This is cool to see. An absolutely awesome group of folks have set up a project called the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which is raising money to donate to various online projects that (you guessed it) help create a more free and open press. Part of the idea is that by funneling money through a foundation like this one, projects like Wikileaks can more easily get funded, without risk of being cut off individually (a la Wikileaks being cut off from most funding sources). Of course, it's not just Wikileaks, but sites like Muckrock, which we've used for a while to help with our Freedom of Information Act requests and some other "citizen journalism" sites.

Among the high profile folks behind the site are Daniel Ellsberg, of the Pentagon Papers fame, some EFFers, including founder John Perry Barlow and activists Trevor Timm (who's the executive director of this new project) and Rainey Reitman. Then there are people like journalists Glenn Greenwald, Josh Stearns and Xeni Jardin, and filmmaker Laura Poitras (who is working on a film about Wikileaks and internet freedom, and has been "detained and interrogated about her work at the U.S. border over 40 times.") And also actor John Cusack -- whose name appears a bit out of place, but he's been active in these kinds of issues.

I hope the project works out well. It's something that is clearly needed.

Few people wouldn't want the ability to remember facts with ease. The skill of memorizing vast amounts of information could be useful for so many tasks, but unfortunately, while there are a variety of techniques to help with impressive memory tricks, there's no magic bullet for general learning. Here are just a few interesting studies on memory that could be worth remembering later.

• We know now that memories are stored in specific neurons because genetically engineered mice with light-activated neurons can be made to recall (or forget) when those neurons are activated (or removed). The ethics of "Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind" technology might be a serious discussion soon. [url]
• Marijuana is well-known to have side effects that impair memory functions, but the mechanism hasn't been studied extensively until recently. THC doesn't have much effect on neurons, but instead affects astroglia cells -- interfering with how neurons communicate with each other. [url]
• The formation of long-term memories in our brains seems to occur during sleep, transferring from the hippocampus to the neocortex. The communication between these two areas of the brain will be important to study for finding out more about memory storage processes, and we've only started to discover how memories work. [url]
• Memory foraging is just one way to think about how our brains recall memories. People tend to remember things in clusters, and knowing this could lead to better ways for people to learn or recall items -- or to build virtual brains that more closely mimic how human brains actually work. [url]

If you have some more free time, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Last week, we wrote about an article by Joe Karaganis discussing the huge tax subsidies and political concessions wrested from the New Zealand government by Warner Bros. in order to film The Hobbit in the country. The editorial was entitled Kill The Hobbit Subsidies To Save Regular Earth, which inspired an editorial cartoon that Bloomberg View attached to it, which in turn has inspired Joe to launch a contest for creative interpretations of The Hobbit as an allegory for the situation.

First, I confess I hadn't fully thought through how to map the various heroes and villains of ‘Kill the Hobbit’ back onto ‘The Hobbit.’ But on reflection, this drawing seems a bit off. In my version of the story, the hobbit is the villain, stealing gold from the people of New Zealand (I guess to take back to Hollywoodshire?) This would make Smaug the dragon the public, and Smaug’s giant pile of gold the commonwealth (that’s why it’s so large). Smaug should be casting the Expecto Patronum (EP) spell to banish the Hobbit, not the other way around.

But hey, people may see it differently, and their right to publish those perspectives on our common culture is part of what’s at stake in ‘Kill the Hobbit to Save Regular Earth’ (pivoting here to New Zealand’s support for the IP-enforcement-on-steroids Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement).

So with that in mind, I am happy to announce the ‘Kill the Hobbit to Save Regular Earth’ Initiative– KH2SREI for short (pronounced Kisstory, after the ancient Elven admonition to beware Hobbits bringing gifts).

I invite you to flesh out the Kisstory allegory in whatever direction makes most sense to you. If you send me pictures, I will publish them here (as long as they are not obscene or gratuitously nasty). I will even try to talk the good people at Bloomberg View into running them. And if we get enough submissions we will have a public vote to award copies of the “semi-epic” Media Piracy in Emerging Economies to the two most worthy entries (plus whatever other awards we can accumulate in the meantime.)

As for those "other awards", we're throwing a Techdirt t-shirt into the mix. So if you're a creator, whatever your medium, we hope you'll submit something! Head on over to the contest page for more details and some "extra points" guidelines, including a "Special award for the best pro-Hobbit, pro TPPA, pro Warner Bros art, if we get any" because hey, political cartoons can cut both ways.

