Going against the EU laws, the Greek National Commission for Human Rights said today that they won’t allow street cameras and DNA checking in Greece. They mentioned that in UK the 4 million cams didn’t bring down crime, and they find the cataloging of DNA samples unconstitutional and against privacy. The Commission did not give any specific directions if DNA should be collected in a crime situation either.

When I used to live in Greece there was (and possibly still is) this fear, usually pushed by the Church, against the “globalization” of the planet, that the super-powers of the world want to catalog everyone, and eventually make our democracy a kind of a hidden dictatorship. I always laughed at such conspiracy theories, since it was just speculation.

However, just as I was writing this very blog post (literally as I was writing it, and was ready to call the Greek lawmakers pussies), this story appears on Slashdot. It shook me.

From the moment you invade the privacy of people even at the most innocent level, and you deem it constitutional, it’s a slippery slope from that point on. And what I mean by that is that 10, or 100 years down the road, the laws would be modified to be more intrusive and even more intrusive every time. The only way to stop the slippery slope is to never allow not even the “good” cases of such situations: e.g. crimes. Deem them ALL unconstitutional.

So basically we are left here with the question: do we deem these measures unconstitutional from the get go in order to not have laws slipping over time? However, we should mention here that by doing this we could be leaving rapists in the streets, and crimes never solved. And of course, people who were falsely accused of rape they will never find justice either.

So the question really is: do we SACRIFICE 100, or 1000, or 10,000 cases/people per year by not doing everything we technologically can to arrest them or exonerate them, in the name of protecting the rest 12 million? And what about collecting DNA for medical research that has to be in larger scale than just a few volunteers?

It’s a difficult question really: Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? Some will say that they don’t. But we need to understand History before we answer this question. Historically-speaking, governments DID slip and added extreme measures on laws that originally were meant to be much softer. One such law in the US is the Copyright one. Every 20 years is updated to be 20x more fucked up than it was before.

However, I think that if enough provisions added to the constitution itself, so future governments won’t change the laws more and more as times goes, it’s possible to put cameras in some very special places, and only access that footage under judge’s orders, or get DNA from criminals — without sacrificing the general public’s privacy. However, if air-tightening the law is not possible, maybe it’s best to cut off cameras/DNA completely. The only thing I’d miss from the whole thing though is that Google’s Street View won’t be possible in Greece.

Then of course, there’s the other side of the coin: so what if they collect DNA from all citizens? So what if they do have cameras anywhere? Does it even matter if you’re a good citizen? The answer is “no” under normal circumstances, however, can you actually trust a growing police state? Even if you can trust the government of today, can you say the same for the government of 50 years down the road? What if they frame innocents to cover up their scandals? Or use some people with specific DNA characteristics to unwillingly test special drugs for major pharmaceutical corporations, because the country has no other way to get money for their ongoing debts?

Difficult questions these are.

Update: A few hours after writing this, here’s yet one more story about all that on Slashdot: “UK Police Promise Not To Retain DNA Data, But Do Anyway“.

Greece saw lots of protests and strikes in the past few years, as part of the social unrest that governs the country lately. However, the country is now in ruins financially, and yet, Greek people STILL don’t fucking get it. They want their cake, and eat it too. They somehow think that “the government should bail the country out”, without realizing that it’s the CITIZENS who should give up some of their benefits in order for that to happen. The government doesn’t have a hen with golden eggs, unfortunately.

The people who mostly strike are the civil servants. I have written about them before here. Professionally, civil servants in Greece equate with a king or queen in another country. They have so many benefits, they get so much more money than freelancers, and they can’t get fired (they have their jobs for life). Civil servants are the people who CAN give away some of their benefits in order to fix Greece back. “…many government workers enjoy preferential tax rates, can retire at the age of 54 (in some cases earlier) and enjoy 14 months of pay for 12 months worked“, writes CNN. Think of that for a moment!

All the new government is trying to do is bring some balance between how civil servants are treated in the EU and US, in order to help the country save money and pay its dues. Who else is going to pay for that 30 years of European Union cheating? The freelance unskilled workers who have to also compete with the Albanians’ ultra-low wages? Won’t happen! The only major social cast that does have enough money to give back are the civil servants, simply because they have been milking it since 1920.

