Roberto Marchioro

Berlusconi: suppletive importanti, daranno segnale su governo

Silvio Berlusconi, a Ischia per sponsorizzare Amedeo Laboccetta, candidato del centrodestra alle suppletive Napoli-Ischia, ritiene che le elezioni in questione daranno “un segnale” di consenso all’operato del governo e della maggioranza e quindi uno sprone ad andare avanti su quella strada. “Queste elezioni sono un fatto importante – ha detto il premier ai giornalisti a Ischia – perch? daranno un segnale. Spero che da questo collegio venga la conferma che stiamo facendo bene e che dobbiamo andare avanti come stiamo facendo, realizzando tutte le riforme che abbiamo presentato agli elettori nel 2001″.

CAMERA DEI DEPUTATI – ELEZIONI SUPPLETIVE 24-25 ottobre 2004
Collegio	Oggi	Nel 2001
Campania 1	Centrosinistra	Centrodestra
Lombardia 3	Centrosinistra	Centrodestra (Lega)
Toscana 4	Centrosinistra	Centrosinistra
Toscana 6	Centrosinistra	Centrosinistra
Liguria 10	Centrosinistra	Centrodestra
Puglia 11	Centrosinistra	Centrosinistra
Emilia Romagna 30	Centrosinistra	Centrosinistra
Totale:	Nel 2004	Nel 2001
Centrosinistra	7 seggi	4 seggi
Centrodestra	0 seggi	3 seggi

In Italia ? aumentata la pressione fiscale. Batosta per i lavoratori dipendenti
GIANNI DEL VECCHIO

I cittadini italiani sono quelli fra i pi? “spremuti” del mondo da parte dell’Erario. In Italia infatti la pressione fiscale complessiva non accenna a diminuire ma anzi aumenta nel 2003 rispetto all’anno precedente. E non solo. E’ il lavoro ad essere sempre pi? tartassato. Nel nostro paese, l’imposizione sui redditi da lavoro subordinato ? relativamente alta, soprattutto se paragonata a quella degli altri maggiori paesi europei. Aumenta poi anche l’incidenza delle imposte locali, a causa della marcata tendenza verso la diminuzione dei trasferimenti da parte del governo centrale. Queste in sintesi le evidenze che riguardano l’Italia nell’ultimo rapporto pubblicato dall’Ocse, “Revenue Statistics”, incentrato sulla descrizione dell’entit? e della composizione delle entrate fiscali nei paesi dell’organizzazione. Nel dettaglio, in Italia l’aumento delle entrate totali da tasse ? stato nel 2003 dello 0,8 per cento, passando dal 42,6 al 43,4 per cento. Una percentuale maggiore sia della media dei paesi europei (40,6 per cento) che dei paesi Ocse (36,3 per cento). Da segnalare poi anche la progressione storica del peso del fisco nella penisola. L’Italia ? uno dei paesi che, dal 1965 ad oggi, ha mostrato un incremento senza interruzioni della pressione fiscale, sebbene con aumenti di ritmo diverso: da sottolineare che il maggior balzo si ? registrato dal 1975 all’1985, con un peso del fisco passato dal 26,1 al 34,4 per cento pari oltre a otto punti percentuali, e nel decennio 1985-1995, con una pressione fiscale salita dal 34,4 al 41,2 per cento, pari a quasi sette punti percentuali.

Per quanto riguarda invece la tassazione sul reddito da lavoro, il nostro paese ? ai primi posti per carico fiscale. L’aliquota implicita risulta infatti del 41,6 per cento nel 2001, inferiore solo a quella francese (43,3) e superiore a quella di Germania (39,9) e Gran Bretagna (25,8), contro una media dell’Europa a 15 del 37 per cento. Non solo, l’incremento nel periodo 1995-2001 per la penisola risulta del 3,8 per cento contro lo 0,1 per la Francia e contro una media Ue addirittura in negativo (- 0,5 per cento).

Il rapporto poi sottolinea l’aumento dell’imposizione locale: il 16,4 per cento del totale contro il 2,85 del 1985. Una decentralizzazione fiscale dovuta al taglio dei trasferimenti centrali agli enti locali e giudicata non positiva, potendosi facilmente tradurre in una maggiore disparit? interregionale in materia di servizi.

Infine, se si va a spulciare la classifica dell’incidenza dei tributi sul pil nazionale di tutti i paesi Ocse, balzano agli occhi due differenti modelli di politica fiscale: quello scandinavo e quello anglosasssone. I primi posti della graduatoria sono infatti occupati da Svezia (prima con il 50,8 per cento di imposizione), Danimarca (seconda con il 49), Finlandia (quarta con il 44,9) e Norvegia (sesta con il 43,9). Tutti paesi in cui per? ad una forte pressione dell’Erario corrisponde un sistema del welfare molto sviluppato e estremamente protettivo nei confronti dei cittadini. Invece agli ultimi posti figurano tutti i paesi anglosassoni: Gran Bretagna (35,3 per cento), Australia (31,5), Irlanda (30) e Usa (25,4). Paesi accomunati invece da una cultura liberale e liberista, che prevede una scarsa presenza dello stato sia in positivo (bassa imposizione) che in negativo ( scarso grado di assistenza e previdenza).

Tratto da “Il Manifesto” di gioved? 21 ottobre 2004

Per quanto le major piangano lacrime di coccodrillo contro il P2P, risulta che le vendite siano in aumento.

