Author: john

Who controls public videos?

I’m struck by the contrast in two stories appearing in today’s news

NHK, Japan’s public broadcasting network, is coming under pressure to start putting video content online (albeit for a fee). While in my country, C-Span, the non-profit network “created by cable, offered as a public service,” asked that videos of Colbert’s White House Correspondents Diner speech be removed from YouTube.com (and later agreed to have the material hosted on Google Video).

I’ll admit, the comparison doesn’t totally gel. NHK requires viewers to pay a subscription fee, and would likely do the same for videos on the Net. C-Span is funded through cable subscription fees. Yet both networks seem to have some element of both publicness and privateness to what they do; both are involved in the creation of cultural (and democratic) artifacts.

Without getting in to what is the “right” thing for either to do, what is interesting to me is the drive people feel to share this sort of material. If the amount of Japanese language videos on YouTube is any indication, there is truly interest in sharing this content across cultures. As with many of the other things I blog about, it comes down to a question of control. Is there any sort of public ownership right in content produced by government (directly, by subsidy, or otherwise)?

Apple’s Neutrality Runaround

It recently occurred to me that Apple’s name was noticeably absent from the list of companies supporting Internet neutrality (or perhaps I’ve just missed it). As a provider of iTunes music and videos, as well as software updates, it seemed to me as though their bandwidth needs would be a prime candidate for higher tiered service.

A few days ago, the Apple rumor mill turned out a theory that Apple would bundle bittorrent in the next version of their operating system. Users would get credit (perhaps on iTunes) for sharing their harddrive space and bandwidth to serve tiny bits of Apple content, like music, videos, and updates.

This would essentially remove the need for them to sign up for a higher tier of service, because their serving needs would be completely distributed in terms of time, space, and bandwidth. While this has been around for years in the linux world, building a commercial model on this technology would be a fascinating innovation.

Why blog?

I’ve done a bit more thinking and reading about the issue of current and future academics who blog. My conclusion is that, especially given the concern that what I write today may have an impact on my future job prospects, it’s necessary to periodically reevaluate and assert what this exercise is all about.

  • Discourse of ideas: Daniel Drezner, for example, says “When I started blogging, I feared that it would prove a distraction from my scholarly research. What I did not anticipate was that it would actually trigger new research avenues.” I have found this to be true. Not being around the Journalism department very much means that there aren’t that many opportunities to talk about these issues, much less think/write them out and receive feedback from others. Since this blog is primarily academic, I hope that it serves this function and stays within the bounds of what would be an acceptable academic debate (theory, research, or otherwise).
  • Technology and Mass Communication: The combination of my interest in Internet technology, and the fact that blogging is becoming a greater factor in the Journalism word leads me to think that working on this type of publication would be a bonus. Knowing how blogs work technically, as well as understanding the culture (something I’m only beginning to do), I believe, will make me a more well-rounded researcher and educator.
  • Anonymous?: As the story of the L.A. Times blogger shows, blogging anonymously can come back to haunt you if you are outed. I would rather have everyone know about my (admittedly very open) intellectual style than risk problems down the road.
  • Intellectual diary: There are honestly a lot of news stories which I find interesting in regards to my academic interests which I don’t want to loose track of (and being able to add my current thoughts and organize with tags is even better).

With all of that said, I realize that there needs to be some focus to my work here. Except when I’m simply posting to remember a story, or working on hashing out an idea, I’ll try to keep things either theoretically or empirically grounded (meaning, as little politics as possible). It simply is the intellectually honest thing to do, even if one is thinking out loud.

Telecom Act revisions heating up

Efforts to revise our telecommunications policy are really taking off in moves beyond the net neutrality debate. Here are a few new additions:

  • Banning MP3 Streaming: Efforts to require DRM on streaming media may make streaming in non-protected formats a violation of the law (thus locking in the grossly incompatible proprietary formats).
  • Congress may consider mandatory ISP snooping: Enforcing log retention timeframes on ISPs to help law enforcement track illegal Internet activity.

These are both good examples of how our policy is coming to revolve around control: both by the government and by the communications industry. A good legislative history of these efforts might be an interesting project as it could show if these actions are being driven by need, by impulse to legislate, or by industry requests. These difficult issues have such great public impact, and yet one must wonder how the public can have an impact on the debate.