Many Greeks have had this problem in my experience: they can’t really understand themselves in a bigger picture. They can’t understand that for something to happen, everyone must contribute. Instead, they see it as “the other guy’s problem, not mine”. Not to mention that some Greeks have a VERY snobbish approach against the Europeans. It’s “the Europeans”, and then there’s “we, the Greeks, who gave these stupid Europeans the Light of Civilization”. They think that a family in Sweden, or in France should bail out the corrupted Greeks just because they’re Greeks. Because they think that other countries STILL OWE THEM.

News flash: THEY DON’T.

Get a good look in the mirror Greece. I do hope that you don’t get a bail-out from EU. You don’t deserve it. Not until your government has the fucking balls to remove most of the benefits from the biggest MENACE of the country: civil servants. Saving the country should be the No1 priority for all, no matter the cost. This is no time for strikes! Going on strike when the economy is so bad, shows citizens who don’t understand what the hell is going on. Strikes don’t help the economy, they destroy it even further!

And then Greece has a problem, and it creates a diplomatic incident when someone tells it like it is? Sorry my compatriots, but that magazine cover was WELL DESERVED. It’s the fault of every one of you for letting your own country fall into such situation (I’m mostly looking at you recipients of European funds back in the ’80s). Not just some government that came and passed. Accept responsibility and dug yourselves out of the hole. Do something that’s admirable, for the first time in 2500 years.

I heard a lot of people wondering: “Why doesn’t the radio play less known artists? There are some amazing songs out there that are lesser known and need to be heard. Commercial/ClearChannel radio sucks.”

However, it’s not the radio that sucks. It’s the listeners.

Consider the following: The music director at San Francisco’s Live 105 (owned by CBS) is Aaron Axelsen (who I’m a fan of). Aaron decides what’s get played by the DJs during the day, but he also has a show of his own on the station: Soundcheck, every Sunday night. In it, he plays the kind of music we are longing to listen to during daytime: From Manchester Orchestra, to The Temper Trap, to Surfer Blood, to many local Bay Area bands that caught his ear (scroll down for his latest playlist).

However, the rest of the daytime programming is terrible: the same 20-30 hit songs are playing on a rotation. How many times it happened to me already: driving for sushi lunch, Phoenix’s “1901″ would be playing on our car’s radio. Coming out of lunch, and Phoenix’s “1901″ would be playing AGAIN. The rotation is so fucking short that it’s not even funny.

Now, it’s easy to put the blame on Aaron or his corporate overlords, but it’s not really their fault. They are just doing what makes sense for their business. And what makes sense is to keep the listeners from switching channels.

You see, the vast majority of the radio listeners don’t listen to music. They hear music instead. There’s a difference. They put the kids on the SUV, and drive them to school, and turn on the radio in the meantime. Or, they’re stuck in traffic, pissed off, and need to listen to “easy” music to pass the time. Or, they’re sitting on their sofa, reading a magazine, and have the radio ON as a background.

Very few people actually drive somewhere in order to turn on the radio and listen to music. Or sit on their sofa, closing their eyes, and listen to just music. Normal people instead, are so busy with their lives, their problems, the quick pace of this civilization, that simply don’t have the time to discover new music. Listening to unknown kind of melodies, or new kinds of sub-genres altogether, takes them out of their comfort zone. Listening to something like Dan Deacon instead of Lady Gaga, for example, while the kids shout at each other at the back of the car, makes it difficult to level your head. Not only you have your problems, but you have this new ‘annoying’ music playing instead of the music (or kind of music) you already know so well.

Basically, commercial radio works as a kind of a depressant for the masses. At first, it feels like music is exactly the opposite: an excitement that is, but in reality, in the large scheme of things, as far as FM radio is concerned, it’s nothing but one of the ways that helps you kept in check. No, this is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just how things work. Listeners want it that way too.

And that’s the reason why you’ll never be able to hear Fever Ray, Antlers, or Local Natives on commercial radio, during daytime, at least in the US. Unless indie bands hit it big on their own, their music will play only late at night, or at specialized radio stations like college radios, KEXP, and Indie 103.1.

