Lots of people are fuming about Nina, an upcoming biopic about legendary singer Nina Simone. According to its critics, the filmmakers butcher important parts of Simone’s biography (in part, by attributing much of her success to the men in her life), but that their larger sin was casting actress Zoe Saldana, who plays the lead role with the help of skin-darkening makeup and a prosthetic nose.

Many argue that casting the lighter skinned Afro-Latina actress, rather than someone who better resembled Simone, was an attempt to make the film more marketable instead of staying true to the singer and the life that inspired her art. The makeup and prosthetic nose, they also charge, were sloppy and poorly executed. In one of the more gentle critiques, singer India.Arie called the casting move “tone deaf.” Others went with “disrespectful,” “deplorable,” and “embarrassing.”

Buzzfeed rounded up some of the Twitter reactions to the film’s trailer. Jezebel highlighted the overwhelmingly white team behind the production. Time magazine talked to Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, about the movie’s narrative flaws, and the Guardian chronicled some of the offensive backlash to people’s complaints about the film. Vox also voxsplained the whole controversy, from pre-production to the release of the first trailer.

But more than any other, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ recently published essay seems to capture the full emotional depth of all this frustration. He suggests this wasn’t just another questionable casting choice involving a person of color in a long line of such casting choices. To explain, Coates gets personal:

“When I was kid, I knew what the worst parts of me were—my hair and my mouth. My hair was nappy. My lips were big. Nearly every kid around me knew something similar of themselves because nearly every one of us had some sort of physical defect—dark skin, nappy hair, broad nose, full lips—that opened us up to ridicule from one another. That each of these “defects” were representative of all the Africa that ran through us was never lost on anyone. “Africa” was an insult—African bush-boogie, African bootie-scratcher etc. Ethiopian famine jokes were all the rage back then…

…[Nina] Simone was in possession of nearly every feature that we denigrated as children. And yet somehow she willed herself into a goddess.”

Coates goes on to explain how Simone’s appearance, as well as her music, helped him view his childhood musings on race in a larger context:

“Simone is something more than a female Bob Marley. It is not simply the voice: It is the world that made that voice, all the hurt and pain of denigration, forged into something otherworldly. That voice, inevitably, calls us to look at Nina Simone’s face, and for a brief moment, understand that the hate we felt, that the mockery we dispensed, was unnatural, was the fruit of conjurations and the shadow of plunder. We look at Nina Simone’s face and the lie is exposed and we are shamed. We look at Nina Simone’s face and a terrible truth comes into view—there was nothing wrong with her. But there is something deeply wrong with us.”

Finally, Coates takes us through what all of this means, both for the potential audience and Nina‘s creators:

“It’s here that the term ‘appropriation’ bears some usage. We’re not talking about someone inspired by the deeper lessons of Simone’s life and her music. We are talking about people who think it’s fine to profit off her music while heedlessly contributing to the kind of pain that brought that music into being. To acknowledge that pain, to consider it in casting, would be inconvenient—as anti-racist action always is. It would mean giving an opportunity to someone who’s actively experienced the kind of pain that plagued Simone. That would doubtlessly mean a diminished chance at garnering funds for such a film. And that, in turn, would court years of delays and the possibility of the film never coming into being. That would be unfortunate—but less so for Nina Simone than for the agents who feel themselves entitled to profit her story.”

The whole piece is worth reading and thinking about. You can check it out over at The Atlantic.

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A Florida jury sided with wrestler Hulk Hogan Friday in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media, and awarded him $115 million for invasion of privacy. Gawker is appealing the ruling.

The celebrity wrestler, whose legal name is Terry Bollea, filed suit accusing the website of invading his privacy when it published a portion of a video showing him having sex with the wife of a former friend, along with 1,400 words describing the video.

Bollea, 62, sought $100 million in damages from Gawker. He was awarded $55 million in economic injuries and $60 million for emotional distress, Reuters reports. The jury returns on Monday to consider punitive damages.

