Save our music pioneers
The News Review:
- Save our music pioneers
- Search giants to answer on China
- Stephen King: Deng’s revolution means China is set to overtake…
- Marauding Scots fall feet first into Welsh ambush
- Russian horror flick hopes to challenge Hollywood
Save our music pioneers
The Independent – Independent – Feb 13, 2006
He had a bit of the cheeky chappy boy next door combined with a little of the new American teen attitude and he was Britain’s first home-grown rock’n'roller. He had a bit of the cheeky chappy boy next door combined with a little of the new American teen attitude and he was Britain’s first home-grown rock’n'roller… This means that any entrepreneur will be free to burn a recording of Tommy’s “Singing the Blues” (which reached No 1 in December 1956) and sell it on without contributing anything to Steele or his record company Decca. The same will apply to other British trailblazers such as Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey and, before long, The Beatles. Jamieson says the British music industry will be making a submission to the independent review of intellectual property rights which has been set up by Chancellor Gordon Brown and is being headed by Andrew Gowers, the former editor of the Financial Times. “We are going into the great British golden era of rock and pop and it would be sad to lose rights to this material to such things as offshore trading companies. It means anyone could duplicate Beatles recordings and sell them. They wouldn’t pay The Beatles and if they are operating offshore they wouldn’t even pay anything to UK plc,” says Jamieson. “We should consider up to 95 years, which is what applies in the US, our biggest competitors for selling music in the global marketplace.
Search giants to answer on China
Australian IT – Feb 13, 2006
“While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission,” Google senior policy counsel Andrew McLaughlin said. “Many agree that there is truth to what the internet companies are saying,” said Bart Mongoven of Strategic Forecasting, a private US intelligence firm. But in order to get the same compliance from a Western internet company, Beijing has to coax, cajole or threaten it, and the resulting controversy in the West is not in China’s interests, Mr Mongoven said. “At the very least, the presence of American web companies irritates the Chinese government, because it places its political tactics on public display,” he said. The Congressional hearing could set the pace for legislation compelling internet companies to locate email servers outside “repressive countries” and prohibit the export of internet technology to these countries. “The hearing is going to give internet companies a chance to testify before Congressman Smith puts the final touches to the legislation,” Mr Dayspring said.
Stephen King: Deng’s revolution means China is set to overtake…
The Independent – Independent – Feb 13, 2006
The Chinese authorities knew that these organisational skills didn’t exist in China: they needed help from outside. And that’s exactly what’s happened over the past 25 years. China’s success is not entirely a home-grown affair: it reflects a huge surge in foreign direct investment as companies in the G7 and elsewhere have tried to take advantage of China’s low labour costs. By doing so, they have turned China into the world’s assembly plant. Sixty per cent of China’s exports and imports are today accounted for by so-called foreign-invested companies. Chinese manufacturing skills and Western talents in management and capital allocation have combined to lead to a more efficient allocation of scarce resources. China may be a one-party state, but the authorities certainly know all about Adam Smith and the division of labour.
Marauding Scots fall feet first into Welsh ambush
Telegraph.co.uk – Feb 13, 2006
First it was Mel Gibson, and when Matt Williams’ head also plopped into a basket, the Scottish rugby team went back to their old Braveheart, marauding ways – inspired, as they hoofed the ball downfield, by the supporters’ cry of: “Feet, Scotland, feet!”However, while their rediscovered passion has been directly attributed to their home-grown coach, Frank Hadden, it was, ironically, their feet which got Scotland into trouble yesterday. When second-row forward Scott Murray left an imprint of his studs on the head of the Welsh lock Ian Gough, Murray’s boots had only one more journey to make – back to the dressing room. It was a shame for the spectators, as Scotland had survived a start in which Wales unleashed everything at the visitors bar the regimental goat they bring out with them for the national anthems.
Russian horror flick hopes to challenge Hollywood
Guardian Unlimited – Feb 13, 2006
Alexander Semionov, editor of the journal Russian Cinema Business Today, said: “Night Shift was the first Russian film to make a lot of money here. The advertising campaign was elegant and sufficiently huge. “He said that last year half of the 10 most popular films at the box office in Russia were home grown, including the top two. Night Shift, which beat Spiderman 2 and the final part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the box office, had its own record broken by the second most popular film of last year, Turkish Gambit, about the 19th-century Russo-Turkish war. Then, in September, a new record was set by Command 9, a forthright look at the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan, which became the most popular film of the year. It grossed more than £5m in its first week. After a decade of poor funding, investment from state television studios has seen a flurry of comparatively big-budget films emerge from Moscow’s Gollivuud – the Russian transliteration of the US film capital – as the country develops both fondness and finance for homegrown films.