Copyrights and wrongs

Copyright. What does that word say to you? Does it say 'unnecessary restriction' or does it say 'necessary lifeline to media producers'? Depending on your answer, you will either be anti- or pro-copyright, and probably with good reasoning each way.

The internet is the main location for copyright debate as it is where the majority of copyright infringement takes place. The internet was originally designed to be open, yet many people now believe it is far too open as copyrighted material is now extremely easy to get hold of. Due to programs such as uTorrent and LimeWire as well as websites such as The Pirate Bay it has become very easy for people to get things for free. In fact, The Pirate Bay has gained a lot of media attention recently- despite it being a database of torrents rather than a site hosting them.

Media companies are so defensive of their copyright that they have written letters to The Pirate Bay on multiple occasions, and these can be viewed here (alongside the websites rather humorous and outspoken reactions). I don't believe that torrenting is legal in any way - but I do believe that it has become a standard part of communication these days, and file sharing is just not likely to go away any time soon. Whilst it does deprive media companies of revenue - I do not think the problem is as drastic as people perceive, especially as music and DVD sales are currently rising. I think that the internet should be kept free and unrestricted, even if this does involve some forms of copyright breaching. Obviously, media producers do deserve to keep creative control over their property - but I do see it as an unnecessary restriction at times.

One such way in which it is particularly obstructive is involved in participatory or remix culture. How is it possible for culture to evolve through editing and remixing when media conglomerates block such things from breaking through due to their extremely possessive nature about copyright? Despite being rhetoric, the answer to this question simply is "it can't." In my opinion this is a sad state of affairs for our culture. We are being smothered by the companies in charge, who are desperately trying to stifle creativity and convergence just in case their copyright is broken.

What is more worrying and restrictive is the 2010 Digital Economy Act that our beloved UK Government has just passed. This Act is utter nonsense and is one that particularly worries me, and those others who believe in freedom on the internet. For those who don't know, the Act allows ISPs to disconnect people under suspicion of brekaing copyright law (without evidence), allows ISPs to begin 'bandwidth throttling' in order to slow down people's internet connections, and allows the UK Government to block any website they wish on the premise that it contains copyrighted material illegally. These draconian measures particularly worry me as they appear to be locking down the internet in a way that will simply ruin our modern day culture rather than block copyright infringement. After all, it is surely only a matter of time until a new way of downloading that is undetectable to the Government is discovered and made popular amongst internet users.

One way of meeting in the middle with copyright is the idea of Creative Commons Copyright. This means people can place a Creative Commons Copyright on their product which allows for flexibility. It allows people to use things commercially, or to take parts of their work and do what they like with it - provided they do the same with theirs. In fact, it is so easy to do this that I have put a CC Copyright onto this blog post.

I think that copyright is, on the whole good for media - but it is the ways in which it is enforced and policed which make the issue a difficult one. I agree that copyright is needed, but I believe that on public forums such as the internet where file-sharing is rife it should not be attacked in the way it has been. The internet should remain free, and participatory culture should remain untouched. Things like the Digital Economy Act are damaging to our society and the internet as a whole, and go as far to ruin all the work that things like Creative Commons have done to find a possible middle ground for copyright usage.

Copyrights and wrongs by Scott Kelly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at scottkelly91.blogspot.com.
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You've Got The Power!

The Internet is home to all sorts of campaigns due to its open nature and the social power that is behind it. Whether on social networking websites themselves like Facebook and Twitter or on websites designed specifically for campaigns - like Channel 4's Battlefront - the Internet appears to be full of people campaigning or trying to get their opinions across to an audience as far reaching as possible.

In order to experience this in some way, we had to form our own campaign idea within our workshops. This gave us the opportunity to work out how we would form a campaign and spread our word to the corners of the world. We chose to base our campaign around the proposed idea that would force students to do compulsory community service in order to help pay off some of their loans. This is an idea that I, along with the rest of my group, are strongly against - as it seems to treat us students like criminals, and does not allow for any choice in the matter.

