Neal Pomea

70 years after the death of the performer who holds copyright or 95 years for a company who had an artist transfer copyright to them are extremely long terms. SOON these terms will be reversed, I believe, more along the lines of 9 years. Yes. If you cannot make the money you hope to earn in 9 years, why don't you run for governor or senator? Socialism for business! 9 years was the original copyright term in the U.S. If it was adjusted for life expectancy, why does it go 70 years after death? The monopoly held by people who cannot seem to find a way to make money on older music? It is just incredible!! They must not have ANY idea what the music means to culture. For them it seems to be only for making money. Bury it if you cannot profit from it. Monopolize it for several generations. Compulsory license? You must be kidding. Why do you deserve any payment at all anymore for having recorded something a long time ago and kept it out of print? Maybe some kind of copyright for your lifespan, but why in the world 70 more years or 95, whatever? That is unconsciounable. You record some music and it's as rare as land? Stupid. These terms of 70 years after one's death for an artist who holds monopoly or 95 years from the date of creation for companies that hold copyright are WAY WAY off. You will see. With the younger people, they will insist that a "generation" is a span of 2 or 3 years, and 70 years might as well be as long ago as mule-driven agriculture.

The little i they put in front of so many things today seems appropriately little. Today you'd better be an iReporter iIMing, or iPhoning, far ahead on the iInternet.

The great thing about this, unless you are a musician or a human being with an interest in history or someone with the slightest objection that maybe there is some way other than copyright monopoly from here to kingdom come to who knows who to provide in some way for our beloved artists, is that you sign away your art and copyright holders will make it unnecessary for musicians to heaven forbid manage your finances and save for your descendants the way everybody else has to. Like the feudal days of yore, the property is owned by generous lords in the music companies and all the musicians and listeners need is provided by their lords in the form of royalties to musicians and permission to the public to listen! Snappy economic arrangement, wouldn't you say?

Wouldn't his Wikipedia entry be longer if he were important? No, I see what you mean but "cultural references" are more and more a subject of negotiation from one generation to the next. I think it's likely that what's useless to the younger generations will more quickly be deemed arcane knowledge. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, once said that if it can't be found in Google, then it doesn't matter enough to be in the Wiki! Along those lines, it's as if there's this mindset: if you can't find the music in emusic, Rhapsody, iTunes, or Walmart, then it must not have been worth keeping. I see this already with niche genres.

This is speculation but young people don't appear to me to be hostile to knowledge. If anything, they seem to think they are more knowledgeable about today's world than their hopelessly outdated and technologically unsophisticated parents. They live in a "secret" world of their own, even more than teenagers of previous generations did, with things they know (pop and Internet culture, inside humor, slang, video games, exposure to musical genres, etc.) that are almost unknown to older people. And it would probably be miserable for a young person today to be without all this generation-specific knowledge. Maybe there's something to the idea that there's only so much attention you can pay and gray matter you can use. If you are expending so much attention on keeping up with your generation, how much less can you give to attending our common history and heritage? Maybe previous generations had to spend less time on keeping up with generation-specific knowledge so they could devote more attention to the world at large. Just my 2 cents.

You are being ironic. If all I needed to do to make something a law were to post some kind of sign on something, I would be the emperor of ice cream.

It's a political question, who gets a slice of the pie? What about the makers of devices that contribute to possible infringement? I mean the makers of programs and devices that can burn cds from one's legally obtained copy? They have an economic interest in the right to sell those devices, even if in the process the consumer breaks the law and some artists works are being copied willy nilly. So to me it comes down to whose interests are being protected. From my vantage point the biggest loser is the public domain. It's hardly even mentioned here, as if the only thing that should be in the public domain is something so old nobody wants it or can make money from it. There's an almost Puritanical attitude arguing that if you want to enjoy something, you had better damn well pay somebody for it, even when it is not morally clear that anyone deserves payment anymore.

No, but we ARE aware that it may be infringement to make even a single copy even for private use. Libraries have exceptions in the U.S., not individuals as far as I know. The Sony v Betamax case argued that consumers could timeshift their viewing of TV broadcasts by using a VCR, but that is different. Making a copy that you can hear on your computer, in your car, then on your IPOD -- those are different facts that have not been tested definitively in court. I believe we are afraid to throw it to our courts. Again my 2 cents on why this is not decided.

