firehose

djempirical

this is #fucked

My Google Youtube rep contacted me the other day. They were nice and took time to explain everything clearly to me, but the message was firm: I have to decide. I need to sign on to the new Youtube music services agreement or I will have my Youtube channel blocked.

This new music service agreement covers my Content ID account and it includes mandatory participation in Youtube’s new subscription streaming service, called Music Key, along with all that participation entails. Here are some of the terms I have problems with:

1) All of my catalog must be included in both the free and premium music service. Even if I don’t deliver all my music, because I’m a music partner, anything that a 3rd party uploads with my info in the description will be automatically included in the music service too.

2) All songs will be set to “montetize”, meaning there will be ads on them.

3) I will be required to release new music on Youtube at the same time I release it anywhere else. So no more releasing to my core fans first on Bandcamp and then on iTunes.

4) All my catalog must be uploaded at high resolution, according to Google’s standard which is currently 320 kbps.

5) The contract lasts for 5 years.

I can’t think of another streaming service that makes such demands. And if I don’t sign? My Youtube channel will be blocked and I will no longer be able to monetize (how I hate that word) 3rd party videos through Content ID.

I told the rep I’m happy with Content ID as it is. Can’t I just continue to participate in Content ID and not be a part of Music Key?

No. The rep said they can’t have music in the free version that is not in the paid version, it would be bad for their users. All music content has to be licensed under this new agreement.

How many 3rd party videos are there? As of today there are 9,696 videos and last month those videos had 250,000 (*1) monthly views. The Content ID robot sucks up more videos every day.

I got started with Content ID a couple of years ago when someone from Youtube reached out to me and I was offered a content management account to “claim” the soundtracks of these videos. The videos are dance performances, documentaries, amateur films, slideshows, animations, art projects, soundtracks to people doing things like skiing, miming, calligraphy or just playing video games. I love the variety of them all. Who knew there could be so many different ways to dance to my music? The video with the most views (1 million) is a demo reel by the Game of Thrones post production team.

In the majority of these videos the creator was really supposed to obtain a sync license from me but I think a lot of people don’t know. It’s daunting and cumbersome and confusing when all you want to do is add music to slides of your art portfolio. I have a licensing agent who handles the big stuff but there is not enough money in these usages for him and I wouldn’t have time to manage all the requests. Content ID feels like an awkward work around (the language the video uploaders see can be very alarming to them), but it solves a problem.

Here’s how it works: I upload my music and the Content ID robot identifies matches. I never block anyone’s videos or stop them from using the music except for special cases, like videos from hate groups or unauthorized product advertisements. Once Content ID finds a video with my music in it I can decide if I want to just track the video, or “monetize” it, i.e. put Dorito ads on it. That doesn’t always seem appropriate but if I do decide to monetize a video, or if the uploader already had ads on it, Google gives the majority of the ad revenue to them and about a third to me for the soundtrack. It really doesn’t pay very much but it does put “Zoe Keating” and a song title in the description of every video…in other words, credit.

One thing I don’t have on Youtube is music videos I’ve made myself. I don’t have a good explanation for why I’ve never made a music video but as I started work on my new album in 2013 I made a few quick videos about my life for my fans, meaning to make that a regular occurrence. I also thought I’d make a couple music videos to go with the new album.

But then my life changed. My husband Jeff was mysteriously and increasingly ill until in May 2014, he was diagnosed with stage IV non-smokers lung cancer. For most of last year I cared for him and our son and was unable to work much, let alone tour. Making videos was the last thing on my mind. When Jeff’s health stabilized in the fall I started working as a TV composer (for a show called “The Returned”, it airs on A&E on March 9). Working on the show has offered a much-needed creative outlet, steady pay and allowed me to stay close to home (his health is still fragile and we’re living in the moment but I am going to try to get that album out this year).

Anyway, a year ago my Youtube rep let me know there was a new music service coming and she sent along a new agreement. I read it and raised my concerns and asked if I could return the contract with those particular terms struck out. Alas no but the product folks seemed genuinely curious about my concerns and I had a phone meeting with them. The meeting was similar to one I had with DA Wallach of Spotify a couple years ago. Similar in that I got the sense that no matter how I explained my hands-on fan-supported anti-corporate niche thing, I was an alien to them. I don’t think they understood me at all.

