Crafting Gentleness

Monday, December 31, 2007

David Byrne in Wired

Clear, concise, thoughtful.

David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

(Thanks, Colin)

from the staff and students of The University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis

What scares me about the following is that these people in France are fighting to defend something which we have relinquished in our own universities, without as much as a peep. I'm going have to think about this for a while.

From the edu-factory list:

for some more info (mostly in french) see
http://universiteparis8engreveactive.org/

An announcement from the students and staff of The University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis

For seven weeks, a massive movement has been growing within the French University system, uniting professors, students and staff in a struggle against Sarkozy's new university reform law, the law concerning the "Liberties and Responsabilities of the Universities" (LRU).

The University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis, with the support of University administration and personnel, has been on "active strike", offering alternative classes and workshops open to all. Today the movement is at a turning point, revealing the depth of the crisis.

In most of the French Universities, with the exception of our own due to this administrative support, riot police are present on the campuses and their buses line the surrounding streets. Aided by private "security" guards, the riot police have entered the campuses in order to violently break the strikes, occupations and picket lines.

Plainclothes police patrol the corridors. During the protests, students have been targeted, beaten and arrested, sometimes resulting in major injuries. Some of the University presidents are therefore closing the campuses preventatively, while others call upon such public or private "forces of order", and create a climate of fear. Despite this situation we are confronted with a near-total media blackout, as to the movement's size and its demands (the abrogation ofthe law LRU), as well as the violent repression, due to the fact that the dominant media are friendly with the government.

The law LRU was adopted by Parliament on August 10, 2007, in the height of the summer vacation, without consulting the university community. It attacks the foundations of the French University system as a public institution with a scientific and cultural mission. Although the system is arguably far from perfect, it has remained an institution of higher learning that is accessible to all, without entrance examinations or elevated tuition.

This law imposes the logic of the market onto the Universities, on many levels. It forces them into competition with one another for students, financing and prestige, thus turning them into enterprises and creating a classist hierarchization between campuses. The few democratic administrative structures that currently exist will disappear, centralizing power in the hands of the president and a board that will include representatives from private firms. Professors and staff will be threatened with job insecurity, with the new possibility of hiring adjuncts and temporary workers. Even theacademic departments are forced to compete with one another for students and financing, allowing private interests to help determine course content, and offering classes in function of the needs of thecurrent job market. The door is opened to elevated tuition. Students thus become clients, and the university an enterprise.

We believe that a democratic society needs public universities whose mission it is to develop the critical spirit of all citizens, and that access to the university is a fundamental right for all. This is why our movement is essential for the future of the University, in France and beyond.

We are therefore calling upon you to ask for your solidarity and support, by inviting you to take part in our movement. At the University of Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis, a university with a radical history and situated in the richly diverse North-eastern suburbs of Paris, we have set up an "open university".

We would like to invite you to come and lead a workshop, consisting in giving a talk and opening up a debate. Your work has inspired us and we have taken it seriously; we therefore invite you to come and put it into practice with us. Together we can discuss issues relating to the University even beyond the abrogation of the LRU.

Your participation would be a great help to our movement, which is in need of exterior support. We thank you very much, and greatly hope to receive your positive response.

Sincerely,

The collective of students, professors and staff of the University Paris VIII Vincennes-Saint Denis

Sunday, December 30, 2007

New Year on its way

I read a book last night. This is a big deal for me, strange as it may sound. I haven't actively, consciously sat down to read a book for pleasure as an alternative to looking at a screen for many, many months. I had prepped myself, as it happens. I find it interesting that my friend Dougald's blog is all about watching less or no TV. Well, synchronicitously as ever, I've been working on something similar. I have moved my TV out of the sitting room, and have replaced it with an old dual-cassette sound system and record player. To be honest, I've moved my sitting room out of my sitting room as well - my primary socialising space is now my kitchen, complete with sofa and wee wooden boxes to sit on. Anyway, back to the TV, I've moved it upstairs to my bedroom, which hasn't really worked as I prefer to go to sleep without distractions, so I think I'll be unplugging it altogether and moving it to the kitchen larder or garden shed for storage (less damp in the larder).

Last night was a big deal because my resolve was fading. I had done the deed, switched off the TV, and I was going to go out. I was going to go to the local cinema (down the road, close) to see I Am Legend (more relevant as I watched a documentary on Catastrophist Sci-Fi the other day, which was fascinating, all linked into the usual suspects in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, something to be returned to some day), and I was even daring myself to leave early so I could head into a pub on my own in the local bigger town of Strabane (my village is dry, no pub). Anyone that really knows me knows that I'm a little sociophobic and find walking into unknown pubs on my own a little bit daunting, so no surprise that I didn't manage that, but I was going to go to the cinema, really.

