I seem to watch a lot of movies that Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Films
and Magnet distribute. His company is a venue for movies that
would be playing art houses if they hadn’t disappeared from the
landscape. However I feel his is a little off in his concern about
the proposed FCC rules regardling Net Neutrality.

Wealth apparently has it’s priviledges as he apparently has been able
to review the 332 pages of rules the FCC wants to pass. Yeah, the ones
we the public aren’t allowed to see. Go to http://www.fcc.gov
and see if you can find those rules.

And I suspect Comcast pays Mark well to show his movies there. Cuban
says, “Net neutrality is just a demonization of big companies”. Not that big companies haven’t worked hard to earn being demonized.

I think most of us wanted the Internet to pretty much be kept the
way it is now which is “open”. We don’t want our telecoms to
throttle our streaming services or pick who is elite enough to be
displayed to us.

I would think the latter should wrankle many small businesses across
the US because if you had to pay extra so customers could view the
menu at your restaurant or what services your remodeling service
offers. And that would not be good.

We also don’t like to be nickel and dimed for every little service
offered. It’s like the wrong people run the telecoms and like they
are great grandsons of snake oil salesmen that hawked their wares
across the western frontier. So I can see regulating them like a
public utility. They’ve already displayed excessive arrogance. And
they will definitely spare no expense at trying to convince
the public that regulation will not be good. They’ll make PT Barnum very proud.

Maintaining a free and open Internet is going to be a tough
challenge, especially since many politicians and big business folks
don’t like our ability to criticize them via the venue.

Back in the day to be in the arts was a risky career choice. Hence the term “starving artist”. I was told this when I was a kid but it was like holding up a red cape at a bull. So I chose a career in music. I began my professional career at age 15 when local musicians had a problem finding available drummers for their weekend gigs. This even required getting an approval from the national offices of the American Federation of Musicians.

I stayed with this as principal career still playing regular gigs, often 5 or 6 nights a week until early 1989. That’s when I got too busy with my second career of computer programming. The new career provided stable and good income and I thought I had it made for life but that turned out not to be true but will be the subject of my next blog post.

These days I hear a lot about the “democratization of the arts”. This has become possible through things like YouTube where anyone can make a video and post it to PC based recording studios that rival the professional ones I recorded at 40 years ago. The documentary PressPausePlay deals with how this phenomena floods the market and makes it difficult to “stand out”. People armed with consumer camcorders and Digital SLRs now make feature films. They often use the “literary conceit” that a principal character got a camcorder for their birthday and has been a pest videoing everything including an adventure where everyone was lost or killed. This allows for low budget and amateur looking footage. Some of these films are very entertaining and often more so than ones produced professionally for millions of dollars.

I’m glad to see this happening and like some in my generation I attempted to make films using the family 8mm camera. This went to a sideline when I put effort into writing and performing music instead. In the late 1970s I did acquire a used Bauer Super8 camera for $25 and later a Chinon sound project which I was going to dub the soundtrack too. I still have some of the Super8 small films from that time.

But this all went to the sidelines until around 1991 when I acquired my first camcorder a Canon A1 Digital. Again it was mainly used for family and company parties. Most of my “movie” production was limited to 2D animation. In 2003 I bought my first HD camcorder the JVC GR-HD1. These days you can buy a better camcorder (well the JVC did have an excellent lens but looked like 16mm film) for under $100. And these days I do have some videos on YouTube under another “stage name.” Most of these have been done with 3D animation software such as Reallusion’s iClone.

Point is I’ve been able to see first hand the “democratization of the arts” and how the market is flooded. Indeed I’ve had exchanges on forums with old professionals crying about how hard it is to make a living nowadays. They too were used to time like when local musicians needed someone to fill an empty chair as players were few and far between.

Interesting how times change.