[alt-media-res] Fw: [transmission-discuss] Sasha's take on political economy of web 2.0

zoe zoe at esemplastic.net
Thu Jul 12 13:15:29 BST 2007


----- Original Message ----- 
From: DeeDee Halleck 
To: discuss at transmission.cc 
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 1:35 AM
Subject: [transmission-discuss] Sasha's take on political economy of web 2.0




  From: Sasha Costanza-Chock <schock at riseup.net>
  Date: July 8, 2007 5:16:21 PM EDT
  To: imc-video at lists.indymedia.org
  Subject: [IMC-Video] political economy of web 2.0
  Reply-To: schock at riseup.net


  Hi all, glad to see this discussion on the list, alongside the much
  needed CMS /functionality upgrade discussion.


  Some of my recent thoughts on the topic:


  (from notes on FilmForge development)


  Background: online video


  Online video sharing has been around since the early days of the net,
  but the community of people involved was at first limited to those with
  fast connections (until fairly recently, this meant universities) and
  folks with net skills more advanced than those of the typical user. By
  1999, the first dot com boom brought a flurry of activity around web
  video, but low rates of broadband penetration, relatively small
  distribution of digital video cameras, and relatively poor user
  interface design of web video sites limited its successful
  mainstreaming. The Indymedia network had early success with video
  coverage of major anticorporate globalization events beginning in 1999,
  but in fact the number of active video producers remained a relative
  handful (compared to much more widespread text, photo, and audio
  contributions). By 2003 more bloggers were incorporating their own video
  content, but it wasn't until 2006 that web video exploded into popular
  consciousness (read: sustained coverage in both print, broadcast, cable,
  and online mass media outlets) with the massive popularity of YouTube.
  Online video's status as a major arena for Web 2.0 investment was of
  course cemented by Google's 1.6 billion dollar acquisition of YouTube,
  and the browser-based video upload and sharing space quickly became
  crowded with entrants. Some are simply YouTube clones; others are
  integrated into existing social network platforms (MySpace video); some
  offer additional functionality such as browser-based editing
  (jumpcut.com and EyeSpot.com); still others try to attract
  higher-quality material by sharing a cut of advertising revenues with
  the producers (revver.com, blip.tv).


  For the community of videomakers focused on human rights documentation
  and social movement mediamaking (the community I work with most
  closely), as well as for other public interest, educational, and
  nonprofit organizations, the rise of corporate videosharing sites
  presents both major opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, such
  communities of videomakers are now able to quickly find vast audiences
  that were previously inaccessible. On the other hand, almost all of the
  corporate video application service providers have the following problems:


  1) Exploitation. Content producers in effect do free labor for corporate
  video sites by producing original content and uploading it under terms
  that allow these sites to exploit and profit from their work,
  perpetually, across both old and new media distribution channels,
  without ever paying a cent. 'Volunteer' content producers also do the
  work of promoting their videos across the net, thus generating the
  eyeballs key to video sites' advertising revenue. (For example, see
  YouTube's Terms of Service: "...by submitting User Submissions to
  YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive,
  royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce,
  distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User
  Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and
  its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation
  for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and
  derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media
  channels..." [http://youtube.com/t/terms]).


  2) Free Speech. YouTube, and most corporate sites, in general take
  material down as soon as they are asked to do so by either media firms
  (for example, see the recent Businessweek article "The YouTube
  Police."[http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_21/b4035060.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_best+of+the+magazine])
  or governments (for example, see the Turkish government's takedown
  requests against material critical of Ataturk
  [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070307/125734.shtml]).


  3) Privacy. All corporate videosharing sites track users' IP addresses,
  which means that information about users is readily available via
  subpoenas by competing companies or law enforcement agents. This
  presents a problem most clearly in places where state censorship of the
  net is broad and penalties are severe (for example, woe to the Chinese
  video blogger who uploads a video clip of government repression to a
  corporate videosharing site, even using a pseudonym), but also raises
  real concerns for activist communities targeted by the 'War on Terror'
  (for example see the Electronic Frontier Foundation case against the USG
  in the 2004 Indymedia server subpoena and seizure
  [http://www.eff.org/Censorship/Indymedia/]).


