Posts by Simon Grigg
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Yeah but be fair JP I sat through countless bloody RIANZ and the like meetings where home taping was portrayed as the death knell of music as we know it. Before that of course there was, before our time the LP, which was hailed the same way. Then there was the rise of radio, which was predicted to kill off live music, and before that the 78 which the music publishers went out of their way to destroy as the satanic medium which would put them all out of business. All these things did was change the way business was done, the music survived and the delivery mechanism changed. I absolutely believe that Peter Jenner was right a couple of weeks back..the world as the record industry knows it is over, but by their very nature that was inevitable at some stage.
As you know I'm a copyright owner but I'm welcoming the current changes with open arms. It has to take us somewhere exciting eventually, its just that no-one knows exactly where yet, and we're all floundering around trying to work it out. Very exciting and positive times I think.
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I agree it's not insurmountable but its hard to overstate the panic out there in major record label land...witness the suits against MySpace and YouTube from UMG. The thought of losing a small percentage of turnover through a software glitch..well its hard to overstate.
The entropy described in the Slate story is nothing new...as the story points out Bridgeport has been around since 1969 and there are plenty of others out there...but the granddaddy of them all is Allen Klein, the ultimate parasite..he makes the likes of Bridgeport and Morris Levy look like amateurs. His swoop on Bittersweet Symphony is a case in example.
When we released How Bizarre he rang PolyGram Music Publishing who were administering it on our behalf, and threatened a law suit (he controls the Spector copyrights including Spanish Harlem which has a passing...no I can't put it in writing). I was in the Sydney office at the time and Roger Grierson, the MD came running thru grinning..we are gonna have a hit! The fact that Klein had rang and threatened was evidence of that...he sniffs around everywhere.
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I went to University with Murray some years back and he was out of step and a bit of a foot in the mouth wally even back then. But to imply that Dobbyn, who to most NZers is a bit of a national icon, is a died in the wool agenda bearing lefty is just bizarre. Quite odd behavior that would win him little sympathy. I'm a long way away right now so a little out of touch with te public response but Dobbyn is more akin to our Ayers Rock / Uluru than anything else. He simply"is"in NZ now. And if he's shown any great bias towards the current government then it may be because of the support that Helen has shown to those in his profession.
And I'll wager he'll be long remembered after silly old Murray is long forgotten.
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James said
I don't understand why anyone would take that bet.
No I agree...50,000,000 Americans took that bet on Bush and 200,000/ 300,000 / 600,000 ..you chose.. the numbers are petty ugly either way...Iraqis are dead now with god knows how many to come. All based on a series of lies.
And now we are supposed to assume that the same people have learned to tell the truth?
No one doubts that the Iranians have a program to produce nuclear something but we don't know what. I too would rather not take that risk but one thing is certain, if it is a bomb the Bush administration has shown that the are neither competent or globally responsible enough to handle it.
Stop threatening these people, stop making ludicrous accusations, and treating this sovereign nation of some 70 million as satanic and talk to them. Do what the rest of the world does and trade with them. Take your warships and troops away from their borders. Then we might make a little progress. They might start feeling a little less threatened by you and stop referring to you as the Great Satan. Repeated overtures have been made by Iran to the US which have been arrogantly and stupidly rebuffed. Although I guess when you get idiots like that guy you quoted in RCP getting published (lets face it it most countries people would simply laugh at him and walk away) there may be a way to go before common sense prevails.
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Hi James,
I read it (with some reservations RCP is up there with Newsmax and Freerepublic in the loopy hard right-sphere) and sadly found it to be a bunch of xenophobic nonsense based on the half baked assumptions that are bounced around the nuttier edges of the US right. I'm sorry James but if I didn't know better I'd assume in was a parody of the American right."Intelligence sources announce that Iran is seeking to replace al Qaeda as the foremost anti-Western global terrorist organization"...really? Which ones. Doe he have a link or is this paranoid supposition. Oh and Iran is a country not an "organization". It's semantics I know but really James that article was garbage wasn't it..seriously...
iAs to the second, more good news from Iraq nonsense. Ramaldi may be our "Battle of the Bulge!!!" I'd laugh out loud if these people were not so deadly serious...there are still people who think like this? How many Iraqis are gonna die in this little good news escapade? How many does it take to make these sort of people feel good. Darryl may not have read further but he didn't miss much.God, even Kissinger has admitted what everyone else knows...you lost, its a mess, its over....159 Iraqis died yesterday (that we know of and 50 Coalition soldiers this month and you are, if that link is to be believed, teetering, against all available evidence and logic, on the brink of success? I'm sorry James but you can't on one hand dismiss Hersh (with sources like Richard Armatidge..not my favourite man but a hell of an inside contact) and the others he quotes...Hersh may not always be spot on but his record historically is pretty good..and then counter with things like those two links. I can't take them seriously.