During the SOPA fight, at one point, we brought up the fact that increases in encryption were going to make most of the bill meaningless and ineffective in the long run, someone closely involved in trying to make SOPA a reality said that this wasn't a problem because the next bill he was working on is one that would ban encryption. This, of course, was pure bluster and hyperbole from someone who was apparently both unfamiliar with the history of fights over encryption in the US, the value and importance of encryption for all sorts of important internet activities (hello online banking!), as well as the simple fact that "banning" encryption isn't quite as easy as you might think. Still, for a guide on one attempt, that individual might want to take a look over at China, where VPN usage has become quite common to get around the Great Firewall. In response, it appears that some ISPs are now looking to block traffic that they believe is going through encrypted means.

A number of companies providing "virtual private network" (VPN) services to users in China say the new system is able to "learn, discover and block" the encrypted communications methods used by a number of different VPN systems.

China Unicom, one of the biggest telecoms providers in the country, is now killing connections where a VPN is detected, according to one company with a number of users in China.

Of course, there are countless ways to encrypt traffic, so all this really does is spur a cat and mouse game -- and the best that can be done is having the system block any traffic that it can't understand. Of course, once you go that far, you're in for a lot of trouble, because there's just a ton of legitimate content you're going to block, pissing off a lot of people. Also, as this game goes on, it'll just spur people to encrypt traffic in a matter that looks identifiable, but which really is not identifiable. Fighting against encryption is a game that can't be won in the long term.

You may remember iiNet, the Australian ISP that Hollywood attacked (with support of US State Department officials) after they decided that it was too small to fight back, but big enough that people would notice. They guessed incorrectly, and iiNet not only fought back by taking a strong pro-consumer view, but won in convincing fashion. Even more importantly, as we noted, the courts made it clear why it's silly to expect third party service providers like ISPs to be copyright cops, since establishing infringement "is not a straight 'yes' or 'no' question," but rather involves going through a lot of evidence and evaluating it.

Since then, Hollwyood has continued (via the Australian government) to pressure ISPs to step up to become copyright cops anyway, and iiNet has participated in those discussions. But late last week it walked away from the discussions after Hollywood folks kept demanding a system similar to the US's in which ISPs would send along notices to people they accused of infringement. iiNet gave a bunch of good reasons for walking away, but the basic message was that piracy is a problem that the entertainment industry could solve itself by making all of its content available more conveniently and at better prices. Until it does that, it's silly to rope in third parties to try to hold back the tide.

A broken record

The conversation has failed to move on. The rights holders are still insisting ISP's should perform work on their behalf instead of addressing what we have always said is the root cause of the infringements – the limited accessibility to desirable content and the discriminatory and high cost of content in Australia. Infringements are a symptom – access is the problem.

Data retention proposals

iiNet won't support any scheme that forces ISPs to retain data in order to allow for the tracking of customer behaviour and the status of any alleged infringements against them.

Collecting and retaining additional customer data at this level is inappropriate, expensive and most importantly, not our responsibility.

It's not iiNet's job to play online police

We've been over this before. The High Court spoke loud and clear in their verdict when they ruled categorically that ISPs have no obligation to protect the rights of third parties, and we're not prepared to harass our customers when the industry has no clear obligation to do so.

It's time to find a new way

We believe that timely, affordable access to legitimate content is the best option for reducing unauthorised sharing.

The problem, of course, is that the entertainment industry still doesn't understand what's happening. They flat out reject the idea that piracy might be due to their own unwillingness to embrace the internet and provide more content, in more convenient ways at better prices. So, instead, they believe that everyone else should be responsible for fixing the entertainment industry's own mistakes. It's nice to see iiNet call them out so directly.

The tragedy last week in Connecticut is still horrifying to think about on many different levels -- but the constant search for blame, and using it to support pet political ideas is troubling. This isn't to say that we don't necessarily need to have a "conversation" on various hot potato political issues, but basing it around an event like this isn't likely to be a productive and informed conversation, but one driven purely by emotions. I understand the desire, and the idea that making use of such a tragedy to create political will to do something, is all too tempting. But I fear what happens when we legislate around emotions, rather than reality. And, no I'm not even going to touch the question of gun control or mental health treatment. Both obviously evoke strong opinions from people on all sides of the issue (and, contrary to popular opinion, there are more than two sides to those issues). Instead, let's talk about the rush to blame video games and TV shows, as seems to happen every single time there's a mass shooting -- and almost always done with no evidence.