In a statement, Gawker founder Nick Denton said, “Given key evidence and the most important witness were both improperly withheld from the jury, we all knew the appeals court will need to resolve this case.”

The witness to which Denton alludes, is reportedly the husband of the woman in the sex tape, Bubba Clem, who Gawker lawyers wanted to question in order to show that that one or both of the parties knew about the taping. Their thinking is that if the defense could establish that the tape was made as a publicity stunt, then it was fair game to be covered as news.

As the Two-Way previously reported, the issue of whether the video is newsworthy was a point of focus in much of the case. Gawker argued that Bollea’s “frequent public discussion of his sex life made the clip newsworthy and thus protected by the First Amendment.”

Bollea’s lawyers argued that distinguishing between the character of Hulk Hogan and Bollea’s real life was crucial.

“I’m kind of concerned about Hulk Hogan’s privacy, but you kind of give it away,” Bollea testified in court, according to The New York Times. “But in the privacy of your own home, no one invades my privacy.”

According to the Guardian, Bollea’s lawyers also called Gawker’s “common decency” into question during closing argument on Friday:

“Kenneth Turkel, a lawyer for Hogan, told jurors Gawker editors had not even had the ‘common decency’ to call Hogan for comment before they posted the video.

“Turkel walked jurors through Hogan’s case: that his right to privacy was gratuitously compromised by Gawker, that his reputation was materially compromised, and that he suffered emotional distress of ‘outrageous intensity and duration.’ “

The jury agreed.

Gawker, however, has “warned that if Hogan wins the case, the decision could not only destroy the company – a loss could cost the site up to $50 [million],” the Guardian writes.

Denton’s statement also said, “I … am confident that we would have prevailed at trial if we had been allowed to present the full case the the jury. That’s why we have already begun preparing, as we expect to win this case ultimately.”

Gawker Media president and general counsel Heather Dietrick said in October that she wouldn’t be surprised if Gawker lost the case, but didn’t think that the jury would award Bollea $100 million, Politico Media reported at the time.

“It’s quite possible that Hogan just gets a very small judgment against us, and then we have to make the decision: do we appeal that and incur further fees to vindicate the First Amendment rights that we know we’re on the right side of,” she said. “Or do we simply say, OK this very small judgment is a win and makes it very difficult for Hulk Hogan, who’s spent a lot of time on pursuing this case and could walk away with something very small.”

Apart from the statement released by Denton, Gawker Media writers and editors, who had been weighing in on the case — sometimes gleefully — for months on social media, did not offer any opinions on the ruling. And Gawker itself, which had been covering the case, (once publishing a story entitled, “A Judge Told Us to Take Down Our Hulk Hogan Sex Tape Post. We Won’t.“) also had not published a post on the website hours after the ruling.

Advocates for free speech, however, spoke up, saying that ruinous media fines were in contradiction with the First Amendment and that Gawker was well within its rights as a news site to publish interesting stories pertaining to celebrities. An attorney for Gawker, Michael Sullivan, said in court Friday that while jurors may find the publication of the tape “unpleasant,” the post was still free speech under the Constitution.

“We ask you to protect something that some of you may find unpleasant,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “To write, to speak, to think about all topics, to hold public figures accountable. It is right in the long run for our freedoms.”

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Prompted by a letter signed by more than 20 academy members of Asian descent, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologized for offensive jokes about Asians during the awards ceremony.

“Thank you for taking the time to voice your concerns about our 88th Oscar show, which are valid. We appreciate your perspective and take your points very seriously. It certainly was never the Academy’s intent to offend anyone,” the letter read, in part.

For some, the apology was hollow.

Actor George Takei, who signed the initial letter to the academy, told The New York Times that the response from academy CEO Dawn Hudson was “patronizing” and infuriating. “It was a bland, corporate response,” he said. “The obliviousness was actually shocking. Doesn’t anyone over there have any sense?”

