Ministry of Sound sues Spotify over user-curated playlists

Source: Atatiwa, CC

If you have an interest in the music industry and its business models in the networked era, there's a couple of articles worth reading over at theguardian.com today that concern music streaming service Spotify. Spotify has been on the receiving end of negative criticism in recent months for the amount of money that artists receive from their labels for playback, as well as flak regarding the longterm viability and profitability of music streaming services. Some of the criticism may be fair but there are a few voices who think Spotify might actually be beneficial to the industry. Nevertheless, let's take a look at the Ministry of Sound case.

The first of which is by Stuart Dredge who reports that the some time night club and record label, Ministry of Sound, is seeking damages against Spotify for allowing its users to create their own playlists which ape the ordering of tracks that appear on their releases, and which may also include the name 'Ministry of Sound' in the title. This last point is significant as Spotify users can now search the service for such a term and easily locate these user-compiled playlists. The label's argument appears to be that these playlists are an infringement on their intellectual property.

It's worth noting that Ministry of Sound does not licence its releases to Spotify as the streaming service's business model seeks to remunerate the copyright owners of musical recordings, whereas compilations compiled and curated by Ministry of Sound would not benefit the label in question as many of the featured tracks are owned by other labels (which Ministry of Sound has had to pay a sum in order to licence for their

Ministry of Sound launched proceedings in the UK High Court on Monday, and is seeking an injunction requiring Spotify to remove these playlists and to permanently block other playlists that copy its compilations. The company is also seeking damages and costs.

Chief executive Lohan Presencer claims that his company has been asking Spotify to remove the playlists – some of which include "Ministry of Sound" in their titles – since 2012

So let's be clear here: 

1. Spotify has agreements in place with the relevant owners of tracks that have also been used by the Ministry of Sound in a series of compilation albums. 
2. Ministry of Sound and Spotify have no licensing agreements
3. Users of Spotify have sourced licensed tracks and complied them in playlists using 'Ministry of Sound' as an identifiable search term
4. These user playlists may feature tracks in the same order as the Ministry of Sound releases
5. There's no guarantee that the tracks in these playlists are the exact same tracks (ie same track length, same remix, etc) that feature on the compilations.

The second article worth looking at is a blog post written by Lohan Presencer, written to accompany the announcement to sue Spotify. The article itself is riddled with errors or disingenuous claims:

iTunes is now the largest music retailer in the world with 575 million customers and annual sales of $23bn. It is the main source of income for every record company on earth. Not only that, Apple built its hardware business on an iTunes foundation – iPods, iPads, iPhones. Not a penny of the sales of which were shared with record companies. 

Forgive me for being pedantic here but this claim needs qualifying. Apple did not build its hardware business on an iTunes foundation - at least not exclusively. iTunes did precede the iPod by about 8 months (released in the US in 2001), however in its original inception it was a tool for moving files from one device to another. The iTunes Store was not created for some time after that, coming to the US in April 2003 and to the UK in June 2004. Granted, sales in the iPod began to grow rapidly after 2004 with the 4th generation of devices capable of storing up to 40GB of music - enough to carry most people's music collections. 

It was hardware iteration that was key to the success here. It seems bizarre that Presencer should claim otherwise whilst also going on to note that this hardware success was not shared with record companies. Should Denon or Technics share their hardware revenue with record companies because they facilitate the consumer in being able to play their CDs or vinyls? Similarly, the success of the iPhone and the iPad have very little to do with music and more to do with devices' multiple functionality (internet access, telecoms, applications, photography, etc).

Presencer goes on to critique Spotify for failing to make a profit despite being heralded as the 'ultimate counter attack to piracy'. Perhaps the company can be forgiven for struggling to make a profit 5 years after launch given the costs of launching a new business in 24 countries, with all the various regional licencing and legal costs associated with such a venture. Spotify claims to pay out 70% of all its revenue to rights holders. Given how notoriously difficult it has been for newcomers to enter the hermeneutically sealed world of the music industry, it's no surprise that profitability is an issue. Only time will tell as to whether or not the 24 million active customers can be converted to paying customers.

Presencer then goes on to critique Spotify for its PR strategy:

Spotify is addicted to PR, its oxygen of growth. Favourable comparisons to Apple and positive reports of industry data showing exponential growth of streaming revenue are its lifeline. Yet what the believers fail to tell you is that published streaming figures include advertising revenue from YouTube, the great hidden free music streaming service.

What is the purpose of this comparison to YouTube? Are they also to be criticised for under paying artists for streams? There's very little stopping users of YouTube from creating Ministry of Sound playlists on YouTube and inserting the brand 'Minsitry of Sound' into the title, for example:

Perhaps Presencer is unaware that this can and does already happen? I'm sure he can't be that naive. The difference with the YouTube model here is that many of the songs that appear in these playlists are ripped from radio shows or uploaded via users rather than having been officially licensed (as Spotify does). Is YouTube the enemy of piracy here?

The final point worth examining relates to how much Spotify contributes to the musical economy of the UK:

According to BPI annual figures, UK record company revenues in 2011 were £795m. Total paying UK Spotify customers at that point could be reasonably estimated to be no more than 250,000. At £10 a month that's total net income of £25m. About 55% of this is paid through to record companies, £13.75m - less than 2% of total industry income

Ignoring the envelope math here (is it 55% or 70% paid to labels) and the outdated figures (Spotify had only been in the UK for 2 years at this point so was a niche player), Presencer seems to have an issue with a young company generating 2% of the total UK music industry's revenue! This beggars belief. Would he be happier if this was revenue lost to piracy? Given that attitude and behaviour change tends to develop quite slowly, Spotify and services like it should be held in slightly higher regard for their attempts to provide a better (for the industry if not the artists) alternative to piracy against a background wherein it is very easy to access music without paying for it.

A solution?

Presencer's gripe seems to be more to do with the fact that compilation curators like Ministry of Sound do not benefit from streaming services because they don't fit the business model that seeks to reward the owners of the music. The simple solution is sue and hope for success so that a service like user generated playlists in Spotify has to removed, thus making the product inferior. Or at least, nuke the ability to search for use playlists. If this does happen, then it might damage the usefulness of Spotify and subsequently, its ability to generate revenue for an ailing industry. I hope this doesn't happen as creating and sharing playlists is part of what makes Spotify a service I'm willing to pay for.

A more complex solution would be to ensure that the Ministry of Sound has to be remunerated and they could do this by ensuring that their compilations featuring tracks that they own the rights to thus making it impossible for Spotify playlists to ever be exactly like the official release (not that this is guaranteed anyway - see #5 above). Ministry of Sound used to produce tracks - I know because I bought them in the 1990s when the brand was building on its 'super club' status. It's often said of the tech industry that companies become more conservative as they age, become less willing to take risks and are more likely to sue than to innovate. Companies in this industry need to be agile and innovative if they want to stay ahead. Maybe Ministry of Sound can go back to innovating.

MAC281 Cyberculture 2012 - module taster

I've been putting together the module guide for this semester's module guide for MAC281 - Cybercultures. I'm currently tweaking the document and finalising a special guest for Week 6 but this is how it's looking at the moment: 

Week 1: Introduction to the module & a short history of Cyberculture – An overview of the module content and assessment

Week 2: Copyright in the Digital Age – This session will establish some of the major arguments that inform the current copyright climate in the UK, and the West more generally.  In particular it will look at the ways in which recent legislative changes have developed to ‘support’ content creators in the face of filesharing by exploring the Digital Economy Act and its impacts. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 3: The Music Industry and the Net Part 1: Producers, Profits, Pirates & Peers - This session will consider the crisis facing the music industry posed by recent changes in the organisation and distribution of music in the age of the Internet.  The primary focus will be on the industry.  It will consider claims made by the industry about sales and will consider business models for the music industry. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 4: The Music Industry and the Net Part 2: The Suits vs The Scene – This session will consider the opportunities presented to music consumers provided by the Internet.  It will reassess some of the claims made by the music industry in context of actual audience members and analyse some of the reasons "pirates" give regarding “sharing” music via the Internet. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 5: Openness, Crowdsourcing & Participatory Culture

– The knowledge and resources of millions of people can now be harnessed through self-organising groups via blogs, wikis, chat rooms, forums, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting platforms, etc.  This session will consider the impact of low-cost online collaborative production tools and the importance of open data and free culture to the participatory nature on the Web.  (Rob Jewitt)

Week 6: Weblogs and the Rise of Citizen Journalism - Today, thanks to weblogs and mobile phones that can send photographs, anyone can be a journalist. New media evangelists claim traditional structures are crumbling as digital technology breaks down barriers and heralds a new age of transparency and participatory democracy. Will citizen journalists change our view of the world? I'm expecting to have a guest speaker here to cover all things journalism and data. Will reprot back tomorrow

Week 7: Video Games, Narrative and ‘Play’ – The history of digital games stretches back over the best part of half a century yet academia has been slow to engage with this interactive form beyond offering moral objections. This session will consider the ways game scholars have attempted to situate and explain this ‘new’ medium by discussing narrative design and “play” mechanics. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 8: Game Music, Design and User Experience – This session will build upon contemporary discussion of game design and user experience by focussing on the frequently overlooked aural experience. It will consider the various ways in which music features within gaming experiences by touching upon the licencing of game soundtracks, incidental music through to a consideration of rhythm-based gaming experiences. (Rob Jewitt)

Week 9: The 'Actualities' of Virtual Realities - An exploration into the history, application and cultural and social impact and implications of virtual reality. The lecture will draw on key examples of VR from popular culture and industry as well as its use as an actual technology. (John-Paul Green)

Week 10: ‘Getting around’ in online environments - How do we come to know and explore our way around online places? This session will seek to define and explore more deeply our relationship with different online places and sites and ask how we come to habitually know and navigate around them. It will examine a variety of different places including virtual and gaming worlds as well as social networks, thinