To paraphrase the Bard: "To Limit, or Not to Limit, That is the Question."

If copyright were forever, I couldn't have just done that. Or at very least, doing that, I'd risk getting sued. Yet in the New York Times, Mark Helprin tries to make us think that copyright should live forever; that 500 years or more from now, someone looking to republish, or rewrite, or simply print and hand a copy of, say, a Hardy Boys novel should need to go get permission.

Helprin tries to equate this to property rights. I'll just quote him here, lest I be accused of twisting his words:

Once the state has dipped its enormous beak into the stream of your wealth and possessions they are allowed to flow from one generation to the next. Though they may be divided and diminished by inflation, imperfect investment, a proliferation of descendants and the government taking its share, they are not simply expropriated.

That is, unless you own a copyright. Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren.

Where he goes wrong is that copyright is not a physical object, or a business entity. If (for the sake of argument) you were to build a business on selling books, for right or wrong, you will eventually need new books to sell. A business that sells widgets must produce a new widget for each customer, and theoretically must periodically re-work and update their product. A house maintains "ownership", but if your heirs don't pay their property taxes or the government exercises its right of Eminent Domain, it will be taken away from them.

Copyright is not a physical object, nor a business entity. It is instead like the other system that operates, as Helprin quotes, "for limited Times". That other system is patent, and patent and copyright are very similar to each other.

The patent system is based upon a simple premise: that an invention is valuable, but that the value does not come solely from its maker, but from what the maker draws from society and the public domain. No invention is crafted simply by itself; the inventor has the input of previous inventors, be they of the wheel, or fire, or TNT, or smokeless gunpowder, or the process to extract propane from crude oil, or to extrude silicon into a form upon which a computer chip can be printed. In short, no matter what invention may be patented, it is not created alone, but rather built upon the building blocks of inventions that have passed previously to the public commons. It therefore makes sense that, after a certain period of time, any new invention should then be "paid back" to the commons, in order to encourage future inventors to improve upon it or add to it, or use it in a new and creative way that will itself be patentable and of improvement to society.

Helprin, of course, has a stake in this. As a writer, he wants to hold onto what he calls 'his", blind to the contribution and presence of the now-publicly-available work of others that is inevitably a part of his own. Philosophers and Doctorates of literature will tell you that there are only 6 archetypal stories, and that any more "complex' stories can always be reduced and analyzed to find that these six archetypes are merely inserted or overlaid upon each other.

Nowhere is this truer than in the "storytelling juggernaut" of the 20th century, the behemoth known as Disney. Take a look at the works of Disney, and what will you find? The vast majority of their stories are shamelessly culled from the public domain, appropriated, twisted a bit, and sold out - and yet the Disney corporation claims copyright over these, and even has been known to file frivolous lawsuits against other companies that produced material based on the same publicly-available stories. Sleeping Beauty, The Sword and the Stone, Pocahontas, pretty much the whole library of Disney works from the very beginning (Steamboat Willie's music comes from various then-public-domain sources such as the folk tune Turkey in the Straw).

Copyrighted and patented ideas are drawn from the public pool. It is in repayment of this debt to the public pool that they must necessarily be returned, so that others can improve and change them to bring new ideas to the next generation. That copyright has been extended to obscene extremes - at the behest of juggernauts like Disney that could afford to shamelessly bribe legislators - is a terrible loss to all of society.

On October 3, 1951, the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson came to bat in the bottom of the ninth with two out, and the Dodgers leading by two runs. He pulled Ralph Branca's inside fastball into the left-field stands, abruptly winning the game, the series, and the pennant with the Shot Heard 'Round the World.

In 1992, Don DeLillo wrote about this event, and focused not on Thomson or even Branca, but on Dodgers left fielder Andy Pafko, over whose head the ball flew. "Pafko at the Wall", which became the introduction to Underworld, zooms in on Pafko just as the rest of the world ceased to notice him:

He tomahawked the pitch and the ball had topspin and dipped into the lower deck and there is Pafko at the 315 sign looking straight up with his right arm braced at the wall and a spate of paper coming down.

