Month: June 2005

Re: Grokster

Prediction 1: Napster’s shutdown led to serverless, tracker-based P2P, and today’s Grokster decision will lead to encrypted, anonymous, unbreakable blacknets.

Prediction 2: today’s Grokster decision will lead to greater contempt for copyright law. Government that is perceived as “not getting it” or as in the pocket of industry lobbyists won’t have legitimacy with the next group to code up a blacknet p2p app.

The librarians probably have it right, but Robert Musil deserves the last word:

…high-mindedness is the mark of every professional ideology. Hunters for instance would never dream of calling themselves butchers of wild game; they prefer to call themselves the duly licensed friends of nature and animals; just as businessmen uphold the principle of honorable profit, while the businessman’s god, Mercury, that distinguished promoter of international relations, is also the god of thieves. So the image of a profession in the minds of its practitioners is not too reliable. (from the second paragraph in chapter 72 of The Man Without Qualities):

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Mad Hot Nonsense

Carrie McLaren has a great piece the difficulty of clearing rights for Mad Hot Ballroom. An excerpt: “When Agrelo and Sewell were filming boys playing foosball after school, Ronnie (right) at one point shouted, “Everybody dance now!”, a line from a C+C Music Factory hit. Incredibly, the filmmakers’ lawyer said the line had to be cleared with the song’s publisher, Warner Chappell. The price? $5,000.”

(via Greg.org)

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Ourmedia and MIC and IMAP?

Ourmedia.org announced that it is planning to build a registry of media files, and that it has partnered with Odeo, Buzznet, Brightcove, and Open Media Network to do this.

The lack of a union catalog or central repository means that it is a lot harder to find footage than it ought to be; it would be ideal if all the separate meta-directory efforts, including MIC and IMAP, would start working together.

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FlickR Clones

The acquisitions of FlickR, Picassa, Webshots, and Photosite — all sites for sharing still images — have inspired several companies to try the same thing, but for moving images.

YouTube and iFeeder are the latest to take this route, and both are still early stage. There are a bunch of others in wings, as well as Google’s free hosting service; innovation beyond simply cloning FlickR is needed here.

Independent World Television – more citizen media

Independent World Television wants to build a viewer supported global independent news network (“If half a million people in the entire world contribute just $50, IWTnews will secure the $25 million it needs to fund its first year of broadcasting, in 2007.”) They’ve assembled an impressive list of supporters (from Charles Benton to Gore Vidal), and hope to start broadcasting via the net in 2007. Their problem statement is spot on:

Serious news and full-spectrum debate—on which democracy depends—are disappearing from television. Across the globe, news media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few entertainment conglomerates whose interests determine news coverage. They promote superficial “infotainment” over tough investigation, context and holding authority accountable. Public broadcasters face shrinking budgets and growing political and commercial pressures.

Their solution, “to change the economics of journalism” is promising, and how can one not cheer for more citizen media? It will be great to see what they put together, but unless they start sampling from right wing media, or viewers are happy with a “spectrum” ranges from Janeane Garofalo to Tony Benn, they may to need to work on the “full-spectrum debate” they are promising.

(via Unmediated)

Sally Potter’s Yes at Delancey Street

Sally Potter’s Yes played last night at the Delancey Street screening room thanks to the efforts of my friend Mark Pincus.

The emotional range of the movie is unusually broad; the plot shifts between political commentary, romance, and a rather bleak look at marital relationships.

More interesting to me than the movie is Mark’s attempt to augment and/or route around traditional film marketing. The representative from the Telluride Film Festival was clearly curious about the bloggers in the room, while Sony’s representative looked a bit nervous about the whole thing. The most likely outcome is that the film industry will be taking credit for Mark’s ideas in about three years.

Lulop2

I’ve been meaning for close to month to write about Lulop‘s new version, Lulop2, an “Internet news gathering” platform. Lulop has been around for a while (four years), and it’s prime mover, Lorenzo Manes, has built a viable business that brokers video footage shot by professionals, and purchased by television broadcast networks.

Lulop2 is now being used to host 2500 video titles, and for anyone dreaming about creating a marketplace for the exchange of online video footage, it’s worth a close look.

Broadcast Flag Dead for Now?

The EFF cites a Communications Daily story that the MPAA may not ask for a Broadcast Flag provision in the digital television legislation now pending in the House. The story also cites a Congressional Research Service report that “raises concerns that the broadcast flag’s technological limitations could hinder activities normally deemed ‘fair use’ under copyright law.”