The catalog commitment is the biggest issue for me. All these years I’ve yet to participate fully in any streaming service although I’ve chosen to give a handful of recordings to a few of them. If anyone wants more and they balk at paying for it, they can always stream all my music for free on Bandcamp(*2) or Soundcloud or they can torrent it (I uploaded my music to Pirate Bay myself many years ago). I’ve heard all the arguments about why artists should make all their music available for streaming in every possible service. I also know the ecosystem of music delivery made a shift away from downloading last year. Streaming is no longer advertising for something else, it is the end product. It’s convenient. Convenience is king. Yup, got all that, thanks.

This is the important part: it is my decision to make.

Is such control too much for an artist to ask for in 2015? It’s one thing for individuals to upload all my music for free listening (it doesn’t bother me). It’s another thing entirely for a major corporation to force me to. I was encouraged to participate and now, after I’m invested, I’m being pressured into something I don’t want to do.

I re-evaluate and change my mind all the time and I might decide to put everything everywhere at some point. But I want to decide what to do when. That is a major reason why I decided in 2005 to self-publish rather than chase after a record deal. I am independent because I didn’t want a bunch of men in suits deciding how I should release my music (*3). For 10 years I have managed to bushwhack a circuitous path around them but now I’ve got to find a away around the men in hoodies and crocs (I’m sorry, that was low, but that story was so funny).

The Youtube music service was introduced to me as a win win and they don’t understand why I don’t see it that way. “We are trying to create a new revenue stream on top of the platform that exists today.” A lot of people in the music industry talk about Google as evil. I don’t think they are evil. I think they, like other tech companies, are just idealistic in a way that works best for them. I think this because I used to be one of them (*4). The people who work at Google, Facebook, etc can’t imagine how everything they make is not, like, totally awesome. If it’s not awesome for you it’s because you just don’t understand it yet and you’ll come around. They can’t imagine scenarios outside their reality and that is how they inadvertently unleash things like the algorithmic cruelty of Facebook’s yearly review (which showed me a picture I had posted after a doctor told me my husband had 6-8 weeks to live).

I’ve been invited to play at Google twice. I went to the World Economic Forum in Davos last year and bumped into Eric Schmidt (not a croc-wearer) in the crowded halls. I was introduced to him a few months later at Google Zeitgeist (where I performed before a talk by Bill Clinton) but I doubt he has any recollection of me. So I might be well-connected but in the end I am a nobody.

What should I do? As much as it makes me grind my teeth, does having all my music forced onto Youtube’s music service really just not matter all that much? Should I just close my eyes and think of England?

Maybe after writing this blog Google will make the choice for me. They will block my channel and I will have to decide whether to block those 9,696 videos….and anger 9,696 fans. The usual people will talk about it for a day or two (*5) and then it and I will be forgotten.

Anyone starting up a new video service?

Footnotes:

(*1) I know it is not the same thing but it’s interesting that my monthly number of Pandora spins is also about 250,000. I’m allowed to talk about how much that pays, about $324 (sound recording + artist payment combined). It’s a violation of my agreement to say how much a comparable number of Youtube plays pays.

(*2) Here is something weird. Until yesterday a search for “Zoe Keating” would yield a Google Knowledge Graph box on the right with all my info, including links to listen to my music. It always bugged me that those links were only to Google Play, Rhapsody and Spotify, all services which have hardly any of my music in them. If the metadata about me is really pure, why not link to the only services that actually have all my music? i.e. Bandcamp, SoundCloud and iTunes? I know the links were there yesterday because I searched to get the list for this blog. As of today, there are no music links whatsoever. Ideas?

(*3) Real things said to me by men in suits in 2004: “This could have potential if it had vocals.” “I don’t see a market for this”. “We need a sexy photo of you naked with your cello on top of you.”

(*4) I came of age in San Francisco working at a software startup during the dot com boom. The cyberpunks and the geeks were my friends. We worked together, we lived together, we raved together. Yes, a lot of what motivated us was the golden handcuffs (i.e. a salary of stock options only good in a future IPO) but I remember being motivated by the idea of technology changing the world for the better. Sometimes it felt like we were revolutionaries. Unfortunately a lot of those ideals, if they still exist, have become…corrupted is too strong a word….subsumed. The revolution has been corporatized.

(*5) Now commence the usual commentary about stupid artists and their entitled attitudes ;-)

UPDATE: 24 Jan

I’ve been in the midst of a medical crisis. It’s been horrible, an MRI found 25+ new mets in my husbands brain yesterday. It’s the first time the cancer has grown since it was discovered last year and we need a new plan.

