Ears On

Should the Motion Picture Association of America add a sixth rating? The current set of five includes G, for general audiences: PG, parental guidance suggested; PG-13, parents strongly cautioned; R, restricted; and NC-17, no one 17 and under admitted. Pressure is building to subdivide R into two new ratings, one for fleetingly racy material, and another (already informally known as hard-R) for extremely graphic horror pics. There are precedents for subdivision and name changing. After all, before there were PG and PG-13, there was a single M rating, for mature audiences. And X changed its name to NC-17 when the terms obscene and pornographic became "legal terms for courts to decide," as the MPAA notes in its explanation of ratings (a comic masterpiece of hairsplitting and equivocation). Now pressure is building from parent groups who feel, as Variety explains, that the current R "is too broad, encompassing everything from a few swear words or brief flashes of nudity to repeated scenes of stomach-churning mutilation and disembowelments." Hollywood is listening, but doesn't want to shove hard-R titles into NC-17 because exhibitors shun films in that ultimate category almost completely and Blockbuster won't stock them at all. My suggestion: Rather than complicate the system with a sixth rating, keep the hard-R material within R, and move soft-R material down into a broadened PG-13. The MPAA's rating guide already uses 306 words to describe PG-13 versus a mere 65 words to describe R. I say add another hundred words of fork-tongued bureaucratese to PG-13 and call it a day. (The illustration is facetious, not a serious proposal.)

My favorite LP-hunting story takes place in a Lower Manhattan store sometime in the 1980s. For several years I had been looking for The Compleat Dancing Master, a compilation of English Morris dance tunes charmingly mingled with spoken-word material. The only copy I'd ever seen was an unsealed one and I wanted a virgin sealed copy. So there I was in this record store, when a guy walked in and asked the manager if the very album I was seeking was in stock. The manager said yes and I went into a collector's frenzy. I had one advantage over the competing shopper--I knew what the jacket looked like, with its distinctive graphics against a hunter-green background. I began scanning the tops of the rows of LPs, looking for a slim stripe of hunter green. It took me less than a minute to find my prize, a sealed copy with a price sticker that read $2.49 (a lot less than online prices today). As I took it to the cashier, I made no attempt to lock eyes with my vanquished rival. Actually, I was half triumphant for my accomplishment and half embarrassed for my greed, if the truth be known. But I still remember that day whenever I see that hunter-green spine on my shelves. Perhaps we live in a better world now, a world where shoppers needn't compete for collectibles because downloads can reach vast numbers of people if the artist is lucky. But this item remains hard to find in any form--and downloads are never this much fun.

Today MusicGremlin started selling the first player to download without a PC and The Wall Street Journal has got hold of it. (We all can't be Walter Mossberg and Katherine Boehret.) The Gremlin downloads via wi-fi for 99 cents per song. You can also use a PC but it must be a Windows PC. For music sharing, it can even beam music from player to player, as long as both parties subscribe to MusicGremlin Direct for $14.99/month. The WSJ does describe a few DRM limitations: "you can't share certain kinds of songs, including legally obtained MP3 files that you transfer to the Gremlin from your computer." Also, while the player downloads from T-Mobile hotpots, it can't do some forms of PC-enabled wi-fi-ing. The player has a two-inch LCD, 8GB capacity, and sells for $299 from musicgremlin.com.

Looking for a way to get free music without being attacked by the Recording Industry Antichrist of America? Napster will keep you out of court with its "Free Download of the Day," which began last week. Each day will feature a different track, with initial sponsorship from Intel, which will push its Viiv technology for the next three months. Today's featured artists: Airpushers, with MoZella. The codec is good old DRM-free MP3 and tracks posted to the Napster Free Downloads page—gosh, how I love the sound of that—will remain up for a week. So plan at least one day a week to visit Napster and check out the free goodies. Oh, there's one catch: You'll have to register to get your free downloads and provide an email addresss. But you can opt out of emailings and needn't supply a credit-card number. Napster, for those who were literally born yesterday, was once the nexus of P2P file sharing on the net but has been reborn as a music-industry-sanctioned paid download service.

YouTube's success has nudged Netflix into video streaming. Install the Windows-only software, browse, hit add, and play. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Initial movie and TV titles from several major studios number only 1000, compared to the 70,000 in Netflix's conventional rental inventory. Subscribers with the most common plan get 18 hours of free viewing per month. Those with cheaper/costlier plans will get less/more. The service will roll out over the next six months.

ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC are challenging the Federal Communications Commission's "indecency" enforcement in federal court. They state: “We are seeking to overturn the FCC decisions that the broadcast of fleeting, isolated—and in some cases unintentional—words rendered these programs indecent. The FCC overstepped its authority in an attempt to regulate content protected by the First Amendment, acted arbitrarily and failed to provide broadcasters with a clear and consistent standard for determining what content is indecent. Furthermore, the FCC rulings underscore the inherent problem in growing government control over what viewers should and shouldn’t see on television. Parents currently have the ability to control and block programming they deem inappropriate...." The Parents Television Council fired back, calling the suit "utterly shameless." Programs involved include ABC's N.Y.P.D. Blue, CBS's The Early Show, and Fox's telecast of the Billboard Music Awards. Under new-ish chairman Kevin Martin the FCC has recently levied $4 million in new fines and revamped its website to encourage more, uh, public participation.