@beerspotter DC changes his Twitter tune

For all you intrepid devotees of good beer in the Washington, D.C. area: Orr Shtuhl of the Young and Hungry at the Washington City Paper has changed his Twitter (@beerspotter) procedure.
So, now ... if you wish to spot, alert, and Tweet (that is, post to Twitter) about your good beer finds in the Washington, D.C. area, use the phrase "@beerspotter" (excluding the quotation marks) anywhere in your 140 character Twitter post.

For example, here's what I Tweeted today:

@beerspotter: Red Sky at Night Saison on cask at Rustico. 'Dry-spiced' with orange, lemon, & lime peel, and coriander, juniper, and pepper spices.

If you don't know how to follow on Twitter (or what all this Twitter stuff means), read more here.

• Follow @beerspotter on Twitter for good beer sightings in the Washington, DC metro area.
• Follow YoursForGoodFermentables.com on Twitter @Cizauskas
• Twitter 'button' graphic by Cheth Studios.

How to use Twitter to spot DC beers

Warning #1: tech geek alert.
Warning #2: Washington, D.C. area beer geek alert.

Say you're sitting in Mahaffeys Pub (Baltimore, Md.), or Olney Ale House (Montgomery County, Md.), or RFD (Washington, D.C.), or the Fredericksburg Pub (Fredericksburg, Va.), or any good beer bar in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore/northern Virginia area. You see Bells Hop Slam on draft, or Terrapin Rye Squared in Annapolis, or a firkin of Flying Dog Snake Dog just tapped, or something else unique or delicious.

So you Tweet —that is post to the Twitter website— your beer discovery. Maybe one person (or persons) notices it and reTweets your message, and then someone else reTweets that, and so on. The network could easily balloon, alerting many DC/Baltimore/northern Virginia area good beer lovers to your discovery.

Facebook vs. Twitter

Where Facebook is exclusionary —you must invite or allow people to see your page— Twitter is inclusionary —anyone can see your posts, unless you exclude them. A Tweet, therefore, is the equivalent of one text message sent to many people.

So, step one on your road to beer/tech geekdom would be to open a Twitter account. It's free.

Then, go one step further.

UPDATE 2013: Things change; tech things change quickly. Mr Shtuhl no longer is an active reporter of the DC beer scene. Better to search Twitter using the hash tags #DCbrews and #DCbeer; and for Maryland, #MDbeer; for Virginia, #VAbeer.

***************

Orr Shtuhl, a beer writer for the Washington City Paper, has created a Twitter account called beerspotter.

When you Tweet your beer discovery, begin it with "@beerspotter" without the quotation marks (or at any point in your 140 character Tweet). Orr then re-posts all those Tweets in real time, in one place, at twitter.com/beerspotter.

To read all the beerspottings, use Twitter search for "@beerspotter" or "beerspotter" or follow@beerspotter through Twitter. (See how in the next paragraph.)


If you're still with me ...

At your Twitter account, search for "beerspotter" (without the quotation marks). Once you find it, look for the box entitled "Follow" (that is, receive all his Tweets) and click it. You can even choose to follow beerspotter on your cell phone. (That's a bit more involved. Look for "Settings", then "Devices", and follow the instructions.)

Now, the magic begins.

Whenever a fellow DC good beer fan Tweets about his/her find at a local bar or store, you'll be notified at your Twitter web page, and as a text message on your cell phone. All of this is easier than it sounds.

Even without a Twitter account

You can see all the postings of beer discoveries simplyby going to beerspotter's Twitter page: twitter.com/beerspotter. All the postings also appear on the City Paper website at washingtoncitypaper.com/food .
Beerspotter could be a model for any other city or region.

A few recent beerspotter Tweets:

• flyingdog: RT @beerspotter: via @Cizauskas: Flying Dog Garde Dog just put on tap at Evening Star Cafe in Alexandria, VA.
• beerspotter: via @angryJohnny: Southern Tier Oaked Unearthly Imperial IPA & Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout on tap at Galaxy Hut, 2711 Wilson Blvd., Arlington
• beerspotter: via @beerandpork: Bell's Porter and Gouden Carolus D'Or at Nanny O'Briens

Warning #3: even geekier alert.

