Category Archives: Media ecology

The downsides of ‘free’ information

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Peter Wayner gave an interesting talk at Google pointing out the downsides of the decline in print journalism and suggesting some things that might be done about it. Here’s one of his ideas:

Let me say that I’m a big believer in fair use. I think it’s very important for people to be able to quote frequently and liberally. But some blogs take this to an extreme. It’s easy to find blogs that are 80, 90, even 95 percent borrowed text. Some frequently cut huge chunks of an article and then wrap it with the thinnest amount of comment. Not surprisingly, some of these folks are big believers in “fair use”. I can think of one blog where the writers spend more time agitating for fair use than they do writing their thin, snarky wrapper around huge blocks of borrowed text.

I don’t think these sites are necessarily bad, but I think they end up taking an unfair amount of the return on the content. Many sell ads and some even support nice lifestyles without consuming too much shoe leather in gathering the content.

So why not add another term to the exponentially growing PageRank equation. Declan McCullagh suggested this during dinner last night. Why not compute the fraction of the text that’s original and the fraction that’s borrowed? This is possible to do because most bloggers are kind enough to include a link to the original text. If they don’t, it’s usually possible for a few searches of complete sentences to find the original.

Let’s call this LeechRank. If 20% of the text is borrowed, let’s do nothing to the PageRank. If 50% is borrowed, we bump them down a few notches. If 80% is borrowed, let’s send them down 20 to 30 notches. And if 100% is borrowed, as some pirates do, well, let’s just knock them straight out to the bottom of the listings, sort of a way station on their trip to the circle in hell reserved for people who steal and destroy a person’s livelihood.

This is a very thoughtful speech. It highlights the fact that while the Web and the blogosphere can easily provide much of the crap (celeb gossip, lifestyle journalism, infotainment) that takes up so much space in today’s newspapers, there’s no indication yet that it could replace the expensive investigating and reporting that responsible newspapers (and broadcasters) do. In the UK, for example, Jonathan Aitken would have gone unpunished if the Guardian hadn’t taken a very risky legal stand and contested his libel action against the paper. The same thing happened recently when Alan Rusbridger challenged a gagging injunction that the Government had clapped against reporting a development in the “cash for honours” investigation.

Who in the emerging ecosystem will do things — take risks — like that? Google? Perish the thought.

I like the idea of a LeechRank!

Thanks to Tim O’Reilly for pointing me to the piece.

Still movies

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Further to my reflections on getting movies from digital still cameras, here’s an example of the way the boundaries between devices is blurring. My Canon IXUS, like many compact digital cameras, has a movie mode. If you use it to record movie clips, then iPhoto neatly collects them and keeps them in its library, where they’re stored as .avi files. Double-click on a movie clip and OS X launches QuickTime player, enabling one to view the clip.

So far so good. But if you launch iMovieHD then you can drag .avi clips from the iPhoto library onto the editing timeline. The software converts them to DV on the fly. (In the old days, you had to open them in QuickTime Pro and convert them to DV files, but now it all seems to be built into iMovieHD.)

I’ve just tested this by making a complete little film from movie clips and images taken using the IXUS in Provence last year. It was as easy as pie. I’d post it to YouTube were it not for the fact that the soundtrack is from a Leo Kottke album and therefore not my property.

I’m sure you can do all this using Windows, but I’ll bet the tools aren’t as integrated as they are on OS X.

I should also add that it was Quentin who, unwittingly, started me off on this line of thought. He too has an IXUS.

That anti-Clinton YouTube ad (contd.)

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You may recall that I liked the YouTube video which mixed the 1984 Apple Macintosh Superbowl ad with Hilary Clinton’s “our conversation” video. Well, Rex Hughes has now pointed me at the next instalment of the story. Read on…

News watchers need to buckle up today as the mainstream media does its whipsaw thing now that the identity of the infamous anti-Hillary Clinton/pro-Barack Obama “Vote Different” video has become publicly known – and that man is now out of a job. The ad, a take-off on Apple’s legendary “1984” spot, had become a YouTube sensation and the guessing game over the author an online parlor game. (Note string of updates below)

For those who haven’t seen it, the anti-Clinton ad, while unflattering, is reasonably clever, not the least bit offensive, and, by modern-day standards, more of a love note than a Swift-boating. … But, as we’re seeing, none of that matters in a practical, political sense.

Phil De Vellis, a political operative at Blue State Digital (the company name tells you what party’s candidates it serves), has been outed as the ad’s designer, and, depending on which account you wish to believe, has resigned or been fired because his employer’s most prominent client is presidential candidate Obama. He claims he did it on his own time and without the knowledge of Blue State Digital or the Obama campaign. You can read more of what De Vellis has to say for himself here on the Huffington Post.

So why all the fuss?

This is high-stakes presidential politics and everybody has a well-defined role to play.

Clinton feigns outrage because that’s her role. She’s been in politics all of her adult life and is no more outraged by that video than her husband was believable when wagging his finger. She does, however, recognize opportunity when it knocks and this video is an opportunity for her to play the victim … and no doubt attempt to inoculate herself against what promise to be truly vicious assaults to come.

Obama feigns outrage because that’s his role. He may be newer to politics, but he’s smart enough to recognize the risks – such as they are – of having his campaign appear to be “attacking” a fellow Democrat. The senator may indeed prefer that his campaign not be associated with such a video, but you can be certain that is a tactical decision and not an intellectually honest assessment of the spot’s message or style.

De Vellis feigns resignation – and says he resigned – because that’s his role. Even if we take him at his word about the project being his and his alone, he knew full well what the consequences would be if he his identity should become public. With free speech comes consequences. He’s no naïf. Weep not for him.

