A few charts have arisen which visualize the rather sobering truth here.

First, the Washington Post broke down how each candidate’s plan would play out across the gross income brackets in the US.
Secondly, Viveka Weiley provided a scaled version of that graph (shown below), reflecting the real weight of this distribution- i.e. with the size of each bracket drawn to scale in order to see how the cuts (and/or raises) really spread out across the entire spectrum. This graph is in my opinion the most accurate and telling, particularly when you note exactly where US median incomes fall on the scale (hint- it’s not in the high range).

Looking at how both Obama and McCain’s proposed tax plans pan out, it’s a very different story.  Obama is proposing tax cuts for 99% of the population, with the upper 1% income bracket (i.e. those making over $600k annually) footing the bill – which to me makes sense as they’re the ones profiting most from the economy. McCain’s graph, however, runs in reverse- granting his biggest tax cuts to that same abundantly-wealthy 1%, with the 60% of the country in the lower income brackets getting the shaft.

Now tax cuts should not be the measure of this election, there are a lot of other important issues to address – but this is a really sobering look at how our adopting McCain’s tax policy really would be like a third Bush term in that respect. The corporate fatcats and their cronies skate by with monstrous tax cuts, while the people in this country that scrape by on far, far less have to shoulder their tax burden.  The fact that the Republicans have been calling Obama an ‘out of touch elitist’ is  insultingly ironic given the contrast in their tax distribution plans.

I was about 85% in the Obama camp already, but add this to the disaster that is Sarah Palin (don’t even get me started), and the door just shut on McCain, at least for me.  Despite McCain’s ’straight talk’ for change and reform, he’s really just spouting the same policy we’ve had to bear for the last 8 years.  Enough is enough.

(disclosure: For the record, given this information I would pay higher taxes in an Obama presidency, so there’s really no tax incentive for me to support him this election.  It’s just the right thing to do.  And if you wish to repost/use this graph, please respect Viveka’s licensing terms – just click the graph above to visit her original post and get details.)

Update: screw that- I’m testing out WordPress right now to see if it’ll work better for me.  So far, the import in WP 2.5 is working like a champ, and aside from losing my tags seems to have migrated everything pretty well.  We may be moving to WordPress in short order.

Sorry for the hiccups, promise I’ll dust off my l33t CSS skillz and re-facelift the search templates shortly. They’re still fully functional, just butt-ugly for the moment.

The issue of ownership of digital media is becoming incredibly convoluted due to the ‘mashup culture’ the Web 2.0 movement has brought on. Particularly with photography and imagery. I’ve lots of friends who make their living as photographers, and have a tough time promoting their work online without being subjected to what I’d consider creative theft. Fortunately the bulk of my own personal songwriting is either locked in a vault at an unnamed record label (I’ll tell that story in person, but not online), or in my own possession and not distributed – most of my professional music career has been studio and session work, focusing on other people’s songwriting. And my photography, although exhibiting an occasional spark of talent, is mostly average in quality- but despite that, I’ve granted usage permission to many people who’ve asked to ‘remix’ a picture here and there from my Flickr photostream. Hey, in general I don’t mind contributing a bit here and there to the mashup culture. But I also don’t make my living as a photographer, so the benefit-to-risk factor is extremely low to me anyway.

Enter the Lane Hartwell controversy.

In a nutshell, Lane Hartwell, an independent San Francisco photojournalist who has published her work in many publications including Wired magazine (among others), noticed a recent ‘parody video’ on YouTube using one of her copyrighted images. Now this is a key point- her image in question was reportedly posted on Flickr with an ‘all rights reserved’ copyright notice affixed to it. In a normal world, ‘all rights reserved’ should mean exactly what you’d expect- she does not want people to use her images without her express permission.

The guys who used this image were reportedly contacted by Ms. Hartwell and asked to not use her image, despite the fact that it only appeared for roughly a second in the video. They (reportedly) either declined or simply did not comply, and Ms. Hartwell – finding this incident the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back after being creatively thieved many times in the past – consulted an attorney who was able to have the video removed from YouTube through legal channels. Now I’m certainly not a fan of indiscriminate litigation, but I can understand being frustrated with watching your work be repurposed without your permission and looking for some help to try and address the problem.

(You’ll noted I use the words ‘reportedly’ and ‘allegedly’ quite liberally within this post as I’m sure that both I and the rest of the incredibly judgmental online communities who have seen fit to comment on this subject do not know the entire story behind this with clarity.)

Anyway, once the video was taken off of YouTube, all hell broke loose. Lane’s now being subjected to verbal harassment, misogynistic slurs and flat out hatred for simply trying to protect her own work.

Web 2.0 analyst Michael Arrington, a lawyer before cashing in on the recent bubble economy with his site TechCrunch, went on record saying that Lane Hartwell was flat out wrong. ‘Fair Use’ provisions – being as the image was used in a parody – reportedly allow the video producers to steal her work without asking, and use it however they see fit as the video was simply a parody. No credit, no need to even ask her permission before taking the image- he implies that she’s an attention hound capitalizing on the situation to get publicity. Even worse, that she’s ‘ruining everyone’s fun’ by not wanting her work remixed- although the license agreement stated on her Flickr account should have made that clear before they decided to lift the image.

Emm… WTF?

Now again- I understand the ‘mashup’ culture is all about remixing and combining a conglomeration of assets (ill gained or not) into new forms. But these guys couldn’t even ask permission before using her photo, and give her the benefit of consent? Or even just simply read – and honor – the explicitly-stated license she’d placed on the image to begin with? And the insinuation that simply expecting your wishes regarding your own property to be honored is ruining the fun for thieves who would usurp said property is absolutely asine, regardless of ‘fair usage’ or not. It’s one thing if she hadn’t stated any license for her image, but she did- it was ignored, but according to Arrington, she’s still a party-wrecker for not having a sense of humor about being ripped off.

Shit- if I was putting up with the abuse Lane Hartwell’s getting right now, I’d expect my sense of humor to be stretched thinner than Kate Moss on a coke binge. And that’s putting it mildly.

If this is the state of our intellectual property laws right now, then I submit we need to fucking reset the system and start over. Even rappers who snag small samples of previously-published songs are well familiar with the need to acquire permission before doing so, and life’s been just ducky since that flap came to a head back in the early ’90s thanks to hacks like Vanilla Ice who tripped over their own egos. But today, simply as Ms. Hartwell had the poor judgment to post her image online, it’s – according to Arrington – fair game for taking and using in any way anyone sees fit – simply as the end result was a ‘parody’. Forget integrity and even good karma in asking someone’s permission before taking their property- since online imagery is easy to take, it’s apparently now OK to do so. Does that mean if I left a Chevy engine in my front yard, behind a fence, with a sign saying ‘PLEASE DO NOT STEAL’, that any jackass who wanted to use it in his own ‘project’ to poke some fun at Ford has the legal right to take it without recourse? Same general scenario.

Fuck that. I say Lane Hartwell was completely within her rights to ask for her photo to not be used in this video, and to take legal recourse when it was without her permission. And I think that Michael Arrington should stick to digging up dirt on the Web 2.0 day traders as although his legal credentials may be intact, his moral foundation is beyond suspect. Just take a look at the comment thread in Lane’s related Flickr post here, and you tell me how you would feel if you simply asked for a little bit of control over your own property, and received the kind of verbal abuse she’s clearly been taking. Methinks you’d probably feel much as she does- ripped off, yet somehow made out to be an opportunistic hack who’s simply trying to grab a spotlight.

