Taking On The New Empire

As I walk up St. George to the Chinese Consulate on Tuesday, March 25, a chill runs through me, and not because winter has made an unwelcome late-March comeback.

I’m thinking of something a friend of mine said recently: “Once China takes over the world as the dominant superpower, we’ll all be pining for the days of the American empire.”

Sitting on the frozen sidewalk across the road from the consulate, 40 supporters of the Tibetan freedom struggle are staging a week-long hunger strike (from 10 am until 4 pm). Such gatherings are becoming a common sight here.

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Posted in All Blog Posts, Human Rights, Now Magazine | 1 Comment »

Give A Little Bit… More

Songwriters are at the bottom of the music industry food chain. They don’t get asked for their autograph at airports and, aside from cashing the infrequent royalty cheque at which at least the bank manager raises an eyebrow, they trudge along in their craft largely unheralded and anonymous.

So it’s interesting that these lowly folks now caught in the crossfire between file-sharers and multinational labels may have tapped into one of the most promising solutions so far to the entire downloading dilemma.

That’s the intro to a possibly historic meeting, Thursday, February 21, at Ryerson where the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) – to much fanfare, not to mention gnashing of teeth – debuted its version of a plan to monetize the downloading and sharing of music files.

The problem the songwriters are dealing with, indeed, the one plaguing the entire industry at a time when voracious Internet appetites demand instant diversion, is how to get paid while still making the peer to peer experience feel free.

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Posted in All Blog Posts, Music and Digital Culture, Now Magazine | 2 Comments »