The mainstream media knows its role here, too: Just fan the flames. There isn’t a reporter or pundit on the planet who honestly believes that ad was out of bounds. There isn’t a reporter or pundit on the planet who believes that Clinton or Obama might be genuinely outraged. (There may be a few who believe De Vellis a “victim,” but they haven’t thought it through.) But every reporter and pundit on the planet recognizes good political theater when they see it.

So, what should have happened, you might be asking.

Clinton should have watched the video and shrugged. Obama should have told his people to tell Blue State Digital to get a tighter grip on its employees. De Vellis should have shown reporters his slapped wrist, apologized for causing a client trouble, and gotten on with his career.

But this is presidential politics. Those roles aren’t in the script…

My instincts would be to hire Mr De Vellis. His skills are useful.

Only approved MySpace invaders allowed in FoxSpace

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Well, well. The NYT is reporting that you can put what you like on MySpace — so long as it isn’t designed to bring you revenue.

Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded.

MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.

At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”

Ms. Tequila, born Tila Nguyen, has attracted attention by linking to more than 1.7 million friends on her MySpace page. To promote her first album, she recently added to her MySpace page a new music player and music store, called the Hoooka, created by Indie911, a Los Angeles-based start-up company.

Users listened to her music and played the accompanying videos 20,000 times over the weekend. But the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute. She then vented her thoughts on her personal blog.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

A MySpace spokeswoman said yesterday that the service did not remove anything from Ms. Tequila’s page. “A MySpace representative contacted her and told her that she had violated our terms of service in regards to commercial activity,” the spokeswoman said. “She removed the material herself, after realizing it was not appropriate for MySpace.”

Ms. Tequila and her representatives would not comment.

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.

Izimi: self-hosted user-generated content

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Interesting service — izimi. The blurb claims that

izimi is the future of Internet publishing. izimi enables you to publish and serve files, photos, music and videos, in fact anything, straight from your PC to anyone with a browser.

* Why do you have to upload your content to other people’s servers in order to publish and share it?
* Why must you give up control of your files to a third party?
* Who dictates what files you can upload, how many, and how big they can be? If not you, why not?

izimi places the power right in your hands, where it should be – it’s a truly democratic web. With izimi there’s no need to upload your content to any server: you decide what you’ll publish, there are no limits on quantity or quality (we won’t degrade your videos, photos or music), and you retain ownership and control.

Download the free izimi application to start publishing anything you like, to anyone you like. Use it for photos, videos, music, documents, anything – all it takes is a few clicks. izimi gives you simple URLs that you can use in email, IM, or any website, blog, or forum…

Only available to PC users, though. Wonder how the technology works: it sounds like P2P, but the FAQs say it isn’t.

izimi is made up of two elements: the izimi application and the izimi website.
•
The izimi application – the izimi application runs in the background on your PC and works a little like a web server. You choose what files to publish, you can add rich descriptions and tags to help other people find them, and you simply click publish’. Izimi create a friendly URL for each item published. izimi’s web services operate a bit like a domain name server (DNS), pointing other users’ browsers direct to the publisher’s PC in response to requests for specific URLs. The izimi application on the publishers PC then serves the file to the user. In some circumstances certain firewall or router configurations won’t allow a user’s computer to serve published media directly, and in these situations izimi’s web services become a sort of traffic controller to direct and stream content from the publisher’s PC to users.
•
The izimi website – The izimi website (www.izimi.com) is like an index of all izimi users and their published content. At izimi.com anyone (not just izimi publishers) can search for people and published content, rate, comment, add friends, and do all the community activities commonly associated with social networks.

Hmmm… These guys may be good at software but they know nothing of apostrophes.

Viacom, YouTube and Joost

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This morning’s Observer column…

Think of it as mud-wrestling, but at a higher level. Viacom is suing Google for a billion dollars because YouTube (which Google purchased a while back for $1.6bn) continues to host clips of Viacom’s video properties. The documents launching the suit express moral outrage wrapped in three coats of prime legal verbiage. The gist, however, is clear: nasty bully Google is getting rich on the back of poor little artists and the companies that support them…

The revolution acknowledged

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Jeff Jarvis blogged Alan Rusbridger’s speech to the assembled staffs of the Guardian and Observer (for which I write). Here’s a snippet of Jeff’s account:

Yesterday, Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, told the staff of his newspaper that now “all journalists work for the digital platform” and that they should regard “its demands as preeminent.”

This came in each of three all-hands meetings with the editorial and business staff held at a theater 15 minutes from the paper’s offices, the first such meetings since the Guardian went through its last metamorphosis to its medium-sized Berliner format. (I happened to be consulting at the paper yesterday and I went along for the ride. Rusbridger gave me permission to blog the company event.)

So that was the line that struck me: preeminent. I suspect it was the line that resonated with staff members a few hours later. Rusbridger said that some would find the content of yesterday’s meetings no-big-deal and others would find unease. But the message was clear, although it was shoehorned into much else in the presentation; you had to listen to hear it. He also said that the paper will serve the public 24/7; it does not yet do that. So the Guardian, he said, will be a 24-hour, web-first newspaper. To do that, the paper’s management needs — he called it the F word — flexibility. And that means that jobs will change. It’s all in a parcel…

The interesting thing about the Guardian is that it’s owned by a Trust rather than being a commercial company. Some people mistakenly think that this ownership structure makes the paper more cosy and resistant to change than a more straightforwardly commercial outfit. In fact the opposite it true: the Guardian has moved faster and more aggressive to embrace change than any other British publication.

Remember old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. We do.