Alex Ross: “He not only left his mark on all subsequent composers but also molded entire institutions. … How did Beethoven become ‘BEETHOVEN’? What prompted the ‘great transformation of musical taste,’ … the shift on the concert stage from a living culture to a necrophiliac one?”
Tag: 10.20.14
Edward Snowden’s Filmmaker
“You asked why I chose you,” Snowden wrote to her. “I didn’t. You chose yourself.” George Packer profiles documentarian Laura Poitras.
Has U.S. Copyright Law Gone Overboard?
“Rod Stewart is being sued over the rights to an image of his own head.” (True story.) Louis Menand gives an in-depth look at the current approaches to the concept of copyright – and asks if we need to update our ideas and laws for the Internet era.
Content And Its Discontents: The Future Of Netflix
“If you really look at Netflix, it’s a pay-TV company. People still think of Netflix as a video store, because that’s their history. But the way a pay-TV service works is that people subscribe and pay a monthly fee for a service that aggregates content and offers original content of its own. That’s exactly what Netflix does.”