Linked List: December 22, 2014

Monday, 22 December 2014

An Oral History of ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ 

I love these oral histories — so many great stories and details. Christmas Vacation is on our family’s annual must-watch list for the holidays.

VHX Loyalty Bundle 

Great indie documentary bundle:

Three awesome documentaries, one fantastic bundle: This is Not a Conspiracy Theory, Indie Game The Movie, and Rewind This!

New fans get all three films for just $15. There’s no DRM and they’re yours to play anywhere, anytime, on any device.

But what if you’re an old fan? Typically, existing fans get left out in the cold by bundle promotions. We don’t like that. We don’t think you should made to regret purchasing early, so we’re making the entire bundle available for free to existing fans. If you’ve already bought one of these films on the VHX platform, just click the button at the bottom of this page, enter the email you used for your purchase, and the bundle is yours at no charge.

Last Week’s E-Book Antitrust Appeal Hearing Went Well for Apple 

Philip Elmer-DeWitt, writing for Fortune:

At times Judge Jacobs came close to suggesting that the government had prosecuted the wrong company. At the very least, he said, a horizontal initiative “used to break the hold of a monopolist” ought not be found to be illegal per se. He likened any collusive conduct on the publishers’ part to “mice getting together to go put a bell on the cat.”

More laughter. More trouble for the government’s cause.

Two of the three judges on the appeal seemed to agree with what I’ve been arguing all along: (a) the agency model — where publishers set prices and Apple takes 30 percent — is not price-fixing; and (b) Amazon, with its monopoly share (80-90 percent) of e-book sales and predatory pricing scheme, is the company the DOJ should be investigating.

Speaking of David Carr 

I really enjoyed this profile of Carr by James Bradshaw for The Globe and Mail. I’ve spoken with Carr a few times when he was working on pieces about Apple, and he is truly one of the greats. It’s always very clear when I speak with him that he is not just looking for quotes to fit a narrative he’s already decided upon (which is exactly what happens when you speak to most reporters). Instead, Carr probes. And he listens. He’s searching for the narrative, not looking for quotes that fit his preconceived narrative.

David Carr on the Slippery Slope of Sony’s Cowardice 

David Carr, writing for the NYT:

It was a remarkable and disorienting turn of events: a tiny, failing state that lacks the wherewithal to feed its own people was deciding which movies we can and cannot see, while the industry it had attacked watched silently from the sidelines, and the president of the United States felt compelled to step into an international confrontation catalyzed by a lowbrow comedy. […]

The threats and subsequent cancellation will become a nightmare with a very long tail. Now that cultural discourse has become the subject of online blackmail, it is hard to imagine where it will end. Documentaries, which have become increasingly important sources of news and information, could suddenly be in jeopardy. And if you’ve been watching the current season of “Homeland” on Showtime, you know that Pakistan’s more sinister operations have been on wide view.