Enjoy the net

CD shipments surge after lean years
By John Borland

CD shipments are surging this year, but not enough to erase previous years’ declines in the music business, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

The record industry’s trade group said the value of shipments of all music at the mid-point of 2004 had climbed nearly 4 percent compared to the previous year. The industry has shipped 10 percent more CDs to retail outlets than last year, showing a strong increase in demand.

But that growth does not mean that the industry can let up in its years-long legal attacks on file-swapping and other digital copying, executives said.

“We are rising out of a deep hole and still have a long way to go,” said RIAA Chief Executive Officer Mitch Bainwol. “Piracy, both online and on the street, continues to hit the music community hard, and thousands have lost their jobs because of it.”

The statistics are likely fuel new rounds of speculation about the effect of Internet swapping–and new digital download sales–on the music business.

The music industry’s balance sheets have been hard hit over the past four years, with steep, consecutive year-over-year declines in sales. The trends have led to widespread layoffs, consolidation, and shrinking budgets for development of new acts.

Record executives have placed much of the blame at the feet of Napster, Kazaa and other file-swapping networks, where people have downloaded billions of MP3s without paying for them.

Some studies have said these networks have had little actual affect on sales, however. Record industry critics have noted that the economic recession, as well as growing competition for home entertainment budgets from DVDs and video games, likely helped contribute to the falling music sales.

What does seem to be evident in the RIAA’s mid-year figures are changing patterns in music consumption, however. Some analysts have predicted that file-trading could lead people to sample albums more frequently before buying, diverting some sales from the heavily marketed superstars to lesser-known acts.

The RIAA said top-selling albums–often the most widely available on file-trading networks–are still selling relatively fewer units than at the peak of 2001.

The top 50 albums shipped 16.7 percent fewer copies than in 2001, and the top 100 albums shipped 19.7 percent less than in that top year, the group’s figures showed.

The RIAA’s figures also reported sales of nearly 59 million digital singles from outlets such as Apple Computer’s iTunes during the first 6 months of 2004.

da CNET Networks

Relatrice alla Camera del decreto poi convertito in legge, Gabriella Carlucci ora chiede che un provvedimento tutto nuovo dedicato alle modifiche anticarcere

Aveva preso un impegno, quello di fare tutto ci? che era in proprio potere per arrivare al pi? presto alle modifiche della Legge Urbani, modifiche “anticarcere” di cui lo stesso ministro Giuliano Urbani da tempo non parla pi?. Vista la situazione di stallo, a qualche mese di distanza, ora Gabriella Carlucci ? tornata all’attacco.

In una nota diffusa ieri alla stampa, il deputato di Forza Italia, responsabile del dipartimento Spettacoli del suo partito, ha nuovamente stimolato un’azione del governo affinch? si arrivi a cancellare le norme pi? contestate, cancellazione impantanata in commissione al Senato. Come si ricorder? le disposizioni pi? severe furono il frutto di una fretta normatrice non esente da clamorose sviste.

Carlucci ha dunque rilanciato l’idea proposta nei giorni scorsi dal senatore dei Verdi Fiorello Cortiana, presidente dell’Intergruppo bicamerale per l’Innovazione tecnologica, quella di stralciare le norme sulla pirateria e produrre un provvedimento autonomo rispetto a quello bloccato al Senato. Un provvedimento che contenga tutte le modifiche necessarie per rimediare ai guasti che, a detta pressoch? di tutti, non ultimo lo stesso Urbani, la legge che porta il nome del titolare dei Beni culturali ha introdotto.

“La mia iniziativa – ha spiegato Carlucci – si propone di ripensare le norme relative alla pirateria perch? ? impensabile una condanna di quattro anni di reclusione per un ragazzo che scarica una sola canzone da Internet”. Una visione condivisa da Urbani che nelle sue ultime esternazioni in materia proponeva di chiudere un occhio sui giovani impenitenti.

“Il nostro unico scopo – ha chiarito la parlamentare forzista – ? quello di perseguire seriamente tutte le principali associazioni del crimine che attraverso la pirateria su vasta scala traggono enormi profitti, sfruttano l’immigrazione clandestina e uccidono il settore discografico e cinematografico”.

Tratto da Punto Informatico

Ho letto con un certo nervosismo la risposta da una signora, di professione “insegnante” a colei che sosteneva che le mansioni dei lavoratori della scuola fossero privilegiate. Mi ha sorpreso l?ipocrisia di costei nel sostenere il contrario. Evidentemente la nostra “insegnante” non si ? mai alzata alle 5 del mattino per andare a lavorare su un assordante telaio in fabbrica, per 8 ore al giorno, per 360 giorni l?anno, esclusi 15 giorni di ferie e le feste comandate, per una paga ben pi? misera di quella che percepisce la suddetta “insegnante”.

Le signore che conosce la scrivente di professione “insegnanti”, oltre a godersi decine di giorni di ferie, d?estate, a Natale e a Pasqua, fra un?ora e l?altra di lezione, vanno a farsi la spesa, a chiacchierare nel negozio dell?amica, e magari trovano persino il tempo per coltivare relazioni extraconiugali.

f. gr.