So stop hating the radio stations for doing their job. Either hate the system, or the listeners, or don’t hate anyone, and listen to your favorite music in your own accord. But don’t expect the population to follow too. They won’t. They have mortgages to think about rather than HEALTH’s awesome off-beat noise.

U2’s Bono calls for control over internet downloads, says on his guest column at NYTimes.

I fail to understand how this can be done though. He mentions child pornography as being combated successfully by law enforcements, but thing is, child pornography is less widespread than… mp3s. And it’s ALL illegal, while not all mp3s are illegal. It would cost an arm and a leg to get officers tracking down every possible mp3 on the internet, since it’s not just bittorrent we’re talking about, but also a lot of “music blogs” that link to illegal files, and PR/artist/label/music magazines that link to LEGAL files. So how do you know which ones are illegal and which ones are promos/freebies? The only ways to really regulate the situation fast-enough, and cheaply-enough, are two:

1. Make ALL downloaded media file formats illegal. No exceptions. This of course is not a very practical or even constitutional solution.
2. Require that all WMA/AAC/MP3s files are digitally signed. Not DRM’ed, but signed with a license. It’s the only way to easily find out via a ‘crawler’ utility that FBI could build if an offered mp3 is a promotional free-as-in-beer file, or an illegally uploaded one.

And this would create massive problems to indie and Creative Commons artists, because it would make every artist a registered provider. Given that most of them can’t even complete their mp3 tags properly on their free promo mp3s before uploading on their server, I fail to see how the same people would be able to properly get a license to give out mp3s. Such a measure won’t only make users outlaws, but some of the artists as well! In other words, such measures for file distributions would have the exact opposite effect of what that Bono claims to “the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales“.

The music magazines will also be hit with the problem because they won’t be able to give out mp3s as easily anymore. Which would mean less exposure to the artists. I mean, I spent most of my holidays tracking down legal mp3 promos. I added 2.7 GBs of legal mp3s in my music collection the past 10 days, and I found some really good artists this way that I actually later bought their full albums or more mp3s from them. Under a new regime, downloading mp3 promos would be an ordeal, and an added risk. The magazines wouldn’t bother, the users wouldn’t bother. Too much trouble about nothing. Who’d pay the price for it? The indie artists.

The major labels and artists won’t be hit much from it, since they almost never give out free promos anyway! If such a law ever passes, it will be a massive kick in the nuts for the indie industry and Creative Commons artists, because the promos or freebies are the only way for these artists to be heard. In fact, according to reports, the average indie artist is making increasingly more money these days rather than back in 2000 — despite the rampant piracy that’s going on in the last 10 years. Obviously, restricting the media transmission will bring the world back to a pre-internet era, where the major labels have the upper hand again, because they would be controlling the internet too, in addition to TV and radio, while the indie artists will be dying of hunger.

Not to mention that wild rumor that’s going around for a while now that RIAA is preparing an international copyright treaty where people would be questioned on the airports about where they got their music files from. Think of having to give out your iPod to a special machine during security checking to check for all the embedded licenses. What would happen on the older files that have no licenses? CD-rips? Not to mention that going through 120 GB of data is enough to make you miss your plane too (these hard drives are dead-slow). Sure, this is just a rumor for now, but there’s no smoke without a fire. This is why I _always_ update the “comments” tag of all legal mp3s I download with the URLs I downloaded them from, to prove that it was from either an artist/label/PR site, or a well-respected music magazine. Might prove me wise in a few years time.

And if airport checks might never realize, house-to-house checks might. I trust RIAA to lobby for things like that. Just like you get your door knocked in UK by officers to check for your TV license, there’s no reason why an officer wouldn’t knock your door to check for your mp3s on your computer, if such a law passes. I trust that if they find “what seems to be illegal” mp3s on your drive they won’t charge you with thousands of dollars per song, but certainly $100 or so. There would be enough volume to pay for these officers, and RIAA, and the government. Who loses again? All the citizens, artists and not.

