Full Committee Hearing on "Assessing the Impact of the Copyright Royalty Board Decision to Increase Royalty Rates on Recording Artists and Webcasters.

Yesterday the House held a hearing in response to the Day of Silence. But BusinessWeek says:

Small Webcasters intent on keeping Internet radio stations from going out of business best not look to Congress for help. That's the message from a June 28 House of Representatives hearing aimed at resolving a dispute over efforts to increase the royalties paid by Web radio stations to musicians and record labels for spinning their songs.

House Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez said she'd prefer Webcasters and the music industry come up with their own compromise. "I really don't think Congress would be the best type of vehicle to resolve this type of issue," she said after the testimony of seven witnesses, including independent record-label owners, musicians, and Webcasters. "July 15 is just around the corner, and I hope the two parties can come together and resolve this issue."

Impact of Royalty Increases on Internet Radio

Sarkozy: Listen, I'm sorry to say it, but we could go on holiday together!
Onfray: Are you joking?
Sarkozy: You don't go on holiday with someone because you agree with him about the problem of social security. Deep down, the most important thing is style.
Onfray: I couldn't agree more --

...

Sarkozy: For a long time, I got drunk on crowds, from their applause, their excesses, perhaps even their hysteria. And now I am more appreciative of their silence. It expresses much more than any applause.

Can you imagine an American president saying that?

(Translation from the French by Tobias Grey; appears in the July issue of Harpers.)

Philomag - Dialogue - Nicolas Sarkozy et Michel Onfray - CONFIDENCES ENTRE ENNEMIS

You may remember the Drew Westen thread from earlier this year.

The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.

Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…

The Political Brain

The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). Webcasters across the country participated in a national Day of Silence this week to increase awareness about this looming threat and gather support for the SaveNetRadio collation and our campaign to preserve music diversity on-line. The Internet Radio Equality Act is currently being considered by both the House and the Senate. This bill will set royalty rates for Internet radio equal to the royalty rate paid by satellite radio, and has gained over 120 cosponsors in the House.

Internet radio needs your help to survive. We need you to pressure your representatives in Congress to take action. Please take a moment to call your Congressional representatives in the House and Senate to ask them to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act. Making your voice heard will go a long way to helping preserve the Internet radio industry. Time is running short, so please call your representatives today.

Rhapsody sent me a pointer to this today.

Savenetradio.org

"What the president did with the NSA [was] a proposal for a worse way."

You can watch a video of FISA court chief judge Royce Lamberth at the ALA convention.

Judge Discusses Details of Work On Secret Court

Shortly after 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for “a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence community and the private sector.” They say you should be careful what you wish for.

... As it happened, the dot-com bubble had burst shortly before 9/11, cutting loose a generation of technology entrepreneurs who, when the government came calling, were only too happy to start developing new data-mining algorithms and biometric identification programs.

There is nothing inherently wrong with all this.

The problem is that the “symbiotic relationship” has turned decidedly dysfunctional, if not downright exploitative.

Don’t Privatize Our Spies

This is Jeffrey Toobin's comment that I mentioned recently.

The Rehnquist Court had its share of divided rulings, of course—most notably, Bush v. Gore—but the new conservative ascendancy has prompted a striking reaction from the dissenting liberals, John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer. It has been the custom at the Court for dissenters to explain their views individually or in small groups; but this group, led by Stevens, the senior member of the Court, has taken to uniting around a single opinion, as if to emphasize a collective view that the majority is taking the law in dangerous directions. In the case about the missed appeal deadline, the dissenting opinion, by the usually mild-mannered Souter (who was joined by Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer), reflected true anguish: “It is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way, and there is not even a technical justification for condoning this bait and switch.”

He concludes, with perhaps a heavy hand:

At this moment, the liberals face not only jurisprudential but actuarial peril. Stevens is eighty-seven and Ginsburg seventy-four; Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are in their fifties.

The Court, no less than the Presidency, will be on the ballot next November, and a wise electorate will vote accordingly.

Five to Four

The most important constraints are not imposed by the laws of physics.

They are the constraints that arise from the limitations of human individuals, of socioeconomic institutions, of human preferences, fears, and sentiments such as elation and outrage. Nowhere in our society does engineering confront these human constraints more seriously than in the functions that sustain our democracy—registering to vote, voting, tallying the vote, reporting exceptions and results, and accepting the certified outcome with confidence that it reflects the collective intent of eligible voters.

... Our hope is that these articles will contribute to the realization of an election and voting environment that satisfies the needs of voters and election officials. ... New rules and reliable, trustworthy voting systems might win over voters and become known as the solution that overcame the constraints and saved our democracy from itself.

Elections and the Future of E-Voting

James Bamford said one cynical interpretation of the move to declassify the family jewels could be that the agency was looking to make the operations for which it has most recently been criticized seem less nefarious by contrasting them with what went on in the old days.

CIA Chief Tries Preaching a Culture of More Openness

Secretary of State Debra Bowen began her top-to-bottom review of the voting machines certified for use in California on May 31, 2007. The review is designed to restore the public's confidence in the integrity of the electoral process and is designed to ensure that California voters are being asked to cast their ballots on machines that are secure, accurate, reliable, and accessible.

California Secretary of State - Voting Systems Review