This shifting of focus to the unnoticed or absent is Mr. Delillo's unmistakable signature. Another example is provided by the quiet climax of "Long Tall Sally", the next section of Underworld:

I look at the Lucky Strike logotype and I think target.
I watched men in moon suits bury drums of nuclear waste and I thought of the living rocks down there, the subterrane process, the half-life, the atoms that decay to half the original number. The most common isotope of uranium is bombarded with neutrons to produce plutonium that fissions, if we can generate a verb from the energy of splitting atoms....
But the bombs were not released. I remember Klara Sax talking about the men who flew the strategic bombers as we all stood listening in the long low structure of sectioned concrete. The missiles remained in the rotary launchers. The men came back and the cities were not destroyed.

Mr. DeLillo's characters are sometimes incomplete, but this makes them more rather than less realistic: they sense their own incompleteness, and search for some means to redress it. These quests, which drive the plots of his novels, are ill-defined and may change course in midstream, like the mutating assassination plot in Libra or the intermittently homicidal Jack Gladney in White Noise. No one is more aware of this uncertainty, of the tentativeness of identity, than Mr. Delillo himself. Consider the haunting prologue to Mao II:

The thousands stand and chant. Around them in the world, people ride escalators going up and sneak secret glances at the faces coming down. People dangle teabags over hot water in white cups. Cars run silently on the autobahns, streaks of painted light. People sit at desks and stare at office walls. They smell their shirts and drop them in the hamper. People bind themselves into numbered seats and fly across time zones and high cirrus and deep night, knowing there is something they've forgotten to do.
The future belongs to crowds.

There's been a lot of controversy - covered by both blogs and the mainstream media - regarding one Amanda Marcotte, comments she's made in the past, the Edwards campaign hiring her, and resulting media furor (additional link here).

Her site currently has a vitriolic suspended page notice up, as well.

Now, those who know me know that while Catholic, I'm about as lapsed as one can possibly be. I can't imagine myself going to a number of other faiths, due to problems with their central tenets or behavior, and my schism with the Catholic Church has a lot to do with some boneheaded stances they have on breaking "certain" laws, harboring "certain" lawbreakers, and general idiocy in a couple policies that directly contradict the Bible (example, celibate priesthood).

However, Marcotte's comments after being hired, probably-fired, "not fired", and then "resigning" from the Edwards campaign show a lot of what I find wrong with a general attitude I see often - mostly from the Left, but not always. The attitude is as follows: that their "right" to free speech means that no consequences should ever follow, no matter what they say, no matter how vitriolic or abusive the wording they choose.

Now, the "right to free speech" only protects you from government intervention. Yet time and again, the Left insists that not only does the "right to free speech" mean (but only for them, not those "evil right-wing haters" that they rail against) that they have the right to stand in the street and say something, but that they somehow - by virtue of "right to free speech" - deserve public airtime. So instead of a business decision by (example) radio stations to stop playing the Dixie Chicks following blatant anti-American ranting, it was "oh you're attacking the Dixie Chicks' right of free speech if you don't play their music on the radio." And the likewise with Marcotte, who's said some incredibly vile and nasty things, but thinks that it's a problem with her "right of free speech" if the Edwards campaign, notified of this and seeing a lot of people rightfully outraged by her hiring, fires her.

On the suspended page she put up, Marcotte says the following:

Because I had the nerve to be critical of the Catholic church's stance on birth control and abortion---nevermind their political opposition to distributing condoms to fight HIV, a stance that has helped usher thousands and possibly millions to their untimely deaths---I've gotten a number of letters from people who call themselves "Christians", as Bill Donohue also calls himself. Chrisitians are people who are supposed to follow the behavior and teachings of Jesus Christ. I mention this, because it seems to me that therefore, when Christians are contemplating an action that is morally questionable, it appears they should consult the Bible before acting.

