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Dischord, Nike, Appropriation and Homage

Over at Off the Hoof Mike follows up his earlier comments about the Minor Threat/Dischord flap with a discussion of appropriation:

Appropriation belongs to the disempowered. It's about the control of identity.

When the empowered attempt to appropriate the culture of the disempowered it's an act of aggression, not appropriation.

I was really happy to read this.

I also dispute the notion that the record cover rip off was an 'homage.' It was basically a forced celebrity endorsement. Ian MacKaye and his music is revered in the skating and punk communities, on the same level that Lebron James is in Basketball, Mia Hamm is in Soccer, or Lance Armstrong is in Cycling. These folks are very well compensated - I wonder what kind of package Nike will offer Ian MacKaye.

The Lazy Ass Village Voice

Over at randomWalks, Adam posted "randomWalks: afrocentric hip-hop is a big shrug," a link to a Village Voice article where they claim that the Coup and Kweli's lyrics are too political for mainstream hip-hop. Typical lazy ass Village Voice reporting. Adam quotes: "People in the streets are now being told what hip-hop is and what it looks like by TV."

Or, it could be that Talib and the Coup are both wack rhymers now. Just because they come correct politically doesn't mean they get a free pass on skills. Listen to their old stuff next to their new stuff, and it's clear they just got lax with their work. Have your whiskey at the ready, though, it's depressing.

The subtext of the discussion is that hip-hop fans can't think for themselves, which is plain false. From Public Enemy to Common to Goodie Mob to Kanye West, there's clearly a thirst for political hip-hop - but not at the expense of good rhymes and beats.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli were on the top of the world when Blackstar was good, but they just dropped it, and I bet they KNOW they dropped it, that's why it's Village Voice reporters doing the whining. Every once in a while I hear a dope new Mos Def verse, and it's like "Woah? What's that from??" "Oh, it's something that's just been in the vault for four years, coming out now." There is nothing hip-hop fans want more than a worthy followup to Black on Both Sides, one of the top five hip-hop albums of all time, but it just doesn't seem likely.

I like Adam's Q-tip quote, of course. Adam - check out Fat Beats Radio. the new Q-tip song is so good. Also check out "Dangerous," ten years ago OC dropped more fantastic rhymes in one verse than most MCs do in an entire career. And if that's not enough, you get to find out what MF Doom thinks about when he puts on his metal mask every morning.

The NBA Draft

9:15 – I'm telling you, Vitale is like Confucius tonight. He just had this rant after the Granger pick: "I get so carried away sometimes hearing all these people talking about quickness, jumping ability, wingspan, hey, this isn't track and field, this is basketball!" Listening to Dickie V tonight makes me feel like Katie Holmes hearing Tom Cruise discuss Scientology for the first time – I feel like he's unlocking a key to a higher being or something. Or, it might just be the blood-red background.

Bill Simmons is always funny, but sometimes he's the funniest man alive. I'm this close to creating a Katie Holmes category.

Eyebeam & Contagious Media

I'm going to head over to Eyebeam tonight to check out their eavesdropping panel. I'll tell you what they say.

Besides their panels and work in Contagious Media, the folks at Eyebeam have their fingers in a whole bunch of other pies: The ongoing work of Cory Arcangel, who's Data Diariez is showing at the Rhizome installation in the new museum, the continuing development of Forward Track and Reblog, and of course Kottke.org.

Four Layers of Cultural Control

20050622_culturalcontrol
Originally uploaded by yatta.

Kenyatta's "Four Layers of Cultural Control" is the clearest definition I've seen of what the "Free Culture" movement is all about.

Kenyatta's graphic clearly demonstrates the relationship between free network access, software & standards, and copyright law. At MediaRights we licensed our festival with Creative Commons, but that kind of sharing is the exception, not the rule, and most filmmakers still don't quite understand what it means. Open content is only valuable if you have the network and software that makes it trivial to distribute and share your work.

