Sobriety tastes metallic

[alexsarll]

Stringer Bell is going to be in Branagh's Thor film. And we already knew Titus Pullo was involved, probably as Volstagg. I SAY THEE YAY. And speaking of things HBO, while the final Generation Kill did editorialise a little, while I don't think it's ever going to be as beloved as The Wire, that was an extremely good series - maybe even more so than The Wire it did a brilliant job of humanising the characters you hated, showing why they were such utter dicks, with even Godfather getting his moment at the end.

To my amazement, the proposed internet laws in the Queen's Speech were even worse than expected. If you've not been keeping up with the minutiae: the Government commissioned a report, Digital Britain, on how to reconcile the interests of the creative industries with those of net users. This report said that while unlicensed file-sharing was indeed rather naughty, internet disconnection was too draconian a penalty even for the guilty, never mind how many innocents would also be punished (Mum and Dad for the kids' filesharing, or a whole town for one illicit movie). So obviously, because we know how the government regards facts as dangerously subversive (just ask Professor Nutt), Peter Mandelson elbowed the relevant minister out of the spotlight, countermanded the report his own government had commissioned (they obviously didn't appoint a tame enough investigator, Hutton must have been busy), and countermanded anything sensible in it to put three-strikes disconnection back on the agenda. And, we now learn, so much more.
This in a world where Rupert Murdoch, until recently New Labour's bestest pal, talks about putting a pay wall around the websites of his various ghastly papers while stealing content from Edgar Wright. But you can bet that even if that happened two more times, even under the new rules, News International wouldn't get disconnected. In spite of how even musicians who don't make nearly as much money as they should would rather be ripped off online than live in a country which thinks disconnection is acceptable. The only consolation is that the relevant bill is profoundly unlikely to make it through before Goooooordon Brooown loses the next election. Not that I expect the other flavour of scum to propose anything better, you understand, but sometimes delay is the best you can hope for. After all, the horse might talk.

The Black Casebook collects a dozen strange Batman stories from 1951-1964, which is the period when the comic was as stupid as the old Adam West TV series, but without having to worry about the limited budget. So, Batman could be turned into a hulking monster, or find himself on an alien world called Zur-En-Arrh - which, if you've read Grant Morrison's run on the character, should explain why this collection has been put out, and why I was reading it. He contributes an introduction (although one which disagrees in some respects with the contents - he mentions 'The Rainbow Batman' when the book instead has 'The Rainbow Creature'. All the campy old elements are here - Bat-Mite and Ace the Bat-Hound - and by no sane standard are the stories or the art any good. Even the ideas are not so much "mad, brilliant ideas" as half-formed and hurries, born of desperation. Mainly it serves as a testament to Morrison's own talents, going back over the history of Batman and managing to find resonance even in these stupidest of stories which most modern writers would prefer to forget about.
Also, I know it's hardly novel to suggest Batman and Robin came across as a bit gay back in the day, but this book opens with 'A Partner For Batman' where you really can't avoid it. Robin has broken his leg just as Batman is about to train up a new Batman-type for an unnamed European country. Except Robin is convinced this is just a cover story and Batman wants to drop him in favour of Wingman! Cue such lines as, while Batman carries the injured Robin like a bride, "Batman's doing his best to sound gay. But I can tell his heart isn't in it!". And, from one onlooker, "A man is better than a kid any day!". Poor discarded twink.

Haven't had the energy or the funds to be out and about so much this week; even daytime wanders have been a bit sub-optimal, like yesterday when Highbury was deserted and instead of relishing this, I just wondered if it was anything to do with how very tentacly those red-leaved plants look once the leaves are finally gone. But, this just makes me look forward to tonight's Black Plastic all the more. Makes the weekend feel like a weekend, something which can rather slide when one is away from the habit of the working week.

Comments

[zagreb2.livejournal.com]

Re: Mandelson's laws, whatever happened to "three strikes" which involved a throttle on internet speed rather than cutting off (and which I assume was temporary)? I'm generally opposed to punishments for illegal filesharing because they've always been over-the-top (massive fines and the like) and now they seem to have gone back that way again?