Once we had an idea for a campaign, we needed to create a video in order to spread the word. After viewing different videos on the Battlefront website, it was decided that we did not want to do anything too serious - as this would not attract the attention of the majority of our target audience: students. This led to the following tongue-in-cheek production which we believed could be turned into a form of viral campaign which people would forward to their friends in order to spread the word.

As you will notice from watching the video, the ending provides links to places which further our campaign. As a group, we knew the power that social networking websites hold for campaigns - with good examples coming from the recent 'battles for Christmas Number 1' in recent years which have shown how the power of a simple social networking site can convince thousands of people to buy a song at once.

We also knew that these sites are extremely popular with young people, especially students, and so it would be silly of us not to include them within our plan. By using Facebook, a campaign can share video, news, information and events with its followers, whilst interacting with them and making them feel involved too. By using Twitter an even closer form of interaction is displayed through the '@reply' feature and allows the campaign to give shorter, snappier and more up-to-the-minute updates to how they are getting on.

Whilst we did not actually make a Facebook page for our campaign (though one does exist already), we did make a Twitter account: @dmusaccs. Although it is not exactly populated with many tweets, it shows an example of how the word can be spread to many people, very quickly.

I think the Internet is the perfect place for people to campaign, as it is so social and open. The boundaries are near enough limitless on the Internet, and this freedom is what makes 'net campaigns flourish so much. Even on a small scale like this one, I think my group proved quite well how campaigns can be thought about and set up in a small space of time - even if they are not produced and finished to the high-end and widespread standards of something more professional like Battlefront.

Remix Culture II - Why is it important?

A couple of months ago I blogged about The Muppets' version of the classic Queen song 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' This was both an example of Remix Culture as well as Viral Videos. Whilst I covered how remix (or participatory) culture is good, and how it is popular - I did not explain why it is important and why it should stay within our culture. Remix Culture is a great part of our culture as it encourages convergence and it allows the consumer of media to become the producer of the media.

There are many forms of remixing, though the most popular tend to involve videos and websites such as YouTube. Many forms of remix video have gained millions and millions of views between them - despite the fact that they often break copyright law. Having said this, remixing tends to be not-for-profit and thus is, in my opinion, a part of our culture that should be allowed, especially as the creativity of many people can influence what the large media conglomerates then do with their products.

This is the fundamental reason, in my opinion, why remix culture is important. It encourages creativity and convergence and is the main reason why our culture evolves - thanks to the innovation of the consumer. To discuss remix culture without an example would be silly, so here are two popular examples of remix culture - both in video and music.

Here is one of the more well known forms of remix culture, the subtitling of a scene from the famous film Downfall in order to alter the meaning of Hitler's rant:

This is a particularly interesting version of these Downfall parodies, as the parodies themselves have started to be removed from YouTube due to copyright claims from the movie's producers. This behaviour intrigues me, as millions of people have seen variations on these parodies - and they have brought much attention onto the film Downfall that would not have otherwise reached the movie.

This is, however, what remix culture comes down to: copyright. I believe that it is important for our culture as it shapes and evolves what we already have into something new and innovative. Yet, when it is stifled by media companies - it becomes very difficult for this creativity to actually break through.

Here is another example of remix culture - a video by 'DJ Earworm' who mixed the 25 top selling songs on the US Billboard Chart of 2009 into one single track and video:

This is an incredibly clever piece of music and video - and is a classic example of remixing at its best. Whilst the artist does not own the copyright to any of the songs, he has transformed them into something new and different - which has gained millions of views on YouTube in a short amount of time.

Remix culture is not completely ignored by companies though. the BBC recently encouraged remixing when it offered the EastEnders theme tune up for manipulation for its new online TV drama: http://www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders/e20/behindscenes/theme_tune.shtml.

This shows that not everybody views remixing as bad - especially when permission is given. I believe that even without the respective copyright permission, remix and participatory culture are vital to our society - due to the nature of the innovation and ideas. Without ideas like these our culture would be stagnant, and it is important that media always evolves due to the intelligence of its consumers - who are big enough fans of certain products to spend their spare time working with the media to converge and create something brand new.

