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Digital Culture Links: September 17th 2009
Links for September 11th 2009 through September 17th 2009:
- 50 Cent: Piracy Is A Part Of The Marketing [Techdirt] – “…rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) was apparently on CNBC recently talking about his “business acumen.” I have to admit that having three different people all trying to interview him at once is rather annoying — as they almost never let him complete a thought. However, when they ask him about piracy, and whether or not it makes him angry (around 2 minutes), he responds that: he sees it as a part of the marketing of a musician, because “the people who didn’t purchase the material, they end up at the concert.” He says that people can fall in love with the music either way, and then they’ll go to concerts. He notes that you can’t stop piracy either way, so why try to fight it? He also talks about other business opportunities for musicians.” (Can’t say I’m a fan of his music, but his perspective on piracy, fans and the business futures for music are spot on!)
- Why the White House is Hiring a Social Media Archivist [Mashable] – The US White House is seeking to archive all of their social media presence and conversation. While their motivations are legal (they’re required to archive all correspondence of any sort) this is still an important archiving process of important historical value. It would be nice to see all national governments following a similar procedure for their national records (hello Mr Rudd).
- Hands-On: iPod Nano vs. Flip SD [NewTeeVee] – The new iPod Nano with video-recording offers a direct challenge to the Flip market. Testing a new Nano versus a Flip HD, the results: “Overall — the Flip offered a MUCH better picture both indoor and out, providing way more detail in the image. The Flip microphone was also a little more discerning in our test, able to distinguish our subject’s voice in a crowded room much better than the Nano.
- Wikipedia’s Rapid Reaction to Outburst During Obama Speech [The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com] – “If journalism is the first draft of history, what is a Wikipedia entry when it is updated within minutes of an event to reflect changes in a person’s biography? This is the very live issue that cropped up in a heated argument on the discussion page that accompanies Wikipedia’s entry on Representative Joe Wilson Wednesday night, just 30 minutes after the Republican from South Carolina interrupted President Barack Obama’s speech by shouting “You lie!””
Digital Culture Links: September 3rd 2009
Links for September 2nd 2009 through September 3rd 2009:
- Copyright protection without the court action [Blogs – Twisted Wire – ZDNet Australia] – An excellent little podcast looking at the challenges challenges to copyright in the digital age, but more importantly exploring alternative distribution models which could circumvent many of the current big media strategy of litigation against a few file-sharers. Comments from Nic Suzor (Australia's Electronic Frontiers Australia), Peter Coroneos (Internet Industry Association (IIA)) and Mike O'Donnell, (CEO of iCopyright in the US). Amazingly, the idea of having better, quicker, more efficient ways to buy movies over the web was one of the main ideas put forward! 🙂 (See also the previous week's show & podcast where AFACT argued with Suzor and Coroneos about the role of ISPs in policing the content viewed by Australian internet users.)
- Web2.0 tools for Gov2.0 beginners: a practical guide [Centre for Policy Development] – A useful beginner's guide looking at web 2.0 tools and social media in relation to campaigning and building links and conversation between government and citizenry in particular ways. Gives a solid sense of the benefits and potential barriers with each platform mentioned. Written by Barry Saunders.
- YouTube Said to Be in Talks on Pay Movies [NYTimes.com] – "YouTube, the largest video site, is in negotiations with major Hollywood studios for a deal that would let its visitors pay to watch full-length movies, according to two people briefed on the negotiations. If an agreement is reached, it would be a major change for YouTube, which has built a huge audience by offering an eclectic collection of free video clips and earns most of its revenue from advertising. It would also put YouTube, which is owned by Google, in direct competition with services from Netflix, Amazon and Apple, which allow users to buy or rent movies online." (YouTube's creep away from a primary focus on supporting user-generated content continues …)
- Media favours Coalition, study finds [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – "Newspapers are left wing, television is right wing, and the media as a whole tends to favour the Coalition. And surprisingly, according to researchers from the Australian National University, the ABC Television news is the most pro-Coalition of them all. Former Liberal prime minister John Howard railed against the alleged left-wing bias of the ABC, but the researchers found Aunty was more likely to favour his side. Researchers pored over news stories from 1996 to 2007 to establish if the media was biased. The results, released today, point to the media being generally middle-of-the-road, with the coalition tending to win out."
