Miles Copeland writes about how big record companies are not greedy in his guest column on the RIAA website. He mentions a few that have "been shuttered," A&M, Geffen, Chrysalis, IRS, etc.

But Geffen Records was sold to MCA, and the man behind the label went on to form Dreamworks SKG with Steven and Jeffrey.

I wouldn't consider a company that was successfully sold to another operating company a business failure, or indication that an industry's profit margins are shrinking.

There is a crisis going on, similar to when rock & roll first came out and was criticised for offensive and subjective lyrics. Today the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet met for 3 hours to discuss the entertainment industry's efforts to curb children's exposure to violent content. The movie and gaming industry were complemented for their advances in self-monitoring through ratings, but the music industry was lambasted for the failure of their ratings to be understandable to parents.

Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the RIAA argued against enhancing the rating system for songs, noting that while the movie industry rates the 600 movies a year released in the US, the recording industry would have to rate the more than 370,000 songs released in a year. Along with the considerable work this would take, the subjective judgements which would have to be made would send the industry into an uproar, Ms. Rosen argued.

Her official response is posted on the RIAA website, which states that the industry will publicize the existing rating systems with more posters and PSAs.

The crisis begins with the FCC fining of a radio station in Colorado for playing the relatively mild Eminem song, The Real Slim Shady. Apparently this song is deemed indecent by the FCC. No wonder I haven't heard it lately on the radio.

With Napster out of commission and radio stations self-censoring because of the threats of fines from an increasingly conservative FCC, where will hip hop fans go to for new and old favorite releases?

Thin Is In For Itsy-Bitsy Wires

Scientists coat organic material, some 2000 times smaller than the human hair, with silicon atoms to act as a super-conducting "nanowire," used for electronics. Experiments are being conducted with Black Widow spiderwebs, cutting them down to 5% of their normal size.

Grim Prospect
Argument for allowing DVDs to be decrypted on Linux.

I've been doing so much research these days that I'm researching references for e-mails before I send them. Here's some interesting facts (albeit alittle cynical, please bear with me).

I'd like to read Naomi Klein's No Logo, even though the Picadorlogo on the front cover negates her argument against brand identity. Picador is an imprint created by Macmillan Publishers, LTD, one of the largest publishers in the world (Britannica reference).

In my defence, I didn't catch this. A reporter on NPR brought it up to Klein when he interviewed her. Her response was that she needed to reach the broadest possible audience. I guess that's reason enough to sacrifice your message.

David Siegel just won't go away!

He just keeps creating new websites. Take his old journal for example. Last updated April 30th, 1998, Siegel's amour propre shows no bounds as he describes his youthful indescretions and thoughts of the day. However, given the mutable nature of the Internet, the page reads like a 19th century historical novel, with just as much relevance to today.

Other sites include Verso, Mr. Siegel's (former?) employer and The Nine-Act Structure, Mr. Siegel's foray into the architecture of screenwriting. The author of Creating Killer Sites should read his own book or at least update it. His site is not easy to navigate (there's no site map), and it is steeped in the non-database driven pseudo-designer's method of shoving a multitude of images and colors in your face with the mistaken belief that overstimulation makes for good web design. The companion website to Creating Killer Sites lists Adobe Photoshop 4.0.1 (version 6 has been out since August, 2000), and Illustrator 7.0 (version 9 has been out since June, 2000) as image creation software. The links point to files no longer on Adobe's website.

Siegel wrote another book, Futurize Your Enterprise: Business Strategy in the Age of the E-customer (1999) in which he posits his new career as web consultant to big business. His message to them is to make the customer central to your business, an idea that has been a part of TQM since the '50s, and has been pushed by management theory luminary Peter Drucker for decades. Mr. Siegel attributes this groundbreaking new trend to startups.

Websites do require a nice design, but more important is how often they are updated. Websites differ from books in that they can be constantly changed. The Internet looks like it is heading towards more database-driven pages displaying current information and products. The layout of Yahoo Finance! and Amazon.com are some examples. The question now is where is David Siegel? His Futurizebooks website, the companion website to Futurize Your Business invites viewers to "Join us at FuturizeWest, April 19-22!" But scrolling down it becomes apparent that this event was scheduled for last year.

David Siegel is leaving bread crumbs in his outdated websites that litter the net. If he is intent on delighting his customers, how does he expect them to find him?

Reference for the history of TQM: Attractive quality: its importance and the points of remark, YOSHIO KONDO, Total Quality Management, July 2000 pS647.

David Siegel's latest virtual manifestation is at Siegel Vision.

Madonna and Bill Gates: The different faces of marketing.


Both of these characters have grown and changed their images and their companies for the last two decades. They've done it by succumbing to the cultural force of our times: change.