artist talk tomorrow

Tomorrow, Thurs, Jan 12 at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific I'll be giving an artist talk in connection with the "10,000 Pixels" show.

It's taking place on Art Micro-Patronage's "talks" page via an embedded Ustream channel.

Ideally at the announced time my face will show up in the video screen and I'll start talking. You comment/ask questions by typing into the grey box beneath the video. You can also communicate via Twitter using the hashtag #AMPatronage

Let's see how this goes.

SOPA and PIPA

Naked Capitalism has a good explanation of what's at stake in the these bad Internet blacklist bills, SOPA and PIPA, which the movie industry is trying to ram through Congress. Yves Smith quotes Techdirt:

SOPA... contains a crazy scary clause that's going to make it crazy easy to cut off websites with no recourse whatsoever. And this part isn’t just limited to payment providers/ad networks — but to service providers, search engines and domain registrars/registries as well. Yes. Search engines. So you can send a notice to a search engine, and if they want to keep their immunity, they have to take the actions in either Section 102(c)(2) or 103(c)(2), which are basically all of the "cut 'em off, block 'em" remedies. That’s crazy. This basically encourages search engines to disappear sites upon a single notice. It encourages domain registries to kill domains based on notices. With no recourse at all, because the providers have broad immunity.

This will do little to deter copying of easily-copyable entertainment but will be used as a political weapon. If, say, a polluting company doesn't like something an environmentalist website is saying, one email to that website's host complaining of "copyright infringement" -- no matter whether the charge is valid -- and that site is gone from the Web. All of us who enjoy a diverse and open internet need to make calls and send letters to Congress to make sure these terrible laws don't get passed.

PIPA, the Senate version of the bill, comes up for a full Senate vote on Jan. 24.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has some suggestions for how we can stop the bills. Please spread the word.

forrest bess

forest_bess_railroad

Painting by Forrest Bess, a naive modernist from Texas who had a stellar New York career, beginning with shows at Betty Parsons (Jackson Pollock's gallery). Recently a Bess turned up on Antiques Roadshow -- the old duffer who got it as a gift from Bess back in the day was pleased and flabbergasted by the $70,000 estimate. Hat tip Bill Schwarz, who has that and other Bess links here.