Archive for the 'Internet' Category

Last week, I gave a presentation at the Copyright Licensing Agency’s annual open meeting about The Impact of Web 2.0 on copyright issues. It was a packed hall with over 180 people, many of them standing. The delegates ranged from authors and content producers to publishers and librarians and knowledge management professionals in education and business organisations. Althought I couldn’t make it for the whole of the round table discussion on digital information and copyright chaired by Chris Bryant, MP, I managed to catch the tail end of it. I also had the chance after the event to speak to a few of the delegates, including representatives from the BBC, a photographic rights agency, a publisher and a corporate knowledge management professional.

I’m jotting down here some of my impressions of the issues from the conference - these are no more than impressions and vignettes of the discussions as they were aired and raise more questions for debate rather than giving firm answers.

• The government is making funding available for schools to help students become more internet- and social media- literate but there are apparently delays due to concerns about schools using materials off the internet in breach of copyright. However, there are apparently special sites offering copyright-free material for schools and educational establishment for just this purpose. But, overall, can the government with all its unwieldy bureaucratic machinery be the right instrument for change is the fast moving area of online technology and networked communication and enterprise?

• Is digital rights management here to stay? Or will content producers like the BBC have to accept the fact that they will have to let go off their rights to a product some time after it’s been produced?

• At the moment, the likes of the BBC can still find a market to sell its high quality products like its natural world series etc due to the fact that pirated versions on the internet are of low quality. It is probably not long before the technology will be freely available to upload high quality pirated versions online. What then for the original content producers?

• Is there a future for book writers when digital readers become more widely available? At the moment, book lovers are still attached to the physical book but as the young techno-loving iPod wearing millenials and their children start to outnumber us oldies, will they adapt more enthusiastically to electronic book readers? If so, will that be an opportunity for “bijou” writers who don’t produce blockbusters to gain a wider readership through digital distribution because they won’t be at the mercy of the bookshops for distribution? Or will it be a threat because their work can now be easily copied and freely distributed illegally?

• Chris Bryant mentioned the estate of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. The estate were apparently restrictive for a long time in granting rights for Brecht’s works to be used, quoted, performed or edited. For example, his plays in their original would run for over 3.5 hours which is difficult to market to today’s theatre-going audiences. However, they have recently been more open in rights granting and the result has been that more Brecht plays are being performed and the increased exposure generally from the dissemination of his works through freer rights has resulted in greater revenue returns for the estate.

• The panellists in the main discussion all called for flexibility in managing copyright - yes, it is important to protect and value the products of creativity and hard work but in this digital age, it’s important to be flexible to enable the sharing of information and knowledge.

• I was struck by the comment of a university representative about the difficulties of printing off 50 copies of an online article to include in a student pack for discussion on one of the university’s courses. It’s ironic in that the founding principle of the World Wide Web was that the technology was meant to make information freely available for all…

What do you think? Have you had experiences around copyright issues and social media or online digital technologies? I’d love to hear your views - please add a comment or email me.

Photo: of Sony Digital Reader thanks to askdavetaylor.com

ymcla

Today, I’m going along to the Copyright Licensing Agency to give a presentation at their open meeting on the impact of digital media and Web 2.0 for copyright stakeholders. It was somewhat last minute as their original speaker for the Web 2.0 segment, Giles Colbourne, a web usality expert at cxpartners, was unable to attend due to a conflicting engagement in the US. Giles asked me to step in last week so I spent most of this last weekend, putting together the presentation and slides.

While thinking about the issues to bring together for this talk, I found myself having a vested interest in both sides of the rights-holding debate.

As a a writer in print media, with two novels published, a third book (non-fiction) in the works and articles published in magazines to my name, I am fully in favour of my creative rights being protected by legislation. The reason is primarily to do with the monetary currency that I receive in return for my work from the bodies who publish my writing. As a professional writer, I expect to be remunerated for the work I create.

