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Toyota Demands Site Remove Fan-Submitted Photos

To the owner of DesktopNexus.com?a site dedicated to sharing user-submitted desktop wallpaper?it sounded as if the attorney from the Toyota Motor Corporation on the phone was reading from a script. He was basically repeating the same demand that Toyota had made over the course of six months in several emails: The car giant wanted Harry Maugans to remove all images on his site containing a Toyota, Lexus and Scion gallery.  What wasn?t clear?because Toyota did not submit a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notification?was whether Toyota was claiming ownership of any image containing one of their cars. That radical claim would be enough to shivers down the spine of any gearhead. ?I asked them for all the information that would be included in a DMCA request, including who owned the image,? Maugans told Wired.com. The attorney, who identified himself as Garrett Biggs, told Maugans that if he wanted that specific information, he would have to pay for it to be gathered. No such payment has been made, and Maugans hasn?t budged. ?I haven't deleted a single Toyota, Lexus, or Scion image since any of this started.? Maugans? stand seems ballsy when you consider the size and legal power of a massive conglomerate like Toyota. Yet Fred von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, feels Maugans' refusal to take down the images is justified.?He doesn?t have to respond,? von Lohmann told Wired.com. ?Toyota is on shaky ground here.? Since Toyota is not in the business of selling desktop wallpapers, von Lohmann sees that Toyota has no grounds to request that the images be removed unless they were created or owned by the company itself. ?Toyota is selling cars, not car designs. It?s a very thin copyright.? As a site filled with user submissions, von Lohmann feels that DesktopNexus definitely fits into the class of sites?like YouTube?protected by the DMCA, which allows for a safe harbor for site owners as long as they comply with proper takedown requests from copyright owners. And ownership of the images is definitely the key issue in this controversy. ?I showed him a couple of images that were definitely not Toyota promotional photos, and the attorney wouldn?t say Toyota owned them,? Maugans said. Claiming copyright ownership is serious business. If Toyota or anyone who makes a takedown request claims ownership of any image or media that isn?t truly theirs, they can be liable for perjury. ?The message here is we can make your life very difficult,? von Lohmann told us. He feels that attempts like this to monitor fan activity are part of a larger effort by car companies. While carmakers love to stir up ?viral? conversation about their models, they?re also very worried that the discussion can get out of hand. Von Lohmann points to the attempt by Ford a few years ago to force sites with Mustang in their name to find new urls as an example of overreaching by automakers. ?MacWorld has a right to have Mac in its name,? von Lohmann said, and MustangHeaven.com has the right to use Mustang in its name And things aren?t going well for Toyota?and not just when it comes to sales. Since news about Toyota?s requests came out, users have been submitting some less than flattering images of Toyotas that no one would claim were official promotional images. Maugans' reluctance to bend immediately to a request from the lawyer of a multi-billion dollar corporation shows some insulation against the chilling effects of potentially unwarranted rights claims. Yet other site owners who aren?t aware of the ins-and-outs of DMCA notifications may have taken down the content immediately, shuddering the kind of hardcore fandom that?s at the core of using a Scion or a Lexus as your desktop wallpaper. ?These wallpapers are great advertisements for Toyota,? said Maugans who insists that he?s definitely willing to follow the law. ?I want to make sure this is done correctly,? he said. So the ball is in your court, Toyota. Submit a complete DMCA takedown notification, or let the poor guy be. Photo by DesktopNexus user armindillo.

4 Philadelphia RFPs: Strategic Planning, Retail and Gaming Designer, Traffic Study, Real Estate and Economic Advisory Services

The Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation, working in conjunction with the City of Philadelphia, is soliciting responses to 4 separate RFPs. read more

Parker Strengthens North American Fluid Handling Business

Parker Hannifin Corporation,the global leader in motion and control technologies, announced that it has acquired Nexgen Hose Inc., headquartered in Fergus, Ontario, Canada. Nexgen is a leading manufacturer of industrial PVC hose and tubing for niche and industry standard applications.

Parker Acquires Manufacturer of Water Filtration

Parker Hannifin Corporation,the global leader in motion and control technology, announced that it has acquired Aqua Pro, Inc. a manufacturer of reverse osmosis ("RO") filtration systems for military, commercial and pleasure marine applications.