Tratto dalle Lettere al Direttore de “Il Giornale di Vicenza” di Mercoled? 20 ottobre 2004

Earlier this week Register San Francisco bureau chief Andrew Orlowski spoke at the In the City convention in the UK, telling the cream of the music industry it’s never had it so good, that it’s been swindled by the technologists, and that it should dump DRM and embrace freedom. As, to our knowledge, he got out alive, we think it’s possible they listened just a little. What follows is the text of his speech. -Editors

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You’re very lucky people.

Like the sex industry, you’re in a business where demand is guaranteed. A lot of other people wish they had your problems. What a stroke of good fortune!

Think about it – you’re in a happier situation than the Peterloo demonstrators who rioted here, and the imperialists who later built this hall. Trade routes and markets disappear. You’re also in a better position than any technology company I know. Even IBM and Microsoft – two official monopolies – need to invest a lot of money to keep their captive customers happy, and neither can be sure they’ll be here in twenty years, without a lot of stoking and a lot of stroking. Meanwhile, you’re sitting on a goldmine, and no one is going to take it away from you.

Why?

We create music in order to share it.

We’ve been sharing it for thousands of years. And people pay to hear it. Since the invention of transmission and recording technology you’ve been able to monetize this desire, and build an industry on it.

But your anxieties about monetizing music in the future are justified. Things are going to get a lot worse. Most of you know how bad. I’m talking today because in five years of reporting from Silicon Valley on these issues, the technology people have failed to tackle the issues. For me, they lost the moral authority when they argued that Napster should be legalized and when asked “How do you pay the rights holders?” answered, “That’s not our problem”. All scientists bear some responsibility for what they create. Secondly the music industry has now started to sue people for enjoying music. It needs to remember that it’s in the music business. And thirdly, no one believes in the “cure” that’s supposed to solve these problems. It isn’t sustainable.

The Silver Dollar model – 99 cents a song downloads – assumes that there’s next to no leakage from ripping, that everyone is going to pay for every song they listen to.

I can see why you like that. I can see why you’ve signed up to a model in which the online retailer takes four cents out of that 99 cents – so only you or the device manufacturers can afford to be retailers. That’s very clever. But good luck trying to stop today’s leakage, because tomorrow’s will be even worse. It’s a bump in the road – because in five or ten years you’ll still own the recordings.

Why will the current Apple/Napster model fail?

For a start, and assuming everything I say in a moment is false, it unpicks the bundle that you’ve depended on since the LP format became popular. If people pick and choose the tracks they want, and reject LP length bundles, you’re looking at an industry the size it was in 1965 – when it wasn’t much more than a cottage industry. But that’s not the biggest reason.

It costs ?10,000 to fill an iPod today. Some of us might have spent something like that over the years on music, you’re thinking. But if you’re 25, and most of your music has been free, then the psychology is very different: an iPod is an empty beer glass waiting to be filled. Why else can it hold so much music?

In five years’ time, iPods will fill themselves, like a TiVO, 24 hours a day. Apple might not build an iPod that does, but someone else will. Compared to the self-filling iPod, the Peer to Peer problems you have today will look trivial. We’ve already got the Bug – a digital radio with record and rewind facilities that transfers CD-quality MP3 files to another digital device. It doesn’t have a hard disk, but next year it will. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t leave that on day and night, flick through for “Britney” songs and delete the rest, say. That’s three clicks.

In five years’ time the Bug will be in my phone. So in the time it took me to eat lunch today, my phone will have leeched dozens of CDs, and simultaneously recorded CD quality sound from the radio.

Do you think you can turn that tap off? Even if you can turn that tap off, do you think you can justify that to your customers? For the current plans to work you’re going to need a change in social behaviour on the same scale as Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture, Mao’s Great Leap Forward or BF Skinner’s Walden Two. All of these attempts caused a lot of misery before they were abandoned. Prohibition lasted thirteen years.

Now I don’t know if this social coercion that you plan, this huge sea change in behavior, using DRM, will be successful or not, and neither do you. But I can guess.

In ten years’ time this will be moot. Digital distribution will make almost everyone in this room richer; publishers, songwriters, network providers. You’ll discover that technology is a tool that monetizes the consumption of music, rather than a tool for preventing people from listening to music. In ten years, you’ll have CDs that play themselves. The electronics will by then be so cheap that the thing you hold in your hand – a book, for example, or whatever package those songs are in – will be able to transmit its contents to the nearest speakers. If you’re around then, it will get very interesting – because the technology will do what all good technology does, and have made itself invisible. You won’t have Steve Jobs to complain about any more – or any other technologist. You should start thinking about that and maybe I’ll see you next year to talk about it. But that’s another reason to be optimistic. You have the recordings.
Now back to the near future

See, the upside of people not changing their behaviour so very much, is that a large number of people will still want a Cliff Richard record this Christmas. So the winners will be the guys with the largest resources. Yup, EMI, Universal and Warners: that’s you.

But you must leave the denial phase. Only then will you be able to remember how to make money.

There’s a very simple model: raise a pool of money and divide it up.

So how did we get here?

You all know digital distribution can save you a lot of money. The marginal cost of production is almost zero. I think the public has rumbled it, too.

You make money in three ways; you charge for physical product, you grant licenses so people can hear the music, and you sell a lot of stuff associated with music. Only one of these may pose a problem in the future: there’s still a lot of stuff to sell.

