Vick, Didinger, Protests, and Shelter/Rescue Work

While visiting friends on my way home from vacation, I opened to the
Friday sports page in their local paper and let out a scream that
startled their dogs--"What's wrong with him? Is he OK?" My
Philly Eagles had signed Michael Vick. Non-YMCA appropriate language
passed through my mind as I tried to get my head around this horrible
(to me) event. Why'd my team sign another QB? And if they needed
one, why this villain??

Later that morning, my hosts and I sat around their kitchen table
completing a task they do most weeks for a local animal shelter:
looking at pictures of dogs about to be made available for adoption at
a shelter, and coming up with names for those who were surrendered or
found as "nameless" dogs. Brought back memories of my being involved
in mid-atlantic Rhodesian Ridgeback rescue. . . .

As I drove home along the NJ Turnpike and I-295 early Saturday
morning, I listened to sportstalk radio out of Philadelphia. Clearly,
I was NOT the only fan thinking about chucking his Eagles. Later in
the day, I heard a sports reporter on the radio talking about how he
wished people would channel their protests.

The guy's name is Ray Didinger, works for Comcast Cablevision, NFL
Films, and radio station WIP in Philadelphia. He and his wife are
active in bulldog rescue, too
( http://www.heavensentbulldogrescue.com/ ). He often talks about the
dogs he and his wife have fostered before they're sent on for
adoption. Didinger's comments were the first rational response I'd
heard on Philly airwaves about the Vick signing.

Anyway, his take on the signing of Michael Vick was pretty
interesting. Of course he found what Vick had done to be deplorable.
Of course he was taken aback by the signing at first. Of course he,
like the Eagles management, is taking a wait and see attitude to see
just how pro-active Vick will be in becoming a spokesman for animal
rights. But he also expressed frustration with how Eagle fans/ Animal
Lovers were expressing their outrage.

As Didinger said, going and standing outside the Eagles' practice
facility chanting and waving signs might make you feel better as you
vent your wrath, but wouldn't it be better if you felt moved to go
volunteer at a shelter or contact one of the many fine rescue
organizations that help abandoned and abused dogs and see what you can
do to help? He talked for a solid 3 minutes about the positive
difference people could make if they could channel their outrage at
Vick and the Eagles into action or contributions to help animals.

Anyway, as Ray Didinger suggested, if any of us hear people grumbling
about the situation, we could use the Vick incident as a way of
mobilizing people we hear PROTESTING into some positive action. Hear
people professing their love for animals? Then we could help them
channel their energy not into making anti-Vick protests but into
working with shelters and rescue organizations.

Maybe Didinger's point is just too commonsensical. Maybe I've become Pollyanna the Gullible. . . .
But it made sense to me--whether you support Vick's second chance or
would support more punishment--we in the dog community can use the
Vick publicity as a chance to mobilize action in support of the
animals most in need of our help.

So, if I were the Emperor, I'd have already had Mr. Vick in the studio recording PSA's against animal cruelty.

I'm so lazy that I'm a twitter. . . .

http://twitter.com/mandorichard

For the time being, I'm too busy to write long and allegedly thoughtful comments. . . .

For now, just follow my twitter feed: http://twitter.com/mandorichard

I've been tweeting about copyright most often, but other topics, too. . . .

140 characters per post--THAT I can deal with!

Whither Ruckus? Comments on interview w/ News Journal

As many college students learned on the night of February 6, Ruckus Networks, a legal music service that targeted college students, closed up shop -- without any prior notice. (The link is to a page at the University of Delaware that links to 3 stories about the demise of Ruckus.)

Shortly after Ruckus closed, I was interviewed by a reporter for the Wilmington, DE, News Journal for an article that ran this morning. Because of space limitations, the reporter omitted some of the points that I think are key to the story.

For instance, she correctly attributed to me the opinion that the demise of Ruckus will not lead to a spike in the amount of illegal music sharing on the UD campus, but she didn't have room to include the reasons I gave. As a result, since she also quotes students who think illegal file-sharing will increase, I wanted to say something SOMEWHERE about why I think the demise of Ruckus is not a big deal on UD's campus.

It's about the market.

First, Ruckus was bought last year by "Total Music"--a creation of Sony/BMG and Universal Music Group geared towards looking for ways to gain revenue from licensing music. The model Ruckus used ("loans" of DRM-protected music) is not providing a viable revenue stream. In fact, even Apple has announced that it's removing DRM protection from the music it sells. As I mentioned to the reporter, DRM may be starting to disappear from music the way copy protection began to disappear from software in the early 90s. Alternate models for restriction, distribution, and revenue-generation are starting to appear. I agree with Eliot Van Buskirk, a writer for Wired, that a "premium package" approach to Internet service--like cable tv companies have--is the likely model that we'll see next. (He talks about a Warner Music affiliate called Choruss in his Feb 9 posting.)

Second, even though royalty payments are still not sorted out, there are plenty of legal ways people can stream music from "Internet Radio" sites--many of which allow individual users to customize the music stream. Personally, I use last.fm both to log what I listen to and to generate a music stream of music I think I'll like. But there are plenty of others. Point is, there are a plethora of ways people can "borrow" music legally in ways analogous to what Ruckus used to allow. (Of course, if the royalty payment negotiations blow up, then this option may be curtailed.)

Third, there is an enormous growth in all segments of the intellectual property economy in "secondary markets." Look at how successful so many of the variants of Linux (open source version of UNIX operating system) have become. How? By using Linux as the free core, and then selling additional services. Lots of bands are giving away their music--in attempts to promote ticket sales, t-shirt sales, sales of songs for use in TV and movie soundtracks and so on. Or there's the basic "loss leader" approach--give away one track to entice people to purchase the rest of the CD or digital download.

Fourth, the music industry itself is changing. No longer does it require a six- or seven-figure investment to get started in the music biz. Free software, inexpensive software, USB mics, XLR-USB boxes, digital music duplication--it's gotten to the point that for a couple grand, you can get what you need to make something decent--maybe not super-duper, crystalline hi-fi--but still pretty decent quality.

So, what I'm getting at is that if we promote the other legal resources, we can keep the number of illegal file-sharers on UD's campus from jumping up. The market is changing; Ruckus succumbed to changes in the market (and an unrealistically optimistic business plan).

Of course, if I were the emperor, I'd also work to revise the copyright laws! But then I could teach a whole course about that!