1 year, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
Christianity, cross, Gene Nichol, religion, William & Mary, wren chapel
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From an email I just received from William and Mary President Gene Nichol and Rector Michael Powell:
Following its meeting yesterday, the William and Mary Committee on Religion in a Public University unanimously recommended a compromise practice on the display of the table cross in the Wren Chapel. We accept and will immediately begin to implement the Committee’s recommendations, which we quote in full:
THE WREN CHAPEL CROSS SHALL BE RETURNED FOR PERMANENT DISPLAY IN THE CHAPEL IN A GLASS CASE. THE CASE SHALL BE LOCATED IN A PROMINENT, READILY VISIBLE PLACE, ACCOMPANIED BY A PLAQUE EXPLAINING THE COLLEGE’S ANGLICAN ROOTS AND ITS HISTORIC CONNECTION TO BRUTON PARISH CHURCH. THE WREN SACRISTY SHALL BE AVAILABLE TO HOUSE SACRED OBJECTS OF ANY RELIGIOUS TRADITION FOR USE IN WORSHIP AND DEVOTION BY MEMBERS OF THE COLLEGE COMMUNITY.
The cross will still be available, of course, for use on the altar during appropriate religious services. This practice is similar to that used by other universities with historic chapels, including the University of Virginia. Other religious symbols, which may be stored in the sacristy when not in use, will also be welcome during the services for which they are appropriate. Under this policy, the Wren Chapel will continue to play its unique historic and affirming role in the life of the College: a place of worship for our students and a site for our most solemn occasions.
This compromise is eminently reasonable. The response to the new policy will be telling. If those who opposed President Nichols’ decision to remove the cross oppose the compromise as well, then it means they will oppose any policy that does not place Christianity in a superior position to all other beliefs, which is a completely unacceptable position for a public university to take.
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1 year, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
Tags: none yet
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Om Malik points to the new webcasting royalty regime announced by the CRB:
Till recently, the royalty rate was about 7/100th of a penny per performance, allowing many small webcasters to thrive and build sizeable audiences. At 14-15 songs per hour, it worked out to about penny an hour – one of the main reasons why Yahoo could offer music-streaming services at affordable prices.
However, now the equation has changed – the royalty rates will increase every year through 2010 when it is going to cost about $0.0019 per performance. While not much when taken as a single performance, the amount does add up if you are a company that streams millions of performances per day.
It’s actually even worse for most webcasters, as many were operating under a percentage-of-revenue model that will no longer be available. But put them aside for the moment, as such webcasters will almost certainly disappear, as the RIAA thinks that they should:
Dr. Nagle rested his overall analysis on the fundamental assumption that the current webcasting industry consists of a large number of marginal or insignificant entities (see, e.g., Tr. 13393 (Nagle); Nagle W.D.T. 5) and that a dramatic “shake out†must and will occur. See id. This, in his view, is both inevitable and desirable because it will bring about market consolidation, which will result in the emergence of a far smaller number of viable webcaster companies. These, in turn, will be able to prosper and endure (operate at a “sustainable scale at this future point of viability†(Nagle W.D.T. 6)) and, not incidentally, be able to afford significantly higher royalty payments to copyright owners. [emphasis added]
The CRB’s job is to consider only what royalty agreement a hypothetical marketplace would produce, so the fate of small webcasters is not within its purview. But what marketplace would produce contracts that no purchaser could afford to pay?
What about the big players, like AOL Music, last.fm and Pandora? Pandora says that the new royalty rates will kill their service:
The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has recently released a revised fee schedule for internet radio. Left unchanged, these rates will end internet radio, period. The RIAA has effectively convinced this federal committee to establish rates that make online radio a non-viable business.
It’s an utterly ridiculous ruling that renders any form of internet radio non-economic. We are continuing in the belief that sanity will return as everyone involved, including the 50 million avid online radio listeners, realize just how outrageous this is.
Bluster from a webcaster that just doesn’t want to pay? Hardly. As Keith Hanson points out, the 2006 rates alone amount to 100% of the total revenues of a well-run web radio station:
In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour.
Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.
That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers’ royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues.
If that weren’t bad enough, the new rates include a minimum payment of $500/channel/year. In the case of last.fm and Pandora, what constitutes a channel? Is every channel created by each listener a channel for purposes of royalty payments? If so, then the news is even worse. It’s not clear to me how many Pandora stations there are, but six months ago Pandora was reporting 2.5 million users. Each user can create up to 100 stations, but even 1 station per user is a minimum royalty payment of $1.25 billion.
The CRB royalties apply only to non-interactive webcasters operating under the statutory license. It’s always been questionable whether Pandora qualifies for that license - would they be better off under a negotiated rate? All in all, the decision is a bad one. Bad for webcasters, bad for customers, and bad for the music industry (even if they don’t realize it yet). The only winner appears to be terrestrial radio stations, which could pick up a handful of listers if webcasters go away. And what’s good for Clear Channel and the NAB is almost certainly bad for you and me.
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1 year, 8 months ago,,
by Fred (,
data retention, flickr, fourth amendment, surveillance, youtube
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According to Declan McCullough, the Justice Department is expanding its data retention push to include image and video-sharing sites:
The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.
That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.
As always, this encroachment on your fourth amendment rights is “for the children” a justification that is the last refuge for scoundrels. Missing (as usual) is any actual justification for the push based on the argument presented. Law enforcement already has the right to get a subpoena to force Flickr or YouTube to turn over user information — have there been cases where police did so, only to be told the data had been deleted? Is there any evidence that YouTube and Flickr have been used for illegal activities (copyright infringement notwithstanding)?
Of course not. Because this isn’t about fighting terrorism or stopping child pornography, both offenses that can clearly be addressed via available tools. It’s about compiling databases of information on law-abiding citizens that can be mined by government computers. Its about compiling information, not about investigating ongoing criminal enterprises.
Lest you think any of this is based on principle, check out the rationale for excluding schools and libraries:
Only universities and libraries would be excluded, one participant said. “There’s a PR concern with including the libraries, so we’re not going to include them,” the participant quoted the Justice Department as saying. “We know we’re going to get a pushback, so we’re not going to do that.”
So it’s all about protecting the children, unless it raises a PR concern. Then we’ll just move on to other lower-hanging fruit.
The Bush/Gonzalez administration seems to have a serious surveillance jones, and it would be nice to see some “pushback” from average citizens. Of course, the Clinton administration wasn’t any better (remember the Clipper Chip?), and a Hillary administration would probably be even worse than Bill’s was.
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