Mega-Rant: Pandora to cut off UK listeners

BBC NEWS | Technology | Pandora to cut off UK listeners

Once again, congratulations must go to the British music industry for successfully screwing-over (sorry, there’s no politer phrase) the consumers.

In the e-mail sent to all those reaching Pandora via a UK net address, Mr Westergren said efforts to negotiate an “economically workable license fee” had proved “impossible”.

The rates demanded per track by UK licensing authorities were too high to support, he wrote.

Wow. That’s a new one. The music industry (by which, like everyone else, I mean everyone except the artists who get paid very little) trying to squeeze so much money out of people that they give up and nobody can listen.

Get your act together. You’re selling to people something which they enjoy and provokes emotions, not office equipment. They want music, the artists want to give them music. Let them without thinking about your wallet for once.

[As a side note, Rob is a great supporter of last.fm, whose free radio let him discover Interpol and Death Cab for Cutie, both of which he has subsequently bought albums of.]

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BBC NEWS | Politics | Brown hits back on forces funding

BBC NEWS | Politics | Brown hits back on forces funding

Personal opinion: this is a major tactical error by Brown. Aside from the clear desperation of blaming the opposition (again), by wading in himself Brown has extended this news story and made it more important.

Services have been criticising the government for years for lack of equipment and funding, rightly or wrongly. If you want to handle this politically, as Prime Minister the last thing you do is comment yourself. What was Brown thinking?

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Amnesty International Video

Amnesty International have created a series of videos for their “unsubscribe” campaign on torture techniques. The first one is entitled “Waiting for the Guards” and is incredibly effective. Some might find the video quite upsetting, but it is definitely worth a watch.

The film was made with a performance artist who stood in the stress position for 6 hours, so the pain is actually real. Even in a controlled, voluntary environment, it gets the message across.

Via Boing Boing

Many thanks to Dom for e-mailing me this.

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Quote of the Week

And it’s only Wednesday too…

Never mind the lack of vision, just get a grip. Deliver a basic level of competence.

George Osborne on the recent 25 million missing child benefits details 

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BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Shut up, Spain’s king tells Chavez

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Shut up, Spain’s king tells Chavez

We really need this sort of thing over here. It would make things much more interesting.

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Bremner on Blair

Just seen on Parkinson, Rory Bremner’s assessment of Tony Blair’s new job:

Now he’s Middle East envoy, which is a bit like asking a mosquito to cure malaria

Fair point.

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Ron Paul

It might be appropriate to say a few words about the internet’s new political obsession, Ron Paul.

He appears to have been getting a lot of coverage lately in his campaign as well as having truly phenomenal support on the internet. This, as 1066 And All That would say, is a good thing. As far as I can tell he seems fairly rational, and pretty much anything is better than the current state of things.

Even better is the way in which the internet campaign has picked-up momentum. Take from his own website, Ron Paul’s reference to:

our Revolution

Quite.

Arguably the internet is one of the most free forms of media available in that anyone can contribute. Essentially, it is like one giant Wikipedia without having to conform to strict facts and with opinions. Some have pointed to the technophiles who have taken part in the campaign so far and argue that their dominance over the issue isn’t a truly democratic representation. Perhaps not. But, there are a lot of politically minded people who aren’t technophiles and have their say on the internet. To ignore what’s going on would be fairly daft.

Nevertheless, there is a different cause for concern. For the moment, no spam comments have gotten through onto this site due to moderation and Akismet, but I just received one which was the usual incomprehensible nonsense and a link to an article praising Ron Paul.

I’m not for one second saying that this is indicative of all his supporters, but the fact that people will try and spam as part of the campaign should be worrying for both supporters and foes of Ron Paul. The internet is a very free medium, but that means it is open to abuse.

Perhaps what this is more a sign of is the zealous way in which the internet campaign is being run. The campaign is easily dominating talk of the future presidential elections, and good for the supporters, but they need to be careful that it doesn’t become intimidating. Just because enough people vote a Ron Paul story up on Digg doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him at an election. The incredible support for Ron Paul might well be one of the most damaging things to happen to his campaign.

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Quote of the Day: Labour Conference

BBC NEWS | Politics | Labour finances ‘election ready’

If mistakes were made, Labour has learned from those mistakes

Hang on a second - why the “if”? Can you learn from mistakes which you’re not sure exist?

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The Governator Not Attending Conservative Conference

BBC NEWS | Politics | Schwarzenegger disappoints Tories

Sadly, it looks like the Governator won’t be attending theConservative conference and will be using a live video link instead. A spokesman had this to say (my emphasis):

It’s a shame that Governor Schwarzenegger will not be attending conference in person. We’re delighted though that he will be addressing delegates live and he wants to assure party members that he’ll be back.

It just had to be said, didn’t it.

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Norway: Probably One of the Best Royal Families in the World

Just came across two articles on the BBC News website about the Norwegian royal family.

Four years ago, the brother of the “controversial” princess was convicted of assault, and now today:

Norway’s Princess Martha Louise says she has psychic powers and can teach people to communicate with angels.

I ought to note that this is a different princess to the sister of the assault guy, but still. I can see the headlines of the papers in a similar scenario over here now:

“Queen declares psychic link with corgis. Prince Charles subsequently declares similar link with vegetables.”

Admit it. You’d love it too if the royal family said something like that.

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