Luke Bainbridge visits Detroit on the 50th anniversary of Motown

'This was it,' says Smokey Robinson, with his arms open and a shrug that suggests he still finds it slightly unbelievable himself. 'People who think about the music that came out of here would think that this place was huge. Think it was this huge recording studio where we had all these people ... but everyone was crammed in here ... and we were making music, we were jamming.''It' is the converted garage of a small frame house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan. Detroit being the home of the automobile, it's only appropriate that this story should revolve around a garage. This is the Motor City, and the house, christened Hitsville USA, is the birthplace of Motown Records. The garage at the rear is Studio A, one of the most revered recording studios in history.It was in this room that Barrett Strong, on Motown's first national hit, declared 'Money (That's What I Want)', where Smokey Robinson cried his 'Tears of a Clown', the Four Tops promised 'Reach Out, I'll Be There', Martha Reeves and the Vandellas sent a call out around the world, asking 'are you ready for a brand new beat?' and Diana Ross and the Supremes demanded 'Stop! In the Name of Love'. It was within these four walls that little Stevie Wonder recorded his first songs and, later, as the Sixties faded, Marvin Gaye asked 'What's Going On?'.Between 1961 and 1971, Motown had a staggering 110 Top 10 hits in the US, more than half of which were million-sellers, and most of them were recorded in this converted garage, barely big enough to house a Lincoln Continental.Motown is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary - the label was founded by Berry Gordy Jr as Tamla Records on 12 January 1959, then incorporated as the Motown Record Corporation in 1960. Downstairs in Hitsville is the reception area, the control room and Studio A. Upstairs was originally the living quarters for Gordy and his family, before Motown's success allowed them to move out into a home of their own. The building remains much as it was in its heyday. Smokey, now 68 and based in LA and Las Vegas, hasn't been back for a couple of years himself. 'This is a very spiritual room for me,' he explains. 'There's a lot of energy. So many things happened in here ...'Does it really feel like 50 years, I ask.'No, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like 50 years. 50 years have gone by in an instant; like that,' says Smokey, clicking his fingers. 'It just seems like yesterday that this stuff was going on. When Berry Gordy first came and saw this house and envisaged this garage being a studio.''It seems like yesterday,' he says again, rubbing his eye, 'it seems impossible. I always relate it to when I was a kid - I would be watching television and I would see Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis and those guys and they would say "Oh man, we've been doing this for 20 years" and I'd think, "God, how can someone have been doing something for 20 years?" But I see now, because 50 years have gone by like that.' He clicks his fingers again. 'Just overnight, you know ... 50 years ... God, that's half a century.'That half a century covers an extraordinary tale of love and loss - the remarkable dream of one man and the creation of a label that produced an unrivalled succession of hits, and the desperate decline of the city that was once at the heart of the American dream.It was 1913 when Henry Ford pioneered the use of a moving assembly line for mass production at his factory in the Highland Park district, then on the northern fringes of the city, and by the 1920s Detroit had already been christened the Motor City. The promise of employment in the car plants meant that Detroit overtook Chicago as the favoured destination for black families migrating from the south, and the city's population swelled to over two million, making it the fourth biggest city in America. By the 1950s, 80% of the world's cars were built in America, and most of those in Detroit. The city was the manufacturing centre of the America, and thus the world.Born in 1929 in Detroit - his parents had migrated north from Georgia - by the mid-Fifties Berry Gordy Jr, the seventh of eight children, was still searching for his way in life. Having dropped out of high school, he attempted to make it as a professional boxer before being drafted for the war in Korea. Back in Detroit, in 1953, he married Thelma Gorman and decided to pursue a career in music. In a rare interview in 1984 - the 78-year-old isn't giving any to coincide with Motown's 50th anniversary, although he has been working on a documentary which should surface next year - Gordy told the Los Angeles Times how seeing an advert for a battle of the bands when he was in a Detroit gym gave him a wake-up call - he noticed the stark juxtaposition of 'young fighters who were 23 but looked like 50, all scarred and beat up... then I saw the musicians who were 50 and they looked 23'.After the failure of his first musical venture, the 3-D Record Mart store, Gordy was forced to find work on the Lincoln-Mercury production line of the Ford plant to support his family. Now writing songs, he was introduced to the R'n'B singer Jackie Wilson, a fellow ex-boxer, who recorded one of Gordy's compositions 'Reet Petite', then several more over the next couple of years. Gordy, however, became quickly disillusioned with the industry when he realised the labels in Chicago and New York that were distributing these songs were the ones making serious dollar. In the offices of Wilson's manager one day, Gordy met the Matadors, fronted by a 16-year-old with sparkling green eyes and light dark skin called William 'Smokey' Robinson. Gordy persuaded the group to change their name to the Miracles and on Robinson's 18th birthday, their first single 'Got a Job', written and produced by Gordy, was released on New York's End Records.Gordy began to dream of building his own label, an equivalent to Ford's assembly lines, a hit factory. It was Smokey who persuaded Gordy that he needed to stop leasing records, and go national himself. 