On Feb 27, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Symphonic Band and Wind Symphony is giving a concert based on sf/f films, video-games, and books, which sounds awesome. And I’l honored that the prof who organized it, Kevin Collins, cited my last couple of novels as inspiration for the theme.

“I think that it’s fair to say that this program was especially inspired by (Doctorow’s) “Makers” and “Little Brother,” Collins said. “I find myself fascinated by his descriptions of the contemporary popular sub-cultures, and the creative culture of modification and personalization that has developed around new technologies.”

The concert will begin with the Symphonic Band performing excerpts from “Symphony No. 1, Lord of the Rings,” by Johan Demeij. The work is based on the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, not the more recent Peter Jackson film trilogy. Those selections will be followed by “New Moon,” Alexandre Desplat’s score from the popular movie Twilight New Moon.

The combined Wind Symphony/Symphonic Band will turn next to a suite from the Batman film, The Dark Knight, by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.

Following an intermission will be “Howl’s Moving Castle,” a symphonic fantasy by Joe Hisaishi created for the popular children’s anime classic.

The evening will close with “Video Games Live Suite,” an arrangement by Ralph Ford of six musical selections from video games: “One Winged Angel” from Final Fantasy VII; “Myst III Main Theme” from Exile; “Bounty Hunter Theme” from Advent Rising; “Halo Theme” from Halo; “Coronation and Baba Yetu” from Civilization IV; and “Kingdom Hearts.”

First Fantasy: Music from Video Games, Anime, Fantasy Films and Fiction

My latest Internet Evolution column, “Copyright Undercover: ACTA & the Web,” talks about the absurd tea-leaf-reading exercise that we have to engage in to figure out what’s actually happening with negotiations for a far-reaching, secret copyright treaty that could change the face of the web, privacy, creativity, competition, and commerce.

As the seventh round of secret negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) concluded last month in Guadalajara, Mexico, the radio silence on the negotiations was near-total. Like the Kremlinologists of the Soviet Union, we’re left trying to interpret the clues that leaked out from beneath the closed door.

Here’s what we know: The idea that major copyright treaties should be negotiated in secret is losing traction around the world. Legislators from all the ACTA negotiating countries are demanding that this process be opened up to the press, activist groups, and the public.

In response, trade reps are making the bizarre claim that none of the treaty language will result in major changes to their countries’ laws, only the other countries will have to change. (Since all these countries have irreconcilably different copyright systems, someone is lying. My money is on all of them.)

Finally, we have some idea of how ACTA’s masters view public participation: During the bland “public meeting” held before the negotiations got underway, an activist was thrown out for tweeting an account of the assurances being mouthed by those on the podium. As she was led away, she was booed by the lobbyists who are able to participate in the treaty from which mere citizens are excluded.

This issue is an embarrassment for all concerned, a naked bit of crony-capitalism that has so much more at stake than mere copyright. It needs to stop. Read on for how it came to this, and what you can do to stop it.

Copyright Undercover: ACTA & the Web

My latest Publishers Weekly column, “The Price Is Right,” looks at the Amazon-Macmillan price dispute as a fight between two strategies for maximizing profit: price discrimination (getting the most out of each customer) and demand elasticity (sacrificing some per-customer revenue to sell to more people) and how these two strategies are challenged by the nature of digital goods and complexified by proprietary formats and DRM:

Everyone with a product to sell practices both price discrimination and demand elasticity in varying degrees. But when the product you’re selling is digital, the correct ratio of one to the other becomes a lot harder to calculate. If you’re selling hard goods, whether books, shovels, or coffee beans, the math is easy: you can’t make money if you drop your price below the marginal cost of production. But digital goods, like e-books, have almost no marginal costs. Things like credit card processing fees, electricity and bandwidth, and a few other considerations keep the cost from truly falling to $0, but the low marginal cost of selling digital copies opens up some very exciting possibilities for publishers. Could the pool of people willing to buy books—the total number of regular readers—be increased by dropping the price? And could that increase in new customers be large enough to offset losses from smaller margins? Amazon clearly thinks so.

But pricing and profit-maximizing strategies aren’t the whole story. Consumer electronics buyer demographics tilt heavily to the coveted 18–34-year-old who’ll buy anything slim with an eggshell finish. Turning those big spenders into readers is an exciting prospect for anyone who cares about bringing in new business—and Macmillan executives are keenly aware of the opportunity e-books represent for turning nonreaders into new customers. Tom Doherty, publisher of Macmillan’s Tor imprint (Tor publishes my novels), is positively luminous on the importance of inducting nonreaders into the practice of regular reading. And there’s no bookseller on earth with more nonreader customers than Amazon, which, in addition to books sells everything from server space to freeze-dried steaks, sex toys, and uranium ore.

The Price Is Right

In my latest Guardian column, “Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?” I look at how lamentably credulous both the BBC and its UK regulator, Ofcom, have been in accepting US media’ giants threats to boycott the Beeb if it doesn’t add digital rights management to its broadcasts. The BBC is publicly funded, and it is supposed to be acting in the public interest: but crippling British TV sets in response for demands from offshore media barons is no way to do this — and the threats the studios have made are wildly improbable. When the content companies lost their bid to add DRM to American TV, they made exactly the same threats, and then promptly caved and went on allowing their material to be broadcast without any technical restrictions.

How they rattled their sabers and promised a boycott of HD that would destroy America’s chances for an analogue switchoff. For example, the MPAA’s CTO, Fritz Attaway, said that “high-value content will migrate away” from telly without DRM.

Viacom added: “[i]f a broadcast flag is not implemented and enforced by Summer 2003, Viacom’s CBS Television Network will not provide any programming in high definition for the 2003-2004 television season.”

One by one, the big entertainment companies – and sporting giants like the baseball and American football leagues – promised that without the Broadcast Flag, they would take their balls and go home.

So what happened? Did they make good on their threats? Did they go to their shareholders and explain that the reason they weren’t broadcasting anything this year is because the government wouldn’t let them control TVs?

No. They broadcast. They continue to broadcast today, with no DRM.

They were full of it. They did not make good on their threats. They didn’t boycott.

They caved.

Why did Ofcom back down over DRM at the BBC?