This is slightly simpler than the current calendar (taking in account the leap years’ rules)
I understand and agree with most of the argumentation here, even if sometimes, specially when he criticises Chilling Effects, I think he is out of bounds. Yeah, you can see the link, but the DMCA Complaints includes many links, not just the one you are looking for, so It’s not the same as getting the correct link.
In other matters, he also criticises the current monopolies that the websites try to create, like Facebook for example, but I think there are escape routes to that, like, for example, put just some snippet there, and the rest on your own website with a comments box provided by Facebook, like I do on this blog.
And about the iTunes monopoly… is up to the artists and record labels to fight that monopoly. And in demanding DRM they are helping them, because that way they can chain the music on their webstores to their hardware products. There are other systems, like the fingerprinting of songs (of which I don’t know If Apple holds patents about), which are much better, and that achieve the same objective: prevent the user from uploading the file to file sharing sites.
But in the end, the idea that transcends all the article, that the tech companies are getting a bigger part than the one they deserve of the money that comes from the work of the musicians, and not investing it back, It’s just the reality of the music market in developed countries now. They are taking for them the consumer surplus, all of it.
(via Evan Prodromou)
Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss?
Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss?:
What follows is based on my notes and slides from my talk at SF Music Tech Summit. I realize that I’m about to alienate some of my friends that work on the tech side of the music business. These are good well intentioned people who genuinely want to help musicians succeed in the new digital paradigm. But if we are gonna come up with a system to compensate artists fairly in the new digital age we need an honest discussion of what is going on. The tech side of the music business really needs to look at how their actions and policies negatively impact artists, just as they have pointed out the negative effect record company actions have had on artists.
Too often the debate has been pirates vs the RIAA. This is ridiculous because the artists, the 99 percent of the music business are left out of the debate. I’m not advocating going back to the old record label model, to an industry dominated by the big three multi-national labels. This is a bit of hyperbole intended to make us all think about this question: Is the new digital model better for the artist?
Your evening reading from this week’s issue: David Grann writes “The Yankee Comandante,” about a dropout dreamer from the Midwest who helped win Cuba for Castro and played a dangerous game with Hoover’s F.B.I.: http://nyr.kr/JTvmAI
De verdad, lo único idiota de la piscina gigante de “San Alfonso del Mar” ¡es que está al lado del mar!
The top five supersized tourist flops
As Japan unveils the world’s second largest building - The Sky Tower, which is expected to receive 8,000 visitors a day, our intrepid travel writer Benji Lanyado says that bigger is not always better when it comes to manmade tourist attractions.
Here are his top five supersized tourist flops:
From top to bottom:
The Ruyong hotel, North Korea:
Started in 1989 this was supposed to be the largest hotel on earth, with seven restaurants at its peak. Unfortunately, the building is still incomplete.
The Mecca Clock Tower, Saudi Arabia
This horrendous clock tower next to Mecca has been described as an “architectural absurdity” and a “kitsch rendition of Big Ben”.
The San Alfonso del Mar swimming pool, Chile
This is the world’s largest swimming pool with 66m gallons of temperate water stretching over 3,300ft, set directly adjacent to the sea.Dubai’s coastline
Where to start really? It’s amazing how many monstrousities you can pack into a small area of coastline!
Valle de la Prehistoria, Cuba
Built in the 1980s this dinosaur theme park features a bizarre 30ft neanderthal cracking a rock with a homemade axe.
Photo credit: Reuters, Getty EPA, Alamy
Aug. 25, 1944: “The Allied War Machine Rolls Through France on Both Fronts,” read the headline above this photo, which shows Nazis in France captured by Canadian troops. The picture ran with an article by André Lebord, the pseudonym of a French underground leader, as told to Leland Stowe. “This was the hour that more than 500,000 French patriots had been living for, through months and years of hunger and heartbreak,” it said. Photo: The New York Times
Via Marco Canepa
“Nunca juzgues un libro por su película” -J. W. Eagan
De verdad llegó demasiado lejos
When you are not paying for something, then you are the product
Facebook Is Going To Be Even More Annoying Now That It’s Public
Facebook Is Going To Be Even More Annoying Now That It’s Public
BY MAT HONAN MAY 18, 2012 12:00 PM 7,206 26
Facebook is public now. And that means you’re going public too. Facebook has to make you share more. It has to make you expose more of yourself. It has to do all those deeply creepy it’s already doing, but more more more. It is going to sell you to advertisers, to shareholders, to anyone it can.
