a gratuitous post for my few dear friends who worry when they don't read anything here for a few days

We're on day 18 of guests.

That is all.

zach flies

I was on my way to the airport on Wednesday when I called home to check on the arriving flight. hobbitt informed me he'd just received a call from someone here in the community who had found Zach and would be bringing him home.

Okay, so I was concerned but there was hardly reason to panic. Zach was safe and coming home.

He'd been picked up that morning by a friend who offered to take him and Inti to the beach for the morning walk. I trust Rossana completely and her dog is a sweetie to Zach and Inti, plus Zach loves to run with the big dogs and that means a peaceful afternoon for everyone.

Evidently Zach decided to jump out the pickup cap's side window - while the truck was traveling down the road. Rossana didn't know Zach was gone until she didn't find him in the back of the truck when she arrived at the beach.

I cannot imagine what she must have felt when she opened the tailgate.

Yesterday I ran into Rossana in town and gave her a big hug. She had been fearing my wrath, I suppose, but everything is fine and sometimes shit just happens. I had thought when she offered to take Zach to mention about keeping the window closed, and didn't say anything, so I suppose I am equally responsible. She doesn't know him as I do and would never have suspected he'd try.

So now she's a little calmer, Zach is still fine, and even better - he's not inclined to be near open car windows.

All in all I'm glad I wasn't here for that. And when I think about his flight, the good luck in there being no oncoming cars, and his friendly nature which led him to walk up someone's driveway, I shudder a little with fear and love. They're not called accidents for nothing, and this time we got lucky.

it's probably not true

But tonight I feel like I don't get back what I give.

That's usually what I expect and it's okay.

Tonight? Not so much.

feel the fluffy love

Well, okay, you might not love me, but how can you resist these idjits?

Now go sign the petition if you haven't already done so.

you love me, right?

Do you?

Okay, you don't even have to love me. All you have to do is love the unfettered expression of art.

Please read and sign this petition. It's all about breaking the corporate stranglehold on music, and the US government's complicity in supporting not the artists, but the increasingly monolithic industries that profit from their work.

Thanks.

Save Our Internet Radio - The View from Paradise

It could change my life, and not for the better.



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suck it, library of congress & copyright royalty board

Here are some interesting words from Bill Goldsmith, the creator, owner, and DJ of Radio Paradise:

There's a lot of talk going on in webcasting circles about what constitutes a fair performance royalty rate for Internet radio. I have a radical suggestion: how about the same amount paid by FM stations? In other words - at this point - nothing. Why do we pay these royalties when FM stations don't? Because we're providing "perfect digital copies" of individual songs to our listeners, rather than engaging in the creation of traditional radio programming. The fact that this reasoning, which is the foundation of the differentiation between analog & digital broadcasting in the DMCA, is *just not true* is rarely discussed.

When I share with my listeners the discrepancy between what we pay in performance royalties & what an FM station pays ($0) they are flabbergasted and outraged. These are people who *know* that listening to Radio Paradise is no different from listening to an FM station (except for better programming :-) and the idea that we're fundamentally different because we transmit digitally seems absurd. It seems absurd because it *is* absurd - and every time the issue comes up, my blood pressure rises all over again.

While it is possible to "rip" a radio stream into individual songs, you can do the same thing - with little more effort, and with similar results in terms of audio quality - with an analog FM broadcast. If you were to take a random sampling of, say, RIAA attorneys (or Senators) and play them a song copied from my webcast and the same song copied from an analog FM station, I doubt that they'd be able to tell the difference.

Based on the feedback I get from my listeners, only a very small percentage ever record our station for any reason, and most of them are recording blocks of programming for playback during commute times or in other situations where they don't have access to the net. The vast majority of them just turn the station on and listen, just as they would do with an FM broadcast. No wonder they are astounded to find out that Congress - under the careful guidance of the RIAA - decided back in 1998 that we were an entirely different type of service that needed to play (and pay) by an entirely different set of rules.

Is it fair that FM broadcasters pay nothing to the owners of performance copyrights? Perhaps not. In most countries, they *do* pay. But is it fair for the recording industry to try to right this supposed wrong in such a manner that it drives law-abiding business people such as myself and the other independent webcasters out of business? I think not. Perhaps the most fair solution of all would be a significantly smaller royalty (something comparable to the 3.5% or so that both webcasters and broadcasters pay to songwriters) applied to *all* forms of radio.

war, peace and the terrorism of press credentials

White House mum on PT peace petition
By Barney Burke, Leader Staff Writer

The Port Townsend City Council was applauded by a large crowd of peace advocates after adopting a resolution calling for an end to the war in Iraq by the first quarter of 2008.

However, it's unclear if similar resolutions from other communities are having any influence on President George Bush. The Leader made three calls to the White House in recent days, but a spokesman there has so far been unable to provide any information on how many such resolutions have been received and whether the president is ever briefed on them.

It makes me think of my little puppy, Zach. He's probably about 24 lbs. He has no idea how small he is, which is a good thing, I suppose, because he's not afraid of the 100 lb. labs he runs with. He's just one of the dogs, not more and not less. It's a healthy attitude, I'm thinking.

In other news, my brother is a person of interest to the TSA not because he has a very, very common name, but because in the last 10 years the Secret Service and FBI have done checks on him at least 27 times. He knows this because he asked some state senators and members of the NJ Legislature's Transportation committee to look into the aggravations he experienced when traveling to celebrate his sister's 50th birthday.

He's a cameraman for a television news enterprise. He gets to be close to presidents, vice presidents and cabinet officials. He gets to travel overseas for his job. He's on a first-name basis with a lot of people I'll never even meet, and he's been doing his job for almost 20 years.

And now, he gets a major hassle in airport security because of Secret Service and FBI inquiries into his press credentials.

Thank you, Homeland Security! Here's to hoping someday you'll actually get it right. I'm not holding my breath.