has paid for. The full report is to be found here (as a PDF). It makes fascinating reading, particularly in regard to bundling titles and access in the future to electronic archives to titles that libraries have since stopped subscribing too. It strikes me that some of these publishers are going to do themselves out of an industry if they’re not careful, as new models for scientific publishing come to pass, opening up the archives to a far greater number of people across the planet. Let’s face it – if you’re published, you want as many people to read your work as possible!
Interestingly, this report comes in the same week that the music industry in the UK is getting into a palaver about the music that is coming out of copyright from next year. This week’s Music Week (the trade magazine of the music industry) devotes its front page and several inside pages. What it boils down to is that the first Elvis tracks exit copyright next year. The arguments are quite interesting – in that they seem to boil down to the fact that the record companies are still making money out the albums, so why should they lose this income?
Maybe instead of trying to sell us the same old music over and over, they ought to be concentrating on their newer fare. Yes, other countries have much tighter rules, but that’s not a good enough reason.
Another argument is that margins are shrinking due to people like Apple. Well if the industry had got off its backside a bit earlier, they could have been the dominant force in electronic music sales rather than letting Apple in at the last minute and watching as it basks in the associated glory.
Then there’s the fact that the majority of musicians earn very little – the article in Music Week says 60% earn less than £10,000 a year. Undeniable then that they’re going to lose out? Well not really. Because it’s not performers who are at the margins who are going to see their back catalogues reissued by all and sundry. It’s going to be Elvis. And assuming that these re-issues aren’t going to have access to the masters, I’d assume that RCA or whoever Elvis’ label was, are going to be able to continue to put out better quality versions.
Then there’s the international issue. If an album is copyright free in the UK, but not in the States, how do they stop albums being sold internationally. Well we have the same issue with DVDs – don’t bother trying to stop it, because people will get around it. Instead, offer better products in your market at better prices. When DVDs first started, UK editions were often inferior products in terms of features, and released months or years after US releases (I use the DVD analogy, incidentally, since a film may well have different distributors in different countries who hold the rights to that film in that country). Well we’ve quickly seen that the time delays have closed up, and in the UK we get equally as good releases for the most part. This all means that I rarely feel the need for a US import.
It’s not even as though song writers and composers won’t receive payments. It’s the performances. Frankly, the sooner The Beatles come out of copyright, the sooner I might actually purchase a Beatles album. With record companies cynically squeezing every penny they can out of a property, it’s not surprising that I don’t empathise too much with them.
The sole reason that this is an issue as that it’ll be 50 years since the start of Rock and Roll, and that’s where money is still to be made. Plenty more songs have gone out of copyright in the UK before now, and this means that HMV has plentiful sections in it’s Easy Listening and Nostalgia areas where companies have moved in to sell copyright free material cheaply.
In Music Week’s “More Views From the Industry” I note that they singularly failed to find a single dissenting voice from the view that the 50 years should be extended (and preferably to the ridiculous 95 years that the US has to prevent the poor little Disney organisation losing out). Even though they interviewed a guy from Prism, who regularly reissue material, they couldn’t find anyone who was happy with the rules as they are.