Your problem has been that you’ve allowed yourselves to be swindled by the Internet lobby and the PC lobby. The Internet was a distraction. Compared to the Internet, where everyone has a number, it’s really hard preventing file sharing on networks that are created ad hoc, like the n-squared networks that last for the duration of a bus journey: one to one, one to many, many to many. This is the world of file sharing we’re talking about.

You’ve been dealing with a lot of self-interested parties. I’m arguing that you need to think about technology on your terms, not theirs. You’ve been seduced by locks and keys companies who promise you the content is safe. But such a technology hasn’t been invented yet. Locked-down songs are available on the P2P networks within minutes of appearing on iTunes.

You can make life awkward for your users, but I’m not going to bet that it’s enough to protect your business. Technology succeeds when it gives people something they didn’t have before.

If you take stuff away from people, the chances are it won’t succeed. I’ll sketch the future, briefly.

The lonely iPod user

Why do you think those people in the iPod posters are dancing away on their own?


Don’t they have any friends?

Let’s help them find some friends!

An iPod is simply a hard disk, and socially, it’s a very limited gadget without wireless. It’s as stupid as having hot running water, but not plumbing it up to a bath or a shower.

The social, self-filling iPod: more music, and more friends

We’re at a very brief moment in human history. After thousands of years, recording and transmission technologies have been introduced: there’s now a music business. The technology allowed a great audience for music and this could be monetized. In the first, recording and transmission technologies – wax and radio – were the revolution; Peer to Peer networks, the iPod, and what we’ll see next, are incremental. The music business has successfully monetized all of these.

Eventually we’ll think that we were incredibly stupid that we once had music players that couldn’t talk to each other, and radios that couldn’t record.

So there’s two technologies that are being integrated together: storage and wireless.

With today’s iPods, you can hijack a party, or share an earphone with a friend, and look a dork – that’s about it. With wireless it starts to be useful.

On the bus, your iPod will be a personal, short range radio station. Click the “What am I listening to?” menu. Tune in to everyone else’s iPod. Like what you hear? Then record it!

Today’s biggest iPod, with 802.11 WLAN, could fill itself up in half an hour. These speeds and these disks are increasing every year, as you know.

What happens when you approach this from the other direction, and add disk storage to a wireless device? It’s already happened: the Bug records CD-quality digital radio and has a record and rewind button. The Bug doesn’t have a hard disk, so it’s still a bit fiddly. But via an SD card you can take that recorded MP3 file and add it to your PC collection.

What happens when people want to share music? They find a way of doing it. Since it costs next to nothing to leave an iPod broadcasting, each clothes stall or launderette will leave one running. Down the street you go, collecting music. Now, iPods are pretty expensive. What if people had these capabilities for free? They will.

In a few years phones will have much more processing power and the storage of today’s iPods. Today WLAN drains the batteries, but there will be lower-power short range wireless technology that does the job, Ultra Wide Band. That’s a T1 pipe over a few feet. There are still technical issues: its effectiveness diminishes as more devices are in use, range is quite short, but it’s potentially hundreds of times faster than Bluetooth.

The carriers subsidize phones by hundreds of pounds. They’re more interested in driving up the ARPU (average revenue per user) once they’ve got you as a customer. What would you rather have, a phone with a built-in iPod, or not? Or one with sharing, or not? Tough decision.

Put another way, do you think they’ll even be able to shift a phone without these capabilities?

So you don’t need an iPod. But you might not even need something as sophisticated as a phone. Here’s something else to think about. In 1997 IBM demonstrated two men shaking hands, and exchanging an electronic business card. The body is a natural electricity conductor, and where there’s electricity, you can transmit bits. It’s still in the laboratory but speeds are increasing.

So hello, [Universal UK boss] John Kennedy. Nice to meet you. Thanks for the CD you’ve just given me!

Now what most of you are thinking are that the DMCA, and the EUCD will prevent such phones and players ever being sold. But remember most of this technology is legitimate. Only a small software hack or dongle will be needed to turn a legitimate mp3 phone into a pocket p2p network. Batteries included.

You’re also underestimating China. If Nokia doesn’t make such a device, then someone else will. Or they’ll make a dongle. Then you’re back to square one. Does China have the will to do this? Ask Qualcomm or Ericsson. Or Intel or Texas Instruments.

The most popular form of 3G has a very complicated royalty structure and most of the world’s 3G networks must pay a few dollars back to the companies who hold most of the patents: Qualcomm and Ericsson. They developed the CDMA technology which is what 3G is based on. Now China has developed its own 3G technology and isn’t in a rush to pay royalties to the IP holders. Qualcomm and Ericsson are very upset about this. China is also developing its own microprocessor – so we’ll finally see a PC that costs what it should, around a fifty quid, and its own digital signal processor, which is an important part in every mobile phone handset. We know the PRC has the will to ignore WIPO because it’s doing so now. Do you think you can persuade the US to retaliate economically? Not with the amount of dollars China holds. The US economy can’t afford to.

All this personal sharing technology – this social hardware – will dwarf the peer to peer networks. But they won’t go away either. I think the legal and technical approaches so far against P2P have had some effect, but not very much. When you’re arresting 12 year-old girls, there’s a cost too. There are cryptographic techniques that haven’t been deployed yet that split a file up amongst hundreds or thousands of computers and hide each piece on a hard drive, so that even the owner doesn’t know what he or she is harboring.