Orr Shtuhl is using GroupTweet. So when you post a beer spotting, you should Tweet it to Beerspotter only as a Direct Message and without hashmarks such as @beerspotter or #beerspotter.  Read more at: Join the Beerspotter Twitter Feed Army.

Read more about Twitter:

• You can follow my Tweets at twitter.com/cizauskas.
• Follow breweries in Washington>, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia on Twitter: .here
• Some US breweries all a-Twitter [Originally posted in 2009, but still some useful information.]
• Twitter's utility
• The Session #24: a Twitter Tripel
• Twitter-ers taste Trappists

8 hours of Belgium

It's off to Baltimore, Maryland ... for 72 Hours of Belgium.

Well, actually not quite 72 hours, but it'll be a nice afternoon of Belgian beers at the Belgian Beer Fest at Max's Taphouse.

A three day festival, it began Friday morning with a brunch and it will continue today through Sunday night. Available are over 120 different Belgian draughts, and 175 different bottles. (Go here for a semi-complete list.) There are several US premiers, including casks of Hanssens Young Lambic and Hanssens Old Kriek. And of the several beers (ha, ha!) I tasted, these two were spectacular, showing more of a soft lactic acidity than acetic sharpness.

UPDATE 2009.02.15:

In the interest of citizen journalism, I attempted to post tasting notes to Twitter and photos to Flickr. I was assiduous ... for awhile.

UPDATE: Statistics

• 132 different Belgian drafts
• 172 different bottled Belgian beers
• 40 different Belgian breweries
• 5 American breweries
• 3000+ attendees
• 4,800 gallons of draft and cask beer consumed (300+ kegs and casks)
• 100+ cases of beer consumed

as reported by the Brews Brothers in Mid-Atlantic Brewing News, April/May 2009 (Vol.11/#2)

The Session #24: a Twitter Tripel

Yesterday, being the first Friday of the month, it was the day for The Session: Beer Blogging Friday.

The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community which was begun by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. On the first Friday of each month, all participating bloggers write about a predetermined topic. Each month a different blog is chosen to host The Session, choose the topic, and post a roundup of all the responses received. For more info on The Session, check out the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s nice archive page.

The theme this month was Tripels, and was hosted by David Turley at Musings Over a Pint.

The late great beer writer Michael Jackson described a Tripel as 8-9% alcohol by volume, orangey-gold in color, with distinctive herbal and orange-fruit notes, a juicy malt middle, and, despite the alchol level, a dry finish. A tripel is one of a range of Abbey-style beers, a reference to the beers of the six Benelux brewing Trappist monasteries. The Beer Judge Certification Program, and others, confusingly mention Belgian-style Golden Ales as a separate style, a distinction of no meaningful difference.

I may have missed the Friday midnight deadline for posting a story, but I was right on time in a different sense.

Alan McLeod at A Good Beer Blog had suggested that participants post their comments on Tripels —in real time— via Twitter. (What's Twitter? Go here.)

And, that I did.

A friend stopped by the house, and we opened a bottle of Allagash Tripel Reserve —Batch 117 to be precise. (Allagash is a brewery in Portland, Maine, named for a town of the same name.)



Here's how we Twittered our tasting:

• Preparing to Twitter Session Beer Blog Friday-http://tinyurl.com/cfv53z Flying Dog Kerberus and/or Allagash Tripel Reserve. #TheSession
• How American homebrewers view Abbey-style tripels: http://tinyurl.com/dlh3s2 I wonder, did they ask the monks? #TheSession
• Opening Allagash Reserve Tripel. As with a Champagne bottle, keep thumb on cork and turn the bottle, not the cork. #TheSession
• Allagash Tripel Reserve,Batch #117:hints of apricot,honey,waxy orange peel,cardamom. #TheSession
• Beautiful color, says drinking partner: deep golden, long-lasting but not moussy white head of foam. Allagash Tripel Reserve. #TheSession
• [A fellow Twitterer, in fact Alan of A Good Beer Blog, replied: @Cizauskas In 2006, My notes said the Allagash tripel finish = sea salt with old bitter greens - sounds like I was full of it! #thesession.]
• [I replied] @agoodbeerblog "sea salt with old bitter greens"- sounds like Ralph Nader vacationing in Nova Scotia. #TheSession [to which Alan Twitter-responded: @Cizauskas Hey - watch it! I'm a bluesnoser expat...though I suppose a Chesapeake Bay man can get away with that #thesession]
• Allagash Tripel Reserve: paired with 'Asian' spiced prepared tofu. Nice match. #TheSession
• Beer style nonsense. Whats the difference between a 'Belgian strong golden 'and a 'Belgian tripel'? Merely more alcohol? Feh! #TheSession
• Music for a Tripel? Going against the grain (barleycorn?) for a Friday night: Beethoven Piano Trio. #TheSession.
• Friend (a wine preferer, gasp) and I are going for a cheesey dessert with Allagash Tripel. #TheSession
• For dessert with Allagash Tripel, we nibbled on Neal's Yard Dairy Shropshire Blue. "Oh, yum", or variations on that theme. #TheSession

