Alexander Millar

SP. Infiltrating into Hotel Beijing network.

During the pandemic, classical musicians and orchestras are reliant on streaming their performances to maintain their profile and solicit donations. That’s a problem, because the platforms’ copyright bots HATE classical music.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/copyright-bots-and-classical-musicians-are-fighting-online-the-bots-are-winning/2020/05/20/a11e349c-98ae-11ea-89fd-28fb313d1886_story.html

Once a record label like Sony Music or Naxos claims a performance that they have released, the bots scour the services for anything that sounds even remotely like that performance and either deletes it, mutes it, or steals the money it generates.

And on the platforms, users are considered guilty until proven innocent. An automated takedown is virtually instantaneous, while a human review that reverses it can take TWENTY EIGHT MONTHS.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/17/cheap-truthers/#robot-sez-no

The fascinating thing about this is that it is entirely predictable. It’s a known failure mode for filters. Either you narrow the matching so that they only catch precise matches (in which case they are easy to trick by making trivial changes) or…

…You broaden the matching, in which case they take down innocent musicians’ own performances.

The fact that they’ve chosen the latter tells you that this is not “copyright protection,” because the musicians whose performances are removed are ALSO copyright holders.

Indeed, the majority of classical music copyright holders are not large companies like Naxos or Sony - they’re the musicians whose performances Sony and Naxos have removed.

These filters are not for copyright protection: they’re for CORPORATE protection.

What do Naxos and Sony say? Duncan Hammons from Naxos blames the filters: “We’re at the mercy of automation in order to uphold our obligations to our clients.”

Translation: Naxos chose not to manually review the filters’ results, rather, they run the system on full autopilot, and anyone who gets censored in the process is an unavoidable consequence of Naxos’s decision.

He doesn’t raise the possibility of making a different decision.

Instead, he proposes that Naxos can be in charge of who is allowed to make classical music even if they don’t have a relationship with Naxos: “[arrangements can be made for channel owners to prove] the legitimacy of their status as a performing arts entity.”

In March 2019, the EU passed its new Copyright Directive, whose Article 13 (now Article 17) mandates copyright filters like Facebook’s for all platforms.

At the time, critics like me argued that this would allow giant entertainment corporations to decide when and whether an indie musician could perform online.

After all, these companies don’t fear being trapped in the filternet: they have direct lines to the online appeals court. It’s only the indie musicians who have to get in the queue to have the robot’s judgment reviewed by a human, who might take 28 months to get to it.

And of course, now that every online platform has to find the money to build these filters - Youtube’s Contentid, which only does a tiny fraction of the filtering required, cost $100m - only the biggest tech players will remain.

So here we are, headed for a future in which only giant tech platforms are allowed to operate, and where giant media companies are given a veto over who can make art on those platforms.

This is not a good situation for artists. Even if you want to sign to Sony or another label, the fact that Sony (and the other two giant labels) are the only game in town means that they will squeeze their talent, giving them less of the money their art generates.

Once, online platforms constituted an escape valve on this pressure-cooker, an alternative to the abusive label system. Now it is captured by them.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Image: Cryteria https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU…

that we are all beautiful fractal expressions of Source Energy that cannot be created nor destroyed? The greater part of us exists in a timeless, indestructible and formless field of awareness that transcends the confines of mind, matter, space and time.  We are momentarily experiencing ourselves as ‘human beings’ (unique vantage points of consciousness) in order to experience a world of contrast, limitation, and disconnectedness.   We had temporarily forgotten the deeper reality of our Infinite Being & went on an imaginary, fun-filled vacation away from our unbroken wholeness (an ego-trip).  By playing this Cosmic Hide and Seek Game, we had turned ourselves inside out & entered into a scary, fun house filled with unlimited and unfolding possibilities.  

- Anon I mus (Spiritually Anonymous)

“WHEN YOU COME TO THE PROFOUND DISCOVERY THAT THERE ARE NO ‘OTHERS’ APART FROM YOU (THE SELF); THEN YOU CAN EXPERIENCE THE PERFECT BLISS OF YOUR UNBROKEN WHOLENESS.”   -ANON I MUS (SPIRITUALLY ANONYMOUS)

A Night in the Woods

From Space

Ｔｈｉｓ　ｉｓ　Ｕｔｏｐｉａ．

NEO TILTED-TOWERS

Max Bergmann and Sam Berger at The Daily Beast: 

For nearly two years, since the U.S. intelligence community released its report on the Russian campaign to assist Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the American people have been seeking an answer as to whether the Trump campaign colluded with its Russian counterpart. In the endless speculation about the direction of the investigation, a common view was that maybe the investigation would never implicate President Trump or find any collusion.

But a flurry of recent activity this past week all points in the same direction: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will likely implicate the president, his campaign, and his close associates in aiding and abetting a Russian conspiracy against the United States to undermine the 2016 election.

First, Mueller has clearly identified collusion in the efforts of Trump aides and associates to contact WikiLeaks. In a draft plea agreement provided to conservative operative Jerome Corsi, Mueller details how Roger Stone, who the special counsel notes was in frequent contact with Donald Trump and senior campaign officials, directed Corsi to connect with WikiLeaks about the trove of stolen materials it received from Russia. Corsi subsequently communicated WikiLeaks’ release plan back to Stone, and the Trump campaign built its final message around the email release. That is collusion.

Second, we now know that Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have provided evidence to Mueller related to collusion. In Cohen’s sentencing memo, Mueller said that Cohen provided his office with “useful information” on “Russia-related matters core to its investigation.” One of those central elements, according to the Justice Department: “any links and/or coordination” between the Kremlin and Trump campaign figures. Collusion, in other words.

In Flynn’s sentencing memo Mueller said that Flynn’s false statements to the FBI about his calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition were “material” to the investigation into “links or coordination between Russia and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

Third, Mueller has found evidence that Trump was compromised by a hostile foreign power during the election. In his plea deal, Cohen revealed that Trump had repeatedly lied to voters about the then-candidate’s financial ties Russia. While Trump claimed during the campaign to have no business dealings with Russia, he was negotiating a wildly lucrative business deal not simply with Russian businessmen, but also involving with the Kremlin itself. Trump’s team even reportedly tried to bribe Russian President Vladimir Putin by offering him a $50 million penthouse.

Worse, Russia not only knew that Trump was lying, but when investigators first started looking into this deal, the Kremlin helped Trump cover up what really happened. That made Trump doubly compromised: first, because he was eager to get the financial payout and second because Russia had evidence he was lying to the American people—evidence they could have held over Trump by threatening to reveal at any time.

[…]