There's a review [link will go out of business too soon] today in the Times of "House/Lights," a play (if that's an adequate word for it) being put on now at St. Ann's Warehouse by the Wooster Group. It's a play on Gertrude Stein's play on the Faust legend, fused with with Joseph Mawra's B-film classic "Olga's House of Shame."

But it's really a review of life in the 21st century: 

The world according to the Wooster Group is the world that most of us live in now - any of us, that is, who spend time with some kind of computer, cellphone, television and/or recording device. Heck, just take a stroll through that open-air sound-and-light show called Times Square, land of giant television screens and walking telephone conversations, and you'll be in the terrain mapped by the Wooster Group.

The company has become the American theater's most inspired and articulate interpreter of an age in which machines mediate between the perceiver and the perceived, between subject and object. In its productions of the last 15 years in particular, it has increasingly specialized in ravishing, meticulous marriages of live and recorded performance that make it shatteringly clear reality ain't what it used to be.

What is real?  What's a reproduction?  Does it matter?  In The Recognitions, by William Gaddis, there's an enormous scene with a very skilled forger of paintings.  The forger says that all of the reproductions of his works in magazines are calumnies.  Someone else says, coldly, "Every piece you do is calumny on the artist you forge."  And then the forger says this:

It's not.  It's not, damn it, I . . . when I'm working, I . . . do you think I do these the way all other forging has been done?  Pulling the fragments of ten paintings together and making one, or taking a . . . a Durer and reversing the composition so that the man looks to the right instead of left, putting a beard on him from another portrait, and a hat, a different hat from another, so that they look at it and recognize Durer there?  No, it's . . . the recognitions go much deeper, much further back.   [The experts can test all they want, but] they don't just look for a hat or a beard, or a style they can recognize, they look with memories that . . . go beyond themselves, that go back to . . . where mine goes.

All the pastiche and collage and reproduction we see online is just as real as any "original."  It's real enough.

The big copyright tussle, the ancient battle between content and technology, is going into a new phase.  Now it's all about product liability. 

Here's how the argument goes:

1.  Failing to design something so as to constrain copyright infringement is just like failing to design something so as to avoid injury.  When the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by the adoption of a reasonable alternative design, failure to use that alternative design renders the product not reasonably safe.

2.  Failing to keep people from infringing copyrighted materials using technologies is just like failing to warn consumers of the dangers of that technology.  When the foreseeable risks of harm posed by the product could have been reduced or avoided by reasonable instructions or warnings, their omission renders the product not reasonably safe.

3.  So copyright protection is really a matter of consumer protection.  That's why 40 state AGs filed a brief supporting the grant of cert in the Grokster case.  They're worried about the injuries (child pornography, spyware) being caused to their constituents through the continued existence of peer to peer software.

4.  Bad design and failure to warn give rise to liability for product manufacturers -- the same should be true for manufacturers of copying devices and technologies. 

This is a brilliant move.  It captures so much of our current sensibilities:  McDonald's should be liable if we eat too much; tobacco companies should be liable if we smoke too much; Xerox should be liable if we copy too much.  This move has the potential to target everyone in the chain of distribution -- anyone who made a dime out of anything that was eventually used to infringe, whatever their intent was.

But it's absolutely crazy.  Manufacturers of flammable clothing can be liable because people are hurt when that clothing burns.  The point is that we're trying to protect people from being hurt by the products they use.  But you can't be injured by a consumer electronics device.  The copyright tort injury is felt (if it's felt at all) by someone thousands of miles away in Hollywood. 

Even though it's absolutely crazy, it's clearly worth a try.  The tough issues in a "failure to warn" case will cost defendants zillions of dollars to fight against -- what's a "foreseeable risk" of copying?  what are "reasonable instructions or warnings" that might have lessened the infringement?

Time to re-read The Hunting of the Snark. 

But the Judge said he never had summed up before;
So the Snark undertook it instead,
And summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the Witnesses ever had said!

When the verdict was called for, the Jury declined,
As the word was so puzzling to spell;
But they ventured to hope that the Snark wouldn't mind
Undertaking that duty as well.

So the Snark found the verdict, although, as it owned,
It was spent with the toils of the day:
When it said the word "GUILTY!" the Jury all groaned,
And some of them fainted away.

Today's activity was a panel dedicated to discussing Peter Swire's proposals to revise the PATRIOT Act.  It was a terrific panel -- Peter really knows what he's talking about, and so does Patricia Bellia, and so does Richard Phillips, counsel to Sen. Leahy and the Senate Judiciary Committee.  All I had to do was direct traffic.

Peter Swire's paper on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (and the changes to it made by PATRIOT) is well worth reading.  It's very clear.  FISA was a grand compromise that has been substantially undermined by PATRIOT -- much broader permitted searches, authorized at lower levels, with less of a nexus to foreign intelligence gathering required, are all now possible under PATRIOT.

Richard Phillips seemed pessimistic that any of this could be narrowed in the current environment.  We might, he suggested, be able to do something about the powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review and authorize records requests (and release gag orders about them eventually).  But it's an uphill battle.

A key part of the policy discussion about all of this has to be resisting the claimed newness of this post-cold war age.  The same arguments are made over and over again -- evil is rampant, we have to give up our civil liberties to respond.  In fact, the world hasn't changed so very much, and it doesn't require new laws, new bureaucracies, or new asymmetries of information to deal with the current situation.  But try telling legislators that.  You won't win.

First the good news:  It seems clear from published reports of this morning's argument that at least two members of the DC Circuit don't think the FCC has jurisdiction to issue the flag rules. 

"You're out there in the whole world, regulating. Are washing machines next?" asked Judge Harry Edwards. Quipped Judge David Sentelle: "You can't regulate washing machines. You can't rule the world."

That's great.  And it has enormous implications for the future of internet regulation.  The FCC is using the same "ancillary jurisdiction" argument to support its efforts in "social policy" regulation of IP-enabled services.  Now the FCC will have to rethink -- and will have to go up on the Hill to seek statutory authority.  This will be a battle. 

Now, the bad news.  It sounds as if Judge Sentelle didn't think much of plaintiffs' standing (ability to claim injury and seek the help of the courts) to challenge the broadcast flag rules.  It seems to me that the libraries certainly have special injury here -- they won't be able to make fair use of materials in ways that otherwise are guaranteed them.  Because the library association is a plaintiff in the flag case, there's a good chance that they can answer the standing questions that were raised today.  And I'm also hopeful that the DC Circuit judges involved wouldn't have said so much about the merits of the jurisdiction arguments if there wasn't standing to begin with.

On balance, it's a great day for the internet.  If only some consumer electronics manufacturers would see their longterm interests more clearly -- it has to be more important to be able to innovate in ways consumers will like than to build to a required standard that no consumer wants.  There is no market demand for the broadcast flag.

Now, I don't like the word "whither" any more than you do.  But this Reuters article was circulating today and it seemed to call for a "whither."

It's a short story, so let's do a close reading.

A U.N.-sponsored panel aims to settle a long-running tug of war for control of the Internet by July and propose solutions to problems such as cyber crime and email spam, panel leaders said on Monday.

We're going to decide what "internet governance" is by July?  And we're going to propose solutions to cybercrime and email spam?  Wow.  Here is the preliminary report [pdf] that Nitin Desai, Chairman of the Working Group on Internet Governance, has transmitted to the WSIS Preparatory Committee and the ITU.  This report isn't as brave as the Reuters story; in fact, it seems to be quite limited -- although WGIG is still planning to submit "proposals for action.. on the governance of the Internet."

Right now, the most recognizable Internet governance body is a California-based non-profit company, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

But developing countries want an international body, such as the U.N.'s International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to have control over governance -- from distributing Web site domains to fighting spam.

"There is an issue that is out there and that needs to be resolved," said Nitin Desai, chairman of working group and special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan

It's clear that Desai has ICANN in his sights.  But ICANN has absolutely nothing to do with "fighting spam," and even having that subject reflected in the Reuters story reflects some deep confusion on someone's part. 

ICANN doesn't do internet governance.  ICANN makes recommendations about what gets added to the root (new TLDs) and has some role in allocating IP addresses, but ICANN absolutely does not approve new internet protocols.  ICANN has nothing to do with how packets get routed or any other key internet agreements.  ICANN gets the respect and deference of ISPs and network operators --  a very thin (and unwritten) form of respect.  There's no governance there -- and, so, there's nothing for the UN to take over.

