The Times printed a news analysis on the recent coup attempt in the Philippines. Here’s the letter I sent the editor (we’ll see if I get published):
Sunday’s news analysis that “ Political Turmoil Again Thwarts Progress in Philippines” wrongly puts the blame on former President Aquino. Continuous corruption of the many Philippine leaders since Aquino has deeply harmed the legitimacy of their government. President Arroyo’s squashing the free speech of the protesters and news media only makes matters worse. A functioning democracy requires more than just elections; the need for a government which the Filipino people can rely on is of the greatest importance.
John Thomson, Jr.
PhD Student, University of Wisconsin School of Journalism and Mass Communication
The previous posts on video have sparked an idea for a project on how the expansion of video on the net will create changes in our media (and copyright landscape). I’m hoping that blogging will serve as a good motivation to write a draft. Here’s what I’m thinking of concentrating on:
- The expansion of video technologies, such as YouTube, Democracy, and BitTorrent (especially when combined with RSS) will drastically change one’s need to rely on cable and Tivo.
- At least among broadband countries, this move will greatly expand our ability to gaze into other cultures. Since video is a visual medium, one barely needs to understand other languages to appreciate the content (which could never have been understood as text).
- The limitations of national and international copyright will affect whether this move of video and culture online occurs with or without the support of content owners.
- Other issues: digital divide (tech and $$), displacement of other video media, Internet tiering, how it will affect content owners/creators/industry.
As always, this at the moment is thinking out loud. Don’t take me too seriously yet.
C Net reports that the high volume of video traffic on the net may soon slow everyone down. The article points to some of the net provider’s arguments against the content neutral Internet, and many of the comments reflect this. However, it goes on to discuss some of the potentials for new developments in video technology.
Itiva’s technology works by taking a huge movie file and breaking it up into tiny individual pieces that are formatted just like ordinary Web pages. When they’re downloaded by a user, these individual pieces–Itiva calls them “quanta”–are stored in ISPs’ Web caches, which are already distributed in every network.
Once stored separately like this, they can be quickly downloaded and pieced together by anyone else in that network, in a way that’s much more inexpensive for the ISP than if everyone was going back to the original download site.
This may really be the benefit of bandwidth hungy content’s move online: the drive of innovation. While creating a tiered net may be one solution, desire to push the existing network further through new technology (most likely relying on neutrality) is the way to go.
Thanks C Net for the good material on video this week 
C-Net News is reporting on how video on the web is being used in a new program on Bravo. I’m not sure why they didn’t address VH1’s similar effort, but the article addresses at least half of the big story here: the expansion of user-created video on the web may give large media companies an easy, free source of content.
For TV producers, it’s simply a cheap way to develop a show. In the classic model of programming production, content producers would invest a lot of money upfront to create a pilot show and test it with audiences. By patrolling the Internet, TV producers can draw on material that’s already proved popular with online audiences and put it on TV with comparatively little investment.
While those of us who are already watching most of our video online won’t be interested in these shows, perhaps some tempted by the possibility of fame will give their work away.
And this is the twist:
Certainly Bravo and VH1 would be quick to file a lawsuit if any of their content was used without authorization…would they be tempted to use a “great” video if they couldn’t track down the owner? An amature video creator wanting to defend the rights to their work may be no match for the deep pockets of a media corporation.
But why steal or pay for someone’s content, when you can get it in a contest? VH1’s WebJunk program has a contest where:
You could win a Digital Entertainment Center with Intel VIIV technology and the Aquos liquid crystal TV from Sharp!
So, according to the contest rules, anyone who enters (meaning compensated winners and unlucky losers) gives away their rights to MTV and IFilm (see clause 14).
Copyright was created to grant authors protection for their work, so that they can make a living off their creativity. The chance for abuse of creators in this case is too great to ignore.
It looks as though NBC has been exerting their copyright control over one of my favorite sites YouTube.com. What makes YouTube such a neat place is that it’s a collection of all sorts of video (copyrighted and not) from around the world. In some ways, it acts as a repository or a gateway to a wide variety of video cultures (for example, Japanese music videos and television shows). The Times article points out one of the site’s benefits to copyright owners:
Several online commentators noted that NBC’s response to YouTube, while legally justified, may have been short-sighted. The online popularity of “Lazy Sunday” has been credited with reviving interest in “Saturday Night Live” at a time when it is in need of some buzz.
…
“We got e-mails from college students, and a lot of them said it’s the ‘Lazy Sunday’ clip that turned them on to potentially watching ‘S.N.L.’ again,” she said.
It is something to consider: relaxing control over one’s copyright holdings may actually bring in more revenue from an increased fan-base. I would think that this is what the people who originally posted the “Lazy Sunday” video would have agreed to. It’s essentially a nod saying, “hey, go check this out.” Statements such as this aren’t intended to bring harm to the creator (even though it may prevent a few $2 iTunes downloads), rather it’s perhaps an easy form of review/comment/criticism (which understandably is not protected under fair use).
