It can also be understood as shared perceptions of the meaning of reality backed by massive background consensus (Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (William Rehg (trans) MIT Press, 1996); pp. 22, 322); or as biopolitics (the narratives through which social and political power may be normalized over the control and management of the bodies of the living and their relationship to physical and abstract objects and the technologies of control) (Michel Foucault, The Birth of… [read post]

  Immediately thereafter, the entire record industry (claiming coincidence rather than collusion) immediately introduced and expanded the concept of the “controlled composition clause” into nearly every American recording contract.[9]  The practical effect of that essentially non-negotiable provision was to contractually freeze and then de-value the new US statutory mechanical royalty rate to 75% of its new level — driving it back down to two cents. [read post]