  4) Access. All of the corporate videosharing sites operate on
  proprietary source code, which means that users are unable to
  participate in development of new functionality, and most only allow
  video viewing in low-quality flash format, making it impossible for
  other users to sample from, quote, or otherwise creatively reuse the
  source material.


  For these and other reasons, while YouTube and its clones may be a good
  way to get material seen, it is not a safe or long term solution for
  human rights videomakers, or for that matter for anyone concerned with
  exploitation, free speech, privacy, or access rights. This critique is
  elaborated further in a recent article published by Mute magazine
  [http://www.metamute.org/en/InfoEnclosure-2.0]. Yet, moving beyond
  critique, what other options do nonprofit, educational, public interest,
  and activist organizations have?




  The Alternatives


  Happily, the number, quality, and reach of nonprofit, open source,
  videosharing tools, hosts, and networks are all steadily growing. Andy
  Lowenthal has recently documented this in his excellent article "Free
  Media vs Free Beer"
  [http://engagemedia.org/Members/andrewl/news/freebeer/view].
  Alternatives to for-profit, proprietary video sharing sites include
  videosharing spaces like archive.org, ourmedia.org, and
  video.indymedia.org. These sites don't exploit producers' content for
  money, vigorously defend their users' free speech and privacy rights
  (some of them, like Indymedia, don't even track user IP addresses), and
  are all built on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), making them open
  to modification by the broader FOSS community.


  In 2005-2007, recognition spread throughout the nonprofit and video
  activist communities that some software developers were duplicating work
  in this area, and a network called transmission
  [http://www.transmission.cc] ]was formed to share knowledge, expertise,
  and development tasks for the next generation of FOSS videosharing. The
  transmission network created several working groups in order to focus on
  key issues such as content management systems (CMS), metadata standards
  [http://wiki.transmission.cc/index.php/Metadata_working_group],
  subtitles, screenings database, and codecs. Outcomes of the transmission
  network include a draft metadata standard and report
  [http://www.shiftspace.cc/j/meta/tx_report_0.2.pdf], and a? fully
  functional, customized video version of the FOSS CMS Plone called Plumi
  [http://www.plumi.org], with a demonstration site running at
  EngageMedia.org [http://www.engagemedia.org].




  FilmForge


  Another outcome of the transmission network is a recent surge of effort
  around developing a version of the FOSS CMS Drupal [http://drupal.org]
  that is customized for videosharing. This networked effort is now
  coalescing under the umbrella of the FilmForge project. FilmForge's
  mission statement is to develop "a version of the content management
  system Drupal, tailored to the needs of videomaking communities.
  FilmForge makes it simple to install and run your own video sharing
  site" [http://filmforge.koumbit.net]. In essence, FilmForge (like Plumi)
  will replicate all of the functionality of existing sites like YouTube,
  add additional functionality key to nonprofit, activist, and educational
  videomakers (such as alternative licensing systems, source material
  download, peer to peer seeding, browser based subtitling, and more), all
  while avoiding the problems and pitfalls outlined above. Most
  importantly, it is Free and Open Source Software, meaning that
  communities of videomakers who choose to use it will be able to choose
  between uploading their content to an existing shared FilmForge based
  site, or downloading and installing FilmForge on their own server. If
  they choose the latter option, of course, they will be free to make
  modifications, additions, and updates to the code, provided they return
  these modifications to the Drupal community.


  For more information about the current and future functionality of
  FilmForge, check http://filmforge.koumbit.net/en/about.


  For more on Plumi, check out http://plumi.org




  Sasha Costanza-Chock, July 2007
  schock AT riseup.net


  http://video.indymedia.org
  http://filmforge.koumbit.net






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www.deedeehalleck.blogspot.com
www.deepdishwavesofchange.blogspot.com








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