Author: Dan G.

Daily Hopechange – guns edition

Via the Rott comes this gem:

U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., is hoping to pass a firearm-licensing bill that will significantly rewrite gun-ownership laws in America.

Among the more controversial provisions of the bill are requirements that all handgun owners submit to the federal government a photo, thumb print and mental heath records. Further, the bill would order the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer and owner’s address in America.

It also forbids the transfer of “qualifying firearms” to anyone who is not a registered and licensed gun dealer or collector. What makes a “qualifying firearm,” you wisely ask? “[A]ny handgun or any semiautomatic firearm that takes an ammunition clip.” So basically… everything except revolvers or single shot weapons. I knew I liked those wheelguns for a reason.

Three guesses as to what his justification is for this travesty.

“to protect the public against the unreasonable risk of injury and death associated with the unrecorded sale or transfer of firearms to criminals and youth.”

For the chidren! As long as you can somehow tie it back to that, any violation of rights or liberties is justified – at least in the mind of your average politician.  The bill even starts off with a tragic tale of a boy who used his body to shield a girl in the line of fire of a lunatic who decided he was going to shoot up a bus. Unfortunately, even had this law been in effect, the result would have been the same. Why? Because criminals don’t obey laws. This is a crucial cognitive disconnect present in nearly every member of congress, and especially the Democrats – these sort of registries and transfer penalties and fines and fees do not work on those who ignore the law. The only people who this kind of legislation affects are the law-abiding ones who don’t need to be tracked in the first place. It makes it even more inconvenient to buy or own a firearm, which means those aforementioned law-abiding citizens will be less likely to have one, which in turn means that when the aforementioned law-ignoring citizens decide they want a crack at his home theater system, he is left helpless – or even dead.

Self-defense is a basic human right, outlined and explicitly declared in the Constitution of the United States. “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” it says – and this law seeks, yet again, to infringe on that right. It seems so absurdly obvious that this would be the case that it never ceases to raise frustration levels in people like myself, Rott, and others – namely, people with basic cognitive skills who can recognize simple truths about reality. Unfortunately, very few of these sort of people get elected into public office.

Music sharing is not A Bad Thing

Mike Masnick has pretty much been my hero lately, with a string of brilliant posts on alternative revenue models being used by various musicians, all based off the idea that giving your music out for dirt cheap or free and encouraging your fans to share it is A Good Thing. One of the artists he uses as an example, Adam Singer, goes so far as to say that the Creative Commons license is the “ultimate music promotion tool” – something with which I think Jonathan Coulton might agree.

The concept here is that punishing your fans for liking your music and wanting to share it with their friends is incredibly stupid. That seems like an obvious statement to make, but there’s more than one major industry player out there who thinks that this is exactly what the industry SHOULD be doing – which is why many bands, big and small, old and new, are abandoning “the industry” as it stands.

There are a handful of basic ideas being tossed around on his blog that have been used, in various ways and degrees, by several different musicians. Note that each of them revolves around the idea that the music is free and that sharing is good. I’ve categorized them as follows:

  1. “Just pay me whatever you think it’s worth.”  This is the strategy used to great success most famously by Radiohead and Jonathan Coulton but also numerous smaller acts. This seems to work best for artists who already have a fan base, but has worked very well for smaller acts as well.
  2. “The music is free, but please buy my merchandise!” This strategy seeks to build a fan base with free music who will then in turn buy “special edition” CDs, t-shirts, and concert tickets. This strategy is tailored for the smaller artist because it seeks first to build your fan base, and second to make a profit, but would work for an artist of any size as the profits will only increase as your fan base does. The risk here comes with the fact that you have to execute it well: your merchandise has to be worth the separate purchase. Don’t insult your fans with CafePress t-shirts. Adam Singer talks about this method at his blog.
  3. “If I get enough money in donations to cover my costs, I will release a free album.” This method carries almost no risk, because if you don’t get enough money, then you don’t make the album, and you don’t lose anything in the process (at least monetarily). The tradeoff is that your fan base who is doing the donating needs to be confident that you will produce something worth their investment, so you have to have that base before you can attempt this method. This works not just for music, but almost any medium: books, digital art, whatever. Once the album/ebook/whatever has been released, it is free to share and will build your fan base who can then purchase your other stuff (option 2) or give you more money next time you want to solicit donations for your work. Marillion succeeded using this model.
  4. “The music is free, but if you buy XYZ too, you’ll get more that you wouldn’t otherwise!” This one starts with a smaller body of work that is free to share, but rewards the buyer with extra stuff they wouldn’t get otherwise. This can take many forms – Jill Sobule had different levels you could buy at that included perks such as getting the album before its release date, a free concert at your home, or even performing on the next album. Trent Reznor offered the first CD of “Ghosts” for free, with additional content costing extra, and options to buy higher-quality recordings, vinyl record, DVDs, books of accompanying art, or autographed merchandise at different price points. This is very similar to numbers 2 and 3, but has a different enough focus that I gave it its own number.

Using these methods and combinations of them gives artists many new ways to find fans and make money while connecting with those fans on a much more personal level than they might otherwise. As Masnick said, you can’t ask your fans for favors when you’re suing them. In addition, it automatically solves the “problem” of piracy – you can’t pirate something that’s already being given out freely! Make the economics of scarcity your friend, not your enemy, and watch things just work.

Good news on the home front

Janet Napolitano is gone, and Jan Brewer is the new governor. As sad as that makes me about the DHS, I’m thrilled for our state, and I’ve been humming “Ding dong, the witch is dead” for the last couple days now.

With her gone, Arizona may be banning those annoying speed cameras, as the bill made its way out of comittee today. With the focus of the current session being a balanced budget, I’m not sure how much attention it will get, or how it will be spun in the light of moneymaking, but this was one of Janet’s many expensive pet projects, and getting it shut down would be great. In addition to being a money sink, it’s caused many irritations for AZ drivers like me who spend a lot of driving time on the freeways. There’s inevitably a big slowdown wherever the cameras are, with people doing stupid things to try to dodge the bullet. In addition, they aren’t standardized because Arizona still has sections of freeway that inexplicably jump from 65 to 55 and then back again, and guess what? That’s where a lot of people get burned. In addition, we are now seeing teenagers use the cameras to get revenge on other teens, by printing out fake plates and then speeding past the cameras. It’s pathetic.

They were installed as a moneymaker, but the millions that were spent installing them isn’t being made back very quickly at all, and it’s pretty much universally considered a big waste at this point – with the notable exception of in Janet’s mind. Techdirt has a good, concise summary of the wastefulness of this program.

Shotgun Linking – Obama Day Three Edition

Day three, still no unicorn.

Because I don’t have the energy to come up with a full-size post for each of these, I give thee a bullet list: