File Sharing Grows Up and Grasps the Economics of Content
One of the back-and-forth arguments around file-sharing is that those indulging in the practise are just taking (some would say stealing) from the creators and offering nothing back. The riposte is that the activities of file sharers act to promote the films rather than destroy their income. Here’s one example:
The story of Jerome Bixby’s “The Man from Earth“, a small-budget science fiction movie released on DVD in November, shows how piracy can help salvage, not sink, high-quality cinema. …
In early November Releaselog, a popular blog that regularly posts links to movies, music, and software (most of which is copyrighted), ran a review (with accompanying download links) of “The Man from Earth”. The review generated a flood of comments. The movie obviously struck a chord with the geeky and anti-establishment community at Releaselog and prompted many (illegal) downloads.
Most crews would have wanted to sue every downloader. Eric Wilkinson, the producer of “The Man from Earth” turned out to be much more new-media-savvy. He thanked the Releaselog community for piracy and said they were helping sales.
According to Wilkinson, in two weeks that passed after Releaselog wrote about the movie, it rose from the 11,235th to the 5th most popular movie among visitors to IMDB, a popular online movie database featuring user-generated reviews and rankings (the movie was the #1 independent film and #1 science fiction film on IMDB). Most of the traffic to the film’s web-site came from Releaselog. The pirates were definitely to thank for the publicity that ensued.
But I think until recently, while the debate has been a valid one, it would be hard to argue that file-sharing had fully grasped the issue of the economics of p2p, that is until until now. What I think we are seeing now is a huge culture shift as the same theory that has made p2p file-sharing such a powerful distribution medium is now being pointed at the money side of content creation. We’ve seen an explosion of crowd-sourcing (e.g journalism) and ideas like Flattr (social micropayments) and now Vo.do too – which is a very interesting project indeed:
VODO, short for voluntary donation, has been a great success thus far. With support from several torrent sites including EZTV, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, all of VODO’s major releases have been downloaded several hundred thousand times. In addition, downloaders have donated tens of thousands of dollars to the filmmakers.
Thus far, most of the buzz has been created by a small coalition of file-sharing sites. But with the the release of VODO 2.1 which rolled out this week, the founders of the project hope to get the average peer more engaged in promoting VODO films. With this strategy the promotional power should shift towards a swarm of real people and influencers, instead of the large sites.
The site added the VO.DO domain to the existing VODO.net one this week and introduced several new features at the same time. One of the new features is meant to increase user engagement. To motivate the public to share and promote films that are released through VODO, the project has introduced a reward system.
This is in contrast to sections of the existing hierarchical media who are still looking for a legal and/or technical fix to come along and make the digitality of digital content go away – which it won’t. Even worse, there are some seeing the legal-threat route as a profitable enterprise.
(Also posted on the p2p foundation blog)
Open Source Space Program
Thus far all of the major space programs have been led by national governments in conjunction. There are a few others that are being run by either huge corporations and/or individual billionaires. Needless to say that at the moment the space-race is not one for the rest of us.
Until now. Into the arena comes artist Song Hojun:
[Hojun] has for the past five years been exploring ways to integrate the concept of a personal satellite project into cultural contexts and into his artistic practice.
All the satellite-related systems (except for the rocket to launch it) are DIY programs –- designed so that regular people may also have the chance of developing and eventually launching their own.
There is also a book and website to support the project. While the art aspect of this project is clear – the aspiration that by default pushes space as a commons for all – is very exciting.
(Also posted on the p2p foundation blog.)
Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7: It’s Smartphone War!
As Google and Apple have been pushing futher into smartphone terriroty, Microsoft has been building for a major offensive:
Microsoft made its final roll of the dice in the global smartphone market today, launching a new mobile operating system which the software powerhouse hopes will rival iPhone and Android devices.
…
Microsoft still dominates office and consumer PC computing but is having to sprint to catch up on the lead it has surrendered in the past three years first to Apple and then to Google’s Android platform. Its rivals have grabbed roughly a third of the rapidly expanding market for devices that can connect to the internet while their user is on the move, as well as making phone calls.
Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said that he had “been looking forward to this day for some time” as he unveiled a range of phones using the system in the US. He said that the development of the software behind the Windows Phone 7 – reckoned by analysts to have cost the company more than a billion dollars, and to have a $400m (£250m) marketing budget attached – had been driven by the necessity to be “modern in its design principles, in the way that people use modern internet services, and we’ve taken a very different tack at the same time”.
