May 7 (this Sat): Princeton Station, in Chelmsford, MA (on Route 4, just east of Route 3)
May 13 & 14: The Haluwa Lounge, in Nashua, NH (in the Nashua Mall, exit 6 off Route 3)
May 28: Back at Princeton Station one more time

All shows start at 9 PM, and there’s no cover at either Princeton or the Haluwa. I expect to be playing bass all four nights.

If you’d like to be on the mailing list to get announcements of all our gigs, please e-mail me at “blogmaster AT arcanedomain DOT com”, making the obvious substitutions for AT and DOT.

Noah

One of the things that I love about both the NYT and public radio is that they are such important resources for educating everyone. When I was growing up we certainly weren’t rich, but a copy of the Times was quite affordable, and the Times was the main way I learned about the world. The day Kennedy was shot, it cost ten cents to read the Times’ coverage, so everyone could. It was and is an extraordinary resource: in those days, you read the Times to get, for example, the full text of presidential speeches, or to see the Pentagon papers unfold, or just to read multiple articles each day with differing perspectives on the Vietnam war. The archives of the Times were freely available on microfilm at my local public library which, of course, paid for those copies with tax dollars — a daily history of the whole 20th century, effectively for free. Every school child was expected to be able to do current events research using the Times, and that often involved scanning way more than 20 articles/month. And by the way, if you did pay your dime for a copy, that was for the whole family, and often for friends too. The Times paywall is a system which, due to its high cost and very limited exceptions, limits this wonderful resource to those who can afford a very significant payment. In fact, even the act of mailing someone a link to a Times article becomes disruptive, now, because following that link might  cause the recipient to exceed his or her free limits — you probably didn’t notice that the Kennedy link above goes to an NYT page until you clicked it (that page is probably free, but you certainly don’t know that unless you check the link very carefully before clicking it, and maybe not even then).

I understand that the Times needs a new business model. In fact, I would be very happy if the Times were like public radio, I.e. a nonprofit that accepts donations from those who care to pay, to support universal access. Whether that would be practical I have no clue, but if so I would contribute generously.

Even if none of the above were a concern, the Times has made a huge mistake by building a system that is so easily defeated and for which the rules are so confusing. Links from Twitter are said not to count, but the Times hasn’t told us exactly how that works. Is it only links followed from the Twitter Web interface? Do links followed from Tweetdeck count? If I find a link in a Tweet and email it to a friend, and they follow it from the email, does that count? Does it matter if URL shorteners are used? How do we know until it’s too late whether following a link has counted toward our limits? I may be missing something, but systems like this don’t make for happy users. Simple instructions for avoiding the limits are already everywhere on the Web; I presume at least some of them work. So, in addition to all the other frustrations, honest users face the temptation to cheat, just to see whether that 21st article is interesting or not.

In a nutshell, the Times now has a system that, if used according to the rules, limits quality access to mainly the wealthy. As an added twist, the rules are confusing, brittle, supposedly easy to circumvent, and poorly documented. This is nothing at all like public radio.

• Saturday, Feb. 5th, at Princeton Station in Chelmsford, MA.  If you live in northern Boston suburbs like Arlington or Lexington, this is about 20 minutes up Route 3.
• Friday and Saturday, Feb. 11th and 12th, in the lounge at the Haluwa Restaurant in the Nashua Mall. That’s at Exit 6 off Route 3 in Nashua, NH, a few miles north of the Mass. border
• Friday Feb. 18th, we’ll be appearing in the student center at Bentley University.

Come on out and join us! The Princeton and Haluwa shows start at 9PM and go until about  1AM. I think at Bentley we play two sets, starting at 9:40 PM and ending at 12:30 AM. We play covers ranging from the 60′s (Blues Brothers, Sam & Dave, Beatles) to the present (Lady Gaga, P!nk, Black Eyed Peas, Kings of Leon). If you need directions or more information, let me know (contact information can be found on the About this blog page).