You really know that P2P doesn’t have a ghost’s chance of being prevented until everyone is using a TCPA (locked-down) computer, and all recorded material is protected with a compliant DRM scheme. Bill Gates has promised you he’ll be able to deliver his part of the answer.

But do you really want to bet your business that he can deliver? Windows Longhorn with Palladium, its part of the deal, was originally supposed to ship this year. The version that ships in 2006 won’t have everything that Microsoft you promised in it. And do you really want to bet your business that it won’t leak? That the CD manufacturers have got it leakproof. And the BIOS people, too?

And do you really want to bet your business that anyone will buy these machines? PC makers want to sell you a PC. If it doesn’t play music the way people expect, they’ll sell one with Linux that does.

That’s a big gamble.

So in addition to the portable sharing, we’re looking at ten years of P2P file sharing and a lot of ifs.

So how are you going to monetize your rights, then? You need to be paid and you have shareholders to answer to. When file sharing becomes ubiquitous, and unstoppable, that’s the question they’ll be asking.

But this is an opportunity.

So here’s a modest proposal. Stop trying to prevent file sharing, and start counting it. Lobby to raise some money from somewhere. It could be a tax, it could be a fee on your phone bill, it could be a broadband tax, it could be an hifi or iPod tax. (Germany taxes CD burners) But the figures for these are very low. The United States alone could subsidize its movie and recording industries for two dollars a week per household out of general taxation. That’s everything. Permanent income for life – assuming people watch or listen to the stuff – for a rounding error.

If we compensate only a small part of what you say you’re losing – say twenty per cent of your revenues, then that’s $27 (?15.25) a year; 51 (28p) cents a week. For less than a bag of crisps per household per week, the record industry’s piracy problem will have disappeared. Many people think that’s fair – certainly in Europe! But there are deep ideological objections associated with general taxation in the USA, and few Americans would share the view that they pay for the rest of the world to get a free ride.

Yes, there’ll be shareholder lawsuits. Your shareholders may sue that your business won’t grow. You’ll win this one, because it’s all about selling stuff: these aren’t commies going to steal your property. Governments don’t even need to get involved, here.

But you will need to remember how to sell music again. That’s what you’re supposed to be good at, and it’s what I hope you’ll do.

Let’s go through the options. Anyone not on the Internet isn’t doing a lot of file sharing. So why should they pay, either? A broadband tax on US users of around $5 a month would compensate both the recording and movie industries 20 per cent of 2000 revenues. Since CD sales are going up, and the link between p2p sharing and is contentious at best that would be a fair figure.

But in the future, most file sharing will be done between people in an ad hoc, personal network.

What happens then?

Things get complicated. You’ll argue that the figure will rise if CD sales fall by significantly more than 20 per cent. But maybe they won’t.

Do I hear any objections? I think I do.

HOW DO WE MAKE MONEY? – You have to start thinking really big. Media ownership laws, or regulations about horizontal integration will be vulnerable. The Big Five can each host a decent 24 by 7 radio station. But isn’t that giving your back catalog away? It might be, but there’s a lot missing from digital downloads. For a start:

- Downloads don’t have a cover. 92 per cent of downloaders in a recent poll said they’d buy more CDs. So make the package fun again. Hire some writers. Remember that CDs will be able to play themselves. Or the book will be able to play a soundtrack. You’re suddenly in the book soundtrack business! Record companies only think of packaging when Christmas is coming. Start thinking that every day is Christmas – and give people something nice. Music is the soundtrack to human activity from birth to death, so if you can’t make money from it, then there shouldn’t be a business. As the recording owners, you have to prove that isn’t the case.

- Sell Insurance CDs break. Hard disks crash. Phones are stolen. Sell them access to a permanent collection. You’re then in the services business. That’s where all computer companies want to be. A permanent fixture of everyday life.

- Stopped diversifying yet? Starbucks is a public company. It’s also a distribution channel. Buy or strike a deal with them before they realize how much they’re really going to be worth. They’re still cheap. You might have realized why the phone networks are hanging onto these expensive retail outlets in every town. You’ll need some of your own. People object to an EMI store now because they want choice, and an EMI store is a cheesy proposition. That stops being the case the second flat fees are introduced. At that moment you become Tony Benn – a loveable brand, a source and archive of great music. Flat fees and ubiquitous wireless give people unlimited choice – but a good store saves people a lot of tramping around, because we’re all lazy, and it lets you add a lot of value once they’re indoors.

- Pools are us The LP gave the music business it’s golden years. It’s true lots of LPs have stinkers. But another way of looking at it is that I’ve spent $3 instead of $1, and I’m still not that unhappy. iTunes and Napster destroy this model because they let people pick and choose the tunes they like within 15 seconds of hearing them. My sympathies are with you guys, because you’re actually right from every point of view I can imagine. The world works on bundles: a newspaper is a bundle of stories; a TV channel is a bundle of programs; a satellite channel is a bundle of TV channels; economically the world only works through bundles. The stuff you don’t want pays for the stuff you do. There are sound actuarial reasons for this. It works. And artistically, we wouldn’t have had The Beatles or Joy Division without the bundle.

Objections

- PUBLIC: No job is guaranteed. Why should I give the pigopolists a job for life? – A: Record companies simply own the recording rights: they’ve paid for them, after all. So buy the recording rights from the record companies. That market is open for business.