'I recorded this record, the Miracles and me, called 'Way Over There' and it broke out really big here in Detroit and so we re-recorded it and put violins on it and I just told him: "We might as well take this record national. Nobody's paying us anyway so we might as well take the chance on doing it ourselves." So that's what we did.'Spurred on by Smokey, and his sisters Gwen and Anna Gordy, who had already started Anna Records with Billy Davis, Gordy borrowed $800 from his family and started the label in January 1959. 'On the very first day, when Berry decided to start Motown,' Smokey recalls, those green eyes sparkling, 'he sat down and said, "Hey, you guys, I wanted to tell you something: we are not going to make black music, we're going to make world music, we're going to make music for everybody. We're going to make great music, we're going to have some great stories, make some great beats" - and that's what we set out to do.'Though Gordy's ambition always stretched much further than Detroit city limits - the label called itself 'the sound of young America' - he still wanted its name to show its roots. 'Detroit was known as "The Motor City",' says Smokey. 'Berry wanted to name the label something that sounded familiar. First, he was going to call it 'Mocity' but he decided that 'town' was more homely, more family-sounding, so he called it 'Motown'.In his determination to build a hit factory, Gordy employed various songwriters. The best known were Holland-Dozier-Holland, aka Laurent Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland. Other notables included Norman Whitfield, William 'Mickey' Stevenson and Smokey himself, whom Gordy made vice president. The producers' mantra was 'KISS' - 'keep it simple, stupid.'Most of the records were also recorded with the same studio session musicians - a tight-knit group known as the Funk Brothers. The 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown claimed that in 14 years, they 'played on more No1 hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined'. Gordy now had the hit factory that he had dreamt of.He introduced weekly quality control meetings to ensure a consistent procession of hits. Smokey, sitting back in his chair in the Hitsville control room, explains: 'We had Monday morning meetings, they started at 9 o'clock, and at 9 o'clock and five seconds you were locked out. You had to be there at 9 o'clock in order to get your stuff heard. All the creative people were in those meetings, the writers, the producers. We would play our stuff for each other, critique each other's stuff and make suggestions on each other's stuff to make it better. We were very competitive but we still pulled for each other to be creatively strong. A lot of people have said to me, "Berry decided..." No, Berry did not decide any of that. Berry was in those meetings, but Berry was still producing and writing at that time and his stuff would get shot down just like anybody else's.' He laughs. 'It was very hard for Berry to get a record out."Several timeless tracks - including Marvin Gaye's 'Heard it Through the Grapevine - were initially rejected by Gordy. 'Absolutely,' confirms Smokey. 'Many of the tracks were sent back and re-worked, and re-worked, until they became the hits that they became.'The label was a strong and highly visible example of black empowerment when the civil rights movement was gathering pace. In her 1999 book, Dancing in the Street, Suzanne Smith points out that Gordy was 'extremely wary about affiliating his business with any organisation or movement that might negatively influence his company's commercial success'. What Gordy cared about was record sales. 'Nevertheless,' Smith adds, 'both Motown's music and its entrepreneurial acumen emerged from an urban black community that regularly asserted its "politics" through cultural and economic means.'In other words, the success of the black-owned Motown was a powerful statement in itself.Gordy may have been wary about Motown becoming overly politicised, but the label decided to release its first spoken-word recording in August 1963: a recording of Martin Luther King's speech at the Great March to Freedom in June that year. King declared the Detroit march 'the largest and greatest demonstration for freedom ever held in the United States', and his speech that day included an early version of his 'I Have a Dream' oration.The record was deliberately released on 28 August, the same day King appeared at the March on Washington, and Gordy spoke of how 'the Negro revolt of 1963 will take its place historically with the American Revolution' and how 'this album belongs in the home of every American and should be required listening for every American child, white or black'. 'There is no way that you could be a black person in the United States in the Sixties and not be affected,' says Smokey, when I ask him about the civil rights movement. 'Dr Martin Luther King came to visit us here at Motown. He was such a dynamic, incredible person. 