Censorship? NO!

When, oh when will people learn that censorship is rarely - if ever - the answer?

Yes, I know that the whole Winterval thing was supposedly a big commercial exercise gone badly wrong, but the Political Correctness brigade have really got a lot to answer for. Is it any wonder we live in a nanny state when no-one can air their opinions or write conversations which might cause offence?

I will grudgingly accept that arbitrarily injected profanity can cause offence - and so arguably should be censored for main-stream broadcast. But, for goodness sake! Fairytale of New York is part of the Christmas furniture .. along with Jona Lewie, Wizzard and Slade. Changing or blanking the words now is a real horse-bolted-door-close thing. Surely, everyone's heard it by now? Even if they had not - the language is in context. This petty PC censorship is like putting a bra on the Venus de Milo. The song is an argument between two lovers - the words reflect the passion and heartache involved.

What're they gonna do next? Will tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol get disability benefit? Perhaps he shouldn't be disabled at all! What? That'd change the story? Who cares - as long as no-one's offended? Wrong! Wrong I tell you!

Right. I will now relax and look forward to Christmas - having got that out of my system. More port and stilton required, methinks.

A Work of Genius

I am humbled. Ronnie Hazlehurst was a popular composer of TV music, I know. What I've just read though has brought a huge grin to my face.

The theme tune to "Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em" spells out the title in morse code. No, really. A rumour was referred to in his obituary. Some bod (Jim) at BBC 6 Music has decoded it to prove it.

Now I know the theme to Inspector Morse did the same thing. But I reckon it's worth celebrating all the same.

Silly: probably. Fun: yes. Unique: well, no. Genius: definitely.

Rest in peace, Ronnie.

Fun with USB Turntables

So .. what've I been up to?

Well, recently I've been mostly ... re-discovering^† my dusty old LPs. Having suffered enjoyed another birthday, I am now the proud owner of a USB turn-table^†. And jolly fun it is, too.

One of the entertaining fringe benefits to this is introducing the children to records. Now I'm not a DJ .. and no-one^† I come into contact with these days is either. My children aren't (quite) old enough to frequent clubs yet so they haven't really seen good ol' vinyl in action. My four-year-old^† is particularly amused by them.

"So .. how do they work?"

"What: you put the needle on it and it makes sound?"

Ho, ho, yes! I'm reminded of a conversation years ago when my eldest was about 2. We saw the shattered remains of a 7" single in the gutter. She pointed and said "CD-ROM^†, daddy!"

The turn-table^† ships with - and recommends - Audacity to do the actual recording and encoding. As I already have the latest version installed, this suits me down to the ground. The kids regularly play about recording themselves and speeding it up or adding weird effects. They make up skits and songs and all sorts. My hard-disk is filling up rapidly.

Speaking of which, I have another on-going^† project. Tagging MP3s. I have ammassed some 3300-odd^† tracks on my jukebox at home - from ripped CDs etc.. It makes more sense to have them in one place and in a format I can take anywhere. It also leaves me the legacy of tagging them all. Over 2000 were unlabelled.

In steps aTunes. A delightful clone of iTunes .. without the DRM nonsense.

So now I'm listening to "Up the Junction" .. ah, memories.

^† in reaction to the recent report that the English language is losing the hypen, I have made a concious effort to sprinkle this post with them. I'm like that; draw your own conclusions.

Music to my Ears

It appears that the powers that be have rejected requests to extend music copyright to 70 years. The likes of Roger Daltrey and Sir Harry Webb (AKA Cliff Richard) have campaigned for the current 50 years to be reviewed.

I have to say I'm glad the copyright hasn't been extended. Successful musicians make an awful lot of money. Royalties are really money for old rope. Yes, the creators deserve credit and money - it is their livelihood after all. Not forever, though. After 50 years, any piece of music has lost its novelty. Most pieces which have remained popular this long have been rehashed and used as inspiration for other pieces by then. In short, the creativity has been paid for.

It's easy for me to say, sure. I'm a musician who'll never make any money out of it. I don't exepect to still be receiving credit for software I've written in 50 years' time. Why should musicians expect this?

The real sting here (no pun intended) is that these people really don't need any more money. Successful pop stars can earn a shocking amount of money if they're clever enough. Can't they get a pension like everybody else?

The listening government?


Subject: Government response to petition 'privatecopy'
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:21:43 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: me
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
From: "10 Downing Street" <team@petitions.pm.gov.uk>

You recently signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to "create a new exception to copyright law that gives individuals the right to create a private copy of copyrighted materials for their own personal use, including back-ups, archiving and shifting format."

The Prime Minister's Office has responded to that petition and you can view it here: http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page10776.asp

Prime Minister's Office

Petition info: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/privatecopy/