I didn’t realize until late last night how widespread my blog went. Some people are saying that surely I must have misinterpreted what Google said to me. I based what I wrote off the transcript of our conversation ( after 9 months of dealing with the health insurance company I’ve gotten good at taking transcripts).

The rep said Google would “have to block my channel” if I didn’t sign the new music services agreement. They went on to say that if didn’t sign the agreement and wanted to keep my videos up I would have to unlink my channel so that it is not connected to the music agreement and then make a new channel under their regular non-music partner terms. In other words if I wanted to upload my own videos to youtube i would have to create a new account so my own music could be treated not like a partner account but like 3rd party videos (who would get the soundtrack share of the revenue I wonder?)

"the music terms are outdated and the content that you uploaded will be blocked. But anything that we can scan and match from other users will be matched in content ID and you can track it but won’t be able to participate in revenue sharing.”

"All music content has to be licensed under this new agreement. We can’t have music in the free version that is not in the paid version”

I had them explain it again to be sure.

“Wow, that’s a bit harsh,” I said.

“Yeah, I know,” they said.

Original Source

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lifesustainingmeasures:

melissaannandthecool:

Just a reminder

Boost this around.

Make it known that no woman ever has any reason to ever vote for a Republican.

I have a heart condition, and I laughed so hard at this post I fucked up my blood pressure, nearly lost consciousness and I now have a migraine. 

Alan Turing was a British mathematician who both broke the infamous Enigma code, enabling Britain to stay alive during WWII, and also the father of computer science and artificial intelligence. He's the reason why people have laboured for decades to beat the 'Turing Test', and also the reason why submarines didn't break the UK in 1942.

Read more...

silverbirch-steelrose:

jossisgod:

freckletriangleofdoom:

I’m glad to see this on the dash — it was a pointed moment last night. The whole thing here.

In America the most comprehensive and intelligent news is provided by comedians on the Comedy Central channel while those channels purporting to be actual news stations are laughable - yes Faux/Fox News & CNN in particular.  It’s no wonder that American politics is so fucked up.

The hardest part about watching this clip was how uncomfortable the audience was. Trevor could hardly get a laugh or chuckle or cheer out of them at all.

thefeministarchivist:

whiteguysdoingitbythemselves:

Republicans have made their choices for the House Judiciary Committee, and they are all white men who oppose abortion rights. Tip courtesy of angryblacklady. 

literally fuck everything

Kim became the youngest person to ever win gold at the Winter X Games.

Chloe Kim made some Winter X-Games history on Saturday when the 14-year-old became the youngest person to ever win a gold medal. Kim won gold in the women's snowboard superpipe and edged seven-time Winter X Games gold medalist Kelly Clark to do it.

Kim won the silver medal in the event last year. She appeared on her way to another second-place finish on Saturday after two runs. Clark scored a 90.00 on her first run and led Kim, who scored a 87.66 in her second run. Kim, however, saved her best for last and posted a 92.00 in the final run to take gold.

Kim was one of five athletes to take home a gold medal on Saturday. Nick Goepper was among the others, when he claimed gold in the men's ski slopestyle. The gold was the third of Goepper's X Games career and the second-straight year he's won gold in slopestyle.

Emma Dahlstrom took gold in women's ski slopestyle, the first X Games medal of her career. Ryan Simons won the third X Games medal of his career and first gold when he took home the win in snowmobile HillCross. Vincent Gagnier capped the night with a gold medal in Ski Big Air. The victory came a year after Gagnier finished second in the event.

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jones_supa writes There has been quite a debate around the Linux version of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the fact that it wasn't really a port. A special kind of wrapper was used to make the Windows version of the game run on Linux systems, similar to Wine. The performance on Linux systems took a hit and users felt betrayed because they thought that they would get a native port. However, after the game stopped launching properly at some point, the reason was actually found to be a Linux regression. Linus quickly took care of the issue on an unofficial Witcher 2 issue tracker on GitHub: "It looks like LDT_empty is buggy on 64-bit kernels. I suspect that the behavior was inconsistent before the tightening change and that it's now broken as a result. I'll write a patch. Serves me right for not digging all the way down the mess of macros." This one goes to the bin "don't break userspace". Linus also reminds of QA: "And maybe this is an excuse for somebody in the x86 maintainer team to try a few games on steam. They *are* likely good tests of odd behavior.."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Background
We’ve been really lucky to have the opportunity in the past to work with Jim McGowan at the American Red Cross who is doing some great work with open source software at that organization. He was a subject matter expert and participant at the 2013 Everyone Hacks Hackathon we ran in Chicago, IL. He has also worked closely with a team that was once part of the Geeks Without Bounds Accelerator Program to modernize crisis response tools used by on the ground volunteers, coordinators and project managers.