As a blogger and free-wheeling consumer of social media on the internet, I’ve got used to the idea that stuff from the web should be free - other than real-world-type things that you have to buy like CDS, books, groceries online or software of a certain level of high complexity that is worth paying money for. People create videos on Youtube and give you an embed code so you can embed (publish) it on your own site. Musicians create podsafe music for the joy of distributing their music to millions online even though they may not be able to get a record deal. I spend as much time - if not more - writing on my blog for free, compared to how much time I spent writing my novels, for which I was paid. Others offer their photos under the Creative Commons Licence so we can enjoy their creative work for free. The idea of having to pay for social media stuff in order to remunerate their creators feels like anathema.

This makes me feel strangely schizophrenic.

But I think the answer to breaking through the apparent conflict is in how we value the content we create in different media.

In my post last week on the world’s first website, I discussed the founding principle behind the world wide web and social media - the principle that information should be freely available to anyone. This is seemingly at odds with the traditional view that information and intellectual property has value and if you want it you need to pay for it.

In the traditional model, the value lies in scarcity and protection. In the new social media model, value lies in abundance and in sharing.

What I’ll be exploring in my talk to the CLA is what value the web’s open source principle has to offer to us offline content creators and publishers - and how we might look to take advantage of it, which I hope will be an interesting and useful approach for the writers, publishers and rights agents who will be attending.

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For delegates attending the CLA open meeting, you can download my presentation slides on The Impact of Web 2.0 - I will be making the password available at the meeting.

ymcla

The world wide web. Social networks. Links. Making connections. Creating communities. The internet.

All these words and phrases evoke images of a spider’s web, a network of connections, chains, groups of people, fishing nets - so many things that bind us all together.

One of the powerful currencies of social media is links - because links help you move up the searchability ranks and also up the rank of authority. It comes from the early origins of the internet which began in the world of academia. Academic texts that are referred to by other academic writers gain the reputation of being authorities on that particular subject. The more a particular text is cited, the greater the authority. So, for example, in the world of psychology, textbooks invariably cite Freud - but they are not so likely to cite an unknown student’s dissertation. Freud is an authority - and is likely to stay one - while that unknown student is not unless he/ she gets their dissertation noticed and cited by other academics. And cited a lot.

So with blogs and websites and other online content: the more other sites link to your blog, the greater your blog is considered an authority. Technorati is a website that calculates your blog’s ranking in the world of blogs so you can see how you compare with the top blogs like Endgadget (No. 1) and Boing Boing (No. 2) - they are the blogs that are linked to the most.

There’s a delightful application called TouchGraph that helps you visualise the network of communities and connections that you are in. Here is a screen shot of the connectivity for my arts and writing blog, Fusion View (No. 69,776* on Technorati).

(Click on the picture for a more detailed view)

To check out how connected you are, go to TouchGraph and type in your blog’s URL and it will generate a swirling, moving net of all the other blogs and websites you are linked with. It’s wonderfully hypnotic, reminding me of the adage that no-one is more than six people away from anyone else (”the six degrees of separation”).

And if you haven’t already done so, sign up at Technorati and “claim your blog”.

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*It seems that breaking through the top 100,000 Technorati ranking barrier is a big deal on the blogosphere, as testified by some of the blog posts that celebrate that breakthrough. So, I guess I need to do something like throw my mouse in the air and douse my computer with champagne or something…!

A survey by BurstMedia in June this year on women and the internet reveals that over half of the women (54.5%) in the US say the Internet is their primary source of information when researching products they might purchase. The survey sampled over 1,800 women aged 25 and upwards. Their next port of call is to ask family and friends - but only 10.9% of the sample do that. Newspapers and magazines come in at 9.9% and brochures and pamphlets at 5.1%, with radio as the last port of call with a rather sorry 1.3%.

While this survey is specific to the US, I expect that you might infer a similar tech-savvy approach to shopping in most of the industrialised nations where women are empowered and have the oppportunities for self-actualisation and financial independence.

For businesses, this represents a huge opportunity to tap into these eager consumers online. The key factor here is that these women are using the Internet to find out about products before or as they purchase. If your business has products and services that are of interest to women, you could really capitalise on this with creating informative and user-friendly pages that will help these potential customers in making their shopping decisions. While they are on your site, reading up on all your useful data and advice, they are engaging with your brand and your online presence - all great for marketing and customer-retention as well as conversion of these potential customers into actual ones.

