New York City’s $500 million campaign to rebuild Ground Zero has officially kicked off, but buried in the celebratory press conference was a disturbing change of plans: “As originally planned, the $500 million would help finance a memorial and a museum complex as well as [a Frank Gehry-designed] performing arts center, to be shared by the Joyce Dance Theater, which specializes in dance, and the Signature Theater Company, an Off Broadway group. But now the performing arts center will be part of a ‘second phase.'” Worse, officials at the Joyce and Signature groups appear to have been left uninformed about the change of status for their new home.
Tag: 04.09.05
The Copyright Debate, Part DCCCLXXVII
Too often, the debate over copyrights, file sharing, and new media seems intractable, with those for and against expanded consumer rights dug in and disinclined to even listen to the other side. But there are real thinkers participating in the debate, from musicians to lawyers and everyone in between. And as the issue of downloadable media slowly begins to sort itself out, more and more musicians are coming to the conclusion that the only people hurt by currently illegal file-trading practices are “people who are so rich they never deserve to be paid again.”
For That Price, Could We Get Some Decent Speakers?
Most attendees at rock concerts in the U.S. probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about audio quality – after all, you just plug in the mics and guitars and crank the amps up to eleven, right? Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that, and George Varga writes that some of his most recent experiences suffering through concerts that “sounded as if they were either being performed from inside trash compactors in overdrive or through a giant car stereo with busted woofers… are symptomatic of a troubling decline in audio quality at concerts across the nation – a trend made more annoying by the concurrent rise in ticket prices.”