Several others participated, and with other Tripels. See full results at search.Twitter.com.

Nerdy? Yes. Fun? Yes.

• Note the #TheSession tag. During the day, participants could monitor the postings —as they occurred— by going to Twitter.com, navigating to the Search page, and typing in #TheSession.
• The next Session: Beer Blogging Friday will be on 6 March 2009 with a new theme.
• I am employed by a wholesaler that distributes Allagash beers.

Twitter-ers taste Trappists

This past Saturday evening saw Twitter users link together in a real time web-tasting of Trappist beers. The event was organized by a website called Twitter Tasting Live, which previously had conducted only wine tastings. Web designer and BJCP Certified Beer Judge Chris Gillis is the co-organizer.

Beer bloggers Jay Brooks and Alan McLeod seemed to act as de facto moderators. The TTL site lists 659 current members (not all of whom participated last night).

The next tasting is scheduled for Saturday 21 February 2009 at 8pm EST (US). The beers will be Rogue Shakespeare Stout and Chocolate Stout, and Samuel Smith Imperial Stout and Oatmeal Stout.

Some breweries are using Twitter.
What is Twitter?

Some US breweries all a-Twitter

There are some 1400 breweries in the US, give or take. As of today, 13 January 2009, only 45 of them Twitter about their activities. [UPDATE 13 March 2009: Twitter craft brewery count triples to 150 in less than 2 months.  UPDATE 2013: Now, almost every U.S. brewery has a Twitter account.]

Think of Twitter as a short text message of 140 characters, but one that can be sent to as many (or few) people as the user wishes. Tweets —as the short posts are known— can be created via cell phone text message or web.

But why should breweries be 'Twittering'?

BeerNews.org offers some strong reasons:

• Build a small following around your brewery and get to know those who drink your beer who may not be local.
• Quick feedback/questions/answers exchange
• Reach the 35-44 demographic (closely followed by the 18-34 group, even though we'll need to legally ignore those first three years for now.)

Read his entire post, which includes the list of all 45 breweries.

Personally, I find Twitter to be a useful addendum to my blog.

• I can make succinct observations about beer and wine and post them across several platforms. They appear, for example, here on my blog, on Facebook, and on my website (in addition to Twitter.com itself).
• Using Twitter posts almost as a time-stamped journal, I can collate them into a longer blog piece.
• By following other people in the beer and wine business, I can learn of things of importance to that business, quickly.
• I can link to beer news stories or blog posts here and send them out on the Twitter network.
• I can publicize events in which I'm involved, in real time. [UPDATE: Twitter scooped regular media in reporting the splash landing and rescue of Flight 1549.]

In the DC/MD/VA area, as of today, only Flying Dog and Hook and Ladder publicize themselves on Twitter. [UPDATE: As of March 2013, there were 49 breweries Tweeting. The list: here.]

• Local blog Musings Over a Pint was an original investigator of breweries on Twitter.
• You can follow my Tweets here.
• I wrote a longer explanation of Twitter at my other blog. Or go directly to Twitter's about page.
• A contrarian's view on drinking and Tweeting.

Break the email chain?

I once stepped out of a office and used my cell phone to call the person to whom I had been speaking, after he had interrupted our face-to-face business conversation to take a business phone call.

