-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Well, M J Ray was watching the show and told you guys what it looked like. Now you get the top-secret behind-the-scenes gossip.
Legal TV is a pretty small outfit, and finding their studio was a challenge. It's hidden in a small industrial warehouse thing behind steel bars down a small road in Aston. There is a no sign. Found it eventually, mainly through luck. The research who asked me on the show is clearly informed about digital issues, but she didn't have much confidence in speaking English. She's French, and tended to lapse into silence. Her explanation of what would happen on the show was exceptionally vague. However, just before we went to the studio another assistant appeared and gave me a copy of the questions we'd be asked. I had about thirty minutes to talk with Andrew (the lawyer) before we went on set. We found a lot of common ground, and we basically compared the answers we'd give to various questions. This ensured we'd both stay on message, avoid needless confusion. This has the disadvantage of meaning that the agenda is limited to our common ground, but the substantial advantage of allowing Matt (BPI person) to get squished when his time came. The show was rushed. The producer and presenter had no time to meet us before we were due to go live. We sat on the sofa. The producer rushed over to me and asked me to look at the wall and under no account to look at the presenter. He said "if you look at the presenter your face will turn from the camera, so avoid that if possible." This meant addressing blank space when replying to questions, something I am not particularly used to. Lucky Andrew. He got the good seat, and could gaze lovingly into the presenter's eyes. The first half of the show was really Andrew's arena. The second half was largely ad-libbed. Matt was meant to be on the show directly after the ad break, but they could not locate him. That meant a quick word about whether DRM was good or bad, and a sudden cut to Matt once they found him. Matt is a good speaker, and his language is carefully prepared. His point about DRM protecting companies while allowing consumers to have access to services like streaming music tasters is wonderfully deceptive. He's trying to create a connection between technological empowerment (i.e. the existence of streaming music) and DRM. Indeed, the consumer could come away with the impression that DRM *allowed* streaming music. I was quite lucky at this point. I knew Andrew would follow me relatively closely when I went for Matt's throat. I was a bit mean, but I think DRM as envisioned by the BPI is meaner. Andrew, ever the peacemaker, suggested that the new digital paradigm would need new ways to deal with distribution issues. He did not reject DRM, but had previously agreed that this was a legal copyright issue. I think that's all the support that can be reasonably requested from a lawyer in this field. After the show we were thrown out of the studio pretty fast to make way for everyone else. Andrew hit the highroad (after we agreed to exchange more information), and I hassled the producer for a DVD. He said sure, and I will be annoying the researcher assigned to me until I get one. I'll then make copies for all you guys. Good point: host of the show said she wants me back. Bad point: I don't like looking at blank spaces! Shane - -- Shane Martin Coughlan e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] m: +447773180107 w: www.shaneland.co.uk - --- Projects: http://mobility.opendawn.com http://gem.opendawn.com http://enigmail.mozdev.org http://www.winpt.org - --- Organisations: http://www.fsfeurope.org http://www.fsf.org http://www.labour.org.uk http://www.opensourceacademy.gov.uk - --- OpenPGP: http://www.shaneland.co.uk/personalpages/shane/files/publickey.asc -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.4-svn4127: (MingW32) iQCVAwUBRFIcrdwG3M95JPpzAQg6QwP+NL5+vgnrmKh7Q16Ei7C/GsTLS7d8rJkE zysA3UWn2SdP37od0Js/EHS9DgeZzfr5hXCtTaVysqpKKBpHtPF9PaauT4HpmINL fLrECObkBX0FQqPpNp1FEQzSil3RNjvM8kXqcoC46IkQvA9OiiK+U8/bmZFK0dXV FPygAkXH5ok= =XULS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