So, fine, solve cybercrime and spam by July.  It will be interesting to see how this happens -- and what on earth ICANN has to do with this effort.

I did the first in a string of talks about spyware today.  My fancy-schmanzty software (MindManager -- I thought it would be great) crashed over and over again before I started, so I gave up and just talked.  I did not blame or even mention the software problem (this is similar to not blaming the horse who throws you to the ground).   

Boy, do we have a long way to go on this issue.  Some people say it's all about privacy.  Other people (including Utah) say it's really about unauthorized uses of trademarks prompting unauthorized ads (or sponsored links).  I'm saying it's all about oppressive relationships, and we have lots of law to deal with these relationships already.  But because of relatives and cluelessness (bet you there are lots of legislators with relatives who have spyware problems), legislators are swinging for the fences on this one.

 Just as the broadcast flag is really about control over the design of devices, the spyware debate is really about control over the design of code.  We should be cautious in legislating these design decisions -- no matter how pernicious particular stories/examples are -- because our language for these distinctions is so impoverished.  We don't know and can't describe in advance what "bad software" will look like two months from now.  HTML?  JavaScript?  Cookies?  What's "bad" and needs notice and consent?

Someone asked me how to make a trackback show up on a blog.  Here's how:

1.  Find a good blog.

2.  Find an entry and copy the URL for the "permanent link" to that entry.

3.  Create a link to that entry in your own blog.

Yahoo! has rolled out a new service, Y!Q, that allows for contextual searching -- on web pages, through a blog, whatever.  Yahoo! blogs about it here.

It's a pretty neat tool.  Is it spyware?

The broadcast flag argument is coming up on February 22.  It's a crucial case.  Did the FCC have jurisdiction to enter the broadcast flag order in November 2003?  If it didn't, we'll need to go to Congress to discuss all this.

Like the Grokster case, the flag situation raises this question:  can one industry force another to constrain new general purpose technologies in the name of copyright protection?  Like the CALEA dispute (prompted by the demands of another great industry -- law enforcement), the flag represents an attempt to have high-tech innovators ask permission before innovating. 

The broadcast flag isn't really about broadcast or the waving of a patriotic flag.  It's about money and fear.  I have high hopes that the DC Circuit will see through the FCC's incredibly broad assertions about its jurisdiction. 

We're in for a long, tough battle in front of Congress -- everything may be up for grabs, including the immunity of online intermediaries enshrined in Section 230 of the 1996 telecom act.  Congress should act with self restraint.  But the first step is to get them involved, and the flag case will (should) be a step in the right direction.

Here's my paper about all this. It explores the application of complex systems theory to internet governance.

Today was a great day, a sunny and mild day, to see The Gates installation in Central Park.  The letters in the Times today about the exhibit were a pleasure in themselves -- everything from "I was deeply moved" to "It is in my opinion bad art, an example of extreme hubris and not pleasing to look at."  

So I had to go.

I guess I'm closer to the "deeply moved" camp.  Going reminded me of the great happiness I used to feel when I managed to visit the cherry blossoms in full bloom in DC.  Those gnarled trees cover themselves with delicate glory for such a brief time, and when it's sunny and you have time to walk under them you feel lucky.  People show up and have lunch under the trees, or lie on their backs and watch the blossoms against the sky.  Just trees! 

Same thing in Central Park today.  There was a festival air around those orange hangings shot through with shiny threads (really, they're orange, not saffron).  Stately waves, undulating settings, and all here for such a short time.  Like cherry blossom time, this is a time for wedding photographs near a gate or two.

Ben Franklin was the ultimate amateur scientist:

"It wasn't just his extraordinary work that he did in electricity. He was also the first person, for instance, to understand that weather just didn't happen locally, that a storm that you experience today might be a hundred miles over tomorrow, and he was the first person, using his position as postmaster general, to track a hurricane going up through the colonies. He was the first person to study the sociology of insects. He was the first person to analyze the teeth of a mastodon and figure out that the climate in Siberia, where the mastodon had been found, must have changed, so that meant that climate was not something that could be relied on as being constant all over the world."

Amateur musicians flock to concerts; amateur radio enthusiasts keep plugging along; amateur astronomers add to our knowledge of the universe.  The interactive, networked screen makes it easier for all of these amateurs to find one another -- joined by the internet as well as by their common interests.  The net can be used to create intellectual common areas of all kinds, built by gift.  Code is love as well as law.