Luckily, I happen to have a Bible laying around this house, because even though I'm not a Christian, I was an English major, and it is important to Know Your Ancient Mythologies if you are reading poetry. And I flipped to this passage that seems to have solid advice on what to do if you've got some asshole dragging a woman in front of an angry crowd and yelling, "SINNER!":

The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Granted, I don't think criticizing the church for policies that hurt families and even get people killed is a "sin", but my letter writers do.

Just for Marcotte's help - since she's so nicely hidden all the posts of her site, and is more than likely spending this time going through her archives and wiping out the "harmful" comments, much the same way she "moderates" her commentary section so that it resembles the left-wing echo chamber - I'll paste a few of the things she's said in the past here. Google Cache is wonderful for stuff like this:

link 1:
Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?
A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

link 2:link 3:At least 114 times referencing "Jeebus." While this is an ages-old Simpsons joke, her uses were far less humorous, instead meant to be deliberately derogatory towards Catholics/Christians.

Marcotte also goes out of her way to try to paint it as if it were the "right wing shills" alone who were offended by stuff like this: it turns out that liberal Christians were just as offended (second link).

Also interesting - and falling into my main problem with the Left and their idea of what "free speech" constitutes is that Marcotte vowed revenge even while some of the left tried to defend her, leading to the most insightful post I've seen yet on it:

But what I find most disturbing is the absolute unwillingness of people like Mr. Stoller to admit that people on the left can engage in hate speech and can needlessly offend both allies and potential ones just as easily as extremists on the right.

This is what I find amazing about comments from those I know who are farthest to the Left, as well as hardcore left-wing groups in general: while they get "offended" all the time, there is a blind spot that says that their comments can somehow never be "offensive", no matter what they say.

And these are the same people who will say the most godawful things, and insist that they have the "free speech" right to say them, and insist that their political allies have the right to shout "down with America", or parrot slogans for the destruction for Israel or the West, or any number of nasty things, while at the same time shouting that the voices that oppose them are "hate speech" that should not be "allowed."

Updated: Marcotte has a piece in the left-wing Salon.com today in which she repeats her talking points: innocent victim, attacked for being woman/feminist, Catholics are misogynists, right-wing noise machine, supposed right to free speech without anyone on the other side having the right to respond.

May I just say: I'm Catholic. I don't hate women, far from it. I don't think women are worth any less than men, though there have been a few times I've been concerned for lowering of physical standards in certain jobs where public safety (police, firefighting) is concerned, and I say this having had a friend back in College who was a volunteer firefighter and who probably could have hoisted me over her head one-handed.

Marcotte? She's a bigot. She's not a "feminist", she's a sexist who's no better than she claims those who were offended by her words are.

A while back, Ebert made some negative comments about the potential of video games:

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.

My first post on the whole thing was regarding Ebert's comments. Now I'm interested in writing about video game fans' almost insanely bitter response.

As most of you know, I have or have had at one point a pretty extensive collection of comic books and anime. I'm not aggressively collecting either right now, but that has more to do with time and money constraints than it does with "outgrowing" any of them. If you read my last post on the subject you know that I am not an avid gamer. However, I see some really interesting connections between the overlapping fan-base of the three: An intense desire for respectability.

Back before anime was what it is now, I recall a great hope that one day animation could be considered a serious art form in the US as it is in Japan. Some wanted anime itself to become respected in the US and others simply wanted American animation to stop having song-and-dance routines, but the desire was there for us to have what the Japanese do.

The same is true, to an extent, of the comic book world. A large number of the "serious comic book thinkers" hate the fact that comics still focus in large part on superheroes because superheroes will never be considered respectable or they wanted to make superheroes themselves respectable by making them more "dark" and "realistic" and essentially take all of the magic out of a magical genre. They also insisted that comic books be called graphic novels, something I don't disagree with because it is more accurate, but something that reaks of the pretension that the movement is infused with.