We already talked about people rushing to blame a video game, after the incorrectly named "original" suspect in the shootings had, possibly, at some point "liked" the game on Facebook. But, of course, now the politicians are stepping in, and retiring Senator Joe Lieberman is using the tragedy to push forth one of his pet ideas that he's brought up in the past: violent video games and TV must have something to do with it. He's trying to set up a commission to "scrutinize" "the role that violent video games and movies might play in shootings" among other things (yes, including gun control and mental health care).

Lieberman, not surprisingly, was not the only one. A large group of politicians and pundits immediately jumped to the conclusion that video games and movies must have something to do with all of this:

A disturbing number of public figures have lashed out at video games since the atrocity committed at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday. A bipartisan group of legislators embraced this scapegoating on the Sunday news programs; from Democrats like Sen. Joe Lieberman and Gov. John Hickenlooper to Rep. Jason Chaffetz and former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.

They were joined by members of the media – sadly, too many to count.

On MSNBC on Monday, Chris Jansing asked her guests what connection Adam Lanza’s interest in video games had to his murderous shooting spree. She quoted senior White House advisor David Axelrod who tweeted “shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?” Liberal contributor Goldie Taylor revealed that she refused to let her child play games until he was 14-years-old.

[....]

On Fox & Friends on Monday, legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. delivered an offensively sermonizing renunciation of entertainment producers and videogame makers who are “clinging to guns economically.”

“They are glamorizing guns in this country. They are the scourge in terms of these guns,” Johnson Jr. said of game and filmmakers

Of course, time and time again when these shootings happen, the reports later show... that video games and movies played little to no role. Yes, sometimes the killers played these games, but it's difficult to find teenagers these days who have not played a violent video game or watched a violent movie. It's like saying that we should explore "the role that breakfast plays" in such shootings. How many of the killers ate breakfast that day? In fact, studies seem to suggest that, if anything, violent movies may actually decrease incidents of violence.

Bizarrely, the person with the most thoughtful explanation on some of this might be movie critic Roger Ebert, in a review of Gus Van Sant's movie Elephant from nearly a decade ago. That movie portrayed a similar school shooting, and did so by making it clear that sometimes there are no answers and there is no "other thing" to blame. Sometimes (perhaps many times) these things don't make sense, no matter how many times we want them to make sense. But Ebert also points to another factor that rarely gets discussed:

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

Meanwhile, Danah Boyd has a related, but somewhat different perspective on the whole thing, noting how the media frenzy around these events also tends to mess with everyone else who are trying to cope with the situation, and makes sure their lives can never go back to any semblance of normalcy. She talks about running into some kids who had gone to Columbine high school, a few months after those attacks:

What I heard was heartbreaking. They had dropped out of school because the insanity from the press proved to be too much to deal with. They talked about not being able to answer the phone – which would ring all day and night – because the press always wanted to talk. They talked about being hounded by press wherever they went. All they wanted was to be let alone. So they dropped out of school which they said was fine because it was so close to the end of the year and everything was chaos and no one noticed.

As she notes, it's not the press's fault either. They're also giving the public what they want -- and, she agrees, that some of these topics are important and should be discussed. But the focus on the people in Newtown isn't helping.

But please, please, please… can we leave the poor people of Newtown alone? Can we not shove microphones into the faces of distraught children? Can we stop hovering like buzzards waiting for the fresh meat of gossipy details? Can we let the parents of the deceased choose when and where they want to engage with the public to tell their story? Can we let the community have some dignity in their grief rather than turning them and their lives into a spectacle of mourning?

Yes, the media are the ones engaging in these practices. But the reason that they’re doing so is because we – the public – are gawking at the public displays of pain. Our collective fascination with tragedy means that we encourage media practices that rub salt into people’s wounds, all for the most salacious story. And worse, our social media practices mean that the media creators are tracking the kinds of stories that are forwarded. And my hunch is that people are forwarding precisely those salacious stories, even if to critique the practices (such as the interviews of children).

What happened last week was senseless and tragic and painful to think about in all sorts of ways. And, yes, there are reasons to hope that such an event might lead to ideas that would prevent such things in the future, but the way we go about things on such discussions doesn't provide much hope that we're going to do anything valuable or thoughtful in response. Instead, it becomes a rush to do something purely out of an emotional response, and it's unclear how that helps.

The developers of the latest SimCity learned a valuable lesson Friday during a Reddit AMA, one that will hopefully be passed on to other developers: people -- you know, the downstream consumers you're hoping will purchase your software? They hatehatehatehatehatehatehateHATE DRM.

