Topics in Digital Media – Fall 09

Hey Everyone,

The summaries for this week are behind the cut. I tried to make it easier to read and used bullet points instead of paragraphs, hopefully it helps. Enjoy.

Lessig’s Free Culture Presentation:
Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of law at Yale/Stamford, he gave a presentation on Free Culture (on which he also wrote a book of the same name) to Al Jazeera  journalists.
-Calls The Internet “Citizen Journalism”
-Power changes the ideals of those who possess it.
-Web 2.0’s architecture enables capabilities to build upon other’s content and share it cheaply and universally.  This architecture changes the power of those who use Web2.0, power is spread more equally and broadly, it is decentralized. Control is weakened.  This is a historical shift.
-Before Web 1.0, bigger meant more power, but after web 2.0 this is different.
-U.S. is surrounded by a set of ideals (i.e. freedom, equality). Power in U.S. history has made our nation different, the 20th century impressed upon the nation a certain kind of control different from ideals of past. It concentrated power and controlled indirectly how opportunities were spread (less equally). Power, not the ideals, made things succeed.  Web 2.0 is creating a shift. People within the structure of this nation have to choose between whether our original ideals should be respected again. This architecture enables the loss of control and a certain type of power. This exists not just on the net, but of a loss of power generally. Original ideals vs. current ideals.
-Loss of control: Hilary 08 ad, 04 ads. Not associated with any specific campaign, but all of them criticizing modern political values.  Read/write politics that the internet is inspiring.  Youtube technique is democratized. We can take things and remix them to say things differently. We can put them into a marketplace in which they are successful and demanding.  A bottom-up democracy. This trend restores older ideals and people participate as much in the changing and spreading of the message as much as the people involved in campaigns. Returning to a read/write culture.  People participate in the creation and re-creation of their culture.  We went from a read/write to a read only culture and a read only democracy.  Web 2.0 has blown this up.
Threats produced by this system:
-This form produces isolation which creates a concern that whether or not this contribution helps democracy.
-Truth becomes less and less of a necessary component and fairness is not at all a component of this new form. Threat produced by collateral damage produced by IP wars/Copyright wars. Wars being waged by content owners against these new technology forms.  Piracy. Major networks are more concerned with Piracy than truth (i.e. “Outfoxed”). The idea that you could refer to journalistic work freely is a threat to journalism, according to Fox.

-Increasing govt power over the network and the opportunity it presents for producing this kind of control. We’re going to see slow changes in the architecture of the network in order to increase regulability of the Internet. How are we going to get radical change in regulation? Z-theory adds to Code, says that terror effects the law. Terror excites an extraordinary politics where we have radical changes in a short period (i.e. Patriot Act after 9/11).  “Happy Internet” (generative internet which enables lots of innovations) vs “Unhappy Internet” (span, viruses, phishing, terrorism, innovations that generate evil and not good).  Malware hasn’t gotten incredibly dangerous yet, but when it does, we will see the political action necessary to make the internet more regulable (this is the argument of the Z-theory).  This infrastructure of control can translate into an infrastructure of censorship, restoring control.

-The ultimate test to our founding ideals is whether outside perspectives will be allowed in the U.S.

Steal This Film (The League of Noble Peers)
-”Intellectual property is the oil of the 21st century” – Mark Getty
-BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay are two popular clients/sites used for downloading music, movies, pictures, text, applications, programs, etc. The files that are downloaded are called “torrents.”
-2006, TPB was raided by police.
-TPB owner compares TPB to Google, saying that Google provides links to sites with copyrighted information, so why not torrents? Microsoft is trying to apply U.S. laws to Sweden, where TPB is/was hosted.
-If you spend time and money making creative material, you should expect to get something back, but the way big businesses are trying to stop piracy isn’t efficient. They’re turning the consumer into the enemy. Is piracy just protecting profit?
-The creators of the first MP3 player were met with a lawsuit, sheet music players resisted musical recordings. TV in the 70s was viewed as a pirate medium. The video recorder was resisted by Hollywood, and the VCR was also viewed as a pirate medium. Piracy is often a civil matter and you’re only apprehended if caught. Commercial piracy involves jail.
-When the U.S. met with Sweden over the TPB matter, they mentioned the thought of WTO sanctions against Sweden if they didn’t handle the problem to their liking. The Swedish government made clear that they do nor serve Hollywood. Because of the raid, TPB and torrents got a lot of free PR and TPB eventually went back online and is not operating fully. Is TPB defended by freedom of speech?
-The network is built so that nobody is in charge, and users are in charge of their own operations. By using file sharing systems, you are using the internet as intended. You are running programs on your computer that make you part of a network.
-File sharing allows those outside of major corporations to produce and distribute their own materials that would otherwise not be able to circulate (DIY).  These people are the real threat to the MPAA and RIAA. There is a potential creation of millions of new authors.  People can use found materials to create their own expressions (remix culture/convergence culture). Making money is not the point with media, making something is. People are not going to stop making media.

