Who Owns The Culture (continued)

The Gotham Gal and I went to the Who Owns the Culture event at the New York Public Libray tonite.

It was fantastic.  The webcast is available here.

Larry Lessig was his usual activist self making incredibly compelling arguments against anything that keeps content from being free to be used in a digital world.

And Jeff Tweedy was just amazing.  He is incredibly honest and humble for a major league big time rock musician.  He honestly believes that music happens between an artist and a listener and both are an equal part of the equation.  He believes that the Internet is a positive force for music appreciation and wants to do everything he can to leverage it for himself, his band, and his listeners.  Plus he’s just a really entertaining guy.

Steven Johson did a great job moderating the discussion.

Anyone who attended couldn’t come away from it with any other conclusion that lawers, litigation, and labels are bad news and the only thing that matters in the world of culture is the artist and the consumer.  Everything else is just overhead.

As an added bonus, the Gotham Gal sat next to David Byrne.  We talked to David about his internet radio show.  He said its costing him a fair amount of money to host it and pay for all the rights.  I asked him if he was going to podcast it.  He thought about the question for a moment and said, "not if its going to cost me even more".

That’s bad.  Here we have a great musician and fan of music who might be enticed into programming my iPod every month.  But he won’t do it because it costs him too much to do it.  I sugested he find a sponsor who would cover all the costs.  If you have any ideas, let me know.

Finally, I must say this was a really fantastic event for the NY Public Library to be hosting. They have a new guy in charge of programming whose name is Paul Holdengräber.  He’s an amazing guy too and the events he is putting on are really excellent.  He aims to make the lions roar.  He did tonite.