- PUBLIC: I never listen to music. Why should I pay for it? – A: I don’t have a car or children, but I pay for your schools and roads. Knowing roads and schools are there is an incentive to join you. It’s a public good, so you might want to start enjoying music now.

- PUBLIC: I don’t download music. Why should I pay for it? I’m not having this on my phone bill! – A: See above.

- RECORD CO: This will expand the music market, but you’re fixing it at Year 200n levels. That’s not fair. – A: Very, very few business people complain about increased demand for their product. Under flat fees, only the gross revenues from rights royalties will be fixed. So extracting dollars and squids from people in lots of creative ways carries on as before.

- ARTIST: We’re one swapping set of tyrants – the Recording Industry Ass. Of America – for another: Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange – A: The carriers want to sell you more than phones. Why do you think they’ve maintained all those high street retail outlets, when they could sell stuff much cheaper without a shop front? But you can do more about it, as the networks are better regulated.

- RECORD CO: You’ll never be able to introduce it internationally, and with cross border leakage, you’ll never get it to work – A: Cross border leakage is a fact, but it’s lower than you think.

- SONGWRITER: It perpetuates inequities over composition and recording royalties – A: Then write the future. Copyright works: either make a case for more granular copyright terms, or insist on fairer contracts. It’s all up for grabs.

- FAN/ANYONE WHO ISN’T PAUL McCARTNEY: It isn’t fair because it doesn’t reflect how much I like an artist who doesn’t sell many copies. – A: About the only thing that can be guaranteed about a flat fee model: it isn’t perfect. I think it will be the least unfair, the most culturally enriching, and probably the only one that works. But it’s a great question. Is one transaction, one file exchange, equal to one “vote”? What if you play a song 100 times? Can’t you express satisfaction in some other way? Peter Eckersley, an academic lawyer at the University of Melbourne in Australia, has written about alternative reward systems in depth. The Blur/Banff proposals which came out of a digital media conference in 2002 also discussed where some of this pot of money could go: a pension fund for blues artists, or creators whose work has fallen out of copyright. But that’s another question.

CD sales are increasing; it’s very hard to plead the victim now. If you’re going to arrest 12 year old girls when sales are going up, you need to do better. You’ve let technologists bleed your confidence dry and you’ve lost your way.

A packaged thing that has music – your music – piping to some speakers is something that people will pay for. It’s extra cents. If you had the choice of the Factory Records Story with just the words, and the Factory Records Story with the music, for a quid extra, what would you choose?

I’ll finish with a quote.

“We will advance science and education, enrich culture, foster greater social harmony and upgrade the texture of life for the people.” – Tony Blair

Tony Blair said that?

Of course he didn’t. That’s the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, earlier this year. I can’t imagine any New Labour wonk talking about “the texture of life”. It’s not in the vocabulary.

It’s a reminder of how much culture can be enriched by music, and a reminder that under WIPO Treaties governments can be permitted to impose compulsory licenses themselves, so long as they provide suitable compensation. Countries have done this for expensive brand name drugs. As I said earlier, governments don’t need to be involved here, because the music industry already knows how to write such a license, and it has the collection agencies to distribute the money. But the People’s Republic of China could become so fed up with the greedy American entertainment industry lobby, that it could unilaterally introduce a flat fee model itself.

We are coming full circle to a process that started with the first recording and transmission technologies.

To sum up, then: because of digital technology, you think your rights are worthless. They aren’t. You need to monetize them in two ways: by ensuring that there’s a revenue stream for things you can’t count, and finding new bottles that you can count.

Acknowledgements: Much of this cites and draws on earlier work from the Blur Digital Media conference workshops in 2002 (“Blur/Banff” – Jamie Love, Ted Byfield et al); by former Geffen CTO Jim Griffin at Cherrylane Digital, and Professor Terry Fisher at the Berkman Law School. Thanks to Tony Wilson for the invitation and suggesting the title, and Momoko for the wireless iPod graphic.

di Andrew Orlowski
? Copyright 2004 The Register
Published Thursday 23rd September 2004 14:37 GMT

Dopo un paio d’ore dall’apertura dei seggi elettorali in Florida sono giunte notizie dei primi problemi legati alla procedura “elettronica” di voto.

Articoli su Wired News e Sun-Sentinel.

Leggi gli articoli >>E-Voting Still a Florida Bugaboo

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida — With memories of 2000 and the state’s bitter fight over ballots still fresh, Floridians began casting votes Monday and within an hour problems cropped up.

In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the recount four years ago, a Democratic state legislator said she wasn’t given a complete absentee ballot when she asked to opt for paper instead of the electronic touch-screen machines. Several voting sites in Broward County had problems with laptops connected to elections headquarters. And a brief computer system crash in Orange County delayed voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs.

A steady flow turned out Monday morning at more than a dozen sites in Palm Beach County. Patrick Flanagan, who went to the county’s election headquarters to cast his ballot, said he voted early because he wanted to avoid the long lines expected on Election Day. He said he’s voted on the touch-screen machines once before, and both times have gone “very smoothly.”

“I’m a computer-phobe, and it seemed easy enough to me,” said Flanagan, who added that he had no concerns about his vote not being counted.

Steve Perez, 44, said he went early to cast a “protest vote” for Ralph Nader.

“What’s important is that you vote. I didn’t want to get in all the hoopla with all the turnout in Election Day,” said Perez, a substitute teacher.