Sure, this sounds like a “police state” to you, that “will never happen”. But if you had a time machine and you could transport yourself back to 1920s, and you mentioned to the people of that era that by 1980 everyone would need a license to have chickens in their garden, they would laugh at you and tell you that you’re fucking crazy. Sorry guys, but that’s how most political shifts happen in a capitalistic environment. Slowly, but surely, usually induced by lobbying. It’s never a swift change, it’s always done gradually.

And finally, the other problem of file-signing is technological innovation. If the governments of the world require all AAC, WMA and MP3 files to be digitally signed, then it might make it illegal to use a different file format, simply because the government won’t have ways to check licenses on newer media formats. And if not illegal, certainly a trouble-making experience. So basically, the media formats would be a “locked” affair, since no one would want to jump to another format, from fear of what might happen to them. This would kill R&D on audio and video formats. This is how technological innovation dies. With fucked up laws and regulations like the ones Bono aspires to.

So, my dear Bono, as South Park so elegantly put it, your ideas are the biggest pieces of crap in the world. Well, either yours, or the RIAA/UMG prick who wrote that article for you.

I found two interesting comments on Slashdot about the Vimeo/EMI situation.

The first comment, by Bedroll:

“As the trend towards Internet Television strengthens the monopolies of the content industry weaken. Quality user generated content is a direct competitor to professionally generated content. The content industry has a long history of using the legal system to ensure that they squash the competition.”

The second comment, by Tepples, brushes off on the fact that many musical compositions are similar, even if not on purpose, and so even by using royalty-free music, ASCAP could fight a potential free media revolution:

“[...] ASCAP will be able to dig up something non-free that was written in the past 95 years and happens to sound like the freely-licensed music, making the free license invalid.”

And this is so true: this year alone there were 100,000 album releases. About 1 million songs. Per year. Which makes it utterly impossible to not be songs out there with the same riffs/melodies. Which makes every musician, or user, potentially liable, especially when the copyright has been extended so far back.

What really made me cry last night though (for real), was reading an excerpt from Larry Lessig’s “Free Culture” book. Please do a search on this page, and start reading from the point that reads “Edwin Howard Armstrong is one of America’s forgotten inventor geniuses“, up to “then stepped out of a thirteenth story window to his death“. This bit shows how new things are shot down by established corporations, and how they use the lawmaking system and the government to do their bidding, and then passing their doings as “normal”. It’s a very good parallelism example for the internet age.

Oh, and I really dislike it when people say “but, that’s the law”, when that copyright law was lobbied by corporations, so it’s not how that law should have been in the first place. The law is the law, and I always try to not break it, but at some point you gotta open your eyes too. Otherwise, you allow the system to fuck you in the ass. And if you don’t have respect for yourself today and you allow the fucking to take place, at least have respect for the children of tomorrow, and fight for a more fair law.

I don’t feel safe even using Creative Commons music anymore for my video projects. There’s nothing stopping ASCAP suing me for a CC song that has a melody similar to a 1960s song that I never heard before. And in this country, everyone is suing every one else for no reason most of the time. Too many lawyers probably, gotta do something with ‘em.

I personally feel very pressured in the last few months, on all fronts. From the various creepy small laws that I read on the news (“shave your lawn or go to jail” type of crap), to FTC’s new blogging rules, to warrant-less wiretapping, to religious nuts, the never-ending wars, to the continuous stifling of culture and art. I feel that previously established liberties are now getting repressed, one at a time, slowly but surely. And in my own country, Greece, things are getting worse too.

I kind of feel like leaving civilization and go live in the mountains. With as little influence and dependence from the outside world as possible. Get a few goats, possibly a mule too, and give the rest of the world the finger. I just HATE the way this whole world is ran. I’m disappointed, and I see nothing good in it. The few good bits in it, are just that: too few. Too bad that JBQ doesn’t want to join me.

We’re audiophiles in this home. This year we spent about $1800 is music purchases. More than anyone we know.

About 40% of all the iTunes/CD purchases were for acts signed to major labels. The rest 60% was all indie.