Yet another reason why Ben Franklin would have loved the internet.  Happy Valentines Day.   

Jared Diamond has written a chatty book ("Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed") that suggests that metainformational depth (he doesn't use those words, but others might) is important for the success of atoms as well as informational things. 

Diamond uses five parameters as bases for comparative analysis of vanished societies:  (1) damage that people inadvertently inflict on their environment; (2) climate change (not just global warming, but all kinds of variances); (3) hostile neighbors; (4) decreased support from friendly neighbors; (5) responses/governance mechanisms adopted in response to all of this.  I'm fresh from chapters on Easter Island, Mayans, Pitcairn Island, Anasazi, Vikings, and Norse Greenland. 

I once spent an hour listening to someone talk me through his snapshots of Easter Island statues.  The pictures were hypnotic and the statues seemed to me to be completely mysterious -- full of a message I didn't understand.  Now, because of Diamond's book, I know that the reason all those eyeless Easter Island statues are lying toppled is that

1) they ran out of wood to build machines/tracks to hoist the statues up on their pedestals (eyes were separately prepared, by the way)

2) when they ran out of wood, they started to starve

3) warring tribes ran around knocking down everyone's statues

And they started carving statues in the first place because there was no other way to show off around there.  Had they been less isolated, perhaps they could have come up with other tricks and avoided the destructive deforestation.

Meanwhile, clever New Guineans survive, even though isolated, by being very thoughtful about how they use their land, and very curious and experimental.  One day some New Guinean brings home a little seedling that looks interesting, and presto! deforestation halted.

It looks as if Diamond's thesis is going to be that failure to see clearly where you are (and what you're doing to your surroundings) can lead to extinction.  (What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree on the island think to himself as the tree fell?)  We need to be better at making good group decisions, by doing things like "thinking skeptically, allowing discussions to be freewheeling, having subgroups meet separately, and having leaders occasionally leave the room." [paraphrasing slightly, p. 439]

In other words, you need wisdom to deal with dirt, and trees, and mines.  Although I don't think that ruins of NYC skyscrapers will someday be viewed with the same sense of puzzled awe that is triggered by the Easter Island statues, I'm all for better group decisionmaking.  And for curious experimentation.

Say you're trying to explain to a group of smart law enforcement-sympathetic people why innovation is a great thing. 

Some messages work:  "you don't want one industry (Hollywood) controlling what another (high-tech) can do -- this is all about money, and Hollywood wants high-tech to bear their costs."  They nod.

Some messages don't:  "through the internet, law enforcement is getting access to more information than you ever thought possible."  They shake their heads.  Nope.  Not a persuasive message. 

The question comes back:  "What's the benefit of P2P to law enforcement?"  Why should we support something that seems to be a place for child porn, spyware, and copyright infringement?

What's in it for us?

If you have any answers, let me know.

It's good news that the 9th Circuit has granted [pdf] en banc review of the Yahoo! decision.

A little review.  Back in November 2001, the federal district court in the Northern District of California decided [pdf] that enforcement of a French order (requiring Yahoo! to block access by French citizens to particular material) was violative of the First Amendmentl.  "A United States court constitutionally could not make such an order," the court said.

The Ninth Circuit then said that US courts didn't have jurisdiction over the French plaintiff in the original French case.  Translated:  "Yahoo!, you have to wait until the French plaintiff actually comes here to the US to enforce the order they obtained in France.  Until they do that, we can't say anything about the constitutionality of the order." 

But the problem with that standard is that it has the effect of enforcing an unconstitutional order.  Here's why:  If Yahoo! (or another online publisher) has to operate in fear of foreign courts suddenly ordering them to block particular things, and can't ask a local court to clear the air ("that order can't possibly work here -- it's unconstitutional"), they'll prudently take down the risky material entirely.  It just won't be worth it to run the risk that daily damages will continue to mount up while the online site waits for the foreign judgment to arrive on its local shores.  CDT and others filed [pdf] an amicus brief making this point (much more elegantly) before the 9th Circuit, and asking for the entire panel of 9th Circuit judges to reconsider this very important case.