While backers touted early voting for people like Flanagan as a way to avoid long lines on Nov. 2, some have criticized the concept, saying it increases opportunities for fraud without significantly boosting participation.

Some groups urged Florida voters to ask for paper absentee ballots because of concerns over the state’s new touch-screen voting machines and any potential recounts. Voters Monday morning could choose either method.

State Rep. Shelley Vana said the paper absentee ballot she was given at a Palm Beach County site was missing one of its two pages, including the proposed amendments to the state constitution. She said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight.

“There was absolutely no concern on the part of the folks at the Supervisor of Elections Office that this page was missing. This is not a good start. If there are incomplete ballots out there, I can’t imagine I would be the only one getting it,” she said.

County elections supervisor Theresa LePore did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Early voting also gets under way Monday in Texas, Colorado and Arkansas. Other key states this year have already begun in-person voting, including Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and New Mexico. Balloting by mail is under way in Oregon, the only state in the nation that has done away with polling booths altogether.

Early voting and touch-screen equipment were introduced in Florida after the 2000 election, in which this crucial state decided the result by only 537 votes and introduced topics such as butterfly ballots and hanging chads to the national debate. The early voting continues at a limited number of sites in each county until Election Day, when regular polling places will be open.

Protesters gathered outside the Duval County election supervisor’s office Monday because the county, the state’s most populous, had only one voting site. A city attorney said it said it was too late to open new sites, even though the city council had committed more money to the idea.

Broward County had 14 voting sites but several of them had trouble linking polling station laptop computers with the supervisor’s office, said Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood. The computers are used to confirm voter eligibility. Workers used paper lists and called the supervisor’s office in Fort Lauderdale to verify eligibility, Nash said.

Broward elections officials did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

In Miami-Dade County, about 150 people gathered Monday morning for a rally led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Some people carried homemade signs that said “Early Voting Counts” and “Every Vote Matters.”

Both President Bush and Sen. John Kerry arranged campaign swings through the Sunshine State over the weekend in efforts to capitalize on the early voting.

Even as voters turned out, lawyers were going to court in Fort Lauderdale to argue a lawsuit over the lack of paper backup on the state’s electronic machines.

Computer problems reported at Broward early voting sites

As long lines gathered at polls, early voters at nine of Broward County’s 14 sites ran into computer-generated problems on Monday.

Gisela Salas, of the Broward Elections Office, said workers had problems connecting with a live database that is used to verify that a voter is properly registered in the county.

The sites, Salas said, that were unaffected were at satellite offices in Deerfield Beach, Hollywood, Lauderhill, Pembroke Pines and Plantation.

All 14 of the branch offices had problems with the database connection. Many of the sites had numerous voters lined up to cast their ballots. Some reported waiting in lines up to 2-1/2 hours to vote.

A work-around was created by calling in each voter’s name to the main Election’s Office in Fort Lauderdale. Two office workers were assigned to each phone, Salas said, for a slowed verification process. The workers would plug into the database, and verify that the voter in one of the branch sites was indeed registered to vote.

Shortly after 2 p.m., some of the branch sites, which were using laptop computers, began getting back online and gaining access to the database. And shortly after 3 p.m., all but one of the branch sites — the one in Oakland Park — were back online.

Salas said it was not yet known what went wrong to cause the glitch.

Voters at several sites said poll workers told them the problems started 20 minutes to 30 minutes after the early polling stations opened at 8:30 a.m. The stations close at 6 p.m.

At the Tamarac branch public library, where voting stopped after the computer glitch, Sally Zwanger, a poll watcher for the Kerry campaign, claimed the problems reflected the inability of Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration to fix voting problems left over from the 2000 election.

“The worst thing to hear was, ‘I support Kerry, but I can’t wait in this line,’” she said. “We are having a repeat of 2000, and it’s only in Florida that this could happen. This administration would do anything to ensure that he [Bush] stays in office.”

Zwanger said at one point there were 63 people in line, most of whom had gone home without voting by 11 a.m.

She also said waiting voters were told at 8:30 a.m. that every voting location in Broward County was closed. But she found out after calling the Broward County Elections Office headquarters that the Plantation location and four others were still open.

Susan Emert waited for two hours – starting at 8:20 a.m. — before she finally had to leave for work.

“They had all the time from when they said the voting machines will be used, all the time to perfect them, and here we are, up the creek,” she said, throwing her arms wildly up in the air. “This is really another black eye for the county. I’m so fed up.”

Before leaving, however, Emert was able to get a number from an elections official. It will allow her to receive priority placement in the line when she returns.

Most of the voters waiting in the line were seniors, and many shared Emert’s frustration. They repeatedly uttered phrases such as, “This is ridiculous,” and “This is so frustrating.”

Lucien Gennaro, a police aide in Coral Springs, waited for an hour at a public library to cast his vote Monday morning, before he had to leave for work.

“A lot of people who were waiting just left. I’ll try again tomorrow,” he said. “It was a little frustrating after what happened in 2000.”

In Palm Beach County, the center of the madness during the 2000 presidential recount, a state legislator said she wasn’t given a complete absentee ballot when she asked not to use the electronic touch-screen machines. In Orange County, the computer system that lists voters briefly crashed, paralyzing voting in Orlando and its immediate suburbs. And in Broward County several sites had problems with laptops connected to elections headquarters.

State Rep. Shelley Vana, D-Lantana, was the seventh person in line Monday at a Palm Beach County early voting site.