The guys who made the ‘Bubble 2.0′ video simply didn’t ask for permission, and have even admitted as such in a reasonably calm tone once they were called on it. But what I find most reprehensible is that people like Michael Arrington, who I previously held in pretty high regard, seem to support this form of creative theft. I’ll simply quote Arrington’s closing shot in his recent post to illustrate my point:

Societal ideals around what constitutes ownership over art are changing. People who try to protect and silo off their work are simply being ignored. Those that embrace the community, and give back to it not only allowing but asking for their work to be mashed up, re-used and otherwise embraced are being rewarded with attention. At the core is a basic implicit understanding – if you want to be part of the community, you have to give back to it, too.

That’s all well and good, but what if you DON’T want to be “part of the community”, as the license statement on Ms. Hartwell’s original image post clearly stated – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED? Simply by posting an image online we absolve ourselves of any rights over our own property? That availability and convenience trumps a clearly stated copyright notice? That position seems utter bullshit to me- and even if you fully disagree with my opinion I’d hope that at least, should your threshold of talent be limited to reordering and remixing bits and pieces of creative product generated by someone elsehttp://www.thebigdark.com/blogadmin/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&id=1121&blog_id=1’s hard work, you’ll at least have the courtesy to at least ask permission before just taking your source material, and respect the owners’ wishes should they decline.

The only glimmering hope I can see out of this morass is that others apparently share my opinion. That’s heartening, but I still have to shake my head and wish Lane Hartwell the best and all of my moral support, as she’s standing strong amidst a flurry of asshats who seem to still, in this advanced day and age, think that creativity is something you can steal.

A line needs to be drawn, or this ‘mashup culture’ will find itself hopelessly without source material- as those with the creative wherewithal to generate their own art, music and prose will simply move outside the community entirely. I’m sure a balance can be reached, but it certainly shouldn’t skew on the side of just absolving rights of ownership to one’s hard work due to the ease with which the Internet makes theft possible. That’s just a crock of shit, and another reason I find our legal system hopelessly and possibly irrevocably flawed in the areas of copyright law.

Enough said, soapbox complete.

Updates of note to this saga:

Lane Hartwell makes a public statement on her position. Well put, in fact.
Lane also sets the record straight- there is no lawsuit.
Valleywag – for once (usually I find ‘em pretty hackish) – kinda hits the nail on the head re: Arrington’s related bullshit and venom.
Derek Powazek sums it up elegantly (at least more so than I did). A must-read.

He says I’ll be impressed if I visit the site. So I do. And get this where video should be playing:

Hm. Nice. So I figure it must be because I’m on my wife’s Mac laptop – although Silverlight reportedly runs on a Mac no one with half a brain expects it to be on parity with their Windows software. Try again on my hoopty laptop (the afore-mentioned ThinkPad), using my browser of choice- Firefox. Result?

(yep- exact same error message on Firefox/Vista)

And that pretty much sums it up.

Now sure, I could use Internet Explorer on Windows to get a seamless experience, but when over 98% of internet-enabled systems have Flash already installed (and that browser/platform combo is only one of many), why in God’s name should I have to download and install additional software just to see the site as it’s authors intended? You can argue that Flash is also a plug-in, but it’s a plug-in that’s PREINSTALLED on most all modern browsers, and can update itself as easily – without requiring a casual browser to configure their system to see a website.

If that’s what a banner Silverlight experience is supposed to look like, Microsoft’s got a lot of work to do. Utterly worthless.

Update, 4/2/08: Looks like the big bad Silverlight-powered MLB Mosaic launch is an absolute catastrophe. Many subscribers are already removing Silverlight to get better performance. To all the asshats who’d been shilling SL in the now-closed comments down below, note that the Flash viewers NEVER went down on MLB.com. Just goes to prove the title of this post definitively. Yep, that Silverlight’s a real treat – glad I didn’t pay for a Mosaic subscription….

