[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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