- Conroy urged to 'end net censorship farce' [The Age] – "The Federal Government's internet censorship trials have been repeatedly delayed over the past nine months, leading to claims from the Opposition that the Government is deliberately withholding the results to avoid embarrassment. The Opposition's communications spokesman, Nick Minchin, today called on the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, to "end this farce and produce his long overdue trial results for independent assessment". Live trials of the filtering policy, which is intended to block "prohibited content" for all Australians as determined by a secret Government blacklist, were initially slated to begin in December last year and take about six weeks. They were then pushed back until July, then September and, today, the Government is still unable to put a date on when it will release the results to the public."
- TV facing 'iTunes moment' warns Microsoft's Ashley Highfield [Media | guardian.co.uk] – "The TV industry has as little as two years to create viable digital businesses or face a version of the "iTunes moment" that saw the music business cede the online future to Apple, according to Ashley Highfield. Highfield, the the managing director of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, said he believed the reluctance advertisers feel to advertise on sites such as Facebook will soon be a "non-issue", putting more pressure on broadcasters' advertising revenues. "Once this happens the shift of spending from TV to web will accelerate even more," he said, giving the Futureview address at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival today. "So realistically I think the industry has about two to three years to adapt or face its iTunes moment. And it will take at least that long for media brands to build credible, truly digital brands. But, importantly, I do believe TV does have a small two to three year window in which to respond.""
Annotated Digital Culture Links: May 29th 2009
Links for May 28th 2009 through May 29th 2009:
- Cambridge study: DRM turns users into pirates [ Boing Boing] – “A long and deep study of user behaviour in the UK by a Cambridge prof confirms that when an honest person tries to do something legal that is blocked by Digital Rights Management technology, it encourages the person to start downloading infringing copies for free from the net, since these copies are all DRM-free.” [Via] [Full Study] [(Readable) Study Summary]
- Illegal downloads soar as hard times bite [SMH] – Asher Moses suggests: “Hundreds of thousands more Australians have turned to illegal download sites in the past year to save money on movies, music, software and TV shows during the economic downturn, new figures show. Total visits by Australians to BitTorrent websites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, TorrentReactor and Torrentz grew from 785,000 in April last year to 1,049,000 in April this year, Nielsen says. This is a year-on-year increase of 33.6 per cent. The figures, which do not include peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, are in line with a Newspoll survey of 700 Australians in April, which found almost two-thirds of respondents said they were more tempted to buy or obtain pirated products in tough financial times.” (I wonder if more immediate legal options to purchase tv would actually fare rather well in these tough times – more folks willing to pay a little to watch something at home rather than a cinema ticket?)
Annotated Digital Culture Links: April 9th 2009
Links for April 6th 2009 through April 9th 2009:
- on url shorteners [joshua’s blog] – “… URL shorteners are bad for the rest of us. The worst problem is that shortening services add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system. A regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver, the publisher’s DNS server, and the publisher’s website. With a shortening service, you’re adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL, without the benevolent oversight of luminaries like Dan Kaminsky and St. Postel. There are three other parties in the ecosystem of a link: the publisher (the site the link points to), the transit (places where that shortened link is used, such as Twitter or Typepad), and the clicker (the person who ultimately follows the shortened links). Each is harmed to some extent by URL shortening.” (While I understand URL shortening for Twitter, I think they tend to obscure the actual destination and make evaluating a link very difficult!)
- Facebook Blocks All Pirate Bay Links [TorrentFreak] – “… [in] March The Pirate Bay added new functionality to reach out to millions of Facebook users. Just over a week later and the world’s largest social networking site has blocked all links to torrents on the world’s largest and most infamous BitTorrent tracker. It was less than two weeks ago when The Pirate Bay implemented a new feature making it easier for site users to post links to torrents on their Facebook profile… The entertainment industries were not happy with the new feature, but since The Pirate Bay is not exclusively used to spread copyrighted material, there wasn’t much they could do about it. Facebook users responded positively and many began posting torrent links in their profile. This integration of the world’s largest tracker and the world’s largest social networking site generated hundreds of news articles and excitement. But it wasn’t to last. This morning Facebook … blocked not only the feature, but all links to Pirate Bay’s torrents.”
- Flutter: The New Twitter [YouTube] – When the 140 characters of Twitter get too much, the nanoblogging revolution of Flutter might be right for you! 😉
Annotated Digital Culture Links: April 3rd 2009
Links for March 31st 2009 through April 3rd 2009:
- Internet traffic in Sweden plummets on first day of law banning web piracy [Guardian] – Internet traffic in Sweden – previously a hotbed of illicit filesharing – has fallen dramatically in the first day of a new law banning online piracy. The country – home to the notorious Pirate Bay website, whose founders are awaiting a court judgment on whether they have broken the law by allowing people to find films, games and music for illicit downloads – has previously been seen as a haven for filesharing, in which people can get copyrighted content for free. As many as one in 10 Swedes is thought to use such peer-to-peer services. But the so-called IPRED law, which came into force on Wednesday, obliges internet service providers to turn over details about internet users who share such content to the owners of copyrighted material, if a court finds sufficient evidence that the user has broken the law. … internet traffic in Sweden had fallen by about 30% compared with the previous day.”
- New Wolverine film leaked online [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] – “An almost finished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine starring Hugh Jackman has been leaked online a month before its cinema release. The high quality copy of the film has been uploaded to several file sharing and streaming video websites. The movie is incomplete, with some special effects still in need of fine tuning and green screens and wires attached to actors still visible.” (It took less than 24 hours for this workprint to appear for sale in Jordan’s pirate DVD markets and C20th Fox are on the warpath. While a leak like this might be good for publicity, given that a workprint – which means unfinished special effects more than anything else – tends to emphasise the quality of the plot and dialogue, this could really hurt the box office.)
- Obama Depressed, Distant Since ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Series Finale [The Onion – America’s Finest News Source] – “According to sources in the White House, President Barack Obama has been uncharacteristically distant and withdrawn ever since last month’s two-hour series finale of Battlestar Galactica. “The president seems to be someplace else lately,” said one high-level official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Yesterday we were all being briefed on the encroachment of Iranian drone planes into Iraq, when he just looked up from the table and blurted out, ‘What am I supposed to watch on Fridays at 10 p.m. now? Numb3rs?'” “I haven’t seen him this upset since Admiral Adama realized that Earth was actually an uninhabitable wasteland,” the official continued. “Or at least that’s what he told me. I don’t actually watch the show. It’s not really my thing.””
- Victim Of Wikipedia: Microsoft To Shut Down Encarta [ paidContent.org] – “Microsoft will discontinue both its MSN Encarta reference Web sites as well as its Encarta software, which have both been surpassed by rising competitors, like Wikipedia. In a message posted on the MSN Encarta Web site, Microsoft says, “Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.””
Annotated Digital Culture Links: November 22nd 2008
Links of interest for November 21st 2008 through November 22nd 2008:
- EFA concerned about movie industry lawsuit against iiNet [Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA)] – “Electronic Frontiers Australa (EFA) today expressed concern about a lawsuit filed against Internet Service Provider iiNet in the Federal Court. A consortium of media companies have sued the ISP for allegedly allowing its users to download infringing movies and TV shows by failing to terminate their accounts after allegations of infringement by the copyright industry. “This lawsuit is the latest attempt by the movie industry to bully Internet Service Providers into becoming copyright police,” said EFA spokesperson Nicolas Suzor. “ISPs are not in a position to monitor and terminate internet access to users based upon unsubstantiated threats from copyright owners, and should not be asked to do so.””
- Kraftwerk sample case overturned [BBC NEWS | Entertainment] – “A court in Germany has told electronic band Kraftwerk that a producer who sampled one of their songs was not violating copyright. The ruling overturns an earlier decision against Moses Pelham’s use of a short sample from Metal on Metal. Judges in Berlin said the two second extract did not infringe copyright, as his song was substantially different. The move will come as a blow to artists who object to rivals using samples of their work to create new songs. ” (Bring on the legal remixes and mashups!)
- Immersion [The New York Times – Video Library] – A fascinating video by Robbie Cooper which captures the faces of young people as they play videogames – watch that concentration! (There are photos, too.)
- ‘The Dark Knight’ Conquers BitTorrent [TorrentFreak] – This week, in another round of leaks, DVD-rips of ‘The Dark Knight’ found their way to BitTorrent. Unsurprisingly, given the commercial success of the movie, <em>these were downloaded well over a million times in just a few days</em>. From the looks of it, Batman will crush Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Transformers, as it will easily become this year’s most pirated movie.
- Star Trek [Apple – Trailers] – Young James T Kirk … the beginnings of the Enterprise … angry Spock … and sex in outer space. The Star Trek reboot will either be amazing or utterly wrong!
- 19-Year-Old Lifecaster Commits Suicide on Justin.TV [smcb] – “In a tragic story from NewTeeVee, we learn that a 19-year-old user of the online live-streaming video service Justin.TV has apparently commit suicide in front of an audience of fellow forum dwellers egging him on during the process. The death has been confirmed with the Broward County medical examiner and the timeline has been pieced together from several different forums that have chronicled the unfortunate series of events.”
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