As NPR’s TV critic Eric Deggans reported after the awards show, there were disparaging remarks made and stereotypes perpetuated at the expense of Asians during the ceremony. He wrote:

“Sacha Baron Cohen offered a line about the animated yellow Minion characters from the Despicable Me franchise that recalled stereotypes about Asian sexual endowments, while [host Chris] Rock ushered three Asian children onstage saying they were the accountants handling Oscar votes, in an embarrassing nod to stereotypes about Asians being good at math.”

Already facing criticism for the fact that only white actors and actresses were nominated for the top award categories — for the second year in a row — the backlash against the jokes regarding Asians was swift on social media. Then on March 9, some academy members sent a letter addressed to Hudson and other officials. It was published this week by Variety:

“In light of criticism over #OscarsSoWhite, we were hopeful that the telecast would provide the Academy a way forward and the chance to present a spectacular example of inclusion and diversity.

“Instead, the Oscars show was marred by a tone-deaf approach to its portrayal of Asians.

“We’d like to know how such tasteless and offensive skits could have happened and what process you have in place to preclude such unconscious or outright bias and racism toward any group in future Oscars telecasts.

“We look forward to hearing from you about this matter and about the concrete steps to ensure that all people are portrayed with dignity and respect.

“We are proud that the Oscars reach several hundred million people around the world of whom 60% are Asians and potential moviegoers.”

Hudson’s response did little to address these questions specifically. The rest of her letter read:

“We are committed to doing our best to ensure that material in future Oscar telecasts be more culturally sensitive. It pains us that any aspect of the show was considered offensive, and I apologize for any hurt the skits caused.

“Our Awards Committee and Academy leadership will be exercising more oversight to make sure that concerns like yours are fully addressed.”

The exchange came as the academy’s board met to discuss diversity and figure out how to implement reforms announced in January. The Times reports that “the board reaffirmed its January resolution to take away voting privileges for inactive members, although the organization’s various branches will have some limited flexibility to determine the criteria for establishing what constitutes activity.”

In its bid to double the number of women and people of color in its membership by 2020, the academy also decided to go forward with a plan to add three board seats earmarked for women and minorities.

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The Sony Corporation has announced it will pay Michael Jackson’s estate $750 million for Jackson’s 50 percent share of the Sony/ATV music publishing company.

The backstory here has more twists and shouts than a long and winding road (Couldn’t resist, but note that the rights to both “Twist and Shout” and “The Long and Winding Road” belong to Sony/ATV). Sony’s purchase marks the culmination of one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the music business.

It all started when Paul McCartney advised his young friend Michael Jackson that, to really make money in the music industry, you needed to own the publishing of hit songs. McCartney told CBS-TV in a 1989 interview that Jackson joked to him “One day I’ll own your songs.” To McCartney’s shock, Jackson was true to his word.

A music publisher owns the rights to a song’s lyrics and composition. Anytime a song is performed, played on TV or radio, used in a commercial, etc., the publisher collects royalties. Contracts vary but, traditionally, that money is split 50/50 with the songwriter.

In 1985, music publisher ATV owned the rights to some 4,000 songs, including more than 200 by The Beatles. It also owned Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti. Michael Jackson’s lawyer, John Branca, knew Jackson was looking for songs to buy. When Branca learned that the Australian tycoon who owned ATV was putting the company up for sale, Branca and Jackson put in a bid. After long, tense negotiations, Jackson was able to purchase ATV for a reported $47.5 million.

In the mid-1990s, when Jackson was in debt, he sold half of ATV to Sony, forming the joint venture Sony/ATV. To get full ownership, Sony offered Jackson’s estate $750 million.

The Sony/ATV catalog has swelled over the years and now owns or administers the copyrights to more than three million songs, including hits by Sting, Lady Gaga and Alicia Keyes. The company controls some of the best known songs in the world, including “Over The Rainbow” and “New York, New York.” One analyst tells Bloomberg, with the increase in streaming, the trove’s worth is more than what Sony’s paying for it.

As for Michael Jackson’s estate, it still owns Jackson’s master recordings as well as Mijac Music, the publishing company that owns all of the songs he wrote. In a statement by co-executors John Branca and John McClain, the sale to Sony will allow them to maximize the “the value of Michael’s Estate for the benefit of his children.”