EA, the publisher of SimCity, has seen fit to up the annoyance factor on legally purchased copies of the game by requiring an internet connection to play the latest title in the series, even in single player mode, and funneling the users through its horrendous Origin "service." Not only that, but players' games are saved online, so if you lose the connection, not only will you be prevented from playing your purchased game, but you'll be back at whatever point you were at when your service died.

The top voted question/comment digs right into the heart of the DRM issue:

What will happen to the game if I am playing and lose my internet connection - will the game still be playable and update the servers when my internet connection resumes or will it pause and wait for the connection?

As I have unreliable internet at times if I were to lose a connection and play for a while longer (assuming I would be able to continue to play) would my changes be saved locally in case my internet connection does not come back up before I need to stop playing (and then be uploaded when I next start the game).

I love what the game is looking like and look forward to the multi-player region games, but as you can tell I am concerned about what happens if my internet connection decides to drop for a few hours.

The first answer back, from Kip Katsarelis (Senior Producer) was far from comforting:

Sorry, I replied to it below. Not avoiding. Here was the reply...

"I actually just ran over to our online engineering team to get the latest info. We do handle "short" internet outages gracefully. Meaning, if your internet goes out while you're logged in and playing the game, we can can recover gracefully. You shouldn't notice a thing. "Short" is still being defined."

At least Katsarelis somewhat acknowledges that the term "short" is woefully undefined. And whether or not players "notice a thing" isn't really the sort of issue that should be getting sorted during an informal Q&A. While that answer was less than satisfactory, Kip's followup was downright laughable.

We will allow you to play for as long as we can preserve your game state. This will most likely be minutes.

The response to that bit of "online imagineering" was full of win, however.

My computer happens to have a hard drive that's suitable for preserving game state. Should I consider buying your game, or is it crippled to online-only?

It's not as though the "paying customers hate DRM" is a new development. It has been this way for years and paying customers have expressed their displeasure with being handed crippled software in exchange for perfectly functioning money, while those who have acquired the same software for free use the software much in the manner you would expect the paying customer to be able to: on his or her own terms, online connection or no. It's gotten bad enough that even EA's own employees are annoyed with DRM "solutions."

A helpful Redditor compiled all the anti-DRM comments from the AMA into an easy-to-read, linked, multi-author screed on the unpopularity of online-connection-required DRM. Perhaps SimCity's devs can run this up the chain to EA in the small hope that a list of disgruntled potential customers might persuade the publisher to drop the online/Origin requirement before SimCity's release in March. It's highly doubtful this will work, as EA's president has stated that all EA games will include "online applications and digital services." If one was optimistic and a bit naive, it almost sounds like EA wants a connected community that expands the fanbase through social media. If one is firmly grounded in reality, however, it's just another way to say "all games will include some form of online-only component DRM."

So, very possibly, no lessons will be learned. People will go and pirate themselves a working version of SimCity, which will lead EA to believe that EVEN MORE DRM is required for the next iteration, which will piss off the next set of gamers, leading to more cracked, functional versions downloaded, and so on, until either a.) all piracy is eradicated (thru some sort of black magic[k] ceremony involving Chris Dodd, Cary Sherman, the remaining members of the BSA and the exhumed corpse of Sonny Bono) or b.) EA (and companies like it) stop dumping crippled software on customers in hopes of making absolutely no discernible dent in piracy levels.

The delusions of the MPAA are really impressive sometimes. For years, they've been pushing to make search engines like Google liable for blocking sites they don't like. That was a key provision in SOPA -- that it would force "information location services" to disappear links to sites deemed "dedicated" to infringement. Of course, as we've noted, it was only after SOPA failed that Hollywood finally started using the tools already available to it to ask Google to remove links to infringing works. At the same time, we noted that the fact that Google is now processing an astounding 2.5 million DMCA takedown notices a week suggests that something is really, really broken. We meant copyright law itself -- but our good friends at the MPAA went in the other direction, and suggested it showed how Google needs to do more, and how artists are overly burdened by the DMCA:

There is a staggering amount of copyright infringement taking place every day online and much of it is facilitated by Google, as their own data shows. According to Google, they receive 2.5 million takedown requests per week – and that data does not even include YouTube, where an enormous amount of infringement takes place. That means that by Google’s own accounting, millions of times each week creators are forced to raise a complaint with Google that the company is facilitating the theft of their work and ask that the infringing work or the link to that work be removed. Often, even when the links are removed, they pop right back up a few hours later. That’s not a reasonable -- or sustainable -- system for anyone....

