Commentary on Camera Policies at Concerts

Here’s and interesting article I got from the NIN twitter feed.

nineinchnails RT @rob_sheridan: CNET has a nice article up about open camera policies at concerts, with some comments from me: http://bit.ly/1HVAlO

I’ve been to NIN and Gwen Stefani concerts with the everything goes camera policies and to a Bjork concert where I was trampled by a large security guard on her way to kick a fan out of the concert for having a camera phone out of his pocket.   When the camera policy is loose, the audience is more engaged and, in general,  having more fun as they make memories and share their experience with the world in real time.  With respect to the Bjork concert, I really didn’t appreciate being trampled and I would have liked to, at least, have taken a picture of myself and my husband at the event to mark the occasion.

To be honest, whenever I see an artist demand a no camera policy, my gut tells me it’s because the artist knows the show isn’t that good and doesn’t want footage leaked that will discourage potential customers.  Any reasonable person knows, regardless of the image and sound quality, NOTHING beats the experience of actually being at the concert.   I applaud those artists that understand their audience and understand cameras are for admiration, adoration, and commemoration and not piracy.  Not only that, with some clever marketing, fan generated media can be made into some nice personalized merchandise for the artist to sell back to the fan.  Example:  HP and Gwen Stefani collaborated with fans to make personalized concert books.  It was a win-win-win solution!

Mommy Bloggers Confront Ethics

Hahaha!!!  It didn’t take long for greed to spoil “Mommy Blogging.”  Here’s a little article from CNN about some of the upcoming self regulation and  government regulation coming for blogging.

Link

Well, I don’t know what to say other than greed is human nature and offering folks free stuff subtly corrupts.  But to me it comes down to the question of whether blogging a life supporting career?  For me, getting paid to generate specific content is the difference between blogging and freelance writing.  I think as soon as a writer is paid (either by cash, items, or services) to generate content, then that person is an employee and, as such, he or she should disclose they are doing a job for an employer.   It’s as simple as that for me.

Haha!!! Aside from that, a brilliant thing has happened here.  The professional news folks,  for years now, have been trying to discredit blogging and here’s the perfect ammo.  Have at it guys!  It’s a really good argument.

So where does this leave the advertisers?  In the same place as always — despised by everyone, but somehow still prowling around for the next convenient dupe.

As for Mommy Bloggers:  choose whether you are blogging or starting a career as a freelance writer or freelance advertiser.  Be clear with your audience as to which you are and all things should be fine.  However, if you choose to be a freelance advertiser, don’t be surprised if you find yourself despised and not believed.  I think this follows for all of us writing on the Internet, including me.

Manga Scanlation

I suddenly find myself in the world of manga scanlation.  It is a world I never intended to walk into because I feel torn about the copyright issues.   However, I feel something needs to change with the way that manga is distributed.  Manga online seems natural to me.  Because it is good online and there are people like me who can put out and English version of a manga online, it seems like it should be done.  The problem is the original authors and artists of the manga need to be paid for their work.  I, too, would like to get paid for my work, but currently their is no mechanism in place to facilitate this.  Instead, we, in the US particularly, have to wait about 6 months for the manga to come over here.  For the most part the mangas are localized for whatever the publishers think a typical teenager would like and then compiled into volumes, usually ~200-pgs in length, that are priced from $8 – 11 each, making them out of reach for most teenagers.  This is why there is fan scanlation.  But, also, in a sense, those of us who can pay for the paperback books are subsidizing those that read online and those that read the book in the store but never make a purchase.  This ends up going badly because the publishers find themselves unable to make money and end up dropping a manga mid-series.  This also limits the number of series that make it to the US because it’s a huge investment to run a batch of books.

I like the operating model of Netcomics.  They work on a micropayment system in which the user is charged 25-cents per chapter for 2-day access to read the chapter.  The manga and manwha are released simultaneously online in their native language and English, so the users always have the latest updates to their favorite stories.  I understand that this may still be too much for teenagers and this is still a barrier to teens because most folks under 18 don’t have a credit card.  Beyond that, not everyone who reads manga in English is in the US.  Actually, I get people from all over the world reading my blog.  I can’t say these people have credit cards, nor can I say that 25-cents US is trivial in all countries.

There’s also the example of Crunchyroll in the anime world.  They went legit after many years of illegally distributing anime for profit.  They use a subscription model.  They are now partnered up with the producers of anime series like “Naruto” and fan translators to bring viewers nearly simultaneous Japanese and English releases of some very popular anime series.  The TV producers have decided to cooperate with the fansubbers rather than fight them.  All they ask is that fansubbers hold off on distributing the episodes for a week.  During that week, folks that have a Crunchyroll subscription can watch the show.  After the week, it’s a fansubbers free for all.  I think, though, the transition for Crunchyroll was quite simple because they had the subscription and the distribution infrastructure in place.  I salute Crunchyroll and the TV producers for coming to a happy win-win-win solution.

I often thought about how to make this a win-win-win solution for everyone with respect to manga.  I like both what Netcomics and Crunchyroll has done.  I also like manga online because paper-based manga is a huge tree hog.  The monthly and bi-monthly manga magazines I buy are like phonebooks!  They quickly accumulate and eat vast amounts of space.  The little paperback volumes can accumulate quickly too because there are usually 10+ volumes for each manga series.  TokyoPop and Viz have made small efforts to put some of their manga online, but for the most part they are short teasers to hook customers into buying the paperback volumes.  Also, I find both publishers website extremely difficult to use.  Then I think about what’s nice about the aggegator sites.  Here’s a short list:

• They have built-in readers to view and navigate quickly through the manga series
• They have drop dead easy to use uploaders so people can upload scanlations
• They have wonderful and engaging forums for fans to discuss the manga
• They have VAST libraries of manga to explore , which,  of course, means they have easy to use and effective search built in

What these sites don’t have is a payment infrastructure.  Again, the problem is that the Internet requires credits of some sort and most people under 18 only have access to cash.  Which brings to mind an idea:  Why doesn’t Paypal sell debit cards at grocery, convenience, and discount dept stores like Target and Walmart?

Well, I’ve rambled enough.  I’m sorry if I don’t have a coherant thought yet about this beyond the need for readily available debit cards for those who may not have a credit card or a bank acount and the need to put manga online rather than on paper.   I would like to see the manga publishers work with some of the fan groups to get more manga out, quickly, to fans.  I would love to see the artists get some money from their worldwide audience.  I would love to see the translators earn a some from their hard work.  The problem is now that people, myself included, are used to free manga, what it going to make them pay for it and how much can be charged — what’s the pain point?

Got Cherry Blossoms?

Do you need cherry blossoms?  Are you gonna die if you can’t find some?  Well, I’ve got cherry blossoms for you!  Here’s what’s in the collection (The flowers are actually peachy colored.  I guess WordPress recrunched the file to “web only” colors):

Here’s link to the vector art file for Illustrator.  Have fun and make something lovely!

In the future go to the Lovely Items Blog for more freebies.

Ouran Wallpaper: More fun with Photoshop

As I post this, I realize that I have no where on any of my formal websites to display this stuff. Yeeks, I’ll figure out something by the end of the week. Anyhow, here’s the Haruhi wallpaper. I like this image of her with sheep (mostly because I adore sheep). So I made the image to look like it was cut out of paper.  Here’s the original image:

This was tough, because the image quality of the manga magazine was very poor.  I had to clean up a lot!

Here are some links to the nether regions of one of my websites. I’ll update this once I get something formal going.

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