Category: issues

Censorship is common in Singapore. But a new set of guidelines concerning censorship are about to come out. “Surveys suggest that a majority of Singaporeans are basically conservative and still want the Government to be responsible for deciding what their children should see and hear. But as our people become more cosmopolitan, there is also a group which argues that Singaporeans should decide for themselves what they want to see, read and hear and what they want their children to read, see and hear.”

The state of Massachusetts made the biggest cuts in arts funding of all states in 2002 – slashing its budgest 62 percent. Now arts leaders are surveying the damage – reduced and discontinued programs, a few closings, and more difficulty raising money in the private sector…Arts groups just hope that this year’s budget won’t be cut even more.

Most people like to go to performances with someone else. Indeed, many consider going it alone to be some sort of personal failure. But David MacFarlane has discovered the benefits of single tickets. “Most importantly, going out alone means you can do whatever you want to do when it comes to responding to a performance.”

Falling attendance, a downturn in funding, program cutbacks and layoffs. Last year marked a downturn in the financial fortunes of Denver arts groups.

“Although arts groups openly discussed their multimillion-dollar drives at this time last year, now fund-raisers are guarding their plans like children hoarding Halloween candy. Others are either scaling back their plans or holding off altogether.”

“In effect, the Supreme Court’s decision makes it likely that we are seeing the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of copyright perpetuity. Public domain has been a grand experiment, one that should not be allowed to die. The ability to draw freely on the entire creative output of humanity is one of the reasons we live in a time of such fruitful creative ferment.”

Kim Howells, the UK’s minister for tourism, film and broadcasting has been pronouncing on culture – that the Turner Prize winners are a disgrace, and that rap music incites violence. Does he “regret shooting his mouth off so regularly, or does he see it as his role to make challenging statements on cultural themes? “I haven’t really been shooting my mouth off. What I’m concerned about is a coarsening of sensibilities. People think that makes me a fuddy-duddy.”

People are lining up to go to Scottish arts events. But there’s a funding crisis. “What explains this bizarre paradox? Money is cascading into arts events, yet nothing is more wearisomely familiar at this time of year than ferocious in-fighting among arts organisations and angry rhetoric about ‘mean’ and ‘philistine’ politicians starving theatres, opera houses and galleries of vitally needed funds. Yet, all around, more money than ever is going into the arts. So what is going wrong?”

Lawrence Lessig, who argued to overturn the extension of US copyright before the US Supreme Court, writes about the Court’s rejection of his arguement. “Missing from the opinion was any justification for perhaps the most damaging part of Congress’s decision to extend existing copyrights for 20 years: the extension unnecessarily stifles freedom of expression by preventing the artistic and educational use even of content that no longer has any commercial value.”

“Some on the public interest side are tempted to lament what could be called the ‘Dred Scott case for culture,’ unjustifiably locking up content that deserves to be free. In fact, the ruling gives public interest activists both motivation and ammunition in the continuing battle against the excessive expansion of the power to control information and culture.”