If I am talking in person to a person, I will not answer the phone. (I will return the call later.)

I tell my customers and clients that email is the preferred manner with which to contact me. Although this may seem to be a tautology, I answer emails at the time of day when I have the time to do so (usually early in the morning).

But there is a big problem with email as a business tool. When one's InBox is crammed full, email can become a nearly all-consuming time demander. Here's more on that, from an IBM IT-er:

I stopped using e-mail most of the time. I quickly realized that the more messages you answer, the more messages you generate in return. It becomes a vicious cycle. By trying hard to stop the cycle, I cut the number of e-mails that I receive by 80 percent in a single week.

It’s not that I stopped communicating; I just communicated in different and more productive ways. Instead of responding individually to messages that arrived in my in-box, I started to use more social networking tools, like instant messaging, blogs and wikis, among many others. I also started to use the telephone much more than I did before, which has the added advantage of being a more personal form of interaction.

I never gave up my work e-mail address, because I still need it for some work-related activities — for example, for one-on-one discussions that are too private and confidential to discuss publicly.

I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
By LUIS SUAREZ
Published: June 29, 2008
New York Times

I recently had a discussion with a brewer at a small brewery that is now partly owned by Anheuser-Busch.

Many of his days are devoted to responding to a barrage of emails from A-B managers, many asking the same questions or for the same reports, sometimes weeks after the fact, and many of whom he doesn't even know.

The above NY Times article might be of assistance to Anheuser-Busch, especially in light of their recent announcement of $1 billion of cost-cutting.

Beer defined

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

So said Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 when attempting to create a legal definition of pornography.

Now comes Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler creating a definition of beer for the ages:

"Beer is yellow with foam," Gansler told reporters at a news conference, holding up a bottle of Smirnoff Source, which is described this way on its label: "contains pure spring water + alcohol."

"This is not beer," he added.

Gansler was testifying at a hearing on the potential taxing of malternatives at the distilled spirits rate: here.

When I attended the Siebel Institute in the early 1990s, one of my instructors was Dave Ryder, then Vice-President for Research at Miller Brewing Company.

Miller was attempting to develop Miller Clear, a beer with none of beer's annoying yellow color or amber or black.

But the researchers at Miller discovered that in removing all of the color in the beer, they had also stripped out most of the foam-positive proteins. Translation: little head retention.

Miller convened customer-preference focus groups. These determined 17 seconds (!) to be the minimum time of head retention required to identify a liquid as a beer. Miller Clear didn't quite hold a head for 15 seconds. The beer was scrapped.

Should we send these results to Mr. Gansler?

I was alerted to Gansler's bon mots by David over at Musings Over a Pint —actually by his Twitter account. David resumed Twittering after he noticed that I had noticed that he had Twittered last year.

Twitter—more than just "What are you doing?"

Beer not "Shine"-ing yet at Yahoo

Yahoo Inc is introducing a new media site focused on women's daily lives, the latest in a string of sites that include ones for gadget enthusiasts and food lovers, the company said on Sunday.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company said the new site, called "Shine," offers nine categories ranging from Fashion & Beauty to Parenting. It syndicates material from popular lifestyle publishers including Conde Nast and Hearst Corp.

The site is aimed at roughly 40 million women between the ages of 25 and 54

Nothing yet on beer. Send in your CVs!

all a-Twitter

I'm bit of a gadget-hound and tech 'tryer-outer'. So I tried out Twitter a couple of days ago:

a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Saturday, on Twitter, you could have followed my day of beer sales.

It's a generational thing, I know, but I don't see the value in this. Real life intervenes. Even a younger friend, who is aghast that the brewery doesn't have its own MySpace page, doesn't Twitter ... yet.

I was like WYD
She was like Z
I was like L8R

Maybe I could Twitter a ticker's record at a beer tasting, and then review it afterward for a sober blog entry. But in any case, until then, I'm officially un-Twittering. Now, back to downloading The Complete Riverside Recordings of Wes Montgomery.

[UPDATE: I've actually taken to Twitter since this post, sort of un-un-Twittering.]

Call me?

Blogger has added a new function that allows readers to place their comments via voice mail, and allows for me to post those audio bits to the blog, or to block them.

It's geeky, and it's asking for trouble. But let's give it a test run.