To an extent, I signed on with both of these movements. Ten years later, though, I somewhat regret doing so. The comic book movement has largely failed. Both DC and Marvel are stuck doing whatever they can to hold on in an industry that's in a lot of trouble. The anime movement, on the other hand, has partially succeeded. Anime is everywhere. It now has mass appeal and not just to younger people. And what does anime have to show for it, really? Not much.It's still largely geared towards the younger crowd and those that are now translating it are now watering it down for more mass appeal.

That's ultimately the rub. Looking back, I don't think a lot of the people clamoring for acceptability of alernative media of entertainment really wanted what it took for it to succeed: trading in what it made it so different and appealing for the fan-base to begin with. What they really wanted - and want - was social acceptability for their interests and themselves.

It's no secret that comic book collecters and anime fanatics are often very unappealing people on a personal level. But for all their concern about trying to score seriousness and intellectual heft for these sorts of things, the fact is that the intelligence level of the average anime viewer and comic book reader is considerably higher than the mean. Social skill level, however, is considerably lower. Popularity level... well I don't even need to go there.

To that extent, the push for acceptability of alternative cultural choices is merely a front on the wider battlefield of acceptability for those that partake in the alternative "geek" culture. These people have spent a lifetime being outcast by people neither as intelligent nor as accomplished as they (though the accomplishment of these people often wanes in the college years as their inability to integrate themselves with society at-large and follow its rules, as well as an overstimation of their intelligence that stunts the growth of an aggressive work-ethic). It's no accident that it's usually those that have the least going for them socially or economically are often the most vocal in the effort to mainstream their entertainment choices.

It's partially for that reason that these efforts are in vein. Those that have the social skills and admirable economic success are the least likely to wave the banner. Mainstream social acceptance of their culture isn't as important to them because they have found fulfillment elsewhere. Additionally, the sense of appropriateness that has allowed them to succeed in mainstream society also gives them a good idea of who is and is not receptive of their ideas. Negative personal experience also leads them to err on the side of caution in that regard.

The result is that victory often becomes only partial or even pyrrhic. Anime becomes mainstream, but it's a bastardized Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z that get the nod rather than Neon Genesis Evangelion or Escaflowne. New serials are brought over, but then altered in ways strongly disapproved by those that once lead the movements. The suits come in, the conventioneers are slung out.

A week or two back Eminem and his ex-wife Kim officially remarried:

Kim Mathers, 30, applied for a marriage license last week, and Detroit television station WXYZ showed an invitation to "join them as they exchange vows and the celebration of their new life together."

Eminem and Kim Mathers reconciled in late 2004, and he announced in December that the two would get back together.

I don't generally care about such things except for something funny on Rhapsody. Most of the time either all or none of the songs on a particular album are on Rhapsody. When a song or two are missing, it's usually because it's a cover or was performed with someone else or something.

Eminem has precisely one missing song. No one else sings on the song and there are no other obvious copyright issues. It's about a jilted husband's bloody murder-suicide revenge on his cheating wife:

Hey remember the time we went to Brian's party?
And you were like so drunk that you threw up all over Archie
That was funny wasn't it? That was funny wasn't it?
See it all makes sense, doesn't it?
You and your husband have a fight
One of you tries to grab a knife
And during the struggle he accidentally gets his Adams apple sliced
And while this is goin' on
His son just woke up and he just walks in
She panics and he gets his throat cut
So now they both dead and you slash your own throat
So now it's double homicide and suicide with no note
I should have known better when you started to act weird

The title of the song? "Kim", of course.

I stumbled across Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds--for Better and Worse on Amazon. It makes the not-unreasonable case that computers in the classroom and in the home do more damage to children's education than it does good, but according to some it is more than a little too strident in tone. No particular desire to read the book, but I found this review interesting and something to file away for a future post on how book-reading is given a pass for many of the same things that are supposed to be demonstrative of the trouble presented by other media.