We couldn’t agree more with Google that this data shows that our current system is not working – for creators, or for Google. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that it also confirms the important role that Google has to play in helping curb the theft of creative works while protecting an Internet that works for everyone. We look forward to continuing to work with them to tackle this urgent challenge.

Now, I agree that it's difficult for copyright holders (often not the actual creators, as the MPAA falsely implies) to have to monitor and track all of this stuff. That's a big burden. But... the MPAA ridiculously implies that there are only two options here: (1) "Creators" keep filing DMCA takedowns or (2) Google has to do more. That ignores reality in multiple ways. First off, the staggering number of bogus takedowns highlights the key point that we've made all along, which is that the only party who actually knows if a work is infringing is the copyright holder -- and even then, they often seem to get confused. Somehow thinking that a third party with no direct knowledge can somehow do more or should be more responsible is a little silly.

But the bigger issue is that this assumes -- as the MPAA always seems to assume -- that the only response to infringement is "more enforcement." What it seems to refuse to consider is that there's another path: it's the path in which the MPAA studios stop focusing so much on beating everyone with a stick, and start fixing the broken parts of their business model. Time and time again the evidence shows that if you offer people what they want, at a reasonable price, and with convenience, they pay -- and the "problem" of copyright infringement shrinks to being minimal (or, in some cases, it actually helps you). So, a rational individual or organization would look at the scale of the "problem" that the MPAA is talking about, along with all of the historical data on how little enforcement does to get people to actually buy -- and realize that perhaps that strategy is a mistake. Even the MPAA admits in this very post that the works often pop back up online.

Maybe -- just maybe -- the problem isn't search engines not doing enough, but rather the strategy that focuses on the stick of enforcement, rather than the carrot of providing consumers more of what they want. I recognize it's a crazy idea, especially at the MPAA -- where they have a whole freaking division of "content protection" VPs who need to justify their giant salaries, rather than a division for helping filmmakers embrace useful business models -- but it seems like a more productive path forward.

Oh, and one other thing. Could the MPAA stop with its bullshit claims that enforcing copyright couldn't possibly have an impact on free speech? This blog post has this in it:

One thing that’s important to make clear in any serious discussion about tackling online theft: absolutely no one is advocating for the restriction of speech on the Internet. Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of the Internet, and a cornerstone of the film community, which has spent the last century advocating for artists to be able to express themselves freely on the screen. Removing infringing works online isn’t limiting access to information or ideas, it's ensuring that the creativity and hard work that went into making a film is encouraged to flourish.

If the only thing taken down due to copyright claims was "infringing works," they'd have a point. But it's not. Copyright claims are used all the time to censor or take down sites or content that people just don't like. That's the concern. The massive expansion of copyright law and broad tools like the DMCA's notice-and-takedown lead to massive amounts of collateral damage that -- absolutely and without question -- infringe on free speech rights. Until the MPAA is willing to acknowledge that simple fact, it's difficult to take the organization seriously.

Whenever something truly horrific happens, there's a good chance that people will find someone or something to hold at least partially responsible for the atrocity. The most immediate reactions are often the worst... and the most misplaced.

The recent school shooting in Connecticut led to just such a reaction. As news began to spread about the tragedy, some Facebook users began lashing out at a couple of targets. One, a user named Ryan Lanza, felt some immediate heat and hatred soon after police mistakenly named him, rather than his younger brother Adam, as the shooter.

Soon after discovering the wrong Lanza's profile, the attack moved on to Mass Effect's Facebook page. According to commenters, Ryan had "Liked" this page at some point and to many of those looking to blame someone, anyone, it was all the justification they needed. A game with guns had to be partially responsible for the horrific event.

Here's a sampling of the first post-tragedy comments, where you can see the tide change from Mass Effect fans to misdirected anger:

It's ugly and inevitable. Any sizable tragedy usually results in some form of backlash or witch hunt. Social networks and forums where reactions can be instantaneous and numerous lend themselves to this sort of unfortunate behavior.

And as ugly and inevitable as it is, it's also understandable. Situations like these tend to make people feel both helpless and angry, a combination that lends itself to taking it out on the nearest proxy as the perpetrator is dead or in custody and thus, unreachable.

Bioware, to its credit, has made the wisest choice. It has not responded to any of the comments blaming its game for supposedly developing a killer. It has also allowed the comments to remain posted on its page, where they can speak for themselves.