It's very good that the 9th Circuit is taking this on.  The only rational rule that will keep the internet ticking along is to make sure that sovereigns only get to boss around those sites over which they have legitimate power.  (Because the French plaintiff took several acts in the US directed towards Yahoo!, the US courts have legitimate power to issue an order about the constitutionality of the judgment.)

France shouldn't be able to use the threat of an unenforceable judgment to silence a company over which it has no legitimate control (that doesn't "touch down" in France in some significant, intentional way).  Similarly, the US shouldn't be able to use the threat of unenforceable judgments to silence offshore companies over which it has no legitimate sway (like, say, gambling sites).  Bravo to Yahoo! for pushing forward with this case -- it's important for all shapes, sizes, and persuasions of online sites.

I heard a fascinating presentation tonight by Benjamin Reeve about the impoverished nature of our understanding of information.  It was an important talk. 

The thesis (I'm waiting for the PDF of the manuscript so that I can post a link here) is that Shannon's understanding of information is not helpful -- that information is really differences that "make a difference" by causing a system to change its state.  Informational things have different qualities than physical things (you can't run an algorithm against a hill).  Most fundamentally, information is not conserved.  Information, instead, amplifies.  But amplification, just for its own sake, isn't an unmixed good.  Instead, what we should be interested in (and design for) is metainformational depth -- quality information about information.

The most important thing we can do is "make things deep" -- build for better information.  Maybe that means tagging data and having it report back to us about how it's doing.  At any rate, for any amount of amplification we create, we need to create MORE metainformational depth.

Stay tuned -- this was a terrific talk, and when I have some links I'll send them along.  If we get better at handling information, we can get better at building society. 

EFF released today a new tool for system adminstrators to use:  Logfinder. 

Many sysadmins may not know what they're logging.  All kinds of automatic information gathering goes on, day after day, night after night, that isn't necessary in any operational sense and creates a honey pot for subpoena activity.  Why gather information you don't need?  Logfinder, conceived by Ben Laurie (once an expert in the Yahoo! case) and written by Seth Schoen, makes it possible to dig around and figure out what it is your system is automatically recording -- and consciously decide not to record it.

Just as Edward Tufte urges us to get rid of "chart junk" when showing information, Schoen and EFF are urging sysadmins  to get rid of "log junk" when running systems.

Elegant.

Thanks to Shari Motro for reminding me about "chart junk"

You haven't heard of the deliberative bus stop?  You're not aware of "civic fairs" in virtual worlds?  You're not sure whether or why we should care about groups? "Group" sounds like "mob" to your ears? 

Beth Noveck of New York Law School (where she directs the Institute for Information Law and Policy and the Democracy Design Workshop) is here to tell you how technology is enhancing the role of groups online, how legal frameworks could support the legitimacy of groups (and encourage deference to their decisions), and how we can harness the energy of groups to achieve democratic goals.

Prof. Noveck's draft is here [word doc].  Her email address is on the first page of the paper. I have it on good authority that she's interested in reactions and comments. 

Groups matter!  Prof. Noveck's article is a major contribution to thinking about the intersection between online life and law, and YOU, the group(s) out there, can help make it even better.   

I lurked in a chatroom today that was devoted to discussing wikinews and blogging. It sounds as if bloggers would like to get feeds for wikinews stories.  

[A wiki seems to be a great way to run a class.  Take a look at this wiki from the Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction.  Mundane:  have students sign up for office hours on a wiki.]

Back to the news -- I like the idea of wikinews, but the entries I flipped through so far (very limited sample) seemed to suffer from the disease that afflicts sitcoms:  anything written by committee is worse than it needs to be.  The flat, affectless tone of the wikinews stories isn't appealing, and several seemed to be based on reporting done by mainstream sources.  On the other hand, wikinews is just starting, and may provide a good place for independent reporting to be found.

I'd love it if wikis could be visual as well as textual.  Why can't we see furious editing of a page as a pulse? 

The Times had a fine graphic today showing how many times particular words had shown up in the President's various State of the Union Addresses.  There was a huge circle for Social Security (many mentions!) for the speech the other night, and this textual analysis by Todd Purdum:

Reprising the themes of his second Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Bush cast his proposal for personal investment accounts for Social Security in sweeping terms, as part of the "guiding ideal of liberty for all" that has led to the first round of elections in Iraq. But if the goal of "ending tyranny" that he announced at his inauguration two weeks ago is "the concentrated work of generations," his latest proposal is also only a first step, its ultimate fate in doubt.