I hereby make it my resolution for the new year to never buy RIAA/majors’ music ever again. Even if I like some of their songs so much that it makes me cry.

The last straw for all this was learning that EMI sued Vimeo the other day. They claim that Vimeo endorses users to lip dub and that this is copyright infringement. This whole thing is obviously a sham, and just pathetic. Even the Rolling Stone commented that this lawsuit comes out strangely after Vevo going live.

For some of the lip dub videos on Vimeo might be on the fence if they’re eligible under fair use or not, but some are so creative that no matter if a closed minded judge deem them in the future as non-fair use, in my mind they are. These videos do serve as a great advertisement for the labels, but they don’t see it this way.

Most of the music I bought this year it was because it was originally free out there. I downloaded the legally free mp3s, and if I liked what I heard, I’d go to iTunes to sample the rest of the band’s music. And if I liked what I heard, I bought the album. Many times I’ve heard a song on Youtube or Vimeo, asked what it was, and then bought it too (e.g. Feist’s “One Evening”). Instead, the majors (and RIAA), have become over-protective about the whole thing somehow, and they prefer to go to court. I really don’t see the point of all that.

Sometimes I wonder if what they’re trying to do is simply to have restrictions apply to ALL (including indie artists), just so THEY can promote their artists via TV/radio as they always have. You see, the internet PR companies have no power over TV/radio/mags, but they have the internet. The majors on the other hand, they are mighty-powerful on TV/radio/mags, but are only equal in the Internet PR game. If the majors can kill part of the internet hype machine by making video sites add more and more restrictions, then their songs will get more recognized/hyped via the traditional media rather than the Internet. So all these lawsuits against people, youtube, vimeo, might be just a strategic way to kill the indies! Destroy the competition by simply destroying THEIR TOOLS (aka the Internet way of doing things).

Rest assured, I’m not against the notion of copyright. What I’m against is the lawmaker’s abusing of that notion to make copyright laws worse and worse as the time goes by. Originally, copyright was meant to last 25 years. Now, with amendments on the law, we’re looking in to a century (in EU too). And the fair use allotments are simply too limited. They were written before the age of Youtube. Instead of the lawmakers taking these changes into mind to change the law, they make the law even more draconian, paying lip service to RIAA. The new international treaty that the media companies are cooking up for all countries is definitely not going to be pretty either.

As a media creator, I have already moved to Creative Commons for my music needs for 2 years now. I don’t touch non-CC music for my video projects.

As a media consumer, December 2009 is the time where I stop buying the major’s music. And if an indie label gets on the same tune as RIAA, I’d ban it too.

I ask all of you to think about this. If you read comments online, many say that “RIAA and the majors will fall soon”, but this is NOT TRUE. The only way to have them fall is if we don’t buy their products. These guys are not going anywhere if they still have money in their pockets.

The Gandhi way, is the ONLY way.

Update: An update to this article can be found here.

NYTimes posted an article about Mars being the next frontier and that it might require astronauts to never come back, in order to cut down costs. At first glance this sounds inhuman, but the reality is, sacrifices must be made for the human race to survive. I am personally not against such a solution if it is to accelerate our space program and bring humans closer to space colonization. To me (and Mr Spock), the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I would personally be a volunteer in such a scenario, if I had the knowledge and fitness required.

A few years ago I went into lengths both on OSNews and on my personal blog evangelizing the basic ideas behind a cloud-based OS, and specifically claiming that Google is the company that can make that true. The comments back then were ranging from “it will never going to happen”, to “it’s not feasible”, to “you are dreaming”.

Finally, Google announced last night the Chrome OS. While I feel vindicated about it, it’s true that such an OS does not fit all shoes and it does raise privacy concerns. For example, doing video editing in such an environment would be a pain in the bum. Other actions though, e.g. emailing, might be better.

As for privacy, I think we are going past that. The world is going towards a supposedly-democratic outlook, but with totalitarian roots. Such a software system makes sense for our modern policed nations. And if Google wouldn’t be the one bringing that technology to us, someone else would. I am glad that it’s Google for now. But in 30-40 years down the road, when Larry and Sergey would be long gone from the company, I don’t know how things would be.