'We all experienced it [racism]. We'd go to the South and we'd be shot at and run out of places and all kinds of stuff just for being black. But the music transcended all of that. We'd go to the South and at first, even though the white kids would have our music, the audiences would be separated: white people on one side, black people on the other side; white people upstairs, black people downstairs or vice-versa, no mingling or any of that. After the music became so popular a year or two later we'd go to the same places and the black and white kids would be together and they'd be dancing, having a good time, singing, holding hands and mingling and talking. The music bridged a lot of gaps.'In the early years, Motown was as much a family as a record label. Several of Gordy's own family worked within the company, and in the early days half the artists and groups were thrown together in one bus when they went on the road as the Motown Revue. Remarkably, three Motown secretaries at Motown - Janie Bradford, Martha Reeves and Diana Ross, went on to be stars.There were also several relationships within the label, including those between Smokey and Claudette Robinson, Marvin Gaye and Berry Gordy's sister, Anne. 'We still have it,' says Smokey. 'You've been around here today and you've seen the reaction when Kim Weston and I saw each other, or "Duke" Fakir of the Four Tops.' Weston and Fakir are also at Hitsville today. 'We just have that brother and sisterhood and it's always been that way,' continues Smokey. 'When people talk about the Motown family, people think, "That's mythical, they couldn't possibly have been like that," but it wasn't and it isn't mythical.''When we first got here we could feel the difference right away; we was family,' explains Fakir when I speak to him later. (the Four Tops had already recorded for Chess, Red Top, Riverside and Columbia before signing for Motown, but had yet to have a hit.) 'On another label you just went and in and did a session and you were out, you didn't meet other artists. But [at Motown] you were talking to the Supremes, the Temptations, the Miracles and you were having fun, and you felt like you were part of something. And you knew that they were on their way.'The Four Tops went on to be Motown's longest standing group, keeping the same line-up for more than four decades. Levi Stubbs died shortly after I met Fakir, who is now the only surviving member. The producer Norman Whitfield also died in the week I was in Detroit. Most of Motown's output still sounds fresh and vibrant today, but the Motor City itself hasn't aged quite as well. By the early Sixties, the city and its car industry were already in decline. The population drain from American inner cities which began after the Second World War was already more pronounced in Detroit than elsewhere. The city had suffered race riots in 1863 and 1943 but the 12th Street riot in 1967, which ignited after a raid on a speakeasy, grew into the biggest riot in modern American history, lasting five days and leaving 43 dead, with 7,200 arrests and 2,000 buildings burned down. This hastened the 'white flight', many of whom fled a lot further than the suburbs. Over the next two decades the population of Detroit halved to around 900,000, leaving swaths of the inner city derelict and desolate.As Detroit entered these desperate times, Gordy made the decision, in 1972, to uproot Motown to the sunshine of the West Coast, a devastating blow to Detroit's already crumbling civic pride. The reclusive Gordy had increasingly spent time in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and decided that Motown needed to branch out and become an entertainment company, and in order to do that it needed to be in LA.'I was the biggest protester about us moving,' stresses Smokey. 'I was born here in Detroit. Motown was born here in Detroit and I told Berry this. I explained all of this to him: "Berry, this is our roots, we started here" and he explained to me that he wanted to become a record complex. He said we could stay in Detroit and be a record company but LA is where entertainment is centralised. I bought him books on earthquakes and smog and everything you can think of, trying to get him not to move, but finally he said, "Look, you're vice-president of the company, get your family, come on out here because you've got to" and so I moved out there.'Not everyone followed. Several artists including the Four Tops, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Martha Reeves and the Funk Brothers either remained in Detroit or left Motown for other reasons. 'It left a hole in Detroit, absolutely,' says Fakir. 'People still don't understand why he left. I understand, because he was looking for bigger things and Hollywood is where everything happens. But I always felt you should leave at least the foundation of what you started here. Just like Ford. He didn't need to leave Detroit to be a global industry giant.'Detroit's fortunes remain tied to the automobile industry, and here in the rust belt that means the big three - Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. The three traditionally built big, brash gas-guzzlers, and failed to react as the price of oil escalated and buyers turned to cheaper and more fuel-economical foreign imports. Ford once employed more than 100,000 workers at the Dearborn plant; now it is a tenth of that.To drive around Detroit - and really, you need to drive - is to pass block after block of untended wasteland and