News Flash!!!!!

by Bryan

For Immediate Distribution:

Puerto Rico is a United States Territory

Puerto Ricans do not immigrate to the United States; they are citizens of the United States.

Being a Puerto Rican is the same as being a New Yorker, or a Floridian, even if you don’t speak English.

It is unbelievable that a territory that is featured on the new US quarters for 2009, and whose people have been citizens of the US since 1917, still has to be identified as being part of the country. They had a Presidential primary last year, for crying out loud.

Update: That wingnuts in Tennessee don’t know about the status of Puerto Ricans is sad, but that the Washington Post has to issue a correction for an editorial shows the level of ignorance in the “Village”.

10 comments

1 Comrade Kevin { 05.27.09 at 8:26 pm }: You’re using logic against the illogical, friend.

Comrade Kevin´s last blog post..Beyond Lock ‘Em Up and Throw Away the Key
2 Kryten42 { 05.27.09 at 8:52 pm }: 😆 OK… That was funny! 😉 😀
3 SSG { 05.27.09 at 9:10 pm }: And it’s a very nice looking quarter, too. 😉
4 Bryan { 05.27.09 at 9:29 pm }: It is so frustrating how many Americans don’t know about the territories, or the status of the people who live there.

All of the Spanish linguists I knew were Puerto Ricans because you had to be a native born US citizen to get the necessary clearance.
5 Kryten42 { 05.27.09 at 10:44 pm }: OT: I wanted to share this and get your opinion Bryan, and there’s no suitable thread at the moment. 🙂

I think it would be a safe assumption on my part that the music & movie industries are the geediest on the planet and would do (and do do) anything to raise revenues and increase profits. Correct?

If that’s a given… then this must surely prove the exec’s are the dumbest bunch of ignorant morons to ever run anything bigger than a hot dog stand!

The RIAA Has Got to Stop – by John C. Dvorak

According to a study done by the BBI Norwegian School of Management, those who freely download music from file-sharing sites and elsewhere buy ten times more music (yes, they actually pay for it) than people who do not participate in file-sharing systems. In fact, the figure that the report cites for the amount spent by the file-sharing subculture is so high that the record industry doesn’t believe it. Well, I sure do, mainly because of an observation I made back in the late 1990s. And I’ve harped on this observation ever since. This research just confirms my suspicions.

The simple fact is that during the Napster era—a period in which there was no significant musical movement that would trigger any excitement in the business—CD sales increased. As Napster got bigger, sales continued to increase. As Napster was shut down, you could see CD sales decline, and once they put the lid on open file-sharing, the industry went into a tailspin. I never believed this to be a coincidence.

The RIAA and the music industry in general blamed the tailspin on Napster and piracy, harping on the concept of “stealing.” The overlooked fact in all this was that with the advent of national radio syndicates and the niche programming that began to flourish in the ’90s, people were not easily introduced to new music. There were fewer ways to discover bands and music you liked so that you could go buy those CDs in the first place. This coincided with the demise of the disc jockey (a music nut who kept tabs on trends). The record industry was essentially doomed at this moment of change.

With its ability to show and share collections of music, Napster became the ersatz virtual DJ, letting you self-select bands and singers who appealed to your individual taste. You did this by looking at the collections of like-minded individuals using the system. And in many ways, except for the downloading time, it was more efficient than radio since you didn’t have to slog through commercials and could skip a track not to your liking.

No wonder CD sales increased and business was on the upswing. But apparently not a single person working at the decision-making levels of the recording industry understood the sociology or the mechanism—and that’s still the case.

Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right

Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new study by the BI Norwegian School of Management. Researchers examined the music downloading habits of more than 1,900 Internet users over the age of 15, and found that illegal music connoisseurs are significantly more likely to purchase music than the average, non-P2P-loving user.

Unsurprisingly, BI found that those between 15 and 20 are more likely to buy music via paid download than on a physical CD, though most still purchased at least one CD in the last six months. However, when it comes to P2P, it seems that those who wave the pirate flag are the most click-happy on services like the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3. BI said that those who said they download illegal music for “free” bought ten times as much legal music as those who never download music illegally. “The most surprising is that the proportion of paid download is so high,” the Google-translated Audun Molde from the Norwegian School of Management told Aftenposten.