The new interface aimed to integrate phonebooks, social networks and other information around “hubs” of people. Ballmer said: “We had an internal mantra that the customer is king … Give them the ability to do everything on their phone but easier and faster. Less stop and stare, more glance and glare.”
One of the last project’s I worked on at FluffyLogic was the Windows Phone 7 version of Battle for Hoth. Not if the success of WP7 was down to the hard work of Microcost’s coders, it would be a slam-dunk as they were always busy (but friendly). However I think this is going to be a tough battle for Microsoft. The phone interface is nice; pleasant to look at, nice transition animations and all. In addition if you’re an xobox gamer, given the integration with xobox Live, I think it will be more attractive. However we were using phones as dev units and not phones, so it’s hard to get a full feel MW7 as a fully functional device…
It will be interesting to see how it does.
My Research Gets Published!
I’m really pleased to say that a journal article I’ve written based on my PhD research is about to be published…
SPECIAL ISSUE
Peer-to-Peer Networking and Collaborative Learning
Guest Editors: DANIEL ARAYA & MICHAEL A. PETERS
Daniel Araya & Michael A. Peters. Introduction
C.K. Cheung. Web 2.0: challenges and opportunities for media education and beyond
Cynthia Carter Ching & Anthony W. Hursh. ‘This site is blocked:’ K-12 teachers and the challenge of accessing peer-to-peer networks for education
Mark Pegrum. ‘I link, therefore I am’: network literacy as a core digital literacy
Crystle Martin & Constance Steinkuehler. Collective Information Literacy in Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Hartmut Giest. Reinventing Education: new technology does not guarantee a new learning culture
David J. Ondercin. The Opportunity in Higher Education: how open education and peer-to-peer networks are essential for higher education
Ilias Karasavvidis. Understanding Wikibook-based Tensions in Higher Education: an activity theory approach
Tomas Rawlings. Understanding the Evolution of Technology through P2P Systems and Its Impact on Learning Environments
Chandler Armstrong. Catalyzing Collaborative Learning: how automated task distribution may prompt students to collaborate
Shwetha Kini. CoLab: a collaborative laboratory for facilitating code reviews through a peer-to-peer network
File Under ‘Important!’: How to Stop Robots From Killing Us
Ok, so are we head into the future, we don’t want to end up building Skynet – so we need to make sure our new robots don’t turn on us (as they seem to do in all the good sci-fi films).
So Michio Kaku, who is Professor of Theoretical Physics, CUNY sugguests that we could put a chip in robots’ brains to shut them off if they start to get murderous.
Response to Fun with Software
I’ve been asked, along with Jon Dovey and Helen Kennedy (both from the Digital Cultures Research Centre), to give a response to the current installations entitled ‘Fun with Software’ at the Arnofini art centre in Bristol. There are a number of installations there spread over three floors.
My response is that the works are as much about hardware as they are about software. Indeed several of them are running minimal to non-existent software processes. Those that are running software are in the main, deliberately sparse examples of coding. However there is something really important about the reductionist and physical collection of installations – that for those who do not engage with technology at a development level, it informs them of the underlying systems that modern life is built upon. To explain: much of the development of digital technology that we see as users over the last few decades, especially over the last five years, it about making our interactions with technology as comfortable to us as possible. Technology development is delving into the functionality of our bodies to seek ways in which we can handshake with technology in a human-centric manner and be oblivious to the underlying structures that power it all. Take for example computer; home computers were originally sold as kits that hobbyists built. The user had to engage with the physical technology before they could engage with the software. Then came pre-assembled computers, but these initial systems still had operating systems that were close to the machine language they parsed on our behalf. To move a file in MS DOS required us to type in commands instructing the machine of what file to move, where it was located to where it needed to end up. Once visual overlays were developed, it became more ‘user friendly’, more human-centric. To move a file now we simply dragged and drop it, as we might move an object in the real world. Even the icon becomes a little hand while the movement is in process. Yet underneath the pretty graphics, the same machine coded functions are at play….
If we look at Loveletters_1.0 by David Link, it features a Ferranti Mark 1. This an amazing project that in running on a rebuilt a primitive computer from 1954. Here we can see its interface, a bank of switches, requires us to move the switches into set positions to create the input for each letter. Within the computers brain, there are no such things as letters – there are strings of binary switch positions. When the correct binary positions are set with an input node at the end, that instructs the computer to draw that letter to the screen. Modern day systems give us keyboards and voice activated inputs rather than banks of switches to input letters and words with a rapidity that has become ubiquitous – yet under the layers of systems that carry our orders to the computer’s brain is the same binary functional concept where the letter does not exist and only rows of binary switches – albeit virtual now rather than physical – are lined up to represent the human world in machine codes.