While Betsy Gotbaum, the current public advocate is twiddling her thumbs and swiping Metrocards, Andrew Rasiej's running his campaign for Public Advocate almost exclusively on a "free wi-fi" platform. On Andrew's blog, he makes the case: "for 1/4 what the Mayor wanted to spend in taxpayer money on a football stadium in Manhattan, we can ensure that everyone can get highspeed access to the Internet whenever and wherever they need it." The cost per city resident works out to $10, less than the cost of a movie ticket in Union Sqaure.

Of course the free wi-fi movement is also facing heavy opposition from telephone companies. You'd think that pundits in New York would do better than to suggest that the government provide vouchers for people with low income. Most DSL providers don't even reach into poor neighborhoods in New York City, so vouchers would do them no good. An open wi-fi network would solve this problem immediately. And it's not just theoretical - Neighbornode offers community wi-fi nodes at $60 a pop, and of course that could come down if it was purchased on a broad scale.

If you want to work on this stuff full time, Downhill Battle has no less than three technology positions open. Paying jobs at non-profits this cool don't come along very often. I can't rave enough about their Broadcast Machine.

Evan Williams on Developing for Early Adopters, and the U.A.E.

An interview with Evan Williams about Odeo closes on this note:

I think it’s really tricky knowing what you could be forever reacting to every whim. The especially tricky thing is that some of the more vocal members of the community are leaders and have big needs, but they turn out to be edge cases. I see a lot of companies, web companies, 2.0 sort of companies that attract early adopters. and they listen to them and get feedback from them. But then they kind of get sucked into pleasing these early adopters, and the early adopter is really on the next curve. And that becomes a conflict when you’re trying to reach a much more mainstream audience.

This is going to be a huge issue facing Web 2.0 companies in the next five years. When you think about this challenge it makes the accomplishments of Flickr and Typepad all the more amazing - since they are developing for the average user but selling themselves to the early adopters simultaneously.

But you can't avoid controversy, look at the current debate over nudity on flickr, seemingly enflamed by muslims from the UAE. I have to admit I have made several residents of the UAE my "contacts," so I can look at their Unicode-driven usernames and the crazy pictures of Starbucks they take with their Nikon D70s. Sure, that's a little weird, but it was a ton of fun. I hope they come back.

Katie Holmes

I'll stop spamming Angela's blog with comments about the Holmes/Cruise affair and start writing some over here. Fox news reports:

The newly engaged Katie Holmes still has some explaining to do to her friends and family... There were 16 days in April during which no one seems to know where she was.

What if it's not Katie Holmes at all, but an alien replacement?

You decide.

Worst Movie Quote of All Time

According to the BBC, AFI has just released the top 100 movie quotes of all time. All morning, AFI representatives have been responding to interest in this story with the same "no-comment" quote: 301: Server Not Available.

I feel for there sysadmin, but talk about dropping the ball! This story has all the ingredients for Bloggers to run wild - movie quotes, lists, objective arguments and the word "best." What AFi should have done was build buzz around the story by releasing ten quotes at a time, and allowing an interface where bloggers could list their own favorites alongside the official selections. This also would have bought them a couple weeks to scale up their servers.

For what it's worth, the top ten quotes listed in the BBC article aren't that exciting. Sure "May the force be with you" is canonical, but it's not exactly moving, and it's certainly not an example of well crafter prose. I'd like to think that some of the best movie quotes of all time are not just pithy one-liners. Of course, I can't comment on the whole list - their server's still down.

Stop Text Bullying

Stop Text Bully:

Mobile phones are great – you can stay in touch with your mates, chat to new friends, and have fun with cool ringtones, photos and video clips. But text bullies can use mobiles to get at you any time.

This is a totally different problem than spam, obviously, but I wonder if some of the same social trust technology and whitelisting software built to stop spam can also help to stop bullies. I also wonder what, if any, off-line bullying organizations they're working with.