Click on the icon. Several boxes appear. Put in a name, your phone number, and then click your choice of keeping your number public or private. Click call. Your phone will ring: the number you see is NOT my actual number but a virtual number assigned to this service. When you answer, you'll hear a brief message from me. Then leave your comment.

Keep in mind that any message you leave may be re-published on this blog.

Web-beer 2.0, and food videos

My Web 2.0 skills are as deficient — if not more so — as those of many other Baby Boomers. Heck, I think Thelonius Monk the distillate of cool.

But that being said, I do have a FaceBook page (currently devoid of much content), a LinkedIn profile, a Last.fm music page (better), and a Flickr page (better yet).

I recently joined Democracy's Drink, a newly minted social network "devoted to beer and the people who enjoy it". You can be a pioneer here; there are currently 184 members. (The badge below will show the updated figure.) The home page, however, has that spurious quote from Benjamin Franklin about God and beer. We'll have to get author/historian Bob Skilnik on board to debunk that.

Visit Democracy's Drink


And speaking of Mr. Skilnik, I've just finished reading an autographed copy of his Beer and Food: An American History. I'll post a review soon. Hint: good.

Bob also sent this request, and I'm passing it along here.

I’m slowly but surely working on a media-rich website/blog that will be a one-stop and entertaining site of video food recipes makingdeals.gifusing beer, wine and spirits. It will be short on my opinions and beer industry news (like http://www.beerinfood.wordpress.com/) and long on taped recipes of me trying my hand at whipping up “spirited” foods. More importantly, I’m hoping to find brewers, pub owners, distillers, vintners, importers, distributors, blog owners and book authors who are willing to contribute short recipe videos using their products. There’s no fee, no sales pitch…nothing required except the submission of a filmed recipe contribution along with the recipe itself that I can post to my soon-to-be-unveiled site.

In other words, Drinkz-N-Eatz-TV will be a very interactive and media-rich way of entertaining and informing anybody at home who wants to cook along and add some “zip” to any food recipe. I’ll also be working on audio podcasts of interviews with business types as listed above.

My video skills aren't even hand-held-shaky good. But Bob's project is eminently viable. More on Drinkz-N-Eatz-TV.

I am also a member of the two big sites for reviewing beer — RateBeer and BeerAdvocate — both of which have aspects of Web 2.0.

I don't contribute much to those two because of a conflict of interest: I work for a brewery now and in the past I worked for a beer wholesaler.

But the greater reason I don't rate beers is because the very act of reducing a beer to a number demeans that beer.

Clipper City has a new look

A friend in the beer business keeps asking why Clipper City Brewing Company doesn't have a MySpace page. One step at a time, I respond.

The brewery today released its vastly improved new-look webpage:

www.ccbeer.com

Now on the revamped site, among many other things, is a page devoted to pictures of Clipper City events. There are only a few photos on the site today, but some of those were taken by me.

You can view more at my personal Flickr account.

I don't have a MySpace page, but I do have a page at Facebook. Not much there though.

Is RIAA redefining guilt?

Re-read this post:

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is insisting that it is illegal for anyone who has legally purchased CDs to transfer that music onto their computer.

and then my follow-up post:

the rhetoric of theft and counterfeiting are being dangerously used to cover all unlicensed activity, whether it is fair use (in the case of copying for personal use), or any other use content owners don't like.

And then this, most recently:
EFF Files Brief in Atlantic v. Howell Resisting RIAA's "Attempted Distribution" Theory

Briefly (sorry, bad pun) put: can people be sued for possible or assumed—yet unproven—copyright infringement?

As the Electronic Freedom Foundation states:

[The RIAA must prove] that actual infringing copies were made or that actual infringing distributions took place. It's not enough to prove that they could have taken place.

What am I missing? Is guilt what we might do rather than what we have actually done?

No More DRM?

