Thursday December 7, 2006

TV Shows I’d Like To See on DVD Part 2: The Piracy Perplex

Several months ago, I put together a list of TV shows I’d like to see on DVD. Since we are talking about piracy this week, and using DVDs as an example, I thought it would be interesting to:

  1. See what movement there has been on that list
  2. Talk a bit about the lengths we’ve had to go to at our house to avoid buying a pirated DVD set of a show that will never come out on DVD.

So first, let’s look at that list:

Read the entire entry …

Monday December 4, 2006

What is Piracy? Part Two

Last week, we posted an item about the acetate of the first version of The Velvet Underground & Nico going on auction on eBay. (As I write this, the bidding is up to US $107,000.) This weekend, I got an email from a friend who said that he was downloading a digital copy of this album.

So here is my question: are either of these piracy? The auction of the physical artifact and the digital download of the music purportedly ripped from that physical artifact. Is the auction somehow not piracy, but the download piracy?

Read the entire entry …

Friday December 1, 2006

That’s What I Like: Cowboy Bebop

punchandjudy.jpgFunny story. Okay, it’s not so funny, but it’s a story. I was driving to the place I affectionately call the Evil Empire and heard a song on the radio. Okay, not really the whole song. It was one of those filler things they place between story segments on NPR stations. The song, naturally, was “Tank”, which is, possibly, the most amazing theme song for a TV series ever.

Though, in this case, the TV series is a Japanese anime series called Cowboy Bebop. I don’t recall how I discovered this show — possibly it was a way to break my Dragonball Z addiction. Really, I was so far out of the target demographic there, and Inuyasha was on another one of those interminable breaks. And I needed something else.
Read the entire entry …

Thursday November 2, 2006

Five Reasons Why Music Lovers Should Worry About The Death of The CD

A couple of days ago, while discussing EMI music exec Alain Levy’s announcement that the CD as we knew it was dead, Kirk wrote this: “music lovers shrugged and loaded more songs onto their iPods.”

Perhaps. But that’s not necessarily the right reaction. Last time I checked, I’m a music lover, and I did neither (of course, part of the reason is that my Nano’s battery keeps acting up, but that’s another story). I actually think that the death of the CD is a potentially bad thing for music lovers. We’re the ones who could easily get the shaft from the wholesale transition to digital music.

Read the entire entry …

Tuesday September 12, 2006

What is a “Webisode” Anyways?

With only a month left before the launch of Season Three of what is probably our consensus favorite show around here, Battlestar Galactica, Sci-Fi.com has launched a series of “webisodes” — internet-only episodes with brand-new content.

Obviously, Battlestar isn’t the first TV show to do this, but the webisodes were actually delayed for a month or so because of controversy over compensation. It’s the latest variation of the “new media meets old contracts” meta-issue we’ve seen played out over and over again.

In this case, the legal issue can be boiled down to this: what is a “webisode” anyways? Is it strictly promotional? Or is it brand-new content for a brand-new medium?

Read the entire entry …

Tuesday August 29, 2006

Why Pitchfork Scares Adults

We talk a lot about the decline of reviewers at mainstream publications. We have a lot of thoughts on the matter. Luckily, we have lots of server space, thus room for one more.

What is truly missing in today’s review world is passion. Good, old-fashioned, “I loved this so much I had to tell you about it” passion. There is a whiff of the academic in the work of many reviewers. Great, if you’re trying to write your master’s thesis, not so great if you’re trying to inspire your readers.

Let us take this lead from the Los Angeles Times’ review of the final Sleater-Kinney show:

Read the entire entry …

Monday August 21, 2006

Watch Out For Falling Serpents!!

So Snakes on a Plane didn’t do as well as expected. What surprises me is why anybody is surprised about this. But they are, and the backlash against the blogosphere has already started.

“It doesn’t create any sort of mandate for Internet promotion,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, noting that all the Web hype for Snakes on a Plane didn’t translate into ticket-buying.

Read the entire entry …

Monday August 7, 2006

6 Books You Should Read Right Now If You Wanna Get Some Insight Into This Whole “New Media” Thingy

Wanna know the philsophical underpinnings of some of our posts here at Medialoper? (I’ll pretend you said “yes.”) The following books have helped me work out some of the concepts that infuse nearly everything that I write about what we are calling the “new media.”

Here they are, alphabetical by author:

Read the entire entry …

Thursday August 3, 2006

Hollywood’s True Long Tail

In a weird sort of sleight of hand, media analysts reviewing Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail focus on the example of Netflix as both embodiment of the theory and refutation of the impact of long tail revenues. As the Wall Street Journal noted:

The currently popular notion that hits are becoming less important due to the vast reach of cyberspace would strike most Hollywood executives as preposterous. For good or bad, moguls make the opposite assumption. They can be forgiven for doing so; after just three weeks of release, the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel is already Hollywood’s all-time 11th biggest grosser, and No. 63 when adjusted for inflation.

Read the entire entry …

Creative Commons License