The Music Industry’s Extortion Scheme, Slate

All good things must come to an end, and downloading free music is hardly likely to be an exception. The alarming fall in sale of music CDs and the consequent loss of revenue (down from $15 billion to $10 billion) is making executives of the music industry consider levying a tax on Internet Service Providers, while Steve Jobs is engaged in working out his own equation with the industry, in a way that guarantees near monopoly for Apple’s ipod/itunes market. You might still pay a tax on music, Reihan Salam argues in Slate, but to the government, who can then ensure that the proceeds go to artists’ in proportion to their popularity.

Coming In From The Cold, Newsweek

Not many know that the creator of the world’s best-known secret service agent — Ian Fleming and James Bond, respectively —also designed the blueprint for what in the post-World War II scenario would be known as the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA. The letters that mention the details are part of the exhibits at London’s Imperial War Museum, writes Ginanne Brownell in Newsweek. The paraphernalia include props from film sets, as well as original manuscripts and ticket stubs from casinos and bars where Fleming carried out his research. Interestingly, Fleming, the master planner for naval intelligence, chose his character’s name because he “wanted something bland”.

War Games, The New Yorker

A video game, based on a kind of modernist chess developed by Marxist philosopher and filmmaker Guy Debord in 1977, attracted its share of controversy when it was displayed at Columbia’s Buell Center. ‘Le Jeu de Guerre’, as the board game is called, is a strategy game, with elaborately laid out arsenals, fortresses, artillery, mountains and cavalry. The online edition, Kriegspiel, however, made Debord’s widow furious. “The seeming irony of a revolutionary Marxist pursuing copyright claims against a free video game” did not strike her, writes Ben McGrath in The New Yorker.

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