[…]
That means ads are going to have increase in prominence and effectiveness. Facebook has already shown a willingness to do some truly shitty things in its ads—like using your likeness or actions to sell crap to your friends without your knowledge. I mean, maybe you get off on your friends seeing your picture and being told that you liked a certain brand of hemorrhoid creme. (Or maybe you just don’t know it’s being done.) But that’s how it works—you are its pitchman. That’s what Facebook sees as valuable. That’s where it’s going to earn more money per user.
And while you can opt out of that kind of thing today, Facebook has shows an extreme willingness to alter its privacy policies. And moreover, opting out is not the kind of thing unsophisticated users do.
1) 40% is just too much.
2) Read the complete article for a comparison with a different industry, also troubled by piraciy, but regulated as much (if not more) than the music one
(Disclosure, I work for a music collecting society, but the above is my opinion, not of my employer)
The Merger Music Fans and the Government Should Fear - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic
The Merger Music Fans and the Government Should Fear
MAY 16 2012, 3:26 PM ET 18
The world’s biggest record label wants to get even bigger. Here’s why the government should say no.
Even by the standards of major corporations, big record labels have never been the most sympathetic of creatures, prone as they are to suing fans and squabbling with their own artists. But Universal Music Group is hoping that by singing a little blues, it can convince U.S. regulators to approve a $1.9 billion deal that would give it control over more than 40 percent of the recording industry.
The company is seeking to buy up the large remaining hunk of EMI, the most troubled of the big four labels that dominate the music business.[…] The Federal Trade Commission would ordinarily be hesitant to bless that kind of a corporate marriage, due to the obvious antitrust concerns. But Reuters reports that the agency is at least considering the notion that the deal could be kosher because “the major recording companies already are weakened giants worn down by the forces of big retailers and piracy that put downward pressure on the price of CDs and digital downloads.”
Importando crisis (e igual creo que la cantidad de personas jurídicas chilenas que realizan emisiones de bonos en el exterior es bastante reducida)
Diario Financiero Online - Las IFRS al banquillo
Diario Financiero Online - Las IFRS al banquillo
Guillermo Tagle
Las IFRS al banquillo
Efectivamente hoy no necesitamos convertir los EEFF para realizar una emisión internacional de acciones o bonos, pero a cambio, parece que hemos retrocedido pasos importantes en materias de objetividad, transparencia y calidad de información. Chile tenía en la claridad de sus normas y principios contables, una ventaja importante respecto de muchos países del mundo, incluyendo muchos desarrollados. Al adoptar las normas IFRS, da la impresión que para ganar en globalidad, tuvimos que nivelar para abajo. Válida la prudencia del SII al no subirse a este carro. Dura la tarea que tiene por delante el regulador, para supervisar y corregir posibles abusos provocados por la mayor subjetividad y permisividad de las nuevas reglas. ¿Es posible volver atrás?, difícil cosa pero no imposible. Mantener la ambigüedad y desconfianza que han traídos estos aires de modernidad sobre los EEFF, también es difícil y, por lo tanto, estamos frente a un dilema complejo, pero de urgente solución.
After being bailed out, there is a problem not only of profitability, but of excellence… They need not to be profitable, but they need to do it without any big mistakes, because it’s like they were walking on broken glass (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y25stK5ymlA)
JPMorgan Chase: Dimon in the rough | The Economist
JPMorgan Chase: Dimon in the rough | The Economist
JPMorgan Chase
Dimon in the rough
A scramble to benefit from a bad trade
May 19th 2012 | NEW YORK | from the print edition
A BIG but digestible mistake by a financial institution with abundant profits and capital should normally be viewed as the market equivalent of an electric shock, a jolt that leads to smarter behaviour. The response to JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion (and rising) loss on a position taken by its chief investment office could not have been more highly charged.
The loss has reinforced the political appeal of bashing banks, no matter what the facts. Barack Obama went on a TV chat show on May 14th and responded to questions about the loss by implying it would have been blocked under the Volcker rule banning proprietary trading. Given the proposed wording of the rule and the apparent nature of the trade, which seems to have started out as an attempt to hedge risk, that assertion is at best a stretch.