Also, over and over computers are blamed for not only preventing learning, but physically damaging our children. For example, in Chapter 4 "Computers and Our Children's Health" she bemoans the physical damage computers do to our children, while longing for the good old days of book-learning. However, couldn't the same arguments be made that reading books physically damages our children? Our bodies and minds have evolved to make us efficient hunters-gatherers. In nature, we focus most of our sight and energy to distant objects, hunting with an intense focus to any subtle sounds, smells, and sights that might show food or an enemy. However, with the introduction of reading and books children spend time alone (social deprivation) in quiet (deafness) artificially lighted rooms (blindness) huddled over (weakness) a book crammed against their faces. That is why so many children have poor vision, bad hearing, and are fat and weak.

In the comment section of the Fireant Gazette post that inspired my Cable a la Carte post, the subject of parental control came up. One of the reasons given by the FCC for the a la carte plan was to allow parents not to get objectionable material to keep it away from their children (or their spouses or themselves, for that matter). Eric and I batted back and forth over the merits of this particular method of reasserting parental control, though in a friendly manner that was missing in my discussion with Nathan on the same subject.

The issue at hand is what responsibility an outside society (in this case, entertainment producers and distributors as well as the government) has in protecting our young from material that may adversely affect their dispositions. In other words, what can we do about the smut, the blood, and the commercialism and who can do it?

This is an issue that I am greatly conficted about. Much moreso as I consider the childen I hope to some day have and noticing, as I get older, that the biddies were not entirely wrong: Negative cultural influences do, in fact, affect society quite negatively. Violent video games do not compel someone to go out and kill people, but there is a case to be made that they do adversely affect our approach and reaction to the violence. Truth be told, though, I am personally more interested in the sex and materialism promoted by popular entertainment.

When we're young and impressionable, we take cues from the society in which we live. Our values are usually incorporated by what we consider normal and reasonable. It provides us with a frame of reference and a prysm by which we will see the outside world that can only be undone by personal experiences that contradict what we were presented in our younger years (or crass rebellion). That's why most children of Republicans grow up to be Republicans, most Democrats to be Democrats, most Christians to be Christians, and so on.

It is an unfortunate fact that from our youth onward an increasing amount of our interaction with society is done through television and radio. More unfortunate still is that the cues we pick up there then influence the society that we interact with when we're unplugged. It usurps our value system and before we know it, we've taken cues from completely staged events that are not accountable to honest human behavior at all. Anyone my age that can still say that we have compartmentalized popular entertainment and that it has had no bearing on our own lives and perceptions or the lives and perceptions of those around them hasn't been looking closely enough.

Entertainment smut didn't invent sex, but it has given us a familiarity with it unknown to previous generations (not altogether a bad thing, to be sure) and it has warped our view of it (a bad thing). Entertainment violence didn't invent violence, but again comes the familiarity (in this case probably a more bad thing than not) and given many of us a sense of detachment from it (a bad thing). The commercials on television and the pervasive nature of material goods (which are not altogether unimportant to a story in a visual medium such as television) didn't invent materialism, but it has given us limitless ways with which to be superficially materialistic (a bad thing).

So on one hand we have all of these things. On the other hand, there isn't a clear answer to me as to what we as a society can do about it. As individual parents and heads or co-heads of households, we can set our own parameters. Unfortunately, the mere act of doing so risks social alienation and casts boundaries between the kids and their peers, making them the exception and making it more difficult to integrate. If all the other kids are jumping off a bridge, your kid may be wise not to but he will forever be branded a coward. I believe that there is a trade-off to be made here, though I will probably fall more on the side of exceptionalism rather than integration than did my parents, who fell more on that side than did most other parents. (Of course, what I say I will do and how I react when my kid is crying cause he's left out of all conversations about the latest video game console are two different things. We'll see how that turns out.)

But ultimately, what other parents do will affect the environment in which our children will be raised. Therefore it is not enough, in my mind, to take the libertarian approach that no one should tell anyone else what to watch or listen to. This stuff matters! On the other hand, using the government to compell people to avoid certain things and limiting their access to said things is censorship. I don't believe censorship to be uniformly evil, but I do believe it to be unhealthy for a society and unless lines are clearly drawn before hand a difficult ball to stop rolling.

