Month: June 2008

Kid Rock explains iTunes boycott. Kid Rock – Apple gets paid, labels get paid, artists don’t

US musician Kid Rock has gone public on why he won’t sell his albums through iTunes, arguing that while Apple and the labels get paid, the artists don’t.

[Macworld UK]

He should complain to his label, then, because pretty much every independent artist I know has their music on iTunes. An artist who uses CD Baby to put his or or tracks in iTunes receives 60 cents of the 99 cent sale price. The article reveals the real reason Kid Rock isn’t getting paid–he’s signed to a major label.

Highway to the Neighborhood Zones. This is a great idea!

The Examiner has the scoop on a controversial new program announced today that would create so-called "Neighborhood Safety Zones" which would serve to partially seal off certain parts of the city. D.C. Police would set-up checkpoints in targeted areas, demand to see ID and refuse admittance to people who don’t live there, work there or have a “legitimate reason” to be there.

From the story:

Peter Nickles, the city’s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have “a narrow focus.”

“This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,” Nickles told The Examiner. “I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it.”

Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal “breathtaking.”

Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, said the plan was “cockamamie.”

“I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,” she said.

Or maybe the Russians didn’t do it right! [Hit and Run]

As if the government wasn’t bad enough, now they’re getting ideas from French action movies.

California Voters Endorse Eminent Domain Abuse. Voters in California yesterday overwhelmingly supported Proposition 99, a ballot measure that will significantly empower state and local officials to seize private property via eminent domain, and rejected Proposition 98, which would have protected property rights and ended rent control. As legal scholar Ilya Somin noted in the Los Angeles Times, Proposition 99, though masquerading as a defense of private property, was actually sponsored by groups representing counties, cities, and other redevelopment interests who drafted it specifically to counter Proposition 98. Among other crimes, Proposition 99 will protect only owner-occupied residences from condemnation, leaving apartment buildings and other rental properties wide open for abuse. Moreover, as Somin observed:

Even the protection for homeowners covered under Proposition 99 is likely to be ineffective, because the measure allows the condemnation of owner-occupied homes if they are "incidental" to a "public" project. This means that homes could still be taken for transfer to private developers if the proposed project allocated some space for a "public" facility such as a community center or library.

Proposition 98, on the other hand, would have placed significant limits on such abuse. But while that might have gone over with the voters, ending rent control was far less popular, even though the law would only affect rent controlled apartments once they became vacant, thus leaving current tenants unaffected. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came out against Prop. 98, however, claiming it "would undermine California’s ability to improve our infrastructure."

Finally, as the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Timothy Sandefur has warned, Prop. 99 will "make things far worse not only by providing fake protection, but because the courts would interpret it as meaning that Californians did not want more serious protections for property rights."
[Hit and Run]

I’m not surprised. I voted for 98, but it was obviously just a gesture–an antifascist measure never stood a chance in such a deeply fascist state. The real surprise is that 39.1% of the voters actually supported civil rights.