Techdirt. Stories filed under "blur"

Big Name Musicians Threaten To Strike Over Parlophone Sell-Off After Discovering They're 'Just Assets'

Mike Masnick — Tue, 2 Oct 2012 05:13:38 PDT

An interesting story over at Hypebot highlights how some "big name" musicians are threatening to "strike" and withhold new albums if they're not happy with how the sale of the label Parlophone goes down. As you may recall, with Universal Music getting approval to buy EMI, it has to sell off Parlophone, the iconic label that's home to a bunch of well known artists. And while Hypebot's title says that they're striking over the sale of EMI to UMG, that doesn't appear to be the case at all. The concern has to do solely with the sale of Parlophone:

Many of the label’s artists are unhappy being viewed merely as “assets” or “pawns” in a game that is set to be in the best interest for the powers that be. To protest this move, the rockers of Blur have joined forces with a number of Parlophone label-mates to collectively lobby potential bidders for the company and calling on them to place the interests of artists first, as reported by The Independent. If the musicians don’t find the new Parlophone owners to their liking, they could withhold all future releases and effectively go on "strike".

"Artists are the only people currently being left out of the conversation, which is unfortunate,” said Blur drummer Dave Rowntree to The Independent. “If the staff at the label are unhappy with the new arrangements they are free to leave, but the artists are not."

I'm sympathetic to the artists here, because it almost certainly does suck for them... but I'm not quite sure what they're expecting here. For the labels, they are an asset and have always been just that. That's why they signed a contract in the first place. If they didn't like it, they shouldn't have signed a contract. Threatening to void the contract because they don't like some completely unrelated piece of business doesn't seem like a particularly reasonable response.

To be honest, it seems like in selling off Parlophone, the label might actually wind up somewhere more progressive and open to a future that embraces what technology allows, rather than holds it back. Perhaps the artists shouldn't make a big stink until they see what results. But, either way, if this was such a big concern, why didn't they write into their contracts that the deals were null & void should the label be sold?

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DailyDirt: Fixing Photos And Fooling Folks

Michael Ho — Wed, 7 Dec 2011 17:00:00 PST

Photoshop has pretty much become a generic verb for altering a digital image. It's so common to use software to fix flaws in photos that it's a bit difficult to find unaltered photos now. Well, software will come to the rescue for that, too, and it'll help people determine which images have been touched-up. Here are just a few examples of some cool photo-enhancing tools.

Adobe presented a photo fixing feature that can almost magically un-blur digital images. That video could use some "enhance" capabilities for itself. [url]
Xerox labs has created software that can predict whether or not a photography will be aesthetically pleasing. Beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, but now there's an algorithm to help predict it. [url]
Virtual fashion models are about to replace human models in advertising. H&M has already started using completely computer-generated lingerie/swimsuit models on its website. Some people are complaining about being tricked by the fake people, but fake people aren't going away anytime soon. [url]
Maybe you can fool some of the people some of the time, but there's software that will point out photoshopped images. "It seems the scientific community is very aggressive about beautifying its images." [url]
To discover more interesting photography-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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Still Some In The Music Business Who Believe The Impossible: Blur Manager Says 'Piracy' Can Be Stopped

Mike Masnick — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:48:47 PST

I had just been thinking that one of the nicer things about the Midem conference this year was that no one really seemed to still be complaining about "piracy" as a problem, and really seemed focused on more positive opportunities for going forward (more on that later). However, not everyone got the message, apparently. In a discussion on the "manager's role" in developing an artist in the digital era, Chris Morrison -- who manages Blur and the Gorillaz, among others -- waited until the end to start trashing "pirates." What was odd was that earlier in the panel he was talking about how much attention and free publicity the Gorillaz got when their latest single showed up on file sharing sites last week. He even seemed proud of all that free publicity, but then later in the panel, he declared that if he could find out who had put the file up first, he'd bring him into his office and have all of his colleagues "give him a good kicking." Then he went on the typical anti-unauthorized file sharing rant, saying, "I believe that piracy can be stopped and should be stopped."

Back on the first day of the event, legendary producer/musician Pharrell Williams had noted that file sharing is "like taste testing," in explaining that he wasn't worrying about it, noting that if people liked the "taste" they could then find something worth buying. But Morrison was having none of it: "It's not a taste. It's like giving them the whole bloody meal!" That's an interesting viewpoint for a manager to have, and one that makes me wonder. I can see how a record label -- who tends to really only own the recording -- could see things that way, but as a manager, he must realize that there's a lot more to sell out there than just the music itself. So, no, it's not the whole meal (bloody or not), but a taste of what the band itself has to offer. And many of the things bands have to offer are not easily copied and shared -- and any manager who wants to cope with today's digital market needs to understand that.

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Unblurred Google Satellite Images Is The Equivalent Of Yelling Fire?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:31:00 PDT

Earlier this month, we wrote about how a politician in California, Assemblyman Joel Anderson, was looking to force Google and other providers of online mapping/satellite offerings to blur images of schools, churches and government buildings. News.com ran an interview with Anderson, where he attempts to defend his proposed legislation as a matter of public safety. He claims that there is no good reason why anyone would need to clearly see these buildings online, and that it can only be used for bad purposes:

Who wants to know that level of detail? Bad people do.

Apparently, Anderson is the final determiner of what good people do and what bad people do with online maps. Then, when pushed on the fact that forcing companies to blur images of public locations might not pass constitutional muster, Anderson claimed that it was the equivalent of yelling fire:

But since when do you have a First Amendment right to yell fire? This falls under the same category.

I'm curious how that's anywhere near the same category. One is deceiving a bunch of people with an alarming false statement, where the resulting response can put people in danger -- and the other is an accurate representation of a building. Am I missing something?

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