Robert plays acoustic guitar and sings a mix of covers including Van Morrison, Al Green, Southside Johnny, Roy Orbison, etc., and some originals too.   We’ll again be joined by Ron Chancey, who is a terrific guitar player.  Robert and Ron have for years been in the legendary Boston-area blues band, the Urge, and these local gigs give them a chance to get out and do something a bit quieter.

The gig will be at:

Also: it turns out I have another gig that evening backing up Robert Cedrone.  I’ll put up a separate posting with info on that one.

Robert plays acoustic guitar and sings a mix of covers including Van Morrison, Al Green, Southside Johnny, Roy Orbison, etc., and some originals too.   We’ll be joined by Ron Chancey, who is a terrific guitar player.  Robert and Ron have for years been in the legendary Boston-area blues band, the Urge, and these local gigs give them a chance to get and do something a bit quieter.

The gig will be at:

Next Saturday, April 10th, will be a smaller, quieter gig with my good friend Robert Cedrone.  We’ll be playing for an hour or so in the early evening at the Starbucks on Bedford Street, on the north side of Lexington MA (map).  I will post more details here when I have the exact time (probably 7PM) and other information.

(And yes, if you were quick enough to catch the first version of this blog entry, I had the Princeton/Lasting Room dates backwards;  it’s really Princeton on Friday.)

The gig will be at:

Update:We had a great time at the gig. Many, many thanks to Ron Chancey and Rob Carlson for sitting in and adding the killer guitar fills. A little blurb about the evening has been posted by David Keevil, who does such a great job of organizing these music nights.

The gig will be at:

Here’s the official announcement:

The net is that I have decided to take Sam Ruby’s advice, which was to adapt the copyright license used by the Apache Software Foundation.   Specifically, for comments posted starting today, you retain ownership of your copyright.  In return for having your comment posted, you grant to me:

“…a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your comment contribution and derivative works thereof.”

As noted in the agreement, I thus reserve the right to republish such material in any form, but I promise to make reasonable efforts to retain the attribution to you.

I apologize again for the concerns that the original policy raised, and I hope that this policy is an improvement.  Thanks to Sam, Ben Adida, all the commentators on the original thread, and everyone who helped me to understand the concerns and the options. To everyone who reads the Arcane Domain blog, your comments are always very much appreciated!

Noah

The reason I ask you to transfer copyright is simple, and it’s not that I want to steal your content. It’s somewhat messy to have a work, such as this blog, for which the copyright is held in bits and pieces by lots of different people. Let’s say someday a new publishing medium comes along, as the Web did a few years ago, and I want to republish this content that new way. Holding the copyright makes it simple: I have the right to do that, just as I have the right to make as many backup copies as I like, to share the content with anyone I like, or potentially to excerpt some of the exchanges in a book.  So, that’s why I took this approach.  I also make very clear on the copyright page that I am very supportive of fair use, and that applies to comments as well as other content.  Indeed, if you contact me and ask permission to use content for this blog for some purpose beyond fair use, I think you’ll find that I tend to be very generous in granting permissions for such reuse.

One concern was raised that I should have thought of but didn’t:  transfering the copyright on your comments to me could mean that you lose the rights to use that same content yourself. That was never my intention, and so I have updated the terms you agree to when posting comments to include the following:

In return for transferring your copyright, you are hereby given a fully paid license to use the content you’ve posted in any manner that you wish, including the right to republish in any form or using any medium.

The copyright page has also been updated to make clear that this same license is granted retroactively for comments already posted.  Of course, as the comment submission form also makes clear:

If this agreement is not acceptable, an alternative is for you to post your comment on your own blog or other public Web site, and to post a link to that here. That way, you may retain ownership of your own material.

Are there other ways of solving this problem? No doubt, but this one is ultimately simple and feels right to me, given what I understand of the applicable laws.  I thank you for your understanding, and also for your contributions to this blog.

Noah