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I would assume a NZ iTunes store would be run off shore ie Australia with content uploaded to them for inclusion, and, possibly have a NZ-based staff member to license content.
this is complicated by the fact that one of the major labels does not report to Australia (EMI) therefore its royalty stream from NZ sales cannot go through the OZ Opco. So the accounting for their acts would need to be treated separately if the sales came out of NZ.
Then there is the mechanical (songwriting) royalty which is still, I think, at a different rate for NZ and Australian sales, so all sales originating from the NZ side of the pond would need to be treated differently if it was simply a part of the Australian store. And then of course there are the NZ indies, some members of IMNZ, some not. Our industry in NZ is still quite different to the Australian one, its not just a matter of plugging in.
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I should say, since I can't efit..several hundred thousand lives in Iraq...
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Neil, I buy the flawed democracy too, just not as unquestioningly as you I guess. That sort of blind faith has cost several hundred lives in Iraq so far.
And I'm not unaware of the American (and Allied) effort in Normandy but that was not the period James was talking about..if you are going to make snide comments at least work out your timelines first so you don't look so silly.
I'm happy to debate this with James, he seems a reasonable sort of guy and as much as i disagree with what he is saying he puts his points well and without derision. Sadly ,I can't say the same for you.
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James, I smell deja -vu...
AFP CIA analysis finds no Iranian nuclear weapons drive: report
19 November 2006
WASHINGTON - A classified draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter said on Saturday.Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.
A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.
“If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran,” Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.
Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions “and thus stop Congress from getting in its way,” he said.
The Democratic victory unleashed a surge of calls for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with Iran.
But the administration’s planning of a military option was made ”far more complicated” in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency “challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb,” he wrote.
whole lot more at the link
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Ok James, now you are digging yourself a bit of a hole.
Firstly "To me it comes to the answer to 2 questions: does a regime have the intent to do harm and, does that regime have the capability to do harm? If the answer to those 2 questions is, probably, then the world is a better place without that regime." If those are the parameters of the judgment then I would hazard that you have rightly condemned the Bush administration's Iraqi policy of the past five years..
But I wish to take you to task over another part of your response and that is the "own team" garbage at the end of your post. Why is the world so black and white to you. Why in gods name is anyone who disagrees with the foreign policies of your country a god forsaken commie. What is thsi for us or against us thing that so plagues and has plagued US policy for years.
I don't agree with the way the United States has handled itself in recent decades but how in the hell does that make me a supporter of Mao. Its a core fallacy that plagues the US global perception, and they way they deal with other nations, and the angle you have taken whilst discussing with me. Just because Chirac was against the invasion of Iraq does not make him pro-Saddam, it simply means he is perhaps slightly more pragmatic and a realist..and as an aside has every right to say "I told you so" (and please don't toss the "Chirac was bought by Iraq or in it for the money, freedom fries nonsense into that) . Don't insult me or anyone else by making that stretch, don't talk about "your team" for gods sake.
Your argument is essentially "our murders are better than your murders" and it doesn't stack up, its defending the indefensible once again. As I said once before you and the Soviets were equal partners in the Cold War, both sides provoked and continued it. If the USA hadn't torpedoed the Vietnamese unification poll in the mid fifties because they didn't like the idea that the majority wanted re-unification, god knows how many would still be alive and we can reasonably assume that Pol Pot would not have killed however many million in Cambodia...if you are going to rack up lives like points that one has to go in your schedule I'm afraid.
And please don't bring up appeasement of Hitler, your nation didn't exactly take a stand there. Iran has invaded no-one and once you strip away the rightwing verbiage from both sides (don't forget that the president of Iran is from the same side of the political divide as Bush, and I hazard, yourself) there is not much more there beyond propaganda. The same people who are rattling about this are the same people who were rattling about Saddam. The same people who cried wolf four years ago, knowing that there was no substance to it. I for one am not willing to trust them this time. Perhps we should encourage, using your Churchill logic, Iran to nuke the USA before they attack any other nations. You logic is flawed.
I don't buy any of your other arguments either re:Iran. I'm sorry but the concept of a "polish" revolution in Iraq is simply a fantasy. The government is overwhelmingly popular and the way he is handing the USA simply adds to that. Its a fantasy, an ideologue nonsense in the same way Cheney sold you the welcome with flowers in Iraq nonsense.
The thing is, it is hypocrisy because you hold yourself to much higher standards than the nasty people of history that you yourself are comparing your country to, and I believe that at the core those ideals are still held dear, but so often your nation, in pursuing those ideals has fallen to the same level as those it seeks to criticise. You invade Iraq under false pretenses and directly or indirectly take the lives of god knows how many innocents; you arm and support Israel which has an appalling human rights record and support them as they oppress, bomb, rocket, imprison, massacre, disenfranchise and destroy a people (and you wonder why they throw suicide bombers at your "infidels", I guess they don't have the Apaches to fire the bombs from afar); you support certain nations in their nuclear ambitions against the wishes of the world but condemn others for doing the same thing; you refuse to comply with international treaties and agreements when they don't suit but insist others do.
I'm afraid the accusation of hypocrisy still stands.