As for Ryan Lanza, things went considerably worse. Fortunately, most Facebook users were unable to do more than send him messages and Friendship requests, thanks to his privacy settings. But even with these limits curbing the collateral damage, Ryan ended up deleting his Facebook account. The hate that was directed towards him was slightly more "justified," as law enforcement had named him as the gunman before issuing a correction. Unfortunately, since the crowd was unable to attack Ryan directly, it turned on his "Friends" list, sending completely uninvolved people "hundreds (literally) of hate-filled messages."

This won't be the last large-scale tragedy we see, or even the last misguided witch hunt. We can only hope that it will be very long time until see either again, although I'd rather see a million misguided torch-carriers burn half the internet to the ground than see a repeat of the Connecticut tragedy. But, despite that fact, I would sincerely hope that those who harassed innocent people in response to this horrific event choose not to repeat their mistakes when the next tragedy inevitably strikes.

One of the running themes we discuss here is the difference between gatekeepers and enablers, but there's also a third category that overlaps both of the others to some degree, and is more relevant than ever in a media-saturated world: curators. Though recommendation and matching algorithms are taking on some of the curation roles that humans used to fill (or that didn't exist before), nobody has ever suggested that there's no longer a need for hands-on human curation of media.

When it comes to music, the classic curation role is the radio DJ—but, like so many traditional fixtures of the industry, that role has increasingly (though not universally) drifted away from creative personal curation and towards safe, commercially-dictated playlists. Music blogs and podcasts have stepped in to fill the void, and today the best barometer of what's worth listening to is online, not on the airwaves—especially for those listeners interested in discovering the most compelling acts emerging from small, independent scenes.

Perhaps no genre feels this more acutely than hip-hop, which still enjoys widespread radio play as one of the dominant pop genres of the past decade, but where even the most widely acclaimed indie acts with a decade of rock-solid releases under their belts struggle to get onto DJ playlists. Rapper/producer/indie hip-hop fixture El-P (who dropped by with a guest post earlier this year) recently took to twitter (found via egotripland) and gave a straightforward rundown of why so much of radio is broken and what DJs need to do to fix it. The self-proclaimed "rant" was in response to an New York DJ who was asked why he didn't play underground records that had a lot of audience buzz, and responded by saying "you don’t just get a slot, you earn a slot"—but even without context, El-P's points serve as a perfect summary of what it means to be a curator in the modern music landscape. You can view the full set of tweets on the egotripland post, but I've copied the sum of the text below:

if you're a radio station that doesn't break new great records because they haven't "earned their slot" you might be forgetting the point.

unless of course you are talking payola. then i get it.

not to state the obvious but that's kinda why radio is dying. the internet lets you listen to ANYTHING ANYTIME. its a simple truth.

being the gatekeepers of what people hear only works if they actually have to get by you in order to hear it, and thats just not the case.

therefore in order to be competitive with the new paradigm radio programmers need to re-examine their whole approach or what it all die.

*watch it all die, i mean.

just my 2 cents. fuck do i know.

which is not to say radio has lost its power. but to not see that on the horizon if everything remains on the same path is foolish.

personally i feel like radio dj's should have more autonomy to play what they like/not have to choose from pre approved content. might help.

it certainly would encourage the music to grow if everyone wasn't desperately trying to make jams that they think fit in with that criteria.

and that would lead to more and renewed interest in traditional radio broadcasts, which would lead to more money for everyone.

but hey i come from an era where we had cats like @StretchArmy and bobbito launching the careers of people who go platinum now. im spoiled.

look at whats happened to the newspaper industry. no one wants their news a day later anymore. theres a metaphor in there somewhere.

also there are clearly many amazing stations that do just what im talking about and breed serious listener loyalty.

it ain't like i'm speaking some sort of hidden esoteric knowledge/philosophy here. but its worth bringing up now and again.

anyone way its just the opinion of one man. #fuckdoiactuallyknow

one more thought: music is a representation of human consciousness, and like human consciousness it is expansive and varying.

it wouldn't hurt for everyone to consider their role in the purveyance of that consciousness a little closer.

put simply:ultimately the only thing that should be a deciding factor in radio play is if the dj likes your shit or not. trust who you hire.

if the people consistently dont like what he plays hes by definition a bad dj. you should fire him. but he's the music guy. let him be that.

*or she

aight "rant" officially over. WHO WANTS SOME FART JOKES!

We've talked in the past about patent system supporters' somewhat blatant cluelessness to China's clear recognition that its own growing patent system is the perfect tool for backdooring protectionism and trade barriers, without making it look like protectionism and trade barriers. I sometimes can't tell if this is just because those system supporters are so focused on the narrow "more patents must be good" argument that they're missing the big picture, or if they truly don't understand what's happening. Either way, we've got the latest example, as the folks at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a part of the UN, are celebrating the fact that China's patent system has received more applications than any other patent system this year.