So… I don’t get it. How can a bunch of greedy capitalists be so dumb that they want to kill the golden goose? Amazing.

And PS. I am one of those who downloaded music for *free*, then deleted the garbage (which the industry produces so much of) and mostly bought the ones I liked online, or sometimes a CD (if there were enough good tracks to warrant it).

I suspect that what the real problem they have is allowing people to have ‘freedom of choice’. With a CD, you have to pay for a whole lot of music you might not like to get one or two you do like. The online model means you only buy what you actually like. So it would mean that all those *manufactured no-talent artists* won’t be very popular at all. 😉 It also means that many artists will not need the companies, who after all treat the artists like crap for the most part, and will produce their own music to sell directly online. Of course, for most of these artists who just want to make music and not worry about the business side, if they could trust the greedy companies to look after them, they would neither need nor want to do *their own thing* online. But that would be a very novel concept for the music industry, speaking from personal experience long ago.

And that, I suspect, is what the companies are REALLY afraid of! That the artists will become independent and people will buy direct and cut out the greedy and useless middle men. 🙂 It’s already happening now. I’ve helped a couple artists produce online, and they are going gangbusters. 🙂

Next, it will be movie production. 😉 Mark my words. 🙂
6 Bryan { 05.27.09 at 11:41 pm }: I have to agree with Dvorak [something I rarely do] is that the core of the problem for labels was the media conglomeration that eliminated the diverse radio play. One of the rarest things around is a live DJ who actually selects his/her own music and plays what they like. You have to go to public stations to find that anymore, because the conglomerates have a corporate playlist that is programmed from a central location and sent out to stations all over.

If you listen to a “local” radio station almost anywhere in the US you will hear the same tired songs played multiple times. New artists have no access to radio play.

The ‘Net is like the old record stores, where you could listen to records before you bought them. You would only be buying music you liked.

Another problem was the constant cost of CDs. Everything else has come down in price but CDs and DVDs didn’t. Tech savvy people know they are dirt cheap to make, but the price never drops. The music buyers now know that their favorite artists are getting screwed over by record labels, so the only people making money are the conglomerates, who, for the most part, have no real connection to the music business, they are corporations with divisions that make money.

For years most people have understood that RIAA lawsuits were a braindead idea – you don’t attack your customers and then expect them to buy your products. I don’t download music, I still buy CDs, but I buy them from bands at concerts or clubs if I liked what I heard. The money I spend on music, goes to the artists, not to a conglomerate.

At the moment the only place you can buy CDs locally is at MalWart, and it will never happen. I occasionally will buy a CD at an online site, but normally it is based on a recommendation of someone, and after listening to them.

The Recording Industry is destroying themselves, and they deserve to die. It has been a very long time since they did anything that justified their existence. Artists need to move towards independence as record companies are no longer the marketing force they once were.

Until the big media conglomerates [there are a half dozen in the US] are broken up, the entertainment business is going to suck.
7 Badtux { 05.28.09 at 12:14 am }: Oh come now, Bryan. Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that you don’t need a passport to visit New Mexico, and Hawaii is a state. Puh-LEEZE, this is America, where we don’t have to know steenkin’ geography ’cause, like, we’re Americans and don’t have to!

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Badtux´s last blog post..Well, well, well…
8 Bryan { 05.28.09 at 12:36 am }: I really have a hard time dealing with the ignorance of Americans. I live in a state where the state government is blissfully unaware that there are two time zones, and seem to forget that Cuba is not a county.
9 jams O\\\'Donnell { 05.28.09 at 6:59 am }: Hmm even I knew that (but then I was an Immigration Officer working at Heathrow for several years… until I got sick of teh job that is). Was there a specific case of ignorance that spurred you to post this Bryan?

jams O\\\’Donnell´s last blog post..A Black Tommy at the Somme
10 Bryan { 05.28.09 at 9:57 am }: It was culmination of media and blogs talking about her “immigrant parents”. It’s not like I’m jumping on people for not knowing about Guam.

I guess it is the annoyance that smug people don’t make an effort to check their facts, especially people who get paid a good deal of money to do exactly that – to inform people.