Category: Video

Video paper project

Thoughts on Video: Theory

There are a number of social-theoretical homes for the idea that video’s move online will bring great changes to the mass communication landscape:

  • First, sharing of video online has the possibility to enhance peoples interaction , and to create new and different communities of interest. Rather than the 50’s, network-style of community (large, centered around a few possibilities), video online may further fragment the public into very small communities (for example, shojo anime rather than whatever happens to be on Adult Swim). While network-based TV brought us together under what editors and producers thought was important, a search online and a willingness to become active within a group online creates a different kind of community.
  • Second, it will further press (perhaps to a head) many of the legal issues surrounding sharing of copyrighted content on the web. To borrow from Art Bell, one might call this a “legal quickening” effect.
  • Finally, in addition to pushing law, it may also be the force which drives demand for broadband and thus (finally) expands the capacity for our network.

More on this (and the other issues below) another day.

Video Paper Project Experiment

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.

Video traffic and innovation

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 🙂

A Strange Twist?

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.