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Spending on prescription drugs in the U.S. rose 5.2 percent in 2015, driven mostly by increased costs of expensive specialty medications to treat conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, according to data from the largest manager of employers’ drug benefits.

Spending on specialty medications rose 18 percent, while spending on standard prescription drugs rose less than one percent, according to a new report by Express Scripts. The report is based on the prescription drug spending for the company’s 80 million covered patients.

The measure — called “drug trend” in pharmaceutical industry parlance — includes increases in the use of medications and price hikes.

Still, in the health care industry, an increase that’s more than quadruple the rate of inflation — 0.7 percent in 2015 — still counts as a bit of good news. Why? In 2014, drug spending increased more than 14 percent.

“In a year when all the headlines were about the escalating price of drugs, overall costs rose only 5.2 percent,” says Glen Stettin, Express Scripts’ chief innovation officer.

The overall boost in drug spending was moderated by patients switching to generic drugs from brand names, whose prices rose 16.2 percent.

Stettin attributed that shift to pharmacy benefit managers and insurers exerting more control over the drugs their customers can get. Express Scripts and other companies have been more willing to refuse coverage of expensive medications than in the past.

The company pointed to its initial refusal to pay for Gilead Sciences’ hepatitis C drugs, which were listed at more than $90,000 for a course of treatment. Instead, Express Scripts opted to cover an alternative treatment, Viekira Pak made by AbbVie, for which it negotiated a 50 percent discount. Express Scripts has said it saved as much as $1 billion with the deal.

Brand name drug prices are more than 2 1/2 times as high as they were in 2008, while generic prices have declined by about two-thirds.

For traditional pills, “total costs are flat as result of generic and effective price negotiation by payors,” says Ronny Gal, a pharmaceutial industry analyst at the investment firm Alliance Bernstein. “For specialty drugs, there are more drug introductions, at very high price per patient per year, and we still don’t have effective alternatives on the market.”

The report says the surge in spending on specialty drugs was caused in part by the 29 new medications that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, including 19 cancer drugs that are being used on a large number of patients. The prices of older cancer drugs also rose, including for example, the price of Gleevec, which is used to treat adults with leukemia. It went up 19.3 percent last year, the report says.

But drugs for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and other inflammatory illnesses sucked up the largest share of cash. Express Scripts says treatments for such conditions cost every person with insurance about $89 last year. Insurers use a measure known as “per member per year” to show how spending is spread across population of insured people.

Diabetes treatments dominated the spending on nonspecialty medications, the report shows, with spending rising 14 percent last year. Three of the top five traditional prescription drugs were diabetes medications — Lantus and Humalog, which are both forms of insulin, and Januvia, a pill that helps control blood sugar.

People who bought insurance through the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act spent an average of $777 on medications last year, about 15 percent higher than the year before.

The big increase “may be due to patients in this population filling a previously unmet need,” according to the report.

Since the exchanges have only been in place for two full years, Stettin says this is the first time there was good information available about people covered by those policies.

The spending increase “is consistent with the belief that people in the exchange plans, people with chronic conditions, are getting medications for the first time,” he says.

The Express Scripts report takes into account the effect of rebates that the company negotiates with drugmakers without disclosing the details of the arrangements. Rebates are considered trade secrets.

Bruce Stuart, executive director of the Peter Lamy Center for Drug Therapy and Aging at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, says the data are different from what he would have expected based on trends in retail prices.

“I have no reason to doubt their numbers,” he tells Shots. “If they say that they are getting better deals, there’s no way to validate that. “

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In his wide-ranging keynote interview at South by Southwest, the music, film and tech festival in Austin, Texas, President Obama focused on technology’s role in civic life.

Obama, who was interviewed by Evan Smith, editor of the Texas Tribune, cited low voter turnout as an area in which technology could improve citizens’ participation in government. He said it was “easier to order a pizza than to vote” and said we need to think about how to “redesign our systems so that we don’t have 50 percent or 55 percent voter participation in presidential elections.”