Taking the You Out of YouTube (Henry Jenkins)
-Jenkins sees Web 2.0 as “fan culture writ large,” it provides fans of niche media with means of communicating, without any sort of negative stigma attached.
-What happens when big comapnies (Yahoo/flickr, Google/Youtube, Fox/Myspace) buy out sites that allow for massive collaborations of thought and creativity?
-Discusses McMurria’s writing on YouTube. After YouTube announced Google’s acquisition of the site, YouTubers had mixed feelings and many criticized Google for owning a company that links to illegally used copyright material, they were also worried about ads. Will corporate conglomerates hinder the creativity of DIY YouTubers and other armature artists?
Jenkins claims that
1.    YouTube is a meeting place for different social groups and subcultures.
2.    YouTube participants scour mass media for content and “insparationg” for videos. They also draw attention to different aspects of media, creating “noise” around certain issues (i.e. John Stewart’s Crossfire interview).
3.    Convergence of major publications, amateur publications (blogs), network TV, and nice television.
4.    YT forces major media companies to opt in or out of convergence culture (come major networks have their own YT channel, etc.)

Still, YouTube can be limiting (i.e. not racially diverse, people with limited computer access aren’t involved), which relates to the participation gap (who gets to/feel comfortable participate?). McMurria looks at the highest ranked/most viewed YT vids, and Jenkins believe this doesn’t account for YT content that may be popular, but has niche audiences and thus not as many views/comments.

Jenkins then copies Geoffrey Long’s article on Google’s acquisition of YouTube/Web 2.0:
-Long claims that perhaps Google bought YT because it provided a service )broad search of videos created by users) that Google hadn’t perfected yet.
-Long also claims that perhaps Google values YT as a brand. Although they own a site that illegally hosts copyright content, maybe they are looking to turn that around and develop contracts with major TV networks, record companies, etc. YouTube is also one of the few sites that provides an easily searchable slew of video that may not be available through other means (i.e. itunes video, I can watch foreign TV shows on YT but I cant buy them for cheap on itunes).
-Google owning YT also allows for ad revenue: inserting ads into clips based on demographic data. YT could be the link between advertisers and independently produced data.
-Google is better at working with the user-created market (i.e. blogosphere) than Microsoft.  Google still feels like an “indie” compared to Microsoft, mainly because they exist entirely online (i.e. I cant go into a store and buy Google stuff).

InfoEnclosure 2.0 (Kleiner & Wyrick)
-Kleiner and Wyrick explore how Web 2.0 has elements of cenralization and can be easily commodified by big business. This could harm peer-to-peer production and the current decentralized format of networks.
-Web 2.0 is defined by Wikipedia as “that ‘Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services – such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies – that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.’” But the authors argue that there is not real Web 1.0 or 2.0 and the Internet is constantly developing.
-The distinction that has created the distinction between 1.0 and 2.0 is that 2.0 emphasizes community and sharing information and content.
-Instead of the original model of sites producing content and users consuming it (which is the same for most media outlets), sites now host a produce/consume model where users can both create their own and use/consumer other people’s material. Remix/Convergence culture. People also don’t need to download software to publish content (i.e. blogs) , we can do it all through our browsers.
-However, the authors argue that the Internet has always fostered this sort of sharing, and that Web 2.0 really distinguishes itself from the past because of venture capital. Web 2.0 represents investments and internet startups. I.e. when Google bought YT they gained a valuable resource, but the users who create YT content did not get any stock and are not being paid (generally speaking, that is complicated, and some popular YTers are sponsored by outside companies).
-The value of 2.0 comes from user-generated material, which is being acquired by big businesses. They bring in advertising and other business models to exploit the site’s revenue potential.
-Open-source software is also unique to Web 2.0 (not really sure if I agree with this..).
-Overall Web 2.0 is  going to destroy the P2P aspect of the Internet and bring back “monolithic ‘online services.’”  We are heading towards centralized control.
Limited communication between peers and more interaction with those in control.
-The authors vouch for a system of P2P networks “owned by everybody and nobody,” Goole acquiring YT is an example from Web2.0s move away from this system.

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• Meme Culture and the Mainstream Media (2) | Lauren Marie