A BAFFLED gran told last night how she discovered the Devil’s footprints — in sleepy Devon.
I loved this bit:
Scientists from the Centre for Fortean Zoology inspected the prints, which were 5ins long with a stride of between 11 and 17ins… But the CFZ experts believe both tracks could have been made by an animal such as a deer — and aim to solve the riddle through further research.
The CFZ site is good for a laugh, too.
A whole bunch of browser-related things up on Techradar today. First of all: Come in Internet Explorer, your time is up:
Imagine if the browser wars were a horse race. Safari’s owner is a bit up himself, but the horse is young, sleek and hungry. Chrome is probably still a little bit too young, but he’s fast and full of potential. Firefox turns up late as always, but it’s the bookies’ and the public’s favourite. And Internet Explorer is a donkey.
It’s the result of two lots of tests, one of which compared Safari, Firefox, Chrome and IE on a reasonably well-specced PC, and one which looked at Netbooks (sorry, I meant to update the link days ago). Internet Explorer did badly in both of them:
If browsers were cars, it seems that Safari would be a Bugatti Veyron while Internet Explorer would be a knackered old Austin Allegro. Towing a caravan. On fire.
This was posted on Jockrock by Commander Keen. I haven’t seen the original.
Dear Member
You may have read the news stories this week about Google blocking access to ‘premium’ video content on YouTube in the UK as a result of their not agreeing a new licence with PRS for Music. Premium content appears to refer to music videos that are traditionally uploaded by record companies.
You may also have read that Google took this decision unilaterally, without any request from us to do so. Their licence with us had expired at the end of December 2008 and we were negotiating their new one. We do not usually ask anyone to remove content as long as good faith negotiations are taking place.
Immediately we heard news of Google’s decision to pull content from YouTube, and that they were talking to the press about it, we issued our own press statement. We expressed our outrage, shock and disappointment on behalf of UK consumers and on behalf of you, our members that Google should take this action.
Google’s decision must be seen as an attempt to influence commercial negotiation and the focus on ‘premium’ content as an attempt to cause disruption within the music industry again. This content may account for about 1% of YouTube music streams.
At the heart of Google’s precipitous action is the going rate for music. This is the rate set by the UK Copyright Tribunal in 2007. The Tribunal is the ultimate and independent arbiter of copyright dispute. Digital service providers pay a fraction of a penny per stream to the creator of the music.
Most of the major digital service providers are licensed by PRS for Music. And just recently we have signed deals with Amazon, Beatport, Nokia Comes With Music and Qtrax.
YouTube has signed-up to licences in very few countries around the world – we were one of the few. They have never before taken down content unless they have been forced to do so by copyright holders. Meanwhile, in the UK, consumer streams of YouTube ‘premium’ content have risen by almost 300% in the last year alone (up from 75m streams a quarter to nearly 300m streams a quarter). In total, Google want to pay 50% less than they paid before for that usage. Google think they paid too much last time. But their music usage, charged at the going rate, suggests they were significantly underpaying.
A further delay to our negotiation has been that Google is, at present, not giving us the data we need to calculate correct royalty payments to you. We ask them to make returns on their music use in the same way that every other major licensee does in order that we can properly analyse it, charge the right fee and then pay the copyright owners we represent. If there’s a stream of a track we don’t control, Google won’t pay us for that stream. Google would like to see our database in order to match it against theirs so they can calculate how much they owe us.
We look forward to continuing our negotiations with Google where we will be looking for them to pay an appropriate amount for the volume of music they use and the contribution that songwriters make to the success of their service.
In the meantime, please help us to help you. There are numerous Internet blogs hosting discussions on songwriter royalties. All too often, the voice of the composer and songwriter is lost in the midst of issues relating to the freedom of the Internet. Many blog posters misunderstand how royalties work and how you get paid. We should not forget that more than 90% of PRS for Music members receive less than £5,000 per year in royalties.
Wherever possible, please contribute fully to this online debate, putting the composer and songwriter point of view. Additionally, if you feel you could give your time, where needed, to talk or write to the media in support of PRS for Music and of the composer/songwriter community, please email us.
With best wishes
Steve Porter, Chief Executive, PRS for Music
It’s Tuesday! First up: why the YouTube/PRS spat is bad news for musicians.
Ultimately, though, the spat is like watching two bald men fighting over a comb. On one side we have a multi-billion dollar corporation demanding that musicians pay the price for its inability to find a properly profitable business model; on the other we have a rights agency that appears to be stuck in a pre-internet age and can’t or won’t accept that online streaming simply doesn’t bring in the same amount of money as traditional broadcasting.
Also, 7 annoying apps you don’t have to put up with.
Printing, as Eddie Izzard once ranted, shouldn’t be hard. Control-P-Print! So why do printer manufacturers insist on installing applications for every conceivable task, such as programs that enable you to add gaudy picture frames?
Long-term readers will immediately spot that one of the nasties, Snap Shots, was briefly on this blog. I was young then, and crazy.
PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our licence than before. The costs are simply prohibitive for us – under PRS’s proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the licence they can provide so that we can identify those works on YouTube – that’s like asking a consumer to buy a blank CD without knowing what musicians are on it.
We’re still working with PRS for Music in an effort to reach mutually acceptable terms for a new licence, but until we do so we will be blocking premium music videos in the UK that have been supplied or claimed by record labels.
What a brilliant, brilliant review. Anthony Lane:
The bad news about “Watchmen” is that it grinds and squelches on for two and a half hours, like a major operation. The good news is that you don’t have to stay past the opening credit sequence—easily the highlight of the film.
There’s something about a thunderingly negative review that makes it the most exhilarating of reading experiences. It might be as effective as taking a peashooter to a steam engine but the sound of that pea pinging off steel is nonetheless strangely warming. This particularly applies with huge blockbuster films because it helps to remind us that the bigger they are, the more likely it is that they are also absurd.
Nice piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun about proposals to enforce the age ratings on video games:
I’d argue that enforcing age ratings on games is perhaps essential, and not because I’m worried about seven year olds playing GTA IV. I’m worried about 31 year olds not being able to play GTA IV.
More than 1,300 schoolgirls have experienced adverse reactions to the controversial cervical cancer jab.
Doctors have reported that girls aged just 12 and 13 have suffered paralysis, convulsions and sight problems after being given the vaccine.
Everybody panic! Why, out of nearly 3/4 of a million vaccinations:
Their latest analysis found there had been 1,340 reports in total, with 2,891 different adverse effects noted. Most were minor complaints such as rashes, swelling on the injection site, pain or allergic reactions.
Swelling on the injection site? That’s not going to scare the readers. How about more serious things?
Four girls had convulsions, one had a seizure and one had an epileptic fit.
Any history of such things? Was the one who had the epileptic fit suffering from, say, epilepsy? Who cares! We have a scare story to write!
There were several cases of paralysis. One had Bell’s palsy, which paralyses the face; one had hemiparesis, which paralyses or severely weakens half the body; two experienced hypoaesthesia, in which the sufferer loses much of her sense of touch, and one had Guillain-Barré syndrome, which paralyses the legs.
Let’s Google, shall we? Guillain-Barré syndrome is a kind of autoimmune disease that usually turns up after a viral or gastric infection. Hemiparesis is usually caused by lesions in the corticospinal tract, which runs from the brain to the spinal cord. Hypoaesthesia is reduced sensitivity to touch, or a feeling of numbness, and causes can include trauma, nerve injury, tumours, MS and, er, leprosy.
Back to the article:
There were almost 20 cases of blurred vision and one girl was reported as developing anorexia.
The implication there is that it’s Anorexia Nervosa, the psychiatric illness, which would be bizarre enough. But plain old anorexia just means loss of appetite.
No wonder it isn’t bylined.
A slightly inflammatory piece by me on Techradar: why the music industry doesn’t deserve government help.
Now, like General Motors, the record companies are hurting – and like General Motors, they want the government to save them. GM wants cash; the record companies want ISPs to act as their policemen, while the Digital Britain report suggests a broadband tax to create a new organisation to fight piracy and find new and exciting ways for DRM to annoy us.
Why doesn’t the government tell them to get stuffed?
The New Music Strategies blog linked in the article is well worth your time.
It’s hard to disagree with Devil’s Kitchen on the government’s upcoming consultation on lower speed limits (inevitably the full post is very sweary):
Yes, it will be like the recent smoking one, highlighted by my colleague, in which the opinions of those who oppose the proposals will disappear into thin air whilst the responses that will count will be those of fake charities—such as Brake (£70,991 from taxpayers) and Living Streets (67% state-funded)—who support the government proposals.
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