For the most part, that line has been drawn in two places: government censorship and advertiser accountability.

The first place is with broadcast entertainment, where it's been decided that the government (the FCC, in this case) can regulate what is and is not shown on the airwaves. The idea behind this is that the airwaves belong to the public and therefore the public, through its elected representatives, can decide what is and is not appropriate for it. Though I'm uncertain to the degree that I buy this logic, I do agree with the result. The broadcast market is inherently limited because there are only so many frequencies that can be assigned. Since somebody has to make those decisions, the government is the most obvious arbiter when it comes to matters of decency and to matters of corporate consolidation of media.

That logic does not, however, hold true for private entertainment venues including movie theaters, private performance venues, and to cable television and satellite (TV and radio). Because these are forms of entertainment in which the customer actively paid money for the entertainment, it is presumed that he or she is responsible for what they see and hear. If you don't want to see or hear it, some are quick to point out, don't buy it. However, cable and satellite television are subject to a different form of expression-limitation in the form of advertisers. The edgier a show gets, the more likely advertisers are to shy away from it and the less money they are likely to get. This form of self-policing is the only thing that separates regular cable from premium cable. Premium cable, like satellite radio and often (though not always) theaters and private performance venues, is only limited by whether or not they can bring in enough people to make money. Their only concerns are picketers and boycotters, and they are particularly vulnerable to neither and therefore not accountable to the public at large, provided they aren't doing anything illegal.

The FCC does not currently have the power to regulate the content of cable and satellite, though there have been noises made recently to give the FCC that power.

That's where I start getting awfully skittish.

I'm more conservative about what should be available for the consumption of minors compared to what I personally prefer to indulge in. I am an adult and believe that I am capable, for the most part, of determining what is and is not appropriate for me. Whatever limitations I may have, I put more faith in my own judgment than that of the government. I like edgier programming that doesn't pull punches. I have a particular distaste for gratuitous sex and violence, so I don't like sex and violence for the sake of sex and violence. But a lot of the stuff I like has sex and violence in it. Sometimes it's necessary and sometimes I wish it weren't there, but if people looking for that sort of thing contribute to a show's success (and therefore its continued production) then so be it.

So the problem is how do we try to restrict access to minors while allowing adults freedom of entertainment choice? It's a question with no clear answer, in my view. In some ways I think I've resigned myself to the fact that a lot of kids will continually be exposed to material that warps their minds because most parents do not monitor what their kids are watching, listening to, or playing. There is, unfortunately, not a whole lot that can be done about that without limiting options for consenting adults. However, I do believe that we ought to give concerned adults every possible paddle with which to swim upstream against the prevailing tides (to mix my metaphors).

A long while back I wrote about ClearPlay, a company in Utah that edits movies, puts them on take, and sends back a cleaner version to their customers. A lot of people apparently disagree because it endorses parental laziness and/or hinders the artistic integrity of the original work (Ironically, many of the same people are big boosters of the "Fair Use Act" a concept which allows people to do what they want with artistic works that they purchase, provided they don't start giving it away.), but I think it's pretty silly to prohibit parents from taking a more active role in shaping their children -- even if I don't agree with the methods employed (I would never use ClearPlay).

I am also a big supporter of satellite companies and their attempts to help parents set guidelines for what will and will not come through on their sets. DirecTV has Locks & Limits and DISH Network has Adult Guard, both of which can not only cut off certain channels but all shows above a certain rating (or below, depending on how you look at it). There is also the good ole V-Chip, which can block television coming from any direction (though it's not nearly as easy to use as the satellite options are).

The unfortunate thing, though, is that most of these methods are not really utilized. The V-Chip is something of a relic and it never really took off even among those trained how to do it. Though it only took a couple minutes to talk someone through OmniStar's parental control system, I got as many calls from people that accidentally turned it on as I did parents actually wanting to use it. Though I'd like to think that's just cause they figured it out, I doubt it.