But no, I stood fast. I said to myself, I said, if I'm intending to read for pleasure this coming year and I wish to do something pleasurable, then why not stay and read a book? So I did. I read some more of Transforming Education by Elizabeth Minnich. Quite heady for an end of year, but a fine read.

And now I'm writing. Unbelievably. As of today I have started the book that I said I would have finished by last Summer, the book from my Ph.D. I think I have a new idea for it, too, a new direction to get me excited about it again, although not too excited as it can't be allowed to veer too far off track - I still need to get it finished as soon as. I'm aiming to make writing the central part of my life for the next few months, if only to displace the TV. I'm realising that I can write with heart and (somewhat) intelligently at the same time, and sure, I only really have to stay accountable and responsible for what I write, so that's easy, eh? :)

So, New Year's Eve in this part of the world (and a few other parts of the world) tomorrow. My dog Cassie is healing after a minor paw laceration, my cat Nila is traipsing about nonchalantly as she does, my house is considerably cleaner than it was last week (I have had four visitors in two days and no complaints). The weather's not bad at all after a squally couple of nights (Cassie is very fussy about going outside when the wind is howling).

Love to all and a very Happy New Year, may you all hold court with the loving and the courageous in the year to come! :)

Resolution:

May I find the sincerity to leave the doors I'd best not open
The courage to open the doors I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

Friday, December 28, 2007

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) has been shut down

From the Commons-Law list:

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) has been shut down after several threats of lawsuits from music publishers.

Started by a student in Canada, IMSLP was a major resource of music scores of western classical music uploaded by a global community in PDF form. Music scores are the written version of a piece of music, as set down by the composer, and are necessary for anyone wanting to play or study that piece. The paper versions cost anything up to $80, and therefore represent a significant expense for people such as music students.

IMSLP collected only scores whose copyright had expired. In the case of the majority of western classical music this was easy since most of the works were more than a century old and there were many editions in existence from before the copyright period.

IMSLP was a perfect "commons" project: it allowed a well-defined community to jointly build a scarce and expensive resource whose cultural value had been validated by the centuries and was largely free of copyright constraint. Music publishers, however, have continued to bring out new editions of these works whose copyrights still obtain, and they did not see IMSLP in such a favourable light. Though the site was fully compliant with local - Canadian - law, it was shut down on threat of legal action under Austrian law (whose copyright term is longer), thus posing the question of how jurisdictions work in such online matters.

Links:

IMSLP site:
"The IMSLP was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores"
http://imslp.on-wiki.net/

Article by internet law professor Michael Geist:
"This case is enormously important from a public-domain perspective"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7074786.stm

TEXT FROM IMSLP GHOST PAGE
Introduction on what happened

The International Music Score Library Project was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores that are in the public domain here in Canada. I was forced to close the site due to circumstance after receiving lawsuit threats from music publishers that do not want the public domain to exist.

The immediate threat was from Universal Edition, a publisher in Austria. Whereas copyright in Canada lasts until 50 years after the author's death, copyright in Austria lasts 20 years longer.

Universal Edition threatened to sue me, perhaps in Canada or perhaps in Austria, for violating Austrian law. There is no reason why Austrian law should apply to this site in Canada, but as a student I did not have the resources to resist even an absurd threat from a company with money to pay lawyers to attack music.

I greatly thank Richard M. Stallman for his support in this matter, and for his offer and help in writing this summary introduction (something that I had neglected).

Thoughts after the closure of IMSLP

I felt an incredible sadness after this incident. Yet this sadness is only in part the result of having to close down IMSLP (at least for the time being). A much deeper sadness is the realization of the fact that classical music, as journalist Michael Kimmelman aptly put it, "survives every attempt to save it".

As many musicians I know will attest to, contemporary classical music is not in a good situation. How many non-musicians know Schoenberg? Even Mahler?

Despite this dire state of affairs, there are people in the classical music world who have shown themselves to have absolutely no interest in the well-being and future of classical music. Instead, they are insistant upon blindly wringing the last drop of profit from dead composers. I say "blindly", because I do not even believe their actions increase profit.