She said the paper absentee ballot she received was missing one of its two pages, including the proposed amendments to the state constitution. She said election workers were indifferent when she pointed out the oversight.

“There was absolutely no concern on the part of the folks at the Supervisor of Elections Office that this page was missing. This is not a good start. If there are incomplete ballots out there, I can’t imagine I would be the only one getting it,” she said.

Elections supervisor Theresa LePore did not immediately return a call for comment.

In Orange County, the computers went down for about 10 minutes shortly after voting began, said Margaret Dunn, the senior deputy elections supervisor. She said she did not know what caused the problem, but speculated a faulty Internet connection may have been to blame.

Texas, Colorado and Arkansas also began casting early ballots Monday, 15 days before Election Day. Other key states this year have already begun in-person voting, including Iowa, Nevada, Ohio and New Mexico.

In Palm Beach County, a steady flow of voters cast early ballots. Robin Punches, a stay-at-home mom from West Palm Beach, said she came early to vote because she heard it would increase the chance of her vote being accurately counted. It was her first time using the touch-screen voting machines.

“It tells you exactly what to do. It’s idiot proof,” she said.

In Tallahassee, a few students camped out overnight in front of the Leon County Courthouse to raise awareness of early voting, and were first to vote Monday morning.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was in Tallahassee Monday, rallying students at Florida A&M University.

“Vote early and get the kinks out of the system,” the former Democratic presidential candidate told students before riding with them on buses to the courthouse.

In Miami-Dade County, where early voting sites were to open later Monday, about 150 people gathered for a rally led by the Rev. Al Sharpton and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Some people were carrying homemade signs that said “Early Voting Counts” and “Every Vote Matters.”

Early voting was introduced in Florida after the 2000 election, in which this crucial state decided the result by only 537 votes and introduced topics such as butterfly ballots and hanging chads to the national debate.

Both President Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, arranged campaign swings through the Sunshine State over the weekend to coincide with the start of early voting.

Some groups are urging voters to cast a paper absentee ballot, as Vana did, because of concerns over the state’s new touch-screen voting machines and any potential recounts. Voters Monday could chose either method.

“It’s going to be changing the way candidates campaign because they have to get their message out to people two to three weeks earlier than in the past,” LePore said last week.

Even as voters turned out, lawyers were going to court in Fort Lauderdale to argue a lawsuit over the lack of paper backup on the electronic machines.

Some have criticized the concept of early voting, saying it increases opportunities for vote fraud without significantly boosting voter participation. Still, most states offer the option of early voting.

Duval County, the most populous county in the state to open just one early voting site, will open at least two more as soon as possible, Hood announced Monday.

A Jacksonville city attorney had said it was too late to open additional sites, even though the city council committed money to the idea. Gov. Jeb Bush had opposed the one-site plan, and Hood urged the city to open more polling places.

Earlier Monday, protesters had gathered outside the Duval election supervisor’s office, carrying signs and singing civil-rights songs.

Election officials say that although the early voting efforts create more work in a busy election year, they’re pushing for voters to get to the polls and make their voices heard any way they can.

“As long as people vote, we’re happy,” said LePore, who lost her re-election bid in August. “But if something really bad happens about a candidate two days before an election, you can’t change your vote.”

No Paper Trail, No Problem
By Jacob Ogles

ORLANDO, Florida — A U.S. district judge ruled Monday that Florida election officials have no legal obligation to provide voter-verifiable paper trails for electronic voting machines, but it would be better if they did.

In tossing out a suit brought by Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida), Judge James Cohn ruled that the touch-screen voting machines do not hinder the ability of election officials to determine the choice of voters in any race.

“Touch-screen machines eliminate the problems confronted during the 2000 election in having humans interpret voter intent based on ambiguous markings of the voter,” Cohn wrote in his summary judgment.

Florida’s electoral votes were in question for 36 days after the 2000 presidential election because of various problems, including people writing in the names of preferred candidates instead of marking bubbles beside their names, and the infamous pregnant, dimpled and hanging chads that clung to the now-outlawed punch-card ballots.

The e-voting machines, which more than half of Floridians will use to vote next week, were sold to election supervisors as a cure to voting woes, but critics have said the machines eliminate the ability to do a recount, and that they make problems worse. Wexler has been among the most vocal critics of the machines, bringing the suit against the Florida Department of State and south Florida election officials earlier this year. He said Monday he would appeal Cohn’s ruling.

“This is not a fight that can be stopped with a simple ruling,” he said. “It is a fight we will continue — working in the courts, with the Florida legislature and with county officials.”

But Cohn said Wexler’s argument that no recount was possible was faulty. Thanks to changes in Florida law after 2000, canvassing boards need to determine a clear choice of a voter, not “voter intent.”

“By pressing the button to cast his or her ballot on the touch-screen machines, the voter is making a definite selection,” Cohn wrote. “In warning the voter of an undervote (an incomplete ballot) and allowing for a review process before a ballot is cast, touch-screen machines provide sufficient safeguards to ensure that a voter’s undervote is intentional.”

In a close race, Cohn agrees with election officials that printed images can serve as a verification of voters’ choices.

Cohn did write that it would improve voter confidence to have a paper system in which voters could confirm their selections on a printout, but the Florida Division of Elections has not approved such a system for the state’s touch-screen ballots.