Album sales decreased in 2007 by 15%. Digital downloads (often single tracks), however, increased — by 49%. And even if that number is figured in with album sales per se — industry standard assumption is 10 tracks per album — album sales overall still decreased by 9.2%. [from New York Times]

Maybe that might account for this ... [from Business Week]

In a move that would mark the end of a digital music era, Sony BMG Music Entertainment is finalizing plans to sell songs without the copyright protection software that has long restricted the use of music downloaded from the Internet, BusinessWeek.com has learned. Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony (SNE) and Bertelsmann, will make at least part of its collection available without so-called digital rights management, or DRM, software some time in the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

Sony BMG would become the last of the top four music labels to drop DRM, following Warner Music Group (WMG), which in late December said it would sell DRM-free songs through Amazon.com's (AMZN) digital music store. EMI and Vivendi's Universal Music Group announced their plans for DRM-free downloads earlier in 2007. <...>

Many, including music executives, consider the industry's about-face long overdue. "This agreement is the first of many of these types we'll be announcing in the coming weeks and months," Warner Music Group Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr. wrote in a Dec. 27 memo to employees explaining Warner's breakthrough deal with Amazon. "Many have argued that we could and should have done this long ago." <...>

[emphasis mine] "DRM tends to punish the innocent more than the guilty," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, a technology research company. "It was hurting folks who were trying to follow the rules more than the folks who were pirating the music."

Labels used DRM software in an effort to prevent illegal sharing of songs on peer-to-peer networks, such as Gnutella. Instead, the restrictions served mainly to frustrate paying customers, forcing them to degrade the quality of music by first burning it to a CD before uploading it for play on the device of their choosing. <...>

Rather than following EMI's lead, other labels are hoping to create another Apple competitor in Amazon, which is willing to give the recording industry greater pricing flexibility.

Apple has had a holier-than-thou near monopolistic stranglehold on digital downloads, disingenuous at best.

Because DRM tended to tie consumers to the store most compatible with their music device, the record labels unwittingly gave much of the power over music distribution to Apple, the manufacturer of the most popular digital music player, the iPod.

Music industry executives say Apple has not wielded that power lightly. With control of an estimated 80% of the market for legally downloaded music, Apple pushed its preferred price of 99¢ per song over the opposition of several labels, which preferred variable pricing that would allow some artists to sell at a premium.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs also refused repeated requests from the recording industry and iPod competitors to license its DRM technology so that iTunes customers could easily put their music on other devices, without first burning it to a CD or otherwise altering the files.

• I was alerted to the Business Week piece by blog Musick in the Head.
• More from me on this topic: here.
• My most recent digital download (paid-for, of course): Levon Helm's Dirt Farmer. This is the first studio album in a quarter-century for this former drummer of The Band. It's a remarkable collection of music.

RIAA — more to the story

Aha! I wrote yesterday that there must be more to the story of a man being sued for simply copying music he had purchased onto his computer — and there is.

From Engadget:

it turns out that Jeffery [Howell] isn't actually being sued for ripping CDs, like the Washington Post and several other sources have reported, but for plain old illegal downloading.

And, from the blog of William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel to Google:

it is here that the RIAA [Recording Industry Association of America] is making the point that placing the mp3 files into the share folder is what makes the copy unauthorized. The RIAA is not saying that the mere format copying of a CD to an mp3 file that resides only on one's hard drive and is never shared is infringement. This is a huge distinction and is surprising the Post didn't understand it. The brief also goes on to allege in great detail that the copies placed in the shared folder were actually disseminated from Howell's computer, thereby stating a traditional violation of the distribution right, even aside from the making available/deemed distribution theory.

However, from Marc Fisher's column in the Washington Post:

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

Patry notes the danger inherent in this view:

the rhetoric of theft and counterfeiting are being dangerously used to cover all unlicensed activity, whether it is fair use (in the case of copying for personal use), or any other use content owners don't like. Everyone else's use of a copyrighted work is now deemed by some content owners to be infringing unless they OK it.
<...>

This new rhetoric of "everything anyone does without our permission is stealing" is well worth noting at every occasion and well worth challenging. It is the rhetoric of copyright as an ancient property right, permitting copyright owners to control all uses as a natural right; the converse is that everyone else is an immoral thief.

TV goes the way of the Dodo bird

Watch TV? Don't believe in paying for it ... as I don't?

Then read this.

Beginning Feb. 18, 2009, anyone who does not own a digital set and still receives their programming via over-the-air antennas will no longer be able to receive a picture. Broadcasting, by law, will become completely digital; analog (remember rabbit-ears?) will end.

