mariness

For the record, my actual plan, before tonight, was to write a nice quick "Congrats to all the Hugo winners!" and leave it there. (Although, you know, and even though the Hugos are still getting awarded as I type, congrats to all the Hugo winners, especially Betsy Wolheim who won for a very, very long overdue award for Best Editor, Long Form. Like 25 years overdue. That was great. Onwards.)

Then, first Worldcon failed to provide a ramp to the stage. Then, Worldcon decided to do a live broadcast through UStream, which was going great until the Best Dramatic Presentation, short form. Among the nominees was a small show that you might have heard of, called Community, owned by a little company you also might have heard of called NBC Universal. Do we remember my recent ranting about NBC? Yes, yes we do. Also nominated were some episodes from Doctor Who, owned by the BBC, U.S. broadcast rights owned by BBC America, and an acceptance speech from last year's Hugos, whose copyright status no one cares about. To the surprise of no one, Neil Gaiman won for his Doctor Who episode, climbed up the stairs (I did mention I'd be ranting) and right in the middle of his speech those of us watching saw this little cheery message:

"Worldcon was removed due to violation of terms of service.
Click here to discover related content on Ustream!"

The violation was a copyright violation, either for the Doctor Who or (more likely) Community clips.

As I type, Worldcon is still banned from UStream.

So that was fun. Or, you know, not.

(Worldcon/Chicon 7 says that the clips were pre-approved. I suspect we'll all be hearing a LOT more about this. My favorite Tweet so far:

"RT @DanielSolis: Best Short Dramatic Presentation (2013) goes to the raging reaction of everyone watching the #Hugos @ustream."

#

The ramp, part two:

I'm still upset about this.

I'm hardly the only writer, much less the only member, of the science fiction community who uses a wheelchair or mobility scooter or other device. It's common.

And I am serious: the last thing I want is to have a ramp brought out especially for me or any other wheelchair user. I want it there already, so that no one has to make a fuss, nothing special has to be done, and so I and everyone can be fully part of the community.

I'm repeating myself, I know, but maybe I have to, in order to be heard. And I suspect this year the only thing that will get heard is the UStream irritation.

The Tolkien estate is demanding that all copies of Mirkwood: A Novel About JRR Tolkien be destroyed.

Next up: Jane Austen rises from the grave to sue Stephanie Barron, joined by Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe sends ravens after Matthew Pearl and Joyce Carol Oates and many many others I'm forgetting, and Shakespeare comes after Elizabeth Bear.

(Before I get pounced on, yes, I'm aware that J.R.R. Tolkien's name is trademarked, which may put this particular lawsuit into a slightly different category. I'm not commenting on the legal merits. I'm just worried about the zombie authors.)

Thanks to Tor.com and several others for the info.

From multiple sources, a couple of recent articles explain again why most musicians make no money from record sales - and why most of that money ends up heading to the record label.

This is why some artists - the one that comes to mind is Jane Siberry - have given up on the concept of record sales altogether, while many others survive on touring and/or creating their own CDs/flash drives as best they can without the assistance of a major record label. I've met a few musicians who, if not exactly living life up in mansions and privately owned jets, are doing decently enough with independently produced CDs and small to large performances here and there. And others that are not doing financially well at all, which could be chalked up to the starving musician syndrome, but in part has to do with a large portion of an audience's limited resources going to record labels and the evil that is Ticketmaster (the last two times I've bought tickets through Ticketmaster - for Stephen Lynch and Jonathon Coulton, the Ticketmaster fees were 1/3 of the cost of the ticket.)

What's not mentioned here is another issue: the fees charged to record copyrighted songs. It's been awhile, so I don't remember the exact numbers involved, but some time ago, the singing group that I was directing was considering putting together a CD. One song we did rather well was "White Christmas," and since we certainly had no problems crediting and paying the Irving Berlin estate, and besides, didn't want to get the independent recording studio considering helping us out into any trouble, we figured we would just get a license for the song, pay whatever fees/royalties and move on.

The problem was, the initial fee - for a song, remember, written in 1940 and made famous not so much by Berlin but by Bing Crosby - was in the thousands of dollars. Thousands. Regardless of whether or not we sold a single CD. So, we rapidly dropped the idea of including "White Christmas" (and ended up not doing the CD at all, at least not with my involvement, but that's another story). The same thing - fees/royalties for copyrighted songs - are also part of the money musicians will owe record companies if they aren't playing their own work.

Off topic, while typing this up I lost a key from my three month old computer - maybe four month. Ok, yes, I realize I bought a cheap computer, but still!

(It's just the top of the left cursor key. I really don't type that hard. Maybe it was a cat.)