Calling on government and private companies to work together, Obama said it’s vital to “create systems that make government more responsive and make it work better.”

When asked about people who are ideologically anti-government, the president pointed to the collective good, saying someone checking the weather on a smart phone is benefiting from government services.

“When government does great things, we take it for granted and it’s not a story,” he said, citing roads, geosatellite systems, armed forces and other public benefits as evidence.

Smith also asked Obama about the “massive digital divide” in the U.S., pointing to the fact that minorities have significantly less access to the Internet, which makes it more difficult for them to be engaged citizens or even do their homework.

Obama responded by describing a program called the Opportunity Network, which installs Wi-Fi in low-income housing and rural areas. He acknowledged that this was only part of the answer, saying “I’m trying to solve every problem.”

But, Obama said, solving problems requires cooperation. He said the country needs to re-imagine the relationship between government and the private sector “so that we use technology data, social media in order to join forces around problems.”

If the U.S. does that, he said, “there’s no problem that we face in this country that’s not solvable.”

At the end of the interview, when asked about the ongoing legal battle between Apple and the FBI over accessing data on the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooters, Obama declined to comment specifically, but urged against “absolutist” views on either side of the issue.

The president said that while there must be some concessions to personal privacy (he cited airport security as one such existing concession) he said he was “way on the civil liberties side” of the debate. Obama said technology is evolving so rapidly that there are questions being asked now that have never been asked before.

“We’re going to have to make some decisions about how we balance these risks,” he said.

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The legal dispute between Apple and the FBI continues: the government has filed a response to Apple’s refusal to cooperate with a federal magistrate’s order instructing it to assist the FBI in circumventing the security features on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

In their legal filings, Apple and the government face off on a number of issues. Apple says the government is using the court system to assert broad authority that hasn’t been granted by Congress; the government says Apple is overstating the wide-reaching security concerns and creating “warrantproof” devices.

Below, in the words of their own filings, are a few of the issues where the two parties most fiercely disagree:

Is Apple too far removed from the Farook case?

The magistrate judge’s order instructing Apple to cooperate with the FBI’s request relies on the All Writs Act, a 1789 law that courts have used to compel companies’ assistance in investigations. The All Writs Act, or AWA, can only be used if it’s not an unreasonable burden on the company, and if the company isn’t “too far removed” from the situation.

• Apple says its connection to the case doesn’t justify it being “drafted into government service”: “Apple is a private company that does not own or possess the phone at issue, has no connection to the data that may or may not exist on the phone, and is not related in any way to the events giving rise to the investigation.”
• The government argues that Apple has a “continued connection” to phones after they are sold: “Apple intentionally and for commercial advantage retains exclusive control over the software that can be used on iPhones, giving it monopoly-like control over the means of distributing software to the phones. … Having established suzerainty over its users’ phones—and control over the precise features of the phones necessary for unlocking them—Apple cannot now pretend to be a bystander, watching this investigation from afar.”

[In case you, like us, were thrown for a loop by the word “suzerainty,” it means the position or power of a suzerain, or feudal overlord.]

What about a possible future burden?

• Apple argues writing the software would pose an undue burden, particularly because its burden would be multiplied by future requests: “If Apple creates new software to open a back door, other federal and state prosecutors—and other governments and agencies—will repeatedly seek orders compelling Apple to use the software to open the back door for tens of thousands of iPhones.”
• The government says there’s no precedent for considering potential future burdens, and says only the burden of writing software for this phone should be considered: “By accumulating its hypothetical future burdens, Apple suggests that because so much criminal evidence is hidden on its warrant-proof iPhones, it should not be compelled to assist in gathering evidence related to the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. Apple is wrong.”

Is using the All Writs Act an example of judicial overreach?