And they attempt to seek justification for their actions in the name of fairness and morality. They claim they have the right to profit from the work of dead composers for eternity. What they want is not limited copyright. They want perpetual copyright. They want to keep their wallets properly lined with minimum effort. They want to change laws to make this happen, at the expense of the entire society. Like vultures, they want to peck the last bit of meat from the skeleton of dead artists.What is the purpose of copyright? To stifle creativity by prohibiting access to art that was created more than a hundred years ago? To make life easier for certain people, who are usually not the artists themselves, at the expense of everyone else? I do not believe I need to explain myself further here.

I here challenge them to give even one logical reason, with proof, why, for the benefit of the society, works of dead artists should be protected for more than 50 years worldwide postmortem, a protection these people are claiming. I challenge them, as an artist myself, to give one reason why artists should receive such exemplary treatment, seeing how this is absolutely impossible in any other trade. But I do not expect an answer, because there is none. There is no logical justification. It is simply pure greed. And not even greed on the part of the artists themselves.

My friends, weep with me. Weep for the resistance of the classical music world to all efforts to save it. Weep for the robbery of culture by a few people at the expense of the society. Weep for our slow but steady decent into the darkness that is Nash equilibrium. Weep with me, my friends.

But do not lose hope. We must continue our unwavering belief in the accessibility of culture, in the correctness of our actions. We must continue in this course we embarked upon two years ago, in this fight for the fundamental right of all humans. Do not lose hope, for all is not lost.

Response to support

Quoting Michael Geist in his article published by the BBC, "thousands of music aficionados are rooting for the IMSLP in this dispute". This is no exaggeration; in the aftermath of the closure of IMSLP, I have received nearly 1000 e-mails regarding this matter, and every single e-mail is in support of IMSLP. This is, of course, not counting all the support that was expressed on the forums, supporters who have shown their support on other sites, or supporters who have not yet vocalized their support.

I have received support from not only IMSLP users and music aficionados, but also notable people in other fields who have much sympathy for IMSLP's situation, and who have offered help in one way or another. In addition to the help law teams and professors in the University of Ottawa, Stanford University and University of Georgia have offered, I have also received support and understanding from notable Canadian intellectual property lawyers Dr. Michael Geist and Mr. Howard Knopf. Many other people have offered non-legal help, including GNU project founder Richard M. Stallman and Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart. This outpouring of support further enforces my conviction that IMSLP was not wrong.

Unfortunately, I am currently very overloaded with other work, and so was only able to respond to select e-mails. I will, however, try to answer the rest of the e-mails and correspondences as soon as possible. But allow me to say this here: "Thank you".

Current IMSLP status

I am currently in the process of reorganizing IMSLP. Like I said on the forums, what needs to be done is clear. However, when it will be done is unfortunately not yet clear at this moment. I will be updating this page when there are new developments.If you would like e-mail notification of the modification of any page on this wiki, simply sign in and click the "Subscribe" link above the particular page.

Links:

IMSLP site:
"The IMSLP was a repository of more than 15,000 musical scores"
http://imslp.on-wiki.net/

Article by internet law professor Michael Geist:
"This case is enormously important from a public-domain perspective"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7074786.stm

Monday, December 24, 2007

Christmas Eve has come around again.

Christmas Eve has come around again. I'll probably head out with my family to midnight mass tonight. I'm not a Catholic any more, but I'm thinking that spending a bit of time in the company of my family is more important than any felt need to make a point.

I'd like to send out a goodwill wish to anyone who reads this.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Hiatusinging Christmas songs

I'm slowly getting there. The unpacking is both therapeutic and frustrating. It's nice to be in place, to place in place, to settle, to lovingly craft a space. It's not so nice not knowing where stuff is, like the potato knife that Mum and Dad packed away somewhere, but it'll turn up.

Joni Mitchell's 'River' on the radio, maybe one of my favourite Christmas songs.

Smaller bookcases are cheaper in the long run, I think, although building big ones with bricks and planks is fun too :)

I'm looking forward to getting this place sorted at least to the point where I can assume a domestic rhythm that allows for regular reading and writing. I'll be moving the TV upstairs later this evening to clear the sitting room of unnecessary distractions and to stop feeding my ability to watch absolutely anything as an alternative to doing anything else.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

dipping in ...

Sorry for the hiatus (what doeszzz that word mean?). I've been busy moving house. Lots to talk about and think about, but I'll leave it all for a bit.

I had an interesting conversation with someone at lunch about whether it would make sense for me to show resistance to senior inmates in a jail ...