The unfortunate reality is that cleaner television is something most parents say they really want, but a much smaller amount are willing to take even smaller steps towards that end. And ultimately I don't think a government can do parents' jobs for them. And unfortunately that means things are unlikely to change any time soon.

The FCC has made waves by strongly suggesting that cable companies offer a la carte packages. On first reading this, I was quite glad. On further reflection, however, I have serious doubts as to the viability of this plan and the impact that it will have on consumers.

The first question, which hasn't been answered (and that itself may answer the question) is "What about satellite?"

Whenever I read cable, I also read satellite beside it in my mind because I have yet to actually be a regular cable company customer. The closest that I've come is the crappy cable apartment complexes have provided me. On the other hand, my folks have had satellite for some time, I've answered phones for a satellite company, and when and if the time comes for premium television, I'm going with the dish. So I may go back and forth between the two in this post.

When you go to a fast-food restaurant, most give you access to the fountains so you can refill your cup as many times as you would like. A person that refills his 20oz cup four times pays the same as one who takes his cup to go. This is, to be technically unfair. The one-cupper can walk away with the feeling like he paid for five cups of cola that he didn't drink.

But don't expect that structure to change any time soon. Truth be told, the restaurants pay a fraction of the $1.39 the customers do per ounce. The price difference between 20oz and 120oz is negligable enough that giving people the ability to refill is worth more important than the theoretical lost revenue involved. The key is not how much they spend on cola, but getting them into the restaurant to begin with. 100oz of cola isn't nearly as bad as the customer who goes to the next place over so he doesn't have to worry about saving his drink. Restaurants have such high fixed costs that often the most important thing is just to get people in there, not worry about making a profit for every ounce of cola consumed.

The point of the above paragraph is that different places use different models, and though they may seem counterintuitive at points, they are often the best option all-around. If it weren't, some competitor somewhere would likely offer a different model to make its customers happier. Cable companies don't have other cable companies to compete with, but they do have satellite companies to compete with (and the sats compete against one another) and they all follow the same model because it makes the most sense for them.

For them. But does it make the most sense for us?

To be honest, I really don't know. But I am extremely reluctant to push them into a business model they are uncomfortable with cause I think it will yield me better prices. The more I think about it, the less sure I am that it will. In fact, I'm inclined to believe that it in the end it will cost most people more.

As with the cola fountain, cable and satellite companies have very high fixed costs and low marginal costs. The fast food place spends very little on the coke and lots on the real estate, electricity, and so on. All cable companies have to do to give people more channels is decline to block the signal (and presumably pay the extra channels a fraction of what they get). But the problem is that they have to maintain the infrastructure which is costing them money whether it's used or not. There is an incentive, then, to use as much of it as possible by selling as many channels as possible.

It's not about selling people what they don't need. It's about efficiency.

I think that a lot of people have tricked themselves into believing that since they pay $40 a month for 70 channels, they will be able to pay $25 a month for 40. From the cable company's standpoint, however, they have to pay for the lines whether they have 40 channels or 70. It's not a matter of dividing the number of channels per dollar spent. It's more like buying 15 channels and getting the other 55 for free. I cannot imagine a la carte channels going for less than $2-3 a pop. The satellite company that I used to work for actually did offer a couple of channels a la carte... for the same price as it would take to upgrade from the 90-channel plan to the 120-plan. Thirty channels or one... same price. Interestingly, we were discouraged from mentioning the a la carte channels to customers that didn't explicitly ask for them. They preferred to sell them in a bundle with 25 or so other channels for $7-12 rather than a single channel for $2.95. To stress: it was a better deal for the company to give 25 channels at at <$.50 than set up a single channel for six times that.)