forlorn shells of buildings, many of which have stood empty for decades, the halving of the city's population reducing the need for refurbishment or regeneration. Many rows of buildings look like the front teeth of an old bluesman - for every one still standing true, there's two missing and two askew. Some are victims of Devil's Night, the evening before Halloween, which, in Detroit, has traditionally been a night of mischief for youths but in the 70s and 80s developed into little less than mass arson as vacant buildings throughout the city were set on fire. It was not unknown for property owners who were unable to sell to use the date to torch their buildings in an attempt to claim on the insurance.If the landscape of a city is reflected in its music output, then it's no surprise that the black youths of the rust belt took diverging routes when they began to experiment with drum machines and samplers at the turn of the 80s. While neighbouring Chicago progressed down a more soulful, gospel-tinged route, based around old disco edits, which led to the invention of what we now know as acid house, the kids of the post-industrial wasteland of Detroit produced a harder-edged, almost dehumanised, spectral version of this new electronic music, which became techno.Today, even downtown Detroit seems quite deserted. Within two blocks of the beautifully ornate Fox Theatre and the neighbouring Comerica Park, home of Detroit Tigers, lie deserted buildings and wasteland. A couple of blocks further west is the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, where Diana Ross and the Supremes grew up. As I drive through the projects, two men are overloading a truck with baths, having liberated them from the derelict buildings.Arriving in almost any city in the world, it's usually possible to establish some reference points and begin to work out the city in your own head within a couple of days. In Detroit, despite the fact that much of the city is based on the grid system favoured by American cities, that's not the case. It's a city designed for three million inhabitants but now with less than a million and the social geography and layout don't seem to make sense.Driving up Woodward Avenue, one of the main arteries leading northwards from downtown, a flickering sign outside the Little Rock Baptist Church meekly suggests 'Give thanks ... it could be worse'. A short distance away, another derelict building turns out to be a disused police station. Every door and window is missing and stepping inside, I find charge books and reams of mug shots from the mid-Nineties lying in the rubble.The queen of Motown is Martha Reeves. If one image sums up Motown, it's that of Martha and the Vandellas filmed on the production line at Ford, miming to 'Dancing in the Street' from the back of a Mustang. Reeves is now a city councillor, and we meet in her office at City Hall, looking out over the Detroit river towards Canada. By coincidence, today is the final day in office of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who resigned after admitting two charges of obstruction of justice that followed on from a wild party involving strippers at his official residence, Manoogian Mansion, in 2002. Tamara Greene, a 27-year-old exotic dancer who allegedly performed at the party, was later murdered in a drive-by shooting. Kilpatrick was sentenced to 120 days in prison last month. Reeves's office is a crammed space, papers overflowing from her desk. The walls are adorned with certificates and pictures of herself with Bruce Springsteen, who invited her on stage to sing 'Dancing in the Street' when he played Detroit.When Motown left Detroit, Reeves signed with the label MCA and moved to the West Coast. But after 14 years away, she decided that 'Detroit is where I want to be'. She exudes civic pride and is keen to cement Motown's legacy. After winning a council seat in 2005 she successfully campaigned to have West Grand Boulevard changed to Berry Gordy Jr Boulevard and is now planning to have statues of Motown greats erected downtown .'The city struggled because it was deserted,' she admits, before adding bullishly: 'But Detroit is on the rebound. We're working diligently to get the city moving again and I see it happening.'Much is made by those who argue that Detroit is bouncing back, of the arrival of three vast casinos. One night I get a taxi to Motor City Casino - 'built to the beat of Detroit' - and it's a bit of a shock. Unlike every other place I have visited in town, the casino is busy, with people of all ages and races. I see more people in half an hour than I have seen in the previous half week. Again it strikes me how dysfunctional Detroit is. 'There's some really fascinating people in this city,' techno pioneer Derrick May said in 2005, 'but you'll never meet them. Because nobody walks and nobody talks.'After leaving Reeves, I meet Gloria Jones at the Foxtown Grille. Jones was coined the 'queen of northern soul' after her 1965 classic 'Tainted Love', later covered by Soft Cell. She joined Motown in 1968 as a singer and songwriter, penning songs for Gladys Knight, the Four Tops and the Jackson Five. She was a backing singer for T. Rex and had a son, Rolan, with Marc Bolan. She was driving the car on the day of Bolan's fatal crash. 