Psycho-geography

In our workshops we were recently presented with the idea of psycho-geography. "Pyscho-what?" was my first reaction to the idea - as I had never heard of it before. After some discussion in class, as well as research, I discovered a good definition of it as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Whilst this definition is a bit wordy, it does cover the main point of psycho-geography - seeing an environment in a different way, so that its effect on behavior and emotions can be found.

One way of doing this simply is by taking a stroll through a place you are familiar with, but by taking a different route to normal. By doing this, you are likely to notice new and interesting things that one would not have otherwise seen. This is a simple way of implementing psycho-geography and is one that we were asked to follow in class.

Within my group, we originally decided to take a walk that mapped out the acronym "LOL" on a map of Leicester, but after starting our walk, our attentions wandered and so we just decided to spontaneously walk in a new direction after a certain distance. This random nature of the walk captured the idea of psycho-geography well in my opinion as it allowed us to truly discover Leicester in an individual way as we were looking at it through fresh eyes, due to the random way in which our walk was conducted.

Here is the result of our walk on a modified Google Map:

View The Magic Lizard Crawl in a larger map

By using this map, it related our walk back to digital media and showed how a simple project like this psycho-geography one, can be integrated totally within the digital world. Whilst our outcome was simple - we used a Google map with images pinned to it - it could have been much more complex due to the wide variety of websites available. Had we wanted to be more detailed, we could have uploaded video at each location to a site like YouTube or Vimeo. Had we wanted to record sound at locations we could have used AudioBoo. The possibilities are endless for doing this kind of task - and if done on a large scale could have a profound effect on people.

I think psycho-geography is a clever idea, and is one that is open to much development and interactivity in a digital age. When it was originally realised, photography was the only true form of doing a project like this, but thanks to the era that we are living in, pyscho-geography can be so much more. It can transform somewhere mundane into somewhere new. It can allow residents of areas to see their hometowns in new lights, and it can allow tourists to see just what a place has to offer.

Whilst my group may have done a fairly simple project - I think we showed how even a random stroll through town can provide an interesting viewpoint on the place in which we all live and work - something I believe is the aim of psycho-geography.

References:

Introduction to a critique of urban geography, 1955

Remix Culture - The Muppets sing Bohemian Rhapsody

After discussing and learning a bit about remix culture over the last couple of weeks, and thinking that a lot of the stuff that has been made is, quite frankly genius, I then discovered this amazing video about ten minutes ago.

While it's not as much a part of remix culture as things like the Hitler Downfall videos, it shows how even the world's biggest and most loved production companies can take part and make something their own. Just thought I'd share it as a good example...

Here are The Muppets, doing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in a very special way:



(Oh, and just as a side note, at the time of writing, "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the 4th largest trending topic on Twitter because of this - just shows how quickly things can go viral!)

UPDATE (25/11 @ 3pm) - When I embedded the video on here, it had about 500 views on YouTube. In under 24 hours it has now broken the 1million views mark. This really shows how quickly videos can go viral!

Week 6 - Presentations...

So, this week we presented our, well, presentations on Web 2.0. Our group's chosen title was Rich User Expriences in Web 2.0 and here is the presentation. It was a Pecha Kucha presentation and so each slide lasted for 20 seconds:

Rich User Experiences in Web 2.0

View more presentations from lolscott.

In this presentation, we covered the 'rich user experiences' which make Web 2.0 so different and more user-involved than the Internet of the past. We centered this discussion mainly on social networking sites - as these are the most popular user experiences which people take part in. Even though these are now taken as a standard part of day-to-day life, they are always evolving and borrowing from each other in order to become the richest experience for their users. This user involvement gives people a sense of belonging, and makes us believe that the website truly cares about us as an individual person.

Despite this, slide 2 showed how sites like Facebook are not actually made for the user, but for the administrators needs - something proven by the vast amounts of groups and pages calling for Facebook to be changed or altered in some way. This is strangely another form of rich user experience as it allows the users to feel involved in the websites running. Also connected to this is the notion that Twitter can be seen as the medium of protest - in the way that it connects people very quickly through a small amount of communication.

