Incentives, Food on the Table, and Cake
I’m a bit slow in posting this, but last Friday I heard this interesting interview with John McCrea of the band “Cake” on NPR’s All Things Considered. This part caught my attention: the host, Melissa Block, noted that Cake’s album “Showroom of Compassion” debuted on the Billboard 200 chart at No. 1—the catch being that it was the lowest No. 1 ever.
BLOCK: [W]hat does that tell you about where the music industry is right now and what the, you know, what the future of recorded music is?
McCREA: Oh, I’m very pessimistic about it. You know, can you put food on your table with music? Probably not. I think I see music as a really great hobby for most people in five or 10 years.
I think there will always be a level of, like, Lady Gaga and, you know, that sort of celebrity artist. But I don’t know, like, the middle class of music. I see everybody I know, who I think, you know, some of them really important artists, are studying how to do other jobs.
This supports an important point: the standard incentive story we tend to bat around in U.S. copyright and patent circles is more complicated than it’s typically given credit for.Read More »Incentives, Food on the Table, and Cake
Let’s say you’re the plaintiff in a civil case against a neighbor, an employer, or a company you’ve done business with. And let’s say that you have a Facebook account. The other side believes that some of your Facebook communications might be relevant to the case, so they specifically request access to your account. You refuse, and the issue goes to the court to sort out. How should the court rule? Specifically, what should the court order you to do? Do you have to give the password for your account over to a party that, to put it mildly, you are probably not on the best of terms with?
(Part 2 of 2) I fully expect that we will get some resolution to several important plot threads in Lost’s finale tonight, particularly matters that have been developed over the last season and Season 5’s finale: what “sideways world” is, what Desmond is up to, how MIB is going to be defeated, what happens to the remaining main characters, what Jack’s nuclear bomb explosion did, and perhaps more about what the Island is/does. The head writers have said that they don’t intend a Sopranos-style fade to black. Whether the resolution is fulfilling or not is a separate issue, but my guess is that I’ll like it.