One thing to remember - you don’t have to target your customers in a gender-biased way eg this opportunity is about more than handbags and pink accessories. Women have to buy household goods, computer equipment, iPods - even power tools - just like men. So whatever you sell, there’s an opportunity here to help all your customers with their buying decisions, not just “the ladies”.

Blogs are an easy way to share your opinions and reviews about products. Here are some to explore:

Shiny Shiny - hmm, very pink and very focused on the gender thing but a good and useful site in spite of that.

Endgadget - the ultimate gadget guide

Rugged Notebooks - a number of bloggers blog about this hardy product, one of whom is digitalnomad, a ZenGuide regular commenter.

Amazon of course have the customer review sections for all their products. I rely on those fairly heavily when considering whether or not to buy a particular book or digitial gadget they are offering. Whether it’s the case or not, customer reviews always feel as if you’re getting a range of opinions and not just the store or manufacturer’s party line.

Photo: thanks to brittanycondo.com

From time to time I’ll be posting a selection of articles from all over the web that I’ve found interesting and useful - and hopefully, you will, too.

This reading list is permanently lodged in my sidebar and is updated as I come across new articles but I’ll be highlighting it in a post every so often for those of you who read your blogs in a blog reader (and so don’t often see my sidebar).

Elton John recently ranted against the internet and social media, according to Neowin.net and other news sources. He is quoted as saying:

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there — communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

It reminded me that there are still many people out there who don’t know much about online social culture and who for some reason don’t want to know about it. I think it’s a shame for them - there is so much creativity and experimentation online in terms of self-expression and artistic expression as well as increased communications between people and cultures.

Here are some examples:

Music

There are a number of virtual recording studios like Net Studio where musicians can collaborate with other musicians anywhere in the world, not just those who are in the same town as they are.

Podsafe music is music that can be used for podcasting without paying a royalty. Podsafe networks allow musicians to distribute their music globally over the internet and there are internet stations like Accident Hash that specialise in playing podsafe music. And a lot of it is really good stuff, too.

Individuals doing funky things with music for themselves and their friends and in the process becoming music legends online - like this young Korean guy playing Pachelbel’s Cannon like you’ve never heard it before.

Books and Blogging

Bhagdad Burning was a blog by a young Iraqi girl which was subsequently turned into a prize-winning book of the same name.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is a book that was compiled by the blog of a London Ambulance driver, Random Acts of Reality

The Blooker Prize is an annual prize for the best blog, modelled on the Booker Prize for books.

Photography

Andrew Losowksy started a collection of photographs of doorbells in Florence, Italy on Flickr, the photo-sharing site. He would write stories to accompany the pictures. He gained a huge following online for his stories and the photos and stories have now been transformed into a book The Doorbells of Florence that has won the Blooker prize.

There’s a whole genre of photography around the theme of a daily photo from your city eg City Daily Photo Blog, Santiago de Chile Daily Photo Blog, Brighton Daily Photo etc

There is a group on Flickr that creates short stories using a series of five photos.

Art

I love this web installation by filmmaker and artist Miranda July - it’s filmic, witty and a commentary on websites all at the same time: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Rhizome is a site that posts news about new media art and the intersection of technology and art, with great links to a vast range of different art websites and blogs.

Social Networks

As for making connections, blogging and social networks like Facebook help people connect so much more easily than in the days of snail mail. I’ve personally made some great new friends in Malaysia through the litbloggers network there and I enjoy using the online telephony service Skype to connect with my family. Facebook and Twitter has enabled me to keep in contact with a range of friends in the UK and Malaysia that I might otherwise not keep in contact with. In many ways, I feel I have a much richer social life through both offline connections with my regular local friends and online connections with those who are further away or in another country.

In my view, the things that are going to “change the world and change the way people listen to music” - and for that matter, change how we relate, connect and create - are already happening online with great energy and creativity. With or without the likes of Elton John.

If you’re a web fan and blogger like me, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse must surely be the one smashing up the servers and hard drives and wires that keep the internet going.

The satirical website The Onion has this very funny news report on what it might be like if there was
a Web Crash 2007. You’ll need the sound enabled on your computer to get the jokes.

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UPDATE: In the light of the outage in the San Francisco Bay Area yesterday 23 July 2007, perhaps this satirical news report has actually come true? The Scientific American has the scoop.