We then discussed how these websites encourage networking through the use of social games - something which on a secondary level allows people to develop and earn money from the users of the site. This lead us onto the discussion of 'free labour in a web 2.0 world' - something which is related directly to the many thousands of applications developed specifically for sites like Twitter which create a more immersive experience for users, but often to not pocket the developers much money at all. This works well for the user - as it creates a richer experience - as well as the website itself - as it creates more attention and user activity. This free labour works on a more personal level too - and it covers things as simple as reporting a user on MySpace or tagging photos on Facebook or Flickr.

Whilst I have said that websites do not work for their users, but for their admins - it is true that the sites do actually go some way to incorporate ideas from their users, as well as respond directly to user feedback on new features. This is something that applies to modern day internet programs as well such as Adobe Flash and Adobe Air.

We reflected on all this by concluding with some key points. Social networking sites are the most important form of rich user experience in Web 2.0 and these allow people to interact with each other and provide people with a more interactive experience on the Internet. As these are free to access (on the whole) it means that we, as users, tend to spend a lot of time on them - something that is definitely true for me and my friends! These sites rely on people like me spending lots of time on them and hopefully then using my free time to give them free labour - via tagging, reporting, or even developing for the websites.

I think that this presentation covered why social networking websites are the archetypal form of rich user experience and provided examples of this - as well as the key idea of free labour.

Week 4 - Impression Management

This week's reading was Danah Boyd's article on "Why Youth Heart Myspace." This provided a great insight into the reasons that people use social networking websites and what they get out of them - it also led to some interesting discussions in class about this text and what the various things contained inside it meant. Something that particularly interested me was Boyd's interpretations and thoughts on impression management. She mentions "self-reflexivity, self-monitoring and imagining an audience" as being crucial to this impression management and after exploring this within both the online and offline worlds, it provides an interesting point of discussion.

Impression management is defined as being "part of a larger process where people seek to define a situation through their behaviour," or simply that people act in a certain way which is deemed socially acceptable in order to gain the acceptance of the people around them, and thus leave a positive impression. Both online and offline, we all use impression management and adapt socially in different situations, but it is those online interactions which can be much more controlled and tweaked in specific ways in order to impress or show off features about you which you want to use to fit in, or be liked for.

Whilst Boyd talked about MySpace in her article, in class we discussed Facebook - as it is much more widely used now than MySpace is. Whilst Facebook is lacking the extreme customisation that MySpace had on its profiles (through the entire page design being exploited), its uniform profiles mean that impression management has to be done on a more subtle level, through things such as text, profile pictures or the personal information you allow yourself to disclose.

We realised that as we know who our audience (or friends list) is, we know how to act around them and judge what would be seen as a socially acceptable status for example. This kind of impression management shows awareness of our audiences online and lets us control what we say and what people see of us in order to promote the most positive sides of our personalities. The same thing applies for picture tagging. When you see pictures of yourself on Facebook - it is not always a positive idea to tag them, as this may give a negative impression of you or your behaviour. This is something that is becoming increasingly apparent as University admission boards, or workplaces checking applications are starting to use social media to check up on their applicants and make judgemental decisions on them.

There are many, many different ways in which social media like MySpace and Facebook can be manipulated in order to give out the right impression of yourself socially, and thus they cannot all be explained. However, the two above examples combined with what Boyd wrote about in her article provide a great insight into how impression management works, and specifically on the internet. As the internet is providing us all with brand new ways of socially interacting with people, it seems right that we are all adapting to this and using tools such as impression management to keep socialising on the internet a positive thing for ourselves that doesn't end up ruining relationships and so on.

Hello!

Hello!

I am Scott Kelly, 18, and quite obviously studying Media Studies at DMU - which is pretty much why this entire blog thing is here. I don't really know what to write here, though hopefully by the end of the year I will have actually managed to write something decent...

To be honest, I don't really know what else to write so will leave it for now until I can actually come up with a decent blog post!