By now, no one should be surprised at Mr. Bush's penchant for thinking big, or speaking grandly. . . .

Here's why the President's approach to social security has something to do with complex systems:

1.  For any given system, complexity is conserved across various scales, and there is always a tradeoff between scale and complexity.  So governments can't provide tailor-made governance at a fine scale for individuals, but they can act effectively at large scales -- moving mountains and armies.  Governments are like large Navy vessels.  They do best when they have a simple, large-scale environment to deal with.

2.  Only variety can defeat variety.  So only Special Forces sorts of operations can effectively deal with terrorists.

3.  But large-scale effectiveness can defeat variety.  A platoon of tanks can easily roll over a forest.  A monopolist of gigantic scale can take over a marketplace, even a wildly complex one.  This is possible only if the large-scale actor (the tank, the monopolist) doesn't really care about the complexities and interdependencies of the system it is flattening.

4.  The Administration does not appear to be worrying about the possible fallout (nonlinear! unpredictable!) of completely changing the social security system.  It is confident that it has a Good Idea here, and it is bound and determined to push it through, no matter what.  In a sense, the Administration is like a tank planning to flatten a forest.  The sensitivities and needs of the forest are of no concern to to this armored vehicle -- it merely wants to get the job done and move on.

The Administration must not care about the complexities and interdependencies of the system it plans to flatten.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has a terrific roundup of current state spyware bills.  After spending some time wandering the virtual state halls, my head is spinning.  Many, many state bills have been introduced in the last couple of weeks.

Most importantly for spyware legislation afficionados, Utah is trying again [pdf].  You rmember Utah.  They passed a bill that was declared violative of the dormant Commerce Clause back in June 2004.  The new 2005 bill has the following slender support from legislative counsel: 

Legislative Review Note

Based on a limited legal review, this legislation has not been determined to have a high probability of being held unconstitutional.

I'm sure that makes everyone in the Utah legislature feel reassured.

Back to the substance, though.  The new Utah draft says that it is illegal to display a pop-up ad "by means of spyware" in response to a specific trademark or URL.  Spyware is defined broadly to mean software that collects information about a site at the time a user is looking at the site.  (The software will be living in a computer in Utah, acc. to the draft bill, so as to avoid any possible commerce clause issues.  Yup.)

This is para-trademark.  We know that mere prompting of ads (or search results) in response to keyword use of a trademark does not create consumer confusion.  But apparently if you do this using "spyware," you're sunk.  At least in Utah.

For reasons I've given before, I don't think this legislative approach makes sense.  This Utah bill is an example of the cure perhaps being worse than the disease -- the scope of the magic power of a trademark is being extended by a non-trademark piece of legislation.  And, of course, it won't work. 

I'm going to write a book about What Ben Franklin Would Do Online.  In the case of spyware, he wouldn't recommend legislation -- he'd create a volunteer spyware brigade.

[And if he did recommend legislation, he'd get a stronger vote of confidence from his lawyer than the Utah bill commanded.]

There's so much cyber-news that I'm overwhelmed and resorting to wordplay. 

(The Federalist Society and the MPAA are co-sponsoring a "conference" in New Orleans in March; PFF is getting a lot of funding to work on the new Telecom Act; Section 230 protects bulletin board operators, even when they "tone down" postings.)

Word for today:  dynamics.  I heard it again last Friday when I listened to academic commentary about a paper comparing intellectual property to property -- a questioner said something like, "Your paper doesn't capture the dynamics of this relationship."  The questioner was looking for the complex interdependencies and adaptive changes that have happened/will happen with intellectual property language.  Or he/she was looking for something livelier.  Whatever it was, the questioner wasn't getting it from the paper.

Last night I said it to myself (silently) because one of the people I was playing string quartets with actually had dynamic range.  Yes, it has to be said, sometimes amateur chamber groups is ALL LOUD ALL THE TIME, sort of like 1010 News.  But if you can actually play softly it can make a tremendous difference to the emotional impact of the music.  Without dynamics it's just not that interesting.  

So -- notice the dynamics.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Boy, those guys over at the MPAA are really skilled.