You would probably have to sell the file with the very computer it is on. If you made another copy it is technically infringement, even if you deleted the original you got from ITunes and only one remains. It's the copying that may be an infringement. The owner doesn't care that you destroyed your copy. That's my take on it.

Fine. We are out of touch and you are in touch. At least he didn't say "All your base are belong to us, LOLcats, and you are retarded. And by the way, you are retarded." Is that the language you want from journalists? Next up 2 girls 1 cup?

The next thing you know some people will think it's ok to call those who disagree "retarded!!!" Oh wait a minute! Good luck with the language and culture wars.

I have a pet peeve about shortening words then pronouncing the vowels differently than in the original: Trad v traditional Prog v progressive Comping v accompanying That kind of thing. Of course the shortened versions would sound worse with the vowels of the originals, but instead of changing the vowel just ban the short versions, IMO.

The era prior to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

Wish I could have driven up alongside him in a golf cart and asked "Have you any Grey Poupon?"

I had to get one so that I can return home from a planned trip to Nova Scotia this summer. I don't know what's with the horror stories about long wait times. I applied for one the Monday after Thanksgiving and got it in the mail that Saturday. I guess the delays have been fixed.

Can you get me Clarence Williams' autograph next time you work with him?

I never had more than a 20 Minute Workout. Shazam! Do you remember those ladies?

Quoted for Power FTW (for the win) I don't know how reliable it is but Urban Dictionary can sometimes offer explanations of these abbreviations.

Our lager, which art in barrels, hallowed be they drink. Thy will be drunk, (I will be drunk), at home as I am in the tavern. Give us this day our foamy head, and forgive us our spillages, as we forgive those who do spill against us. And lead us not into incarceration, but deliver us from hangovers. For thine is the beer, the bitter and the lager, for ever and ever, barmen.

I have enjoyed the copyright discussions on this board! Some of the discussions took surprising turns and I learned more about other points of view. I would like to know of a new board: npomea@earthlink.net

Our public radio station moved all its music to HD (hybrid digital) and they gave away cheap HD radios to its members or to anyone making a $100 donation. I got one. Can't catch too many other stations, but at least the oldies station it can catch plays music from the 50s. Don't have HD radio in my car. I don't see how satellite radio is going to catch on. There will no competition, only homogenized offerings from a few mega-stations. Not very promising for small niche music markets.

Lidia's cookbooks are well done and easy to follow. A lot of cookbooks leave out the explanation, like you already know the chemistry behind what is happening while cooking. I find that I enjoy the cooking shows on PBS and Bourdain's No Reservations on the Travel Channel much more than the Food Network anymore. I will miss the Emeril Live show. Yeah, he could be a bit much but his food was good.

Astonishing! I guess musicians can't be too happy about radio disappearing, i.e. going more or less to "all talk" format! Was that ever lucrative for musicians or just for composers/publishers?

Not necessarily so. It could be, but it could work in other ways too. The song doesn't have to be in another musician's profile. It can be on the Web somewhere. People use those embedded music players to link to songs from my Web site, for instance (not my MySpace profile). They use up my bandwidth rather than putting the songs on their own server. The songs play as background music whenever their friends go to their MySpace page, but the bandwidth comes from me. If it ends up costing me too much bandwidth I will try to contact them and ask them not to link that way to my Web site for their background music, but I don't want to have to remove the songs from my Web site.

I wondered if the writer ever actually heard him. He was known for his smooth voice. I have never heard it characterized as gravelly. I was lucky to see him perform at an American Legion hall in Bethesda Maryland back when the hall was home to the Twist and Shout, a roots music club in the 80s-90s. He had a pick up band that including Buddy Charleton on steel (from Ernest Tubb's Texas Troubadours) and Eddie Stubbs on fiddle before Stubbs left the Johnson Mt. Boys and went to Nashville to become the announcer for the Opry. I never saw so many fans line up at break time for Hank's autograph! Before that I heard him at a farm implement show in Lafayette Louisiana in the early 70s when I was a teenager. One year it was Hank Thompson, the next year Don Gibson! Surprising music among the John Deeres, Minneapolis-Molines, Olivers, and Massey-Fergusons!