Whilst we're on the subject, what I find immensely frustrating is that no one seems to be talking about a reformation of the copyright laws to reflect changing times and, to some extent, get them back to their original purpose (to make art a viable career whilst enriching the public domain, rather than all this "intellectual property" nonsense) but instead is either defending the broken and unfair status quo or arguing that copyright be done away with so we can return to the bad old days of artists having no royalty rights and instead being paid in commissions from whoever was willing to do so which would leave artists essentially the only workers without any rights.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Of course they've gone back that way again, because regardless of the evidence, Big Business wants disconnection. And under this allegedly Labour government, in spite of how much Big Business has screwed up these past few years, what Big Business wants, Big Business gets. Hell, Brown even appointed an ex-head of the CBI to his 'Government Of All The Talents' as soon as he was in, just in case it wasn't clear enough.

There was a very, very good discussion between SF writer Charlie Stross and Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman about copyright reform here (http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/08/a_fireside_chat.html) which essentially proposes something like public lending rights money, paid for by a tax on bandwidth. It's an off-the-top-of-head proposal rather than a costed one, but I think it makes an awful lot of sense - certainly more so than either the current regime or our leaders' proposed model.

[zagreb2.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that sounds interesting but off-the-top-of-my-head I can see a couple of problems. The first is a question of how the "rights money" will be doled out (ie will frequently-downloaded artists get more? Doesn't that open the system to abuse?) the second is the problem of the income stream essentially becoming state-controlled which leads to the same issues as the current corporate-controlled and state-protected model (ie I think the artists aren't likely to get their full due).

I'll try and give it a listen, though, because I'm keen to hear actual new ideas (rather than the negativism which the internet had been pouring out in the last 12 hours) but I'd prefer a transcript. Is one available?

[zagreb2.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's a link to a transcript on the page. *blushes*

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

There's more in the discussion, but I think the library system is a really good model. First off, it caps payouts to any given author at a significant but not obscene level - I think something like four grand. Now, obviously you'd want to raise that cap, but a cap in itself does not seem like such a bad idea. Second, the state model seems to work significantly better and more fairly than the corporations currently associated with copyright, because they do the normal corporate thing of wanting to collect money, but not being so keen on doling it out. Obviously, it's a weakness government has too, but not to the same degree (or at least, not in the developed world).

[zagreb2.livejournal.com]

There's a problem there already. Four grand a year isn't enough to live on, not even close (a typical lower-middle income wage in the UK is about 12-15 grand a year) but artists who write/create for a living tend to produce one work a year (if that) be it an album, a book or whatever. If they're getting a capped payment of £4000 then they aren't going to bother and they'll go and get another job.

And that's before we look at the sort of art the public wants. The most popular video games and most popular films cost a packet, and they only get that much money lavished on them because someone - be that a very rich indie producer or a large entertainment company - expects their money back plus profit. If we abolish copyright and use the taxation based payment system then there's not the money to create these any more so "blockbusters" will simply vanish.

Its worth remembering that we had art before copyright because people are always willing to create it but we didn't have as much as we did afterwards (by quite a margin) because there was no financial motive to do so. Most of the solutions to the copyright conundrum and the plain fact that the internet means that people can have art without paying for it (and no amount of Mandelson's laws will stop this, as people are correctly pointing out) have tended to acknowledge a return to the old model: artists create art and are essentially paid a non-living wage or in whatever the public wants to give them (rather than having rights as other workers do). There's something depressing about it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Like I said, obviously you want to raise the cap.

Don't we have more art now for a variety of reasons - more media, more literacy and simply more people? Copyright certainly contributed to the professionalisation of creativity, but it's debatable whether that was such a good thing when you look at the sort of authors churned out by creative writing courses, or bands mass-manufactured by stage schools. In the situation we were meant to be in by the 21st century, with machines doing the work and everyone living a life of opulent leisure, we could get back to the age of the gentleman amateur. Alas, it would take a lot more fundamental changes than copyright reform to get us to that point.