The Mind Boggles

Universal Music pressuring YouTube, MySpace (via BoingBoing):

"The poster child for (user-generated media) sites are MySpace and YouTube," said Morris, according to a transcript obtained by Reuters. "We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars."

Yessir, the BILLIONS of dollars they're making EXCLUSIVELY on the backs of Universal Music artists (which is in no way to be confused with free publicity etc etc) must be RECLAIMED! It's the good old business plan: "If you're not the hottest asset on the block, find out who is and sue them. For anything."

Sigh. YouTube could be toast, but I wonder if MySpace's masters will put up a fight...?

Unrelatedly, my week is all messed up. Super-complex CMS systems are really nice and all, but to the average user (my clients) they tend to make eyeballs bleed. I'm spending most of my time creating tweening interfaces that let the clients update and manage their site without having to know the intricate subtleties between a page and a story. It sounds like a lot of work, but that's only because IT IS. Argh.

Also, a personal note to all people out there that hire IT folks to do projects for them: if you expect to be able to call at 3AM to request a change that you saw in a dream, and expect that it'll be implemented by the start of business, you'd should also probably expect that you're going to pay for the work within 6 months of being invoiced. It's common courtesy for the love of god.

And finally, I think I may be taking next week off to do The Vector, so unless Time Warner decides to sue Digg for copyright infringement, I won't be posting here very often. I hope to make up for it towards the end of the month, once things with kids and school and CopyCamp etc all quiet down.

As you were.