'At Motown, we were writing 10 songs a day, and good songs,' she recalls, 'because we had all these fantastic artists to write for. Mr Gordy stressed to us to write a standard and we were so young, we were like, "What's a standard?" and he said, "A song that someone like Frank Sinatra would cover 50 years later," which was such fantastic advice. Which is why I'm still getting royalties from songs I wrote 30 years ago.'Many of the Motown artists are still performing, in Detroit's clubs, cabarets and casinos. One night I go to Baker's Keyboard Lounge, near 8 Mile Road, which proclaims to be the 'world's oldest jazz club'. It's a no-frills room with a low ceiling, waitresses serving soul food to the small booths that face a low stage. In its 74-year history the club has played host to many an American jazz great, from Louis Armstrong to Chick Corea. Tonight the stage is occupied by Dennis Coffey, who played on the Temptations' 1968 hit 'Cloud 9', one of Norman Whitfield's first psychedelic soul tracks. After the show he tells me how the other Funk Brothers were gobsmacked when he first played his signature wah-wah guitar in the recording sessions. Later in the week, I drive out to the suburbs to meet Joe Billingslea from the Contours, at the home of fellow band member Charles 'Chuck' Davis. The Contours signed to Motown in 1960 and scored a hit with the Berry Gordy-penned 'Do You Love Me?', which later featured in Dirty Dancing, before leaving Motown over a disagreement about money. Billingslea was then on the production line at Chrysler for four years, before joining the police. He got the Contours back together in 1971 and has been performing ever since. 'I remember Stevie Wonder running around the studio,' he says. 'He'd be running and then stop right before hitting a wall. I said, "That guy can see, who you fooling?" Stevie has always been a nice guy, but, to me, the icon of Motown is Smokey Robinson. He is still the same guy I met back in '59. Smokey's just a nice guy.'Billingslea isn't the type to say a bad word against anyone, but he's clearly still devastated by the events of 2004, when group member Sylvester Potts left overnight, with their manager, and started an alternative version of the Contours. 'It took a lot of work from us because they had all the contacts. We basically didn't work for three years. What made me angry is they told lies. If you don't want to sing with me that's fine, but don't go and tell lies. One lie was that I was deceased, the other lie was I had pulled a gun and disbanded the group.''My friend ... Joe Billingslea ...' says Chuck, his voice faltering and a tear rolling down his face, 'if you saw his face when he found out that there was another group, you would understand how I feel. There's been a lot of hurt over the last few years.'While we are there, a phone call confirms a court appearance to decide who has the rights to use the name of the Contours. Joe and Chuck agree to arrange an impromptu performance for us at 1pm the following day. When we arrive, the band are sat around the basement studio, joking and passing round a huge packet of barbecue-flavoured crisps and drinking lemonade from plastic cups. They run through a few songs including 'Do You Love Me?'. It's touching to see five guys in their twilight years going through their paces in this suburban basement, trying not to bump into each other. There can't be many people of their age, or any age, who are still dancing the mash potato.Despite the bullish statements of Martha Reeves, Detroit's plight has worsened. The credit crunch has bitten GM and Ford, with car sales plunging and warnings that even the biggest automobile firms could face bankruptcy. The situation could hardly be bleaker for what is left of Detroit's car industry. 'I can't think of a worse scenario short of a war in America,' declared veteran industry analyst John Casesa. 'But maybe that would be better because we would need tanks from Detroit.'I stop off at the Henry J Ford museum. Built on a scale only Americans understand, its exhibits include the Lincoln that President Kennedy was shot in, built by Ford here in Dearborn. I find myself drawn to the part of the museum that depicts the late 1950s, that golden age of automobile design and the American dream. All the imagery suggests that Detroit and Michigan must have felt like the centre of the world, a place of endless possibilities. The comparison with modern, post-industrial ghost town Detroit could not be more stark. The words of Marvin Gaye - originally Motown's fourth-choice drummer, who became one of its greatest stars - come to mind. 'Detroit turned out to be heaven,' said Gaye, 'but it also turned out to be hell.' ? For full details of Motown's anniversary releases see motown50.com10 classics picked by Motown writer Janie Bradford1. The Four Tops - Baby I Need Your Loving Levi Stubbs is spellbinding.2. Marvin Gaye - Let's Get It OnThere's raw sexuality in every word.3. The Temptations - My GirlSimply a classic. 4. The Supremes - Where Did Our Love Go?The beat + the nasal voice of Diana Ross = winner.5. The Miracles - Who's Lovin' YouAn underrated gut-bucket blues with Smokey on lead. Can you imagine Smokey singing the blues?6. Brenda Holloway - Every Little Bit HurtsWow!!!7. Stevie Wonder - For Once In My LifeStevie put this great lyric into its place in history. 8. The Marvelettes - ForeverWanda Young's emotional lead is matchless.9. The Originals - Baby I'm For RealThe blending of perfect voices on a perfect song.10. Barrett Strong - Money (That's What I Want)This one has that raw edge over the many versionsof the song that followed.? Janie Bradford's songwriting credits include 'Money' and 'Too Busy Thinking 'Bout My Baby'Motown recordsUrban musicguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