China received 526,412 applications compared to 503,582 for the United States and 342,610 for Japan, according to the latest report from the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Now, some might wonder why this is happening -- or even look to some of those earlier examples where China has used the patent system specifically to hold back foreign competition and wonder if this is actually something worth celebrating.

But not WIPO.

It thinks that patents are good, so more patents must be excellent:

“Sustained growth in IP filings indicates that companies continue to innovate despite weak economic conditions,” said WIPO’s Director General, Francis Gurry. “This is good news, as it lays the foundation for the world economy to generate growth and prosperity in the future.”

Except almost nothing that Gurry says there is even close to accurate. It assumes -- without proof -- that increased patent filings have something to do with innovation. They don't. Increased patent filings only show people are filing for more patents. That is not the same thing as suggesting that they are innovating, because research has shown that patent numbers do not correlate well with innovation. Furthermore, a massive growth in patent applications does not "lay the foundation for the world economy to generate growth and prosperity." Again, the reality is almost entirely opposite. It lays the foundation for a massive hindrance on innovation, increasing the amount of patent trolling, protectionism and general holding back of true innovation. And this doesn't even touch on the fact that China's numbers are propped up by the crazy incentives it's been giving to people to file for patents.

This is a massive problem with groups like WIPO. They never seem to recognize that "more patents" or "more copyright" aren't automatic good things. They simply assume -- despite a total lack of evidence -- that it must be so. Considering the harm that over-protection can do to any market, it's a really ridiculous stance to take, and it makes WIPO and the UN lose nearly all credibility on the subject of patents and innovation.

There's no better way to treat your paying customers than by taking away some functionality. Most people would consider the previous statement to be completely full of shit, but when you look at it from the perspective of a proud bookstore chain that seemingly adores its own tasteful logo, it all begins to... Nope. It's not working. The thought process involved in the following debacle seems to have short circuited somewhere between the marketing team and the IT squad, resulting in this bit of branding stupidity.

Remember how Waterstones was going to sell the Kindle and take a sales commission on the hardware and any ebooks bought from that device? Apparently they decided that the subtle but positive relationship of simply making money off the Kindle wasn't good enough; now they've turned the Kindles they sell into billboards.

The Kindles sold by Waterstones got a firmware update in early November. This update wasn't rolled out to all the Kindles, and for good reason. According to a couple different users (this story has also been confirmed by Waterstones) the only change in the update was a new screensaver.

I have not yet seen it myself, but the Kindle owners are reporting that all the screensavers have been replaced by a Waterstones logo. Furthermore, there's no way to disable or replace that screensaver, so every time these Kindle owners pick up their device they will be reminded where they purchased it.

Advertising on the Kindle is nothing new. The ad-supported version is available at a discount if the buyer's willing to put up with being advertised at in exchange for a price break. But, as The Digital Reader points out, Waterstones-branded Kindles aren't discounted.

Instead, as thanks for purchasing a portable Amazon ecosystem from a brick-and-mortar, Waterstones' customers are now locked into a single screensaver that will constantly remind them who they need to contact for a full refund... which, unbelievably, Waterstones is actually offering.

Thank you for your email regarding your Kindle Paperwhite from Waterstones.

I am sorry you are disappointed by the addition of a Waterstones screensaver after the recent software update to Kindle. It is our view that this screensaver does not constitute advertising and differs substantially to the advertising-supported Kindles available to the US market. The Waterstones screensaver is a non-dynamic, static image that will change infrequently and not advertise any specific product, offer or website.

It is not possible to remove the Waterstones screensaver to replace it with the former Amazon screensaver. We apologise that this change was made without consultation, and hope it does not detract from or alter your reading experience. However, if you feel it does, please let us know and we will arrange for the return of the device and a full refund.

I am sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

Yours sincerely,

**********
Customer Service Team
Waterstones.com

This should do some serious damage to what was already a rather sketchy hookup. Back in September, Waterstones' CEO James Daunt made the following ostensibly cheerful statement announcing its partnership with Amazon.

"There are substantial difficulties for us around working with our major competitor," Daunt said at the Independent Publishers Guild Digital Quarterly Meeting on Tuesday, according to The Bookseller. "But we think we have an agreement which protects some of the most significant bear traps that sit there, and there are some major upsides for us."

