Thank You For Sending Me an Angel

It's getting to be a tradition at In Aurem A2D to use holidays as opportunities for Surface to Air Full Circle music challenges. Our last was on Labor Day.

You know the drill. (Connection between our game and the WDET-FM Music Head fundraiser is in our first challenge.) Starting with a particular song, chart a path along associated metadata to create a connected playlist; but at some point, reverse course and return along a different metadata path to arrive full circle back at the starting song, in "about an hour" of running time. Bonus points if you only use songs from your personal library.

That bonus may get harder to achieve over time, if the trend continues away from music ownership and personal libraries to music access and personal playlists via streaming services.

To celebrate Thanksgiving Day in the USA, our starting/ending song is Talking Heads' "Thank You For Sending Me an Angel."

Full size table here. Annotated table with metadata associations here.

We're getting a little lengthy at over 61 minutes (longest running time for a list to-date). But this list appeals to me for metadata associations enlisting wordplay that we have not explored in pevious exercises.

HappyThanksgiving!

             Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #46             

Artist: Talking Heads

Title: More Songs About Buildings and Food
Genre: Alternative
Year: 1978





More Songs About Buildings and Food is the second album by Talking Heads. It was the first in a series of three produced by Brian Eno. In 2003, the album was ranked number 382 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. I bought it after seeing Talking Heads peform "Artists Only" and "Take Me to the River" on Saturday Night Live. Before MTV made music on TV ubiquitous, appearing as the musical guest on SNL was a significant milestone for an act.


© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.

Music Ownership, First Sale Doctrine, and a Potential Parade of Horribles

The US Supreme Court is hearing an appeal that could change your ownership rights to music.

If you purchase music as physical media or license-free downloads, you are protected by the so-called First Sale Doctrine of the US Copyright Act, which gives people the right to lend, resell, or give away the works that they've bought, even if those works contain copyrighted elements.

If you purchase music as licensed downloads (or by storing it in the cloud) you accept terms clearly outlined in the end-user agreement for doing business with services like iTunes. Consumers do not own their iTunes material; rather, they get a non-exclusive right to access the files, a right that cannot be sold, donated, or given away, even to your descendents after you die.

But the case of Kirtsaeng v. Wiley, currently being heard by the US Supreme Court, could undermine First Sale Doctrine, making ownership feel more like licensing.

Book publisher John Wiley & Sons is suing to prevent an entrepreneur from (legally) purchasing cheap editions of Wiley textbooks in his native Thailand and (legally) importing and selling them to foreign students in the US at below list price.Wiley is asking the Court to rule that First Sale Doctrine only applies to goods made in the USA and that Mr. Kirtsaeng needs their permission to run his import business. [Transcript of oral arguments.]

The so-called "Parade of Horribles" resulting from a ruling for Wiley are many and far-reaching: foreign manufacturers like Toyota having to seek permission from all owners of copyrighted content in their vehicles before import and sale in the US; companies perversely moving manufacturing operations overseas specifically to escape First Sale Doctrine on their products; libraries requiring permission from copyright holders before lending titles in their collection; US citizens requiring permission before bestowing gifts of copyrighted items (books, fashion, textiles, jewelry) brought home from the design capitals of the world. All would have negative US economic impact.

Furthermore, once a precedent is established that First Sale Doctrine can be limited, the slippery slope scenario imagines a tangle of special-interest exemptions passed by a lobbyist-influenced Congress until the suburban garage sale becomes a bureaucratic nightmare, used book and music stores become extinct, and eBay and craigslist shut down completely.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation has joined Demand Progress and the Free Software Foundation in giving you a platform to contact your legislators to urge them to stand up for First Sale. While you're at it, ask them to pass legislation conveying legacy rights for licensed media. Take action today.


             Vinyl-to-Digital Restoration #45             

Title: The Modern Jazz Quartet

Artist: The Modern Jazz Quartet
Genre: Jazz
Year: 1972

The Modern Jazz Quartet (2-LP, Prestige PR 240050) is a re-packaging of three Modern Jazz Quartet titles: Concorde (PR 7005), Django (PR 7057) and MJQ (PR 7059). I recently purchased it at an estate sale for $2 and made a high-res digital transfer with tracks organized according to original title and album sequence. (Yes, you can do that.) If First Sale Doctrine is not universally applied, how many copyright holders' permissions (euphemism for payments) would have been necessary to buy this used record — one, three, four? Any number greater than zero is too many.

© 2012 Thomas G. Dennehy. All rights reserved.