ITT Wins Wastewater Treatment Contract in Oman

ITT Corporation, the leading provider of pumps and systems for the movement and treatment of water and wastewater, has been awarded a wastewater treatment plant contract in Oman for the city of A Seeb. This contract was awarded to ITT through Hyundai Rotem, the project s general contractor.

David Cameron blasts BBC over executives' pay

The Conservative party leader, David Cameron, has said the BBC is bloated with overpaid executives and out of touch with licence-fee payers.Writing in today's Sun, Cameron said he supported the BBC and was not just a fan of the "quality stuff" such as Blue Planet and Radio 3, but also of Silent Witness, Jeremy Clarkson and the Big Cat Diaries. However, the opposition leader said the BBC had to change, calling for an overhaul in its regulation and an end to unfair commercial expansion."Even I, a fan of the BBC, think it is time for a change. The BBC has lost touch with the values of the people who support it through the licence fee," he said, also highlighting that Jonathan Ross's £6m-a-year contract is the equivalent of 43,000 licence-fee payments."Is it really the job of the BBC to pay these sorts of figures? Shouldn't they rely on the kudos of the platforms they have to attract and keep talent?" Cameron added.He said the corporation is too focused on nightly ratings figures and instead should concentrate on driving audiences to quality TV. "The BBC should be judged on what it does to promote excellence in all is does and should justify its excellence and funding on the basis of its reach - how many people use different parts of the product - rather than on nightly figures," Cameron added.He criticised senior BBC executives' pay, saying that 50 of them are paid more than the prime minister."I simply don't believe these kinds of salaries are necessary to get the best candidates. These are some of the best jobs in British broadcasting and it is an honour to be asked to do them," Cameron added.The BBC Trust, he said, is an improvement on the corporation's previous regulatory regimes, but should be replaced by a properly independent body, just as executive salary decisions should be independently reviewed.Cameron described BBC Worldwide's acquisition of the Lonely Planet travel guides business as unfair competition and said the corporation should be taking on the struggling regional press by moving into local online video news. "The squeezing and crushing of commercial competitors online or in publishing needs to be stopped. We need the BBC, but we also need healthy competition to the BBC to boost choice and drive up quality," he added.Cameron said he agreed with the common perception of leftwing bias at the corporation, saying it did not have to behave like a commercial organisation. "That tends to make the BBC instinctively pro-Big State, distinctly iffy about the free market and sometimes dismissive of a conservative viewpoint," he added.Cameron also said he approved of the licence fee. He added that he spent seven years working for the ITV company Carlton and that viewers benefit from the three clear income streams of advertising, subscription and the licence fee."You can come up with all the arguments in the world for how - theoretically - a different, more market-driven model could work better," he said."But frankly, I would rather stick with a structure that has produced good programmes, led by an institution - the BBC - that is still respected at home and abroad."· To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 7278 2332.· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".BBCTelevisionDavid CameronConservativesPolitics and the mediaRussell BrandJonathan Rossguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

BBC rapped over Brand a year ago

Media regulator Ofcom warned BBC bosses about lax editorial procedures on Russell Brand's BBC 6 Music show over a year ago, it emerged last night. In a ruling published 15 months ago, it criticised the corporation for failing to follow its own editorial procedures and allowing Brand to broadcast a quiz won by a member of his production team posing as a listener to the digital radio station. As director-general Mark Thompson today says that the corporation will not 'overreact' to the events of the past week, the revelation that Ofcom highlighted the failure of the BBC's programming rules in July last year will be seized on by critics as evidence that Brand's latest gaffe should have been avoided.At the time the BBC responded by promising to tighten up its editorial controls, and said it would 'enhance training programmes on editorial compliance across the BBC and implement a mandatory training programme for staff'. It also promised it would 'change the BBC's structure to include a senior manager on every divisional board with specific responsibility for editorial compliance and co-ordination. The BBC Trust, which regulates the corporation, concluded some months later that those steps would prevent a repeat of the offence. The BBC was fined £17,500 by Ofcom following its investigation into the Brand broadcast, which formed part of a wider probe into several instances of fakery on its phone-in competitions on TV and radio. Ofcom's ruling on Brand's show included specific criticism about lax editorial procedures.It said that 'as the programme was being recorded, a compliance form should have been submitted by the production team to BBC 6 Music's head of programmes for his sign-off and [been] logged into the BBC's systems. However, no such form had been completed.' The failure to tighten compliance could mean that the BBC will be fined the maximum for its latest misdemeanour. The trust has already promised to tighten the BBC's guidelines in the wake of Brand's abusive phone messages to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. Brand resigned after tens of thousands of viewers complained about the show, which was made with Jonathan Ross. Ross has been suspended for three months without pay and Lesley Douglas, controller of Radio 2 has also resigned.In today's Observer, Thompson launches a staunch defence of the BBC's creativity by warning the corporation will not 'overreact' to the events of the past week that tarnished the careers of two of its most famous presenters. He insists the BBC will do everything in its power to ensure the breakdown in editorial standards, that resulted in the broadcast of obscene phone calls from Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to Sachs's answering machine, never happens again. He acknowledging there are 'absolute boundaries which we must never cross', and that on this occasion the corporation got it 'spectacularly wrong'. However, he insists that the BBC's creativity must be allowed to thrive, despite calls for it to rein in its ambitions following the explosive row that has raised profound questions about the broadcaster's wide-ranging remit. Yesterday several of Ross's colleagues questioned whether the star presenter's career with the corporation could continue. 'What the BBC has done to Jonathan by the suspension is terminal,' said Terry Wogan. 'It is very damaging to him, and I would not be surprised if he did not come back.'Michael Parkinson said, however, that Ross, who is on a reported £18m contract, would bounce back. 'He's very good at his job, but he's given to fits of madness now and again and I think he had one on this occasion,' he said.However, Parkinson was caustic about Brand, saying that the presenter's arrival at the BBC had prompted concerns that 'sooner or later it would put them in a very embarrassing situation. 'The facts are he did something that was silly, obscene, tasteless and unfunny,' Parkinson said. 'He's generously called a comedian. I can't feel much sympathy for him. As for Jonathan, he'll come back, he'll be fine.' However, reports last night suggested that the BBC has been warned by ministers to re-examine salary levels to top presenters or risk cuts to its public funding. Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, is understood to have told BBC executives that seven-figure contracts given to such stars as Ross are opposed by licence-fee payers.Russell BrandJonathan RossOfcomRadioTelevisionBBCguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Greg Dyke criticises £18m spent on Jonathan Ross

Greg Dyke the former directorgeneral of the BBC said the corporation should never have spent £18 million hiring Jonathan Ross.

