March 2007 Archives

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March 20, 2007

Next Generation Cultural Democracy hits 2008 Election

This video pretty much makes it clear why a certain percentage of the younger generation would prefer a country with Barack Obama as the president instead of Hillary Clinton (or John McCain and the others for that matter.) The 2008 election will clearly see the next phase in the evolution of visionary (and incendiary) citizen produced political media. Let's hope it serves more to carve out a positive vision for the future than to play into the horse race of which person will represent us as president.

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Could we sue iTunes for Creative Commons infringement?

A journalist from the Guardian in the UK called me today asking about my attempts to get iTunes to open up the DRM on my Premixed album, which is Creative Commons licensed. As you may know, ever since Steve Jobs made the announcement that he'd like the major labels to open up the DRM, there has been renewed requests by some including Larry Lessig to follow through on his words by opening up the DRM for CC licensed music on iTunes.

The truth is that I haven't really done very much, just sent that initial email, and then didn't follow up further after receiving a note back saying I could contact some other department (unfortunately I lost the email message after my laptop got stolen in June 2006). However, the journalist's call has given me a new reason to push a bit further. I'm going to write to my friend Bruno from Insead who I think may now be working at iTunes again to see what would need to happen in order to create some momentum.

The question the journalist asked me is: could someone sue iTunes for not respecting the copyright license that a musician has chosen for their music. I'm not sure. I don't really have any interest in suing anyone, but it's an interesting idea. I'll keep you updated.

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March 18, 2007

Evolution of the Blue Ocean Strategy song

After having drinks last night with a friend from Insead, I wanted to give an update on the Blue Ocean Strategy song that I had recorded with friends while in China last year. 

First, if you haven't already heard it, here are the links to the mp3 of Blue Ocean Electro Rmx by Beatbros, as well as the original a cappella and various other remixes on CCmixter.  Also, check out the post about the song as well as another "Red Ocean Blues" track over at Gabor George Burt's blog Creating Blue Oceans.

The part of the story that I haven't fully shared is that Blue Ocean Strategy author Professor Kim
had mentioned he thought about playing the song when he was meeting with the higher ups in the Chinese government, but thought that the lyrics could be interpreted to be a bit negative. ("Big brother watching over me..")

So he asked that I try to update the lyrics to be more positive, which I've worked on a bit.  I'll be in touch with Professor Kim to see if I can get the song to that point, then we can rerecord and hopefully get a track that take Blue Ocean to the pop culture masses! Well, probably not, but at least the Bschool masses.

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