Added a new link: the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I've heard about them by-the-by from their involvement in intellectual property cases, but I didn't check out the website until John told me about this article.
Lawrence Lessig pointed out a pretty valid problem in Free Culture, when, I think he was talking about Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid,a film that entirely re-appropriates old film noir footage into a new screwball comedy starring Steve Martin. Lessig pointed out how grossly unfair it is that a production company is capable of paying out the nose for all of these old licenses to create a transformative work, while Joe Shmoe would catch a lawsuit for the very same concept. The problem is primarily that this re-appropriation technique is an entirely new brand of creativity which now belongs only to the rich and the well-lawyered. Where cheap technology and the internet has "democratized" media production, stuffy copyrights keep it gentrified.
Free Culture came out a while ago and things have changed a little since then, but fair use is still so impossibly murky that the victor is often the powerful, not the just. A good example is the guy from Grand Rapids (Van der Beer? Van der something) who lost a lawsuit to JK Rowling for trying to publish a Harry Potter encyclopedia. To me that's a clear cut case of transformative work, and specifically with the Potter books it is not unprecedented. He lost anyway.
So that may defeat my next point when I say that despite all this, the best tool we have now for ownership in the new media landscape is to be well-informed about copyright and fair use. That's why Teaching Copyright is important. I think it's pretty cool.
Sorry I haven't been around much. I will continue to not be around much for the next several days. Settling in and starting a new life in DC is a full time job.
Showing posts with label Media Critical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Critical. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2009
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Birth of a Frontier
So, I spent all night cleaning apartment because me and the fiance are leaving for DC this morning. I finally finished around 6:30, which leaves me with exactly thirty minutes before I have to leave to run last minute errands downtown. (Jamaica Plain downtown, not Boston downtown). Instead of sleeping, which I find futile under these conditions, I decided to eat little pieces of cheese and read some stuff that FreePress sent me:
In Move to Digital TV, Confusion is in the Air, NY Times
For once, I'm going to have to go out on a limb here and say that the government, the FCC, and other commercial networks are doing a pretty decent job of informing people about the switch . Although, when I read that most people think that this switch requires them to start buying cable or satellite service, I did narrow my eyes a little at Comcast, whose commercials are vague and slightly condescending enough to nudge people in that direction.
The reason there is still great confusion is quite simple: it's really confusing. I get that. It's also more or less unprecendented, and when you try to do something different and universal, the average joe-shmoe is slow on the uptake, no matter how many times you blast it into his face. It's not his fault, or anyone's. Technology is generally intimidating for middle-aged rug salesmen who just wants to watch CSI after work, because he's generally not interested unless he has to be.
My question is not in the logistics. I know that Feb 17th will be the second coming of hell (whatever that is) for a lot of people. My question is why.
Really, why this government mandated switch? I have no idea. To be fair, I haven't done much digging, but I thought I would pose the question to the masses, because my friends are smarter than the internet.
Another interesting thing of note. When the digital transition was announced, analogue TVs disappeared off the shelf. Whooosh, gone. It's not like they stopped ordering new analogue TVs wholesale, they vanquished them entirely.
What happens now, to those empty airwaves? They don't just disappear. This, I am very very interested in. I feel like it would be a rogue playground for all the basement pirates, a beautiful oasis of DIY indie love, or at least for one dreamer's second. It will probably be quickly snatched up by some one else, some one big, but...who? I don't think for a second that the government is about to let that newly whitewashed airwave frontier go to waste.
It reminds me of Edwin Armstrong and the new days of FM Radio. David Sarnoff of RCA basically sucked him dry of all he had and drove him to suicide because he had discovered, temporarily, a product that RCA did not know how to commodify. I think it's one of the great unsung American tragedies.
Future Post! I plan to talk about zombies a little, and vampires a little more.
In Move to Digital TV, Confusion is in the Air, NY Times
For once, I'm going to have to go out on a limb here and say that the government, the FCC, and other commercial networks are doing a pretty decent job of informing people about the switch . Although, when I read that most people think that this switch requires them to start buying cable or satellite service, I did narrow my eyes a little at Comcast, whose commercials are vague and slightly condescending enough to nudge people in that direction.
The reason there is still great confusion is quite simple: it's really confusing. I get that. It's also more or less unprecendented, and when you try to do something different and universal, the average joe-shmoe is slow on the uptake, no matter how many times you blast it into his face. It's not his fault, or anyone's. Technology is generally intimidating for middle-aged rug salesmen who just wants to watch CSI after work, because he's generally not interested unless he has to be.
My question is not in the logistics. I know that Feb 17th will be the second coming of hell (whatever that is) for a lot of people. My question is why.
Really, why this government mandated switch? I have no idea. To be fair, I haven't done much digging, but I thought I would pose the question to the masses, because my friends are smarter than the internet.
Another interesting thing of note. When the digital transition was announced, analogue TVs disappeared off the shelf. Whooosh, gone. It's not like they stopped ordering new analogue TVs wholesale, they vanquished them entirely.
What happens now, to those empty airwaves? They don't just disappear. This, I am very very interested in. I feel like it would be a rogue playground for all the basement pirates, a beautiful oasis of DIY indie love, or at least for one dreamer's second. It will probably be quickly snatched up by some one else, some one big, but...who? I don't think for a second that the government is about to let that newly whitewashed airwave frontier go to waste.
It reminds me of Edwin Armstrong and the new days of FM Radio. David Sarnoff of RCA basically sucked him dry of all he had and drove him to suicide because he had discovered, temporarily, a product that RCA did not know how to commodify. I think it's one of the great unsung American tragedies.
Future Post! I plan to talk about zombies a little, and vampires a little more.
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