Category: issues

“On Tuesday, the U.K. rejected a plea to extend copyright for music to 70 years, saying the change would also require revamping laws for the rest of Europe. Artists such as Richard and McCartney are facing the expiry of copyright on their early hits, such as Richard’s 1958 song Move It and McCartney’s early Beatles hit Please Please Me. At the same time there is unprecedented demand for their back catalogue through digital downloads.”

“An earlier generation of comics was self-policing, careful about giving credit, often adhering to an unwritten code: Any comic who stole another’s material faced being shunned by his peers. Now, though, the competition is so much greater and the comedy world so decentralized that old taboos about joke theft seem to be breaking down. That, in turn, has led to an outbreak of finger-pointing among comics that some say is starting to smack of McCarthyism.”

“Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced yesterday that the city’s Department of Education will require all schools to maintain arts programs, and that principals will be rated in their annual reviews on how well they run those programs. The announcement came just months after the department infuriated arts groups by eliminating a multimillion-dollar program to finance arts education.”

Not so long ago, economists not named Milton Friedman mostly kept to themselves, impressing each other with their inscrutable theories. Now they’re the pop stars of academia. Spurred on by Freakonomics, the 2005 best seller by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, economists realized that, if only they can learn to communicate normally, they have the tools to explain people’s lives to them.

Orange County Performing Arts Center’s main presenter might have to cancel part of its season if it can’t raise $500,000 in a hurry. “The Philharmonic Society, which presents touring artists, reported a $756,000 deficit for 2006-07, its first season using the new Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall as its main venue. Attendance was 74% of capacity for 29 concerts in the new, 2,000-seat hall, and 81% for seven shows at the 756-seat Irvine Barclay Theatre.”

If your work is really really successful, how will you know if it’s actually very good? “J K Rowling might genuinely want to know if her work is taken seriously: but the praise is just too cacophonous. Popularity can be worse than any curse. Just as Jack Vettriano, Andrew Lloyd-Webber or Lynda La Plante.”

Directors of the formidible Salzburg Festival have tended to be larger than life. Enter rookie Jürgen Flimm: “Here the whole festival is my stage. My job is to orchestrate productions the way a director orchestrates the characters in a play. The citizenry and visitors are characters too.”

The Canadian government has permanently boosted the Canada Council’s budget by $30 million. “The May 2006 federal budget raised the Canada Council’s funding by $20 million in 2006-7 and $30 million the following year, but the increase was not guaranteed in future.” Total annual Canada Council funding is now $180 million.

“Ah, the difficulties of being human in the age of the new science museum! There was a time when such museums developed out of collections of objects that science created, used or studied. Science was an undertaking that required discipline and enterprise; it was somewhat imposing because it could seem so impersonal in its quest, and somewhat heroic because it was so full of mystery and possibility. Now everything is urgent and personal. And, often, the personal is also political.”