Category: issues

“The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers’ online swapping of copyright songs and movies. Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster and StreamCast Networks that came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works… The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in August that file-sharing services were not responsible because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyright material.”

The chairman of San Francisco’s budget committee last week “recommended taking roughly $800,000 from the combined budgets of the opera, symphony and ballet in order to keep more social services afloat during mid-year reductions. The sum equates to half The City’s current backing, which performing arts supporters point out has already been reduced by 25 percent.”

How did the arts make out in the US Congressional session just closing? Well, the extra $18 million President Bush requested for the National Endowment for the Arts got cut to $2 million. But also Congress ignored Bush’s proposal to cut $35 million from arts in education funds. So a mixed result… And things arenh’t likely to change much in the new Congress…

Public intellectual debate has been on the rise in China in the past few years as the economy opened up. But the new openness may be closing up quickly. “A scathing commentary on the list, published last month by a Shanghai newspaper and republished by the party’s main mouthpiece, People’s Daily, said that promoting the idea of “public intellectuals” was really aimed at “driving a wedge between intellectuals and the party.” The window for free debate that opened a crack over the past couple of years, as China’s leadership shifted to the “fourth generation” of leaders, is closing again.”

Melbourne is getting a new theatre complex, and the architecture is firmly contemporary. “The $91 million project combines two buildings – one providing a new home for the Melbourne Theatre Company and the other housing the city’s first purpose-built recital hall for acoustic music. They will be built on a car park opposite the ABC headquarters.”

A discount ticket program aimed at college students has been quite successful at drawing young adults to arts events in Pittsburgh, but some in the city’s arts community have begun to question whether the cheap (and sometimes free) tickets will ever actually translate into a new generation of paid subscribers. Still, the program represents an important revenue source for performing arts groups in a time of fiscal uncertainty. And the program’s coordinator claims that more and more students lured in by an initial freebie are taking advantage of discount ticket offers.

The Alabama state legislator who has introduced a bill to ban books that “promote homosexuality” has been invited by George Bush to the White House. “Traditional family values are under attack. They’ve been under attack “for the last 40 years”. The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is “Hollywood, the music industry”. We have an obligation to “save society from moral destruction”. We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from “re-engineering society’s fabric in the minds of our children”. We have to “protect Alabamians”.

“The idea is to spend more on fewer projects but ones that the council hopes will excite Australian audiences. A $9 million fund will be set up to drive strategic initiatives, which could include more international touring, support for indigenous art and education projects. Heads of art-form boards will be given greater power and will be encouraged to apply to the fund with important projects.”

As part of the Australian government’s restructuring of the Australia Council, the Community Cultural Development Board and New Media Arts Board are to be abolished. Critics were quick to pounce: “It’s a fairly appalling decision made by people who clearly have very little comprehension of what contemporary arts is all about. They have shown a complete disregard for any idea of progress.”

Directors of the Australia Council say their reorganization of the agency will up the profile of an arts agenda. “We are trying to make sure the arts are a vibrant part of society’s agenda, and the Australia Council needs to be seen as a driver of change and a strategic, impactful organisation that makes important and interesting things happen.”