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Posts from the ‘media ramblings’ Category

Dec 31

the Torontoist is dead – No, wait, no it’s not.

This sucks. I had pre-written a great pair of thematic “out with the old, in with the new” posts to celebrate the new year, one of which has now pretty much invalidated itself over the time I was out of town for the holidays, as it turns out the patient being eulogized isn’t actually deceased. Regardless, let’s ring out / ring in the new year by mourning/celebrating the departure/return of everyone’s favourite big-smoke-centric-blog the Torontoist!
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Dec 8

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Dear Chicago Blackhawks Marketing Staff – You’re Doing It Wrong.

still doing it wrong

Catching up on my hockey blogs over the weekend I found an amusing post over at Hit The Post sharing a couple of funny mock-political ads made by the Chicago Blackhawks – presumably to spur fan voting for the all-star game. The spots were unusually funny for in-house marketing, and contained a couple of good Canada jokes, so I fired the link off to my brother and forgot about it. Behold – viral marketing in action!

Except for the part where he went and discovered that both the videos had been pulled off YouTube by the Blackhawks claiming copyright violation.

Confidential to Chicago Blackhawks crack marketing team: When you make a viral-type video – it is with the express purpose that you hope it will show up on YouTube (or Veoh, or Digg, or any of the myriad of bastard social-networking sites – some of which will re-host your media, and some of which won’t). The entire point of this type of marketing is to encourage your fans to spread your message far and wide – even if it is out of your control. Why it might get to the point where a Calgary Flames fan reads about them on a Flames blog, and e-mails his brother… who just happens to be in the process of filling out his all-star ballot at that exact moment. Read more

Nov 21

Somali Pirates to Acquire Citigroup

Man you know the market’s getting slap-happy when you start getting multiple market humour posts on the same day…

Somali Pirates to Acquire Citigroup

Oct 10

The Industry of Culture

While it was quite refreshing to see culture come up in the leaders debate there’s still an unsettling trend of framing the various issues in the context of “is cultural product important”? These are usually identifiable by such thrilling arguments such as:

  • I don’t think taxpayer money should have been spent on (Artistic Thing Goes Here)
  • (Famous Canadian Artist) is vitally important internationally because…
  • Canadian’s aren’t known internationally for their trade agreements, they’re known for (Music, Film, Literature…)…
  • The government shouldn’t be stifling freedom of speech!
  • The government shouldn’t be funding inexorable filth!
  • etc, etc, etc…

Defending the importance of the arts is important, and many people will do a better job than I at doing so (and lots of others will rebutt them). But in framing the entirety of the conversation in such a way we are ignoring positions that can be discussed without relying on personal preference and moral dogma. Read more

Sep 23

Olde Tyme Shilling

John Dickerson has a neat video with his favourite five American political ads from the past sixty years:

via Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish – where there’s usually something cool to be found.

Aug 22

Hey, Kids – Anti-Piracy Propaganda!

Wired’s Threat Level blog has a great write up about a non-profit comic distributed to 50,000 US students which reads suspiciously like RIAA propaganda about file sharing.

The goals may be admirable:

“The purpose is basically to educate kids — middle school and high school-aged about how the justice system operates and about what really goes on in the courtroom as opposed to what you see on television,” said Lorri Montgomery, the center’s communications director.

but as Threat Level points out, there’s a lot of questionable questionable interpretation of law in “The Case of Internet Piracy”. Plus, there’s a nice framing story about eminent domain. Because I know I’d buy a lot more comics if the Justice League kept getting evicted so the city could build public works. Read more

Aug 20

A few links on music blanket licensing

It’s been a busy week so forgive me if I lean on other sites for content:

Ars has an interesting article about Jim Griffin, a consultant for Warner, talking up “blanket” licensing for digital music. While this would seem to be a huge step in the right direction for a major label – like so many things – the devil’s in the details. Read more

Aug 13

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A Huge Win for Open Source Licenses

Hey remember when I used to talk about copyright?

Me neither.

Very interesting ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the case of Robert Jacobsen v. Matthew Katzer & Kamind Associates. Since I’ll presume not everyone shares my love of reading out of country judicial rulings (or pdf files) – here’s a brief summary for the copyright-interested: Read more