If you are interested in knowing more, from a Perl version of William Bake’s poetry to connectivities of flesh and machine, then join us tomorrow at 2pm for a tour of the works…
Free – All Welcome, meet in the Gallery Foyer
For more information on the exhibition:
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/details/732
See you there!
The MOH Debate – An Update
I blogged before about the debate over EA’s new Medal of Honor game that allowed players to play at the Taliban. Apparently the story is still rumbling on – but mainly with non-gamers. Which means more free publicity for EA I guess…
However, [EA marketing director Craig Owens] blamed the controversy surrounding the original name on a lack of awareness amongst non-gamers.
“The objection was, kind of from an older generation that doesn’t understand games, that the soundbyte was ‘Play as the Taliban and kill US soldiers.’
“Later that soundbyte kind of caught wind and got taken out of context, really.”
He claimed that it was ” just a misunderstanding… It’s just one of those transition points, where people who don’t play games still think they’re just for 12-year-olds and they’re just all fun and games and they could never really tell a story like a movie does.”
Owens went on to reiterate EA’s claim that the game was highly respectful towards US troops.
Online Games Grow…Bigger than email
Interesting… online games are now a bigger percentage of users time than email. Second only to social networks:
The Nielsen company’s latest study show that online games have edged out email as the 2nd-largest time sink online in the U.S.
Progress, I think.
(The result may be partially due to users shifting personal communication from email to social networks.)
More Nokia Woes (But they are not out yet…)
Following on from a very full-on hammering by John Naughton (which is worth reading) where he suggests that Nokia are living in a parallel world that has no iPhone and Android – now we get another bit of bad news…
Never mind Windows Phone 7, at least until this afternoon. What’s been happening at Nokia?
You’ll recall that Stephen Elop was drafted in from Microsoft’s Business division as chief executive when its previous chief executive’s Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo challenged the board to “back me or sack me”, to which the response was “actually, there’s been something we’ve been meaning to say…”
Since then the resignations and departures have come thick and fast. Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia Mobile, resigned, essentially because he hadn’t been offered the CEO job.
And now October’s outpourings: the vice-president in charge of its Linux-based MeeGo devices has resigned. Ari Jaaksi (for it was him) left before the company could get one of its next-OS-generation devices out of the door. The schedule had suggested that the first one would be out of the door by the end of this year. Now Nokia is saying that there will be “an update on MeeGo” before the end of the year. That’s not necessarily a device, though.
However I’d not write them off as yet – from from it. They have a lot of experience in the sector and that must count for something. A lesson from technology history: Before the Wii launched, lots of people were writing off Nintendo off as the Gamecube had not performed that well next to xbox and PS2 (though it was still profitable). Many of us thought gaming was becoming a two horse race… Then the DS Lite did really well and the Wii did amazing. So it is not over yet for Nokia – though they are going to have to work hard, as one former employee notes:
I used to call Nokia the Borg: create a product and it gets assimilated into this process, resistance is futile. Product mangers specify, and the rest just happens, a corporate pavlovian reaction that works well.
But good software is iteratively built. When I pushed for short iteration cycles for a project I led (that morphed into Ovi), it was exciting and new for Nokia (but old-hat for the folks we worked with in Silicon Valley). A classic problem at Nokia is locking specifications 2 years before a product is released. And that long-term cycle is ingrained at Nokia, even target setting is no shorter than 6 months, meaning at least a year to react to anything.
Fun With Software Event
I’m going to be talking at this event in Bristol this weekend – come along; it’s free!
Fun With Software
You are all warmly invited to a gallery talk on Sat 16th October at 2.00pm in the Arnolfini.
The Fun with Software exhibition is part of the Arnolfini’s Old Media season. As well as classic software based media artworks, the gallery is also showing recent work by digital subversives YoHa and Bristol’s own Heath Bunting. The show explores how the spores of play inhabit the engineering systems of computer science.
Interactive art fun
Join Professor Jon Dovey and Helen Kennedy of the Play Research Group, and Tomas Rawlings, game designer and digital activist, for an afternoon of discussion and reflection.
Free – All Welcome, meet in the Gallery Foyer
For more information on the exhibition:
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/details/732Learn more about YoHA here: http://yoha.co.uk/
See you there!
A Great Becoming... 