Mid-week Items

Winter storm warning today. Wussed out and took the day off work. Items:

• Via A&LD, a review of a book that tells you how to drop references to books you have not read into conversation. I have not read this book.
• Excellent essay on digital rights management, an open letter to Edgar Bronfman. Excerpt: The thing "without logic or merit," Mr. Bronfman, is the idea that everything produced has a value that can only be equated with a dollar sign. You elude to the fact that because LPs, Cassettes, and CDs, (or as you call it the "legacy product") have no piracy protection technology on them, that doesn't mean that their counterpart…the digital file…shouldn't have them. I would like to point out to you that in the past 30 years, with all the Chicken Little antics from your industry over people being able to copy the music they purchased, and share that music with others…your industry did not fail or falter as you predicted. In fact, you've thrived. In 30 years, despite real piracy issues, you've made money hand over fist…and you've been wrong about every single prediction you've ever made. You have no credibility on this subject. And you simply can't blame every slump in music sales on piracy. We don't believe you anymore. While you continue to fight your own customers, your customers continue to create the innovation that keeps you in business.
• I've been watching the PBS series Art: 21 -- Art in the 21st Century lately. The series is very good. Some of the artists I'm like "meh" but some I think are real cool -- For instance, Andrea Zittel, among whose specialties is making the most of confined living spaces, Michael Ray Charles, who was a consultant on the Spike Lee joint Bamboozled, and Maya Lin, best known as creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
  
• This has been up for a couple of weeks, but make sure to browse through the Facets top-movie list for 2006, full of staff favorites. Facets Multi-Media is a Chicago institution -- Arthouse theater, Super-mega video rental store, and releaser of obscure or foreign gems.