Performers fear 'safety first' will lead to exodus of talent as programme makers feel the chill

Fears are growing among performers that the BBC will become too risk-averse in the wake of this week's furore over Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, as the backlash against the departure of the Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas also swelled yesterday. Some fear there will be an inevitable "chilling" effect despite attempts by the BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, to quell worries that its looming review of editorial guidelines and a management clampdown on "high-risk" areas would have an adverse effect on its output. Dara O'Briain, the comedian who hosts a BBC2 show that became a minor player in the drama when newspapers picked up on a rude joke about the Queen made by one of the Mock the Week panellists, said the corporation should not clamp down on risky comedy. "We are now entering day six of man-has-his-feelings-hurt-gate. I stand by 100% any of the things we've ever said," he said. "There's no way we can ever do a show while thinking 'Will David Davis MP approve of this?' Not all shows are intended for all people."The controversy was sparked when Brand and Ross left a series of lewd messages on the answer machine of actor Andrew Sachs. When the Mail on Sunday picked up the story a week later, it resulted in 37,500 complaints, an Ofcom investigation, a three-month unpaid suspension for Ross, and the resignations of Douglas and Brand. The BBC director general, Mark Thompson, attempted to wrest back control of the spiralling crisis on Thursday by suspending Ross and announcing the resignation of Douglas. He will deliver a full review on November 20 to the BBC Trust, which said it was "dismayed" and ordered an overhaul of editorial and compliance controls in BBC radio. Ross will not return to the screen until next January, losing £1.3m in pay, and some BBC insiders questioned whether he could return to his Radio 2 slot at all, given his part in Douglas's downfall. It was announced that he would not host the British Comedy Awards on ITV in December during his suspension from the BBC. He has special dispensation in his £6m a year contract to present the awards. A spokesman for Ross said: "He would not want his participation in this year's event to take away from the awards themselves." Some BBC executives said that compliance procedures had already become more onerous in the wake of last year's scandals over faked competitions and that new systems would inevitably mean erring on the side of caution. Comedian Jimmy Carr, who has worked for both the BBC and Channel 4, said the furore was "a storm in a teacup" and said there was a "silent majority" who didn't believe Ross' punishment fitted the crime. "Being on TV at the moment is like being at school and getting told off all the time," he said. Lyons, who has faced criticism for not acting publicly quickly enough, said: "What this incident shows is that there are still areas of the BBC where the editorial responsibilities are not being taken seriously enough and they need to be reinforced." The departure of Douglas, the Radio 2 and 6 Music controller who brought the curtain down on a 23-year BBC career after saying she ought to carry the can for mistakes made "on my watch", was widely lamented. DJs including Terry Wogan and Chris Evans have spoken of their sadness at her decision to resign. "I just hope that at least her sacrifice will bring everything back down to earth a little bit and will give a sense of proportion," Wogan told BBC News. Brand, who resigned on Wednesday in a failed effort to take responsibility for the scandal, said of Douglas's decision: "I think it's really sad and I am upset." Asked if he felt responsible for her departure he quipped: "I do. I wish I could resign twice but I'm not Peter Mandelson." Douglas could re-emerge in the music industry, where she was considered one of the most powerful and passionate figures in breaking British acts to mainstream audiences. Christian O'Connell, the breakfast DJ on Absolute Radio, said: "I think it's a terrible over-reaction. I know how well respected Lesley is across the industry. I know I will [be more risk-averse]. If you're a producer at the BBC right now, you're not going to be taking any chances." But others said that Douglas was undone by her determination to give Brand a slot on the station, seen by some as one step too far in her policy of bringing in younger audiences and wooing key television talent. "The analogy I make is: Achilles, great body - shame about the heel," broadcaster Paul Gambaccini said. "She had all of these amazing qualities and wonderful abilities - but she had this one obsession that proved to be her downfall." John Lloyd, the producer of Spitting Image who is also behind the Stephen Fry-fronted panel show QI, said he hoped the incident led to a reappraisal of how risk- taking television was defined. "What passes for risk-taking in television today is showing people having sex on Big Brother. That's not a risk - it's just grubby," he said.BBCComedyTelevisionRadioTelevisionRadioJonathan RossRussell Brandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds