A blog headache

Hey Sacramento Bee blogger/California Insider Daniel Weintraub: In this country we like to read newspapers, books, magazines and websites with flush-left columns.

Newspapers should let reporters blog away

Journalismjobs.com: My colleague, Online Journalism Review editor Michelle Nicolosi, is on the same track in thinking that newspapers would be well-served by letting their reporters take up weblogs. She says in a Q&A: "More papers should think about setting up reporters with blogs. Working on them should be optional -- not mandated -- and reporters should be given the freedom to have a little personality in their blog, to link offsite, to post pretty much as they see fit. If they do a bad job, cancel it."

Pentagon retaliates against GIs who complained

From today's San Francisco Chron: Pentagon retaliates against GIs who spoke out on TV. Sad, but typical.

Bush approval ratings come down to earth

Interesting snapshot of public opinion: President's approval rating sags over Iraq, economy. Key graf:

Half in the poll, 50 percent, said it was likely they would support Bush's re-election, while almost that many, 46 percent, said it was unlikely.

Plagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage?

Somehow I missed this Jon Pareles piece in last Saturday's NY Times. It's going to disappear behind a pay firewall tomorrow, so I'm reproducing it below. Excerpt:

[Dylan] was simply doing what he has always done: writing songs that are information collages. Allusions and memories, fragments of dialogue and nuggets of tradition have always been part of Mr. Dylan's songs, all stitched together like crazy quilts. ...

The hoopla over " `Love and Theft' " and "Confessions of a Yakuza" is a symptom of a growing misunderstanding about culture's ownership and evolution, a misunderstanding that has accelerated as humanity's oral tradition migrates to the Internet. Ideas aren't meant to be carved in stone and left inviolate; they're meant to stimulate the next idea and the next.

Because information is now copied and transferred more quickly than ever, a panicky reaction has set in among corporations and some artists who fear a time when they won't be able to make a profit selling their information (in the form of music, images, movies, computer software). As the Internet puts a huge shared cultural heritage within reach, they want to collect fees or block access. Amazingly enough, some musicians want to prevent people from casually listening to their music, much less building new tunes on it.

Companies with large copyright holdings are also hoping to whittle away the safe harbor in copyright law called fair use, which allows limited and ambiguously defined amounts of imitation for education, criticism, parody and other purposes. The companies also want to prevent copyrighted works from entering the public domain, where they can be freely copied and distributed. The Supreme Court recently ruled, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, that individual copyrights could extend for 70 years after the life of the creator, or in the case of a corporation, for 95 years. As a result, Mickey Mouse will be kept out of the public domain ó that shared cultural heritage ó until 2024.

The absolutely original artist is an extremely rare and possibly imaginary creature, living in some isolated habitat where no previous works or traditions have left any impression. ...

Plagiarism in Dylan, or a Cultural Collage?
By JON PARELES

n alert Bob Dylan fan was reading Dr. Junichi Saga's "Confessions of a Yakuza" (Kodansha America, 1991) when some familiar phrases jumped out at him. There were a dozen sentences similar to lines from songs on Mr. Dylan's 2001 album, " 'Love and Theft,' " particularly one called "Floater (Too Much to Ask)."

In the book a father is described as being "like a feudal lord," a phrase Mr. Dylan uses. A character in the book says, "I'm not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded"; Mr. Dylan sings, "I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound." Mr. Dylan has neither confirmed nor denied reading the book or drawing on it; he could not be reached for comment, a Columbia Records spokeswoman said.

The Wall Street Journal reported the probable borrowings on Tuesday as front-page news. After recent uproars over historians and journalists who used other researchers' material without attribution, could it be that the great songwriter was now exposed as one more plagiarist?

Not exactly. Mr. Dylan was not purporting to present original research on the culture of yakuza, the Japanese gangsters. Nor was he setting unbroken stretches of the book to music. The 16 verses of "Floater" include plenty of material that is not in "Confessions of a Yakuza," although the song's subtitle and its last line ó "Tears or not, it's too much to ask" ó do directly echo the book. Unlike Led Zeppelin, which thinly disguised Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" as "The Lemon Song" and took credit for writing it, Mr. Dylan wasn't singing anyone else's song as his own.

He was simply doing what he has always done: writing songs that are information collages. Allusions and memories, fragments of dialogue and nuggets of tradition have always been part of Mr. Dylan's songs, all stitched together like crazy quilts.

Sometimes Mr. Dylan cites his sources, as he did in "High Water (for Charley Patton)" from the " `Love and Theft' " album. But more often he does not. While die-hard fans happily footnote the songs, more casual listeners pick up the atmosphere, sensing that an archaic turn of phrase or a vaguely familiar line may well come from somewhere else. His lyrics are like magpies' nests, full of shiny fragments from parts unknown.

Mr. Dylan's music does the same thing, drawing on the blues, Appalachian songs, Tin Pan Alley, rockabilly, gospel, ragtime and more. "Blowin' in the Wind," his breakthrough song, took its melody from an antislavery spiritual, "No More Auction Block," just as Woody Guthrie had drawn on tunes recorded by the Carter Family. They thought of themselves as part of a folk process, dipping into a shared cultural heritage in ways that speak to the moment.

The hoopla over " `Love and Theft' " and "Confessions of a Yakuza" is a symptom of a growing misunderstanding about culture's ownership and evolution, a misunderstanding that has accelerated as humanity's oral tradition migrates to the Internet. Ideas aren't meant to be carved in stone and left inviolate; they're meant to stimulate the next idea and the next.

Because information is now copied and transferred more quickly than ever, a panicky reaction has set in among corporations and some artists who fear a time when they won't be able to make a profit selling their information (in the form of music, images, movies, computer software). As the Internet puts a huge shared cultural heritage within reach, they want to collect fees or block access. Amazingly enough, some musicians want to prevent people from casually listening to their music, much less building new tunes on it.

Companies with large copyright holdings are also hoping to whittle away the safe harbor in copyright law called fair use, which allows limited and ambiguously defined amounts of imitation for education, criticism, parody and other purposes. The companies also want to prevent copyrighted works from entering the public domain, where they can be freely copied and distributed. The Supreme Court recently ruled, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, that individual copyrights could extend for 70 years after the life of the creator, or in the case of a corporation, for 95 years. As a result, Mickey Mouse will be kept out of the public domain ó that shared cultural heritage ó until 2024.

The absolutely original artist is an extremely rare and possibly imaginary creature, living in some isolated habitat where no previous works or traditions have left any impression. Like virtually every artist, Mr. Dylan carries on a continuing conversation with the past. He's reacting to all that culture and history offer, not pretending they don't exist. Admiration and iconoclasm, argument and extension, emulation and mockery ó that's how individual artists and the arts themselves evolve. It's a process that is neatly summed up in Mr. Dylan's album title " `Love and Theft,' " which itself is a quotation from a book on minstrelsy by Eric Lott.

Hip-hop, ever in the vanguard, ran into problems in the mid-1980's when the technique of sampling ó copying and adapting a riff, a beat and sometimes a hook or a whole chorus to build a new track ó was challenged by copyright holders demanding payment even for snippets. Although sampling was just a technological extension of the age-old process of learning through imitation, producers who use samples now pay up instead of trying to set precedents for fair use.

That might be a good idea; a song that recycles a whole melody (like Puff Daddy's productions) calls for different treatment than a song that borrows a few notes from a horn section, and courts are not the best place for aesthetic distinctions. But in practice, it means fewer samples per track, and it can make complex assemblages prohibitively expensive. Mixes heard only in clubs and bootleg recordings are now the outlets for untrammeled sampling experiments. Yet, samples have extended and revived careers for many musicians when listeners went looking for the sources.

Mr. Dylan has apparently sampled "Confessions of a Yakuza," remixing lines from the book into his own fractured tales of romance and mortality on " `Love and Theft.' " The result, as in many collages and sampled tracks, is a new work that in no way affects the integrity of the existing one and that only draws attention to it.

Dr. Saga has no need to keep his book isolated. He told The Associated Press that he was ecstatic to have inspired such a well-known songwriter. And as news of the Dylan connection surfaced, sales of "Confessions of a Yakuza" jumped. Yesterday it was No. 117 among the best-selling books at Amazon.com, and No. 8 among biographies and memoirs.

Of course, Dr. Saga can't be too possessive about the writing. The book is an oral history, told to him by the yakuza gangster of the title. It's another story that has drifted into humanity's oral tradition. Mr. Dylan's complete lyrics are freely available at www.bobdylan.com. As for the song, if someone asks Mr. Dylan for sampling rights, it would be only fair to grant them.

Bryant charged with sexual assault

Breaking news from AP: Kobe Bryant charged with sexual assault. In this ESPN followup, Bryant says, "I made the mistake of adultery."

Kazaa offspring block RIAA

Yahoo News: Two derivatives of the popular Kazaa peer-to-peer filesharing service now actively attempt to block scans by the RIAA and other agencies, escalating the P2P war to a new level.

Thanks to Sheila for the pointer.

OT rules would exempt journalists

Overtime could be a thing of the past for many journalists under the Labor Department's regressive new rules.

Localism's last stand

More on Congressional efforts to overturn the FCC's new media ownership rules, from William Safire in yesterday's Times:

... I scorn all polls except those that support my views. According to this week's Pew Research poll about the F.C.C. plan (to break the ownership barrier and permit media crossover), "By roughly 10 to one (70%-6%), those who have heard a lot about the rules change say its impact will be negative." Nearly half of those polled had heard about this issue, despite conflicted media coverage.

This growing grass-roots grumbling against giantism is getting through to legislators ordinarily cowed by network-owned station managers or wowed by big-media campaign contributions. Unfortunately, the any-merger-goes F.C.C. chairman, Michael Powell, has derided objections to his diktat as "garbage," and the White House strategist Karl Rove dismisses the depth of voter resentment that Democrats will be able to exploit next year. ...

Public opinion is on the march. Some in-house pollster should awaken President Bush to a bipartisan sleeper issue that could blindside him next year.

Washington Post's future is online

CBS MarketWatch: A new content deal with Yahoo News is one of the ways in which the Internet is playing a big part in helping the Washington Post boost its presence outside the Beltway. Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointer.

Gov. Dean finishes up his guest-blogging

I'm still following presidential candidate Howard Dean's guest-blogging on Larry Lessig's blog. (And so are the folks on Slashdot, where his campaign manager, Joe Trippi, waded into the capital of nerddom and gave assurances that it is, indeed, Dean, and not one of his assistants, who's at the keyboard and blogging.) His last entry should go up tonight.

Rolling Stone ad defends file sharing

From the EFF:

An ad from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) intended for the more than 60 million U.S. residents sharing music files online appeared in Rolling Stone's August 9 issue, hitting the stands today.

The EFF ad -- part of an ongoing campaign to protect the rights of people sharing music online while compensating artists -- shows several music fans in a police-style lineup accused of sharing files online using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology like Kazaa and Morpheus. The ad copy reads, "Tired of being treated like a criminal for sharing music online?" and "File-Sharing: It's Music to Our Ears." ...

Blogging for bucks

Not many bloggers make money for providing links, but independent journalist Rafat Ali does. Ali publishes PaidContent, a blog-cum-newsletter, and is doing pretty well, thank you. Wired News asked him how he does it.

Rafat Ali: I have only been in this full time for about five or six months, so it's early days, but I am slated to get about $60,000-$80,000 in advertising/sponsorship alone this year. ...

Ali: I am lucky in that I have done freelance Web design, so I'm pretty comfortable with design and technical issues. I use Movable Type, which is very good. I still think pMachine is the best nano-publishing tool but I am too lazy to move from MT to PM. ...

AOL flack a leading contender for RIAA chief

From the NY Post:

John Buckley, the head spokesman for AOL Time Warner's America Online division, is a leading contender to become head of the Recording Industry Association of America, according to sources close to the RIAA. Buckley, according to sources, is a finalist to get the key lobbying job, and the RIAA could make an announcement within the next couple of weeks.

Buckley was seen schmoozing last month at the going-away party for Hilary Rosen, who announced in January that she would step down as the RIAA's chief.

Buckley has strong ties to the Republican Party, a credential that the RIAA has been seeking in candidates. He was the longtime head of public relations for Fannie Mae, and served as communications director on Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.

He has also held flacking jobs for the National Republican Congressional Committee and Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign.

Prior to entering politics, Buckley was a rock critic for both the Village Voice and Rolling Stone.

Pods unite

Buy a new Volkswagen Beetle and you get an iPod. Here's the new commercial.

Trade a song, go to jail

The latest outrage from the House Dems, reported by Jon Healey in the LA Times:

To some music lovers, paying $18 for a CD with only one good song is a crime.

To some members of Congress, letting someone copy a song online without paying for it should be a felony.

A bill introduced by senior Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee would make it easier for federal prosecutors to bring felony charges against people who offer at least one song, movie or other digital file on Kazaa or other public computer networks.

The proposal by Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-North Hollywood), which is co-sponsored by four other Democrats, also would make it a crime to record movies as they're being displayed in a theater or to register a Web site under a false name. ...

As Mike wryly (but accurately) notes on Dave Farber's list: "Given that anything you write is copyright without a filing, that means that sending anything will be a violation."

British arms expert dies suddenly

From today's NY Times:

LONDON, July 18 ó The body of a man believed to be the arms expert at the center of a high-profile dispute over the validity of government weapons intelligence was found today near the expert's home in Oxfordshire.

The arms expert's wife told the police shortly before midnight that her husband, Dr. David Kelly, had been missing since he left his home Thursday afternoon saying he was going for a walk. The body was discovered this morning on a hillside bridle path five miles from the Kelly residence in the town of Abingdon.

The acting superintendent of the Thames Valley police, Dave Purnell, said a formal identification would be made on Saturday, but he added that the description of the body matched that of Dr. Kelly. Calling the case an "unexplained death," Superintendent Purnell declined to discuss possible causes or answer questions about whether there were any suspicious circumstances. ...

A new scapegoat in Nigergate?

From Writerrific:

President George Bush blamed CIA Director George Tenet for allowing Bush to falsely claim in his state of the union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program. Now, a senior CIA official has fingered presidential assistant Robert Joseph as having pushed to keep the known lie about Niger uranium in the speech, according to the Washington Post.

White House e-mail system becomes less user-friendly

John Markoff in the NY Times: Do you want to send an e-mail message to the White House? Good luck. Those who want to send a message to the president must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a form that asks if they support White House policy.