Later this [January 2008] month, the FCC is auctioning off the analog television frequencies to wireless providers, with a portion of the spectrum reserved for emergency responders.

But again, the turn-off date is not until 2009. At that point, to watch broadcast TV — if you're still using an older television set — you'll need a converter box to watch TV.

The converter boxes are expected to cost between $50 and $70 and will be available at most major electronics retail stores. Starting Tuesday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will begin accepting requests for two $40 coupons per household to be used toward the purchase of the boxes.

Viewers who have satellite or cable service will not need a box.

To request a coupon, consumers can apply online at http://www.dtv2009.gov starting Tuesday. The government also has set up a 24-hour hotline to take requests, 1-888-DTV-2009.

Of course, you can always pay for cable or satellite, and not worry.

[UPDATE 2008.02.15: The federal government said Friday [15 February 2008] it will begin mailing out $40 coupons next week to consumers to help pay for converter boxes that will save their analog sets from becoming obsolete. More here.]

RIAA denies 'fair use' of music

There must be more to this story. [And there is! See this update.]

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is insisting that it is illegal for anyone who has legally purchased CDs to transfer that music onto their computer. Huh?

The RIAA has stated in a lawsuit that Jeffrey Howell of Scottsdale, Arizona created "unauthorised copies" of copyrighted music when he copied 2,000 or so MP3 files onto his hard drive.

That seems to deny over two decades of legal precedent. From Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., decided by the US Supreme Court in 1984:

Manufacturers of home video recording machines could not be liable for contributory copyright infringement for the potential uses by its purchasers, because the devices were sold for legitimate purposes and had substantial non-infringing uses. [emphasis mine] Personal use of the machines to record broadcast television programs for later viewing constituted fair use.

Contradicting their own website, the RIAA's prima facie case seems to be that Howell had simply copied the files. [This may not be the case. See UPDATE 2008.01.03] There must be more to this story, because as the case publicly stands now, this isn't about selling or sharing copies of music. This is about the fair use of a purchased product.

... there’s no legal "right" to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or [emphasis mine] transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:

• The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
  
• The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.

More from the Washington Post here.

Classical downloads done right?

Jazz, blues, avant-garde, classical, some indie-rock and world music... that's what you'll suffer in my car. (There could be stories about me and Mahler's Second!)

"In my car" means mp3s, or more precisely, digital downloads. And there's the rub.

Classical music demands context: information about the composer, performer, composition, etc. Most mp3 retailers don't provide this; most don't even provide a hi-res album cover (front and back). Classical music (and jazz) audio fidelity also requires higher audio definition than the low-resolution 128 or 224 kbps (kilobits per second) often offered.


Now comes Deutsche Grammophon opening up their catalog to digital download. Owned by the Universal conglomerate, DG has often been thought of as the gold-standard of classical music labels. Two reviews of their new on-line store offer this information:

• DG is offering their current in-print recordings and a growing list of their out-of-print recordings: that is wonderful news.
• The music has no digital-rights-management (DRM) restrictions. Translation: you're not restricted to one player, such as the iPod.
• DG is loading up each track with appropriate meta-data: meaning artist, composition, conductor, movement number, etc. will be included in the viewable properties of each track.
• A full pdf file is included of the album front and back.
• Each download will be encoded at the higher quality rate of 320kpbs.
  

I haven't used the store yet, but will - and will post on the experience: ease of use, ability to search for composer/composition/performer, etc. If the store is as advertised, then as Gizmodo put it: Deutsche Grammophon Shows How Digital Music Stores Should Really Work. Yahoo Tech's review here.

DG Web Shop

Brewing Network podcasts

Clipper City's Hugh Sisson was interviewed on a podcast at The Brewing Network on Sunday. The 'casters call him Huge Saison. Get the podcast here.

The Brewing Network is billed as "a multi-media resource for brewers and their craft."

If you're like me and don't want to support the closed-source shenanigans of Apple, Inc., you can use several podcast receivers other than iPod/iTunes, many available free on-line.

I haven't tried any other than Juice, but it seems more than adequate, and is easy to set up and use. I transfer onto Creative Zen Vision M 60g.