I bought a CD, not a licensing agreement
Below is a letter from the Sydney Morning Herald that raises an interesting argument about the gray area that the products of the music industry occupy:
It is sad but predictable to see John Prior trotting out the old fallacy about music that we buy a product encumbered with a licence.
Let us walk through my most recent purchase. I strolled into the store, located the CD I was after, paid for it in cash and left. At no stage was I asked to sign a licensing agreement like those for software. It was a simple transaction of cash for a physical product.
"No," cries the music industry, "you are bound by the licensing agreement that you did not sign and that we cannot produce for inspection."
Fine -- let's suppose I now have a license for personal use applying to all the CDs I own. I should be able to take advantage of that. A CD I bought 10 years ago now has a scratch down the middle so that five of the 10 songs refuse to play. Luckily for me, this problem is solely with the physical medium. After all, my licence for personal use should allow me to reacquire "my" content, especially since it is digital data and can be reproduced an unlimited number of times at virtually no cost.
"No," cries the music industry, "you bought a product, not a licence. You are not entitled to a free replacement, you need to buy it all over again. And when you do, you will be covered by another identical licence. Until something happens to this new physical medium."
David Jack, Leichhardt
SEOh yeah!
I was flattered to see this very blog appear as a search result for my former employer. I might be at the bottom of the page but it's the first page :)
Google must've changed something though because this is no longer the case :(
Daily Agoniser online
I haven't picked on Wagga's Daily Advertiser for a while and, since I'm not currently trying to get them to pick up stories in my PR work, now is a good time to point out that they treat visitors to their website to more mistakes than what appear in the print edition. Look at the way the intro para gets cropped above and the lazy typo below.
Then look at this headline:
Literacy is dead
An article at Time magazine discusses the demise of cursive writing among what marketers call Generation Y and, although I'm Generation X, it's not something I use either.
I often wonder if literacy isn't also on the way out. How long before the abbreviations used in text messaging are replaced by voice recognition? It's only a recent phenomena that a majority of the population can read and write, for centuries it was the realm of an elite class such as scholars. They'll soon be l33t!
Vaginamite toast
The current contest to name the new Vegemite makes me wonder how many deviants will suggest Vaginamite or Vaginamite with dick cheese. Aside from me that is :)
I won't be trying the new Vegie, we're very happy with our combo of Vegemite and olive oil on toast. It's really good with a wholemeal sour dough. Try it.
Poo-poo pouch
This clever copywriting combines both euphemism and the latest marketing research that shows how mothers respond to baby talk!
Mr Goatse
Call me puerile but I noticed that the Mr Bump figurine has a passing resemblance to a shock website and internet meme.
Not a joke
It's a bit mean putting a department for disabled people at the top of a flight of stairs, no?
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