Some of the software needs translation files for client-facing parts of the interface. The language communities in the United States are quite diverse, and sometimes a single neighborhood may have more than 25 languages spoken. We don’t expect to have language files for every language there is, but the more language files we can give them, the better!

The Challenge
Translate the items inside the quotation marks in the following block:

InformationRelease: "Client Consent to Share Information",
InformationReleaseLong: "Privacy: The American Red Cross respects the privacy of its clients.  We will honor your wishes when sharing information about your needs.  " +
   "I authorize the American Red Cross to share my information with and receive information from the specific " +
   "individuals/organizations (landlord, etc.) listed below:",
InformationReleaseWhy: "We do this to coordinate benefits, and ensure that we do everything we can to assist you.  If you do not want us to share your information, please let your Red Cross caseworker know before signing this document.",

Address: "Address",
Phone: "Phone",
Residents: "Residents",
Name: "Name",
Age: "Age",
MF: "M/F", // gender
RelationshipToHOH: "Relationship to HOH",
AtScene: "At Scene?",

YourAcceptance: "Your Acceptance",
InformationCorrectDisclaimer: "The above information provided is correct and accurate, and I live at the above address.",
AssistanceIsAGift: "All Red Cross assistance is a gift of the American People, and never needs to be repaid.",
PleaseSign: "Please sign in the box below with your finger or the provided stylus:",

// Info release agencies:
sfhsa: "San Francisco Human Services Agency",
tzuchi: "Tzu Chi Disaster Relief"

How To Submit Your Work
The best way for you to submit your work is through GitHub. First fork the idat project off of the GWOB tree:
https://github.com/gwob/idat/tree/master/apps/forms/translations

Use the file English.js as your model for what your translation file should look like. Name your translation file [Your Language].js. You will see in the repo that there is already a Spanish.js file. The translations go under the line that says
Forms.translations.english = Forms.Translation.create({

Only, you should change “english” to your language in all lower case, just like you did with the filename.

If you’d like to have credit for your work inside the code, feel free to add a line right after the line that says
Forms.translations.[yourlanguage] = Forms.Translation.create({

Your credit line should look something like
//translation contributed by Joanna Doh j.doh@email.net 23 Jan 2015

When you are done creating your translations and have them committed into your GitHub account, send us (GWOB) a pull request. We’ll pull your translations into our repository, clean up the code if need be, make sure that each file is checked for consistency and accuracy and then we’ll send a pull request to the Red Cross team with the final version.

Need help getting started with GitHub? It’s a great tool to learn how to use, even if you aren’t a coder. Version control is great for all sorts of creative projects, including translations! Luckily GitHub have some great step by step tutorials and videos to get you started, too. https://help.github.com/.

If you just aren’t up for that but you still want to do the translations, that’s OK. You can copy and paste the translation block above into a hackpad, pirate pad, or google docs document and send us the link at fridaychallenge@geekswobounds.org and we’ll handle getting the translations into the code files.

Happy Translating!

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Olmec mask, dated to 900-500 BC, and made of jadeite.

Artefact courtesy of & able to be viewed at the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas: 1973.17. Original photos taken by Mary Harrsch (edited).

WE GET IT. IT'S THE SAME WORD AS TESTICLES -- the Patriots

There has been a lot of talk about the Patriots' potential deflation of footballs, which has led to people talking about footballs a lot, which has led to footballs being abbreviated as "balls" a lot, which has led to A MILLION BILLION TRILLION TABLOID HEADLINES ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE WORD FOR SPORTS OBJECTS IS THE SAME AS THE WORD FOR TESTES.

But after Bill Belichick's presser today, the Pats tried to put a stop to this.

Press guy just told media that all "sophomoric references to balls will be replaced with footballs" in the transcript of the conference. Ha!

— Sara Ganim (@sganim) January 24, 2015

Did it work?

LOLNOPE

balls balls balls lololololololol

[clears throat] HE WAS JUST MEASURING THE PSI OF HIS BALLS IN AN UNCONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT pic.twitter.com/XMF9c0ufiR

— Brian Floyd (@BrianMFloyd) January 24, 2015

The New England Patriots held a press conference in which Bill Belichick reiterated that the team followed every rule in regards to the ball deflating scandal. Also, he wants you to know he handled a lot of balls this week.

The New England Patriots held a press conference Saturday, addressing the scandal regarding the deflating of footballs in the AFC Championship against the Indianapolis Colts. Head coach Bill Belichick reiterated that the Patriots have followed the NFL's rules, saying he "personally, and we as an organization, have followed every rule to the letter."

He said he spent an extensive amount of time learning about ball inflation and preparation over the past week, and it became clear to him he didn't have a strong idea of how the process of determining the pressure of a football actually works.

"I've handled dozens of balls over the past week," Belichick said, "The texture of the ball is easy to identify, the pressure of the ball is a whole different story."

Belichick said the pressure of a football is "much more difficult to feel or identify," by touch. Again, he reiterated the Patriots set the balls to the proper PSI, and that they were delivered to the officiating crew properly. "Once the balls were on the field for an extended period of time ... they were down approximately one and half pounds per square inch."

Essentially, he's saying normal use caused the balls to be deflated, despite the fact the Colts' balls were not affected in the same way. He said the footballs were never prepared in any area other than the Patriots' locker room, specifically noting there was no specific heated room in which the footballs were handled.

"We had no way of knowing, until we went through this exercise, that this has taken place," Belichick said, "When we hand the balls to the officials ... the air pressure at that point, from then on until the end of the game, we have no knowledge of that."

In other words, when the balls were given to the officials, there was no way to test them accurately.

At the end of his conference, Belichick said he is embarrassed to reveal how much time he'd spent on this as opposed to the upcoming Super Bowl against the Seattle Seahawks, before restating that the Patriots did everything by the book.

"I'm embarrassed to talk about the amount of time I've put into this, relative to the other challenge we have in front of us," Belichick said. "This is the end of this subject for me for a long time. ... I've spent more than enough time on this."

In the court of public opinion, many are quick to bash the Patriots for this whole situation, though some have pointed out it's not exactly a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.

Bird showers before school.

The Kingdome has been out of existence for almost 15 years, but King County and the city of Seattle are still paying down a debt stemming from roof repairs in 1994. That debt will likely be paid back early, according to the county budget director, thanks in part to the recent success of the Seahawks.

I have a feeling there's a lot of tech support workers out there cringing a little at my portrayal of the kinds of questions they'd ask.

“

GamerGate seeks to drive women out of computing by choosing some targets, harassing them until they go into hiding, and warning the remaining women (and the declining number of women pursuing computer science degrees) that they might be next. Methods for achieving this include:  

• anonymous threats of assault, rape, and murder.
• anonymous messages to employers seeking to have the victim demoted or dismissed.
• publicizing the target’s sexual history, both as an end in itself and as a way to make the target less attractive to prospective employers.

  At an early date, GamerGate identified Wikipedia, “the encyclopedia anyone can edit,” as ideal for their purposes. It’s conspicuous. Google loves it: for most everyday people, Google will make Wikipedia its first or second hit. No one admits it, but reporters use Wikipedia as a crib all the time. It’s anonymous, and it’s rich enough to make that anonymity stick.”

-

Mark Bernstein: How GamerGate Uses Wikipedia as a weapons platform.

These GamerGate assholes are explicitly and implicitly supported and have been enthusiastically endorsed by Adam Baldwin. You may want to think about this, if you’re considering attending a convention where he’s appearing.

The threat of fines has not deterred Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch from grabbing his crotch after scoring touchdowns. But the threat of a 15-yard penalty might. The NFL wants Lynch to know that officials will be on the lookout and ready to assess a 15-yard penalty if Lynch does it again.

Seahawks receiver Jermaine Kearse, who scored the game-winning touchdown in the NFC Championship Game, celebrated by throwing the football into the stands. That’s against NFL rules, and the NFL has fined him $5,512 for it.

Bad Lip Reading is always great. Especially when it features football men.

My favorite? "I ONCE GOT A RAKE AND I KILLED A SNOWMAN."

Just kidding. They're all my favorite.

thejohnsu:

dog dog dog dog dog