I was just reading the ludicrous news about “ASCAP Wants To Be Paid When Your Phone Rings” at Slashdot. We obviously living in some very restrictive times, and I am more liberal than that I am afraid.

But after the initial shock, I kind of liked the idea of not using popular copyrighted songs as a ringtone. In Greece, a lot of people are using some of this terrible pop-bouzouki music as a ringtone. Not only it’s terrible to hear such music over a small speaker when you happen to be next to one such cellphone ringing (it just sounds like noise), but there’s a “feature” where you can enable that ringtone to be head on the OTHER side of the line, while you’re waiting for someone to pick up the damn phone. Basically, having moved to the US, thousands of miles away, doesn’t spare me of the torture of having to listen to that crap.

In fact, the last time I was in Greece (this past May), my cellphone rang using the default Nokia ringtone (which was properly designed to have the right volume/crispiness/frequency to be easily heard). When my mother heard it, she said, “Oy! What is that? What is that stupid sound? Put a good song in there, something from Elena Paparizou“.

ASCAP of the world, do save us from pop song ringtones! Don’t let anyone use them!

There are those who say that by 2011, all music will be free, and the labels will offer artists 360 contracts in order to survive (meaning, putting the artists under more financial pressure than they are now). There are those who say that RIAA/MPAA will eventually win, and convince world governments to draconian laws about piracy. And there are those who say that indie/CC art will eventually take over and make RIAA/MPAA irrelevant.

I think that the truth lies somewhere in between all this. There will be 360 contracts, some of the major-label music will be free (but not all), some music will be streamed for very cheap/free in exchange for ads, more laws will take place, indies will become more mainstream via the internet, advertisement will be more evident in art projects, and piracy will continue to exist.

Today, making music is cheap. Mixing isn’t as expensive as it was even just 10 years ago. Making an indie movie is also cheap. When costs go down, more people jump into the bandwagon for the opportunity, over-saturating the market. Currently, the indie music scene is super-saturated with wannabes (and only about 5-10% of all that music is actually good). There are so many indie bands in the Bay Area alone that is not even funny. I stopped counting at around 600. And I personally like only about 20 of them. Don’t even let me start at the thousands of albums released every week on sites like eMusic.

Put all that together, and you will see that all these happenings will weaken the industry. I believe that the last super-star is already being born, and the last Box-Office movie (meaning, $100 mil or more of sales) will be out in less than 15 years from now.

Maybe I am wrong. But maybe I am right. It’s inconceivable for us to think that there won’t be any new super-stars to gossip about, or a new super-expensive movie. But like with any other profession, they all have their time limit, as the circumstances change (in this case, the digital age). For example, being a clock maker back in the 17th Century was something! Being a clock maker today doesn’t even get you laid.

Basically, what I am trying to do with this blog post is to answer to all these other blog posts and analysis articles found on the web that the future of music/movies will be with this or that. In my opinion, the future will be a mix of all these things, which will eventually weaken these professions, and downgrade them to just normal jobs.

This doesn’t mean that music and movies will be dead. That kind of art will never be dead. But they won’t be multi-million products anymore, but smaller projects from smaller groups. It’s not that the digital age killed the industry. It’s just that it put it back in its place. Before the digital age, Hollywood over-capitalized on the whole thing — because they could. Now that they can’t anymore, they will crumble under their own weight. They will still exist, but their golden days will be over. And this is true for the indies too.

Now, some will say, “does this mean that we will never see again an artistic masterpiece?”. And the answer is “we will”. There are many masterpieces in our history written by people who don’t have 10 assistants and millions of dollars in the bank. I am looking forward for these kinds of masterpieces again. All these thousands of wannabe artists will go back to flip burgers at MacDonalds, and the ones who really can deliver will stay alive in the (now crumbled) industry and make a basic salary. But don’t expect super-stars anymore.

That’s my take on the thing, and I am good with such an outcome. The same thing I believe about my old profession btw: developers. The good developers will continue making some good money, but I don’t expect super-stars anymore (e.g. Havoc, Linus, Miguel etc). The vast majority of the programmers of the future will just “write C# for food”.