At $2-3 a pop, you don't even get 20 channels before you're paying as much as you presently pay for 70. That's not even accounting for a basic connection cost. Some people may benefit from this. One of my former roommates wanted cable solely so he could watch professional wrestling. Since he only wanted TNN/Spike, he would have benefitted. According to an informal Wall Street Journal poll, nearly a quarter say they only want 10 or fewer channels. I expect that most of them are not including local channels in that total (I don't recall a single customer call I took for the satellite company with someone that had the option of getting local channels but chose the rabbit ears to save money. I recall many complaining that they didn't have the option to forego the rabbit ears and pay more to get local channels. Presumably the local channels would not be as expensive as the cable ones cause they would be bundled as satellite did with local channels... oh wait, I forgot, bundling is bad). Half would be between 10-24, which sounds more reasonable, except that they would be paying roughly the same that they do now. Even those that would benefit, however, would be costing the company money and one doubts that those costs won't be passed right back to the customers (both those wanting more channels and less).

Of course, saving the customers money isn't the only reason for this. In fact, it's not even listed as the primary one. The primary reason is supposed to be to give families more choice over what goes in to their homes. It's not a bad goal, actually. However, it's usually possible to get certain channels and shows blocked. The company I used to work for had a host of features with which you could turn your big, bad satellite television into a rated-G playground if that's what you wanted to do (without additional cost). If cutting channels out of the lineup is the goal, it's not that difficult to do. Chances are it's one of the 55 free channels and you're not paying for it anyway.

Now cable TV is granted something of a monopoly due to reasons logistical, and as such government does have some right to make demands of them. However, I believe the above demand is a mistake for both company and consumer alike. I am much more amenable to the idea of forcing cable companies to offer different kinds of packages rather than just a different sum of channels. I could even be convinced in requiring that consumers be allowed to pick out which channels to get (say 50 picked channels or a 70 channel package). Maybe.

In sum, this strikes me as yet another example of consumers (and government) telling an industry "You don't have to do things the way you do them" or "you don't have to charge so much" or whatever with no risk to their own financial safety. It's easy to be a cavalier economist when you don't have to live with the consequences of a poor decision.

What makes a good band name?

There are a number of factors involved, in my estimation. I tend to prefer band names that are plural (Jayhawks, for instance) but others disagree. I think that band names should avoid being too long ("And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead", for instance, is too long). I would say no more than three words, though some exceptions may apply.

But it's not long names I am interested in talking about today, it's short ones. Short and generic ones. Ones you can't google. It may be the computer nerd in me that says as much, but bands ought to increasingly consider the googlability of a band's name.

A classic example would be the band Live. The good news for that name, I guess, is that even during the heyday of Napster it was difficult to find their music. They're big enough that if you put "live band" in google you will find some information, but that would be pretty difficult to pull off these days.

Recently I've become interested in a couple of bands that it is rather difficult to get information on. The first is an pot-country band out of Sacramento named Jackpot. Not only are there a couple bands out there named Jackpot, but like Live it's littered with completely irrelevent links. If I didn't already know that they're from Sacramento, I never would have been able to find their website. Another band is Missouri alt-country outfit Hadacol, who found a long time ago on eMusic. I was wondering if they had new stuff, but because they named themselves after an established product, I really have no way of finding out.

My best friend was in a band called The Drinks, which was doubly bad. They were a quite talented group, but who is going to stop at a bar when all it says on the marquee is "Tonight... The Drinks"... do they even know it's a band? Hadacol and Jackpot would run into the same problem, the former being a type of drink and the latter possibly implying gambling night or something.

So not only are these names bland, but they're quite impractical.

So to anyone naming a band: don't give your band a lame name.

Next lesson: Don't have a lame website. Jackpot really needs a new one. Complain, complain...

I've been getting a resurgence of google queries involving Kenny Chesney and homosexuality again. I thought it odd till I found out that things weren't going well for Connecticut's country music export and his now estranged wife, Renee Zellweger.

On a side note, looking for the link where I found out something about Connecticut Kenny that explains a lot. The general assumption - on my part, at least - was that he was merely a tool of the Nashville machine. Turns out that he went to college and got a degree of advertising. I guess I didn't give him enough credit on intelligence and gave him too much credit in intention.

Carry on...