Category: issues

“The principle is that freedom from the Internet is so rare and exotic and impossible that it is becoming a commodity: It’s not iPhones or iPads we have to worry about buying, but peace from them. Freedom, then, is a poor man’s fabulous hotel room on a cliff on a beach without wireless.”

Faced with a loss of 100 million kroner (roughly €13.5 million) in funding over the next four years, the Royal Theatre is eliminating 100 positions, including five senior management and 35 artistic jobs. At least three productions will be cut from the 2012 schedule as well.

“The measure would impose criminal fines and allow the US government and individuals to shut down websites for alleged infringement. Critics say the steps would restrain free speech and cause service providers to filter out content they were unsure of.”

The art museums, and the city’s other not-for-profit organisations owning property that is worth more than $15m, face paying a fee that is based on 25% of what they would have to pay if they were charged the city’s commercial tax.

“Yes, the arts, especially in America, where government support is so paltry compared with Europe, have relied on backing from the wealthiest sliver of society. And, yes, top ticket prices at prestigious performing-arts institutions are out of reach for many among the 99 percent. But as we try to grasp what the committed Occupy Wall Street activists are saying to the performing arts, can we all agree to put aside at last the charge of elitism?”

“Department of Cultural Affairs employees who were sacked a year ago (because of problems with anti-patronage regulations) and then hired to do the same jobs by the “private” nonprofit Tourism Fund (aka Office of Tourism and Culture), are either out of work again, or soon to be, their positions at Tourism eliminated.”

“[A]nyone seeking to promote ‘British culture’ – a key marketing concept in the year of the 2012 London Olympics – faces the problem that the definition of the United Kingdom is contracting while the definition of culture is expanding.”

“Mayor Bloomberg named five people to the Word Trade Center performing arts center board Thursday, a last-minute move that averted the loss of millions of dollars in funding for the long-delayed institution. … If the board wasn’t in place by the end of 2011, the performing arts center could have lost most of the $155 million it has received.”

In 2011 lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans alike — turned a blind eye to important civil liberties issues, including Patriot Act reform, and instead paid heed to the content industry’s desires to stop piracy. “Any civil liberties agenda was a complete non-starter with Congress and the Obama administration,” said Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal director. “They had no interest in finding any balance in civil liberties.”

“‘Firstly, the reputation of being a good corporate citizen; secondly, people ascribe the quality of one organisation to the other.’ A bit like being a strait-laced banker who starts dating a bohemian artist, the firms hope that some of that coolness will rub off on them.”