• Apple also argues that this particular use of the AWA extends beyond precedent in a way that ought to be decided by Congress: “Congress has never authorized judges to compel innocent third parties to provide decryption services to the FBI. Indeed, Congress has expressly withheld that authority in other contexts, and this issue is currently the subject of a raging national policy debate. … The unprecedented order requested by the government … would preempt decisions that should be left to the will of the people through laws passed by Congress and signed by the President.”
• U.S. Attorneys respond … : “Congress intended for the Act to be broad and flexible, capable of rising to meet new obstacles to the courts’ lawful exercise of jurisdiction. The Act is not a judicial usurpation of congressional power, but rather an example of Congress’s reliance upon the courts’ sound discretion and close familiarity with specific facts to ensure that justice is done.” … and also argue this precise argument has been used before, and the nation’s highest court found it wanting: “In deciding New York Telephone, the Supreme Court directly confronted and expressly rejected the policy arguments Apple raises now. Like Apple, the telephone company argued: that Congress had not given courts the power to issue such an order in its prior legislation; that the AWA could not be read so broadly; that it was for Congress to decide whether to provide such authority; and that relying on the AWA was a dangerous step down a slippery slope ending in arbitrary police powers. … In the forty years since that decision, it has become clear that the Court was correct because those fears have proved unfounded.”

Could such software be reused?

• Apple: “Once the process is created, it provides an avenue for criminals and foreign agents to access millions of iPhones. And once developed for our government, it is only a matter of time before foreign governments demand the same tool.”
• The government: “As Apple well knows, the Order does not compel it to unlock other iPhones or to give the government a universal ‘master key’ or ‘back door.’ It is a narrow, targeted order that will produce a narrow, targeted piece of software capable of running on just one iPhone, in the security of Apple’s corporate headquarters.”

Could such a program be requested for other criminal cases in the future? Maybe, the FBI says, but it’s not relevant now: “future cases involving other iPhones will be decided on their specific facts.”

Does the magistrate’s order violate the First Amendment?

• Apple: “The code must contain a unique identifier ‘so that [it] would only load and execute on the SUBJECT DEVICE,’ and it must be “signed’ cryptographically by Apple using its own proprietary encryption methods.’… This amounts to compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.”
• The government: “There is reason to doubt that functional programming is even entitled to traditional speech protections. …To the extent Apple’s software includes expressive elements—such as variable names and comments—the Order permits Apple to express whatever it wants, so long as the software functions. … “At most, the Order compels conduct—namely, the removal of barriers from Farook’s iPhone—with an incidental effect on ‘speech’ (i.e., programming).”

Did the FBI effectively cause this legal standoff?

• Apple: ‘”Unfortunately, the FBI, without consulting Apple or reviewing its public guidance regarding iOS, changed the iCloud password associated with one of the attacker’s accounts, foreclosing the possibility of the phone initiating an automatic iCloud back-up of its data to a known Wi-Fi network … which could have obviated the need to unlock the phone and thus for the extraordinary order the government now seeks. Had the FBI consulted Apple first, this litigation may not have been necessary.”
• The FBI calls that “both untrue and irrelevant”: “A forced backup of Farook’s iPhone was never going to be successful, and the decision to obtain whatever iCloud evidence was immediately available via the password change was the reasoned decision of experienced FBI agents investigating a deadly terrorist conspiracy. … Both the FBI’s testing and Apple’s security documentation show that entire categories of evidence … reside only on the iPhone and not on an iCloud backup, and that some of the backup data would still have been encrypted.”

Who wants to set a dangerous precedent?

• Apple says this court order leads down a slippery slope that expands government’s reach into Americans’ private lives: “If the government can invoke the All Writs Act to compel Apple to create a special operating system that undermines important security measures on the iPhone, it could argue in future cases that the courts should compel Apple to create a version to track the location of suspects, or secretly use the iPhone’s microphone and camera to record sound and video.”
• The FBI says Apple is undermining the country’s legal system and usurping the government’s authority: “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government. … The government respectfully submits that those authorities should be entrusted to strike the balance between each citizen’s right to privacy and all citizens’ right to safety and justice. The rule of law does not repose that power in a single corporation, no matter how successful it has been in selling its products.”

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