SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

Many millions of dollars are at stake in a lawsuit against Universal Music Group filed by Eminem’s music publisher, FBT Productions, which finally wended its way to a courtroom this week.

At the moment, legal digital music downloads fall under distribution agreements. That means the artist usually gets 30 percent or a little less. Eminem’s lawyers content that digital versions should be treated the same physical product and be covered under licensing agreements, which would give artists about 50 percent. (All percentages vary in direct proportion to the artist’s clout.)

Let’s remember that this is an industry that continued to levy a “packaging fee” of at least 15 percent of the sale price on digital downloads until enough lawyers complained. (Title lyric by Eminem.)

Last night a panel discussion hosted by Zócalo addressed the question, How Will Labor Discord Change Hollywood? Or at least it tried to. Moderator Jon Healey did his usual excellent job and tried to keep everyone on topic, but most of the panelists preferred to rehash the home video revenue sharing formula and strategize how to get the actors’ contract to expire simultaneously with the writers’ and directors’.

But I guess that was to be expected from a panel that consisted of AFTRA National Executive Director Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, actress Kathryn Joosten, actor Ron Ostrow UCLA’s David R. Ginsburg, and Veoh founder and Chief Innovation Officer Dmitry Shapiro. Spot the odd one out.

Overheard during the enjoyable reception afterwards, during a chat about Slumdog Millionaire: “Even winning Oscars has been outsourced.” (Lyric title by Neil Young.)

The Kindle controversy (Kontroversy?) seems to have caught most people by surprise. To those of us who love technology, it was an obvious step to have the gizmo read out loud. It’s the sort of feature I might never actually use but would still intellectually appreciate that it exists. Or I might have the NY Times read to me next time I’m stuck in Westside traffic.

The Authors Guild said copyrights were being violated, explaining that reading out loud by people was okay but reading out loud “by a machine” [sic] was not okay (unless an audiobook license was in place)

Amazon obviously disagreed. It even overtly stated that the feature was legal, since no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Even so, the company said it will enable publishers and authors to decide on a case-by-case basis “whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled.”

As someone who has written billions of words for magazines, newspapers and elsewhere, it never even occurred to me that I should be outraged by speech-to-text. But then, I rarely get to keep any rights to my writing anyway. (Title lyric by Lennon/McCartney.)

I have been locked out of the touchscreen revolution/evolution. I prefer to keep my fingernails a little long (sometimes more than a little long), and therefore cannot use an iPhone, a BlackBerry Storm, or anything else that relies on a capacitive panel input. Even using a laptop’s track pad is awkward, although I have developed hand contortions for use when necessary.

Friends who are aware of my situation kindly send me links to things like the Dots Gloves, which have little metallic alloy nubs so people don’t have to expose their hands to cold weather when using their touchscreen devices. Or the Pogo Stylus, which seems designed to solve the problems of gloves and/or pudgy fingers but which doesn’t allow for the two-fingered “pinch” action. Those don’t really solve the problem, though. Other less understanding friends have suggested I forgo the fingernails, which is an even worse idea. Technology will simply have to adapt. (Title lyric by Joe Ely.)

So farewell then to TotalMusic, another industry attempt to control the way people choose to enjoy music. Not that TotalMusic ever officially launched, by the way. But the joint venture between Sony BMG and Universal Music Group did purchase and operate Ruckus, a service that offered unlimited amounts of legal streamed music to verified university students (based on their email address). Its most recent incarnation was ad-supported but otherwise free.

Ruckus also was supposed to supply the technology backend for whatever TotalMusic ended up offering. Its demise was unofficially announced via a blog post by vp of product management Jason Herskowitz. I don’t personally know Jason, but his blog makes me remember why I loved my years in the music industry. (Title lyric by John Miles, Creative Commons photo by Nomad Tales.)

Some of my favorite things on the Internet required a great deal of intelligence, creativity and ingenuity to create, yet have no easily definable purpose. The latest of these I’ve come across is by renowned and indefinable artist Ze Frank (pictured). It’s a Web-based drawing tool that responds to audio input: low volume curves the line counterclockwise, medium volume is straight, high volume curves clockwise. Ze Frank seems to have thought of it as kind of an audio theremin, a way for users to draw an image just by modulating their voice, but it didn’t take long for people to start feeding songs and things like Christian Bale’s rant through it. (Originally via b3ta.) (Title lyrics from the Pet Shop Boys.)

Some of the most impressive interactive TV in the US is what’s available to Nascar fans. Today TrackPass went live for the Budweiser Shootout, a premium package of features like Scanner and PitCommand that lets viewers follow and listen to their choice of drivers. When I tested it, I liked being able to eavesdrop on the live conversation between the pit crew and their driver, even though I have no idea what most of it meant. RaceView, a separate interactive TV package, will go live on Feb. 12 and will be available for every Sprint Cup race.

I was glad to see the services no longer require the Itiva Media Accelerator, by the way.  It needed to be manually shut down every time I turned off my computer. (Title lyric from Led Zeppelin.)

Entertainment has always incorporated a feedback loop of communication between creators and audiences, a way to indicate that a connection was made. Think of how curtain calls and applause work with each other, for instance.

Modern Mechanix blog found an early application of technology to this impulse. French radio listeners in 1937 were offered a small switch that they could press when they liked the current program. The switch turned on a small lamp, and the increased current drain would be reported to the station through a deal between the broadcaster and the power company. There is a more modern counterpart in the UK, where the National Grid reports an up to 10 percent surge as electric tea kettles get switched on after major sporting and other television events.

Check out the original radio rater here. (Via Mental-Hygiene.org). (Title lyric from OMD.)

Digitas is building on their 3D Super Bowl [registration required, sorry] efforts, which resulted in back-to-back and rather psychedelic ads for PepsiCo’s SoBe Lifewater and DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming 3D movie, Monsters vs. Aliens (where the ad can also be seen). Intel paid for the glasses, incidentally, to help promote its Intru3D.

Now that 130 million pairs of old-school anaglyph 3D glasses are in people’s homes, Digitas is nudging everyone to dig them out from under the sofa in order to check out  the Crest Whitestrips site Kiss Me in 3D. You can choose your gender and smooching preferences.

This is cool, as far as it goes, but what’s really cool is the subtle way campaigns like this help 3D slide gradually into the mainstream. And hey, the viral website is actually relevant to the product. (Title lyric by Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry via The Crystals.)

This year’s Game Developers Choice Awards will include two special awards being given to very worthy recipients.

The Pioneer Award will go to Harmonix co-founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy, whose most recent achievement is the world-changing Guitar Hero and Rock Band game franchises. It’s been fascinating to watch how Harmonix took the revolutionary ideas they came up with for Frequency and Amplitude and turned them into blockbuster mainstream entertainment.

The Ambassador Award will get taken home by the ever-charming composer Tommy Tallarico, co-founder of the Video Games Live concert series and founder of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), in recognition of his tireless work to advance appreciation for the music in games.
Anyone going to the Game Developers Conference can join in the festivities on Wednesday, March 25th in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center. (Title lyric from the Donnas.)