You are required to pay royalties for covers and adaptations regardless of whether you use the actual recording
on the flip side, you are apparently allowed to do covers and adaptions regardless of whether the original author wants you to or not. you still have to pay, but they can't stop you from doing it. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/290/must-you-get-permission-to-record-someone-elses-song
i'm a designer and illustrator and i own a toshiba satellite tablet PC - i love it; it's got a big screen (14 inches) and it runs photoshop and all the other art/drawing tools i want, and drawing directly on the screen is so much nicer to me than using a wacom pad or something.
but it's getting old, and it's starting to show its age, and full-OS tablet PCs nowadays are just getting smaller (hard to find one with more than a 12-inch screen anymore) and more expensive ( i paid about $1100 for mine), while the cheaper ones are less useful. i was excited by the rumors of a mac tablet, because i thought maybe given apple's traditional position with designers and artists that the mac tablet might be something i could actually use.
it's true that tablets are a niche product, but it's MY niche, and it bums me out that it's not being better served.
Years back I worked for a company who did a very successful display at the Louisiana Children's Museum in New Orleans: http://www.bentmedia.com/case_studies/teamturtle.php
The computers were all touchscreen enabled and put into cabinets like kiosks, and they were scheduled to automatically restart if a crash was detected and relaunch the multimedia presentations. The exhibit itself was bright, colorful, and interactive.
I wasn't directly involved with the implementation of this project so I don't know all the details, but maybe from the photos in the case study you can get a sense of how it was set up. I remember it being a pretty big hit - and while I don't know the extent of any "unpleasant surprises" that are sure to occur with a project like this, when I visited the exhibit I recall everything working very smoothly.
"If you're going to steal for me, what's to stop you from stealing from me?"
"If you're going to lie for me, what's to stop you from lying to me?"
"If you're going to screw someone else over, why should I trust you?"
And yet the people "at the top" - in business, in government, in organized crime, everywhere - play these same games with each other, and have played these games with each other for centuries. Somehow, the whole thing still "works" and they manage to stay "on top". How do they pull that off? How do they keep the house of cards from falling when every one of them knows that every other one of them would turn on them if the moment was right? It doesn't sound like it would be possible to keep an organization going in an environment like that, but somehow they do it.
It would be like someone offering the secret of Coke to Pepsi - what do you expect Pepsi to do?
that very thing happened a few years ago - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5152740.stm
pepsi declined the offer and reported it as a theft of trade secrets.
But you see, the point is that someone still DOES make horse buggies. People still go to Central Park to ride the buggies, and SOMEONE has to create them.
That's the great thing about a niche market - if you're the only one in a certain business, be it horse buggies or resurrecting Polaroid film, you might very well be able to get enough customers who are interested in your product to stay in business.
If they think that enough people still find the old-school Polaroid film appealing, then they'd be stupid NOT to take their money, since no one else wants to.
Now if someone started a political party with positions more similar to those of the editorial line of The Economist newsmagazine, I could see voting for them. That is, support free-market economies with regulation and/or costing of negative externalities (pollution, systemic risks, etc.), a moderate social safety net, and liberal positions on social and civil liberties issues.
I guess that's the sort of thing I'm looking for. I just wonder why nothing has yet filled that need, if the Libertarian party has diverted so far from that completely reasonable path. If the answer is "no one really wants that", then I suppose that answers the question about Americans and the things they really cherish, as opposed to what they claim to cherish.
Legitimate question: why is the Libertarian party so marginalized in America? Their platform basically represents everything that most Americans will claim to believe in, so why do they have so little support? Is it them? Are they just bad at marketing themselves to the American Public? Are they so idealistic as to be completely impractical? Is it that Americans are actually pretty hypocritical? They say they love freedom and liberty, but then when they realize how much responsibility it takes they say to the government "ew, you take care of everything".
If it's the case that the Libertarian Party is essentially too uncompromising on ideals in order to function in the real world, isn't there a middle ground somewhere? Some party that says "yes, we really do love liberty, and we recognize that it requires responsibility, but here are some concessions that we recognize must be made for the real world". Who is that party? Is that kind of thinking what gets us Democrats and Republicans?
I've just never understood why "Libertarian" has become such a joke of a thing to be, when it essentially encompasses everything that Americans are "supposed" to cherish.
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