Notably, Daunt didn't say that the agreement protects Waterstones from "significant bear traps." Instead, his Freudian slippage states that the traps themselves will be unharmed, even if, as it appears, Waterstones has to trigger the traps on its own.

The deal was never advantageous, what with Waterstones making the most money when purchasers bought ebooks using its in-store wifi network. It's hard to believe this strategy of getting customers into the physical store in hopes that they'd spend part of the time shopping on their Kindles has paid off. Perhaps the always-on "W" is meant to remind customers where they purchased their Kindles and why not go have a look around the bookstore a bit then.

On the plus side, Waterstones customers were threatened with warned about promised some additional bonuses for their branded Kindles during this rollout announcement:

At yesterday's IPG event, Daunt revealed a few more details about Waterstones' Amazon partnership. "Waterstones-specific Kindle screensavers, bestseller lists and a Read For Free offer are among the plans," The Bookseller reports.

That's a pretty frickin' specific screensaver, Daunt. Shame it changes so "infrequently" as to be completely undetectable.

At this point, TIME Magazine is probably starting to feel like the unwilling straight man in a comedy duo. Its "partner," 4chan, stormed the Person of the Year poll a few years back, battling a belated and hastily instituted CAPTCHA system in order to place its father figure, moot, at the top of the chart. Motivated by streaming porn and its pure love for trolling, 4chan went above and beyond, reordering the selections to spell out "MARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME."

Emerging into the sunlight, bleary-eyed, triumphant, and jaded to all but the most deviant porn, 4chan soon returned to its normal mode of being highly inscrutable and incredibly frightening, resurfacing occasionally to perform such minor miracles as sending Taylor Swift off to perform a concert at a school for the deaf.

4chan has returned to the limelight once again to torment reluctant sidekick TIME by voting early and often in its own particular idiom (read: bots, prolly) for Person of the Year. And the winner is none other than North Korean dictator and poster boy for evil, nepotism and ill-fitting grey smocks, Kim Jong-un. Here' a portion of Time's statement on the poll results, which is good naturedly resigned, much in the way parents raising child 7+ are more concerned with keeping the cleaning products, bandages and fire extinguisher close at hand than preventing the feat of daredevilry that is currently being performed using Sharpies, a purloined Zippo and the second floor bannister.

Kim Jong Un is having a good year. After taking over the leadership of North Korea from his late father Kim Jong Il, at the end of 2011, he's solidified his control over the country, appeared on TIME's cover and he was even named "Sexiest Man Alive." (OK, that honor was actually bestowed as a spoof in the satirical newspaper, The Onion, but a Chinese news service mistook the Onion piece for real news and the story went global.)

Now, he's gotten the most votes in TIME's completely unscientific reader Person of the Year Poll with 5.6 million votes. Not bad for a man who didn't make an official public appearance until 2010.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that TIME takes time to point out the "unscientificness" of an easily gamed polling system. This is another sign of resignation, as the lesson learned from 4chan's first chart coup was that a determined band of anonymous users can easily defeat CAPTCHA systems, especially those as weak as the one deployed by TIME only after it realized that installing nothing at all was a bit like doxxing yourself in a 4chan thread: ill-advised to say the least.

TIME also points out that The Editors will be picking the correct Person of the Year, thank you very much. But the note does go out of its way to acknowledge the hive mind behind the dictator at the top of the list.

"The Daily Show" funny man Jon Stewart, Undocumented Immigrants, Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas and Burmese leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, all made it into the top ten. However, some of the highest vote tallies got a boost from members of Internet forums like 4Chan who launched a campaign to manipulate the results pushing North Korea's supreme leader to the top of the list.

If the names listed seem like a rather strange group to be reaching the upper echelon of TIME's poll, it's because simply pushing Kim Jr. to the top is TOO EASY. The secondary objective was another phrase -- KJU GAS CHAMBERS-- using the initial letter of the nominees' names. Yes, 4chan is all about the inappropriate humor. And anagrams.

So, as TIME prepares to put this year "to bed," its readers can rest well knowing the benevolent smile (and collectivist haircut) of Kim Jong-un will be shining down upon them.

[Jong-un could not be reached for comment, but a spokesman who wished to remain anonymous, alive and un-re-educated stated that the world's most popular dictator was so pleased with the results that he launched a celebratory missile before returning solemnly to his desk to file away the latest UN resolution condemning his actions. The spokesman noted that he did catch a small hint of a smile tugging at the corners of Kim Jong-un's perfect and infallible mouth.]