References:
http://mosaic.mlblogs.com/archives/2008/04/mosaic_update_temporarily_unav.html

http://venturebeat.com/2008/04/02/mlbtv-strikes-out-with-premium-online-video/

ttp://www.pcworld.com/article/id,144061-pg,1/article.html

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/04/02/mlbtv-strikes-out-again-0

The iPhone has been the shining light at the end of this dark tunnel- providing me with just enough of my formerly-illuminated life to keep going in the face of adversity. I’ve pretty much been using it for all my email, most of my web access, and the center of the universe when it comes to address book/contact/calendar data. And quite capably so, in fact. I’ve become pretty adept at the touchscreen keyboard- going well beyond my old WPM count on a Crackberry or Treo – and honestly the Edge speed doesn’t suck terribly when I’m away from a hotspot.

The few things I really really miss that there’s really no presest subsitute for:

• All my Quicken data (don’t have a copy of PC Quicken to use it with- manually balancing my accounts is sucking heavily)
• OmniFocus beta (OMFG the lack my tasklist is painful right now- I’ve lists and lists of stuff that I probably should be doing but am currently blissfully unaware of)
• iTunes (my audio/video library is on a 2TB Mac-formatted RAID – shit outta luck for now)

The OmniFocus/tasklist deficiency is pretty tough to deal with- the iPhone syncs everything else from my Mac (addresses/phones, calendar items) but for some reason ignored the tasklist/to-do list features. Consequently, I’ve been using the beta of OmniFocus to manage my whopping big to-do lists, and damn- I feel out of touch without that data right now. Again- as OmniFocus is a Mac-only beta (which rocks the haus, I might add), there’s no PC equivalent I can lean on for the time being.

On a good note, however- my new MacBook Pro was ordered less than 24 hours after my old one was deemed dead and officially shitcanned, so I’m holding out hope that CDW knows how to rush an order in less than a month (have to go thru them for corporate orders, alas). Another week or two of this PC/Windows shiznit and I might unexpectedly go postal.

So although I could be back in brushed metal by end of this week/beginning of next, right now I’m stuck with a hooptilicious ThinkPad running Vista. Which has to be the most disappointing part of the whole process- there were no loaner Macs to spare, just a bunch ‘o frankenhooptiesque PC towers – and this hulking black brick of a laptop. Now I don’t mind using Windows here and again in a nice contained box on my Mac screen, but being stuck with a Windows machine for the better part of a day now- quite frankly I can’t remember why I ever put up with it to begin with. I’ve never missed my Mac more, mainly cause on that platform shit just works. And smoothly. With Windows, no matter how skilled I am (and I do know my shit here) it always seems I’m struggling between what I want to do, and the fucked-up process one has to follow to make it so.

I just don’t understand why so many people put up with such a substandard user experience. Seriously. I think I’ve only marginally accepted Windows this long because it wasn’t my primary platform- there was always a better option. But for now it’s like I’ve been downgraded from a Ferrari to some Yugo-based, cut-rate monstrosity. I’m just going to try and think positively, and take this PC-only experience as a learning experience or character-building exercise- cause it sure isn’t fun. Ugh.

But now, they’ve gone and placed themselves strictly in asshat territory by deciding to finally go DRM-free with a ’select’ group of their repertoire, and of course bypassing doing so on the iTunes Music Store (the #1 online music retailer), again, ostensibly out of spite for Jobs’ resistance to UMG’s intended ‘variable pricing’ for MP3s in favor of a flat rate across the board. Sure, a ‘variable pricing’ scheme for UMG lets them price-gouge consumers at will, but ignore that. What they’re doing is a disservice to their own artists- by ignoring the best venue and channel for their music in the DRM-free distribution models.

Edgar Bronfman Jr and Doug Morris- f@#k you and your merry band of thieves. My best wishes for a swift and agonizing demise to the UMG empire as a result of your mismanagement and idiocy. And of course, that you pull your collective heads out of said collective asses long enough to actually watch it coming. It’s been vicarous fun watching you scurry about trying to protect your paper empire for the last few years, but given your collossal stupidity over the last 12 months it’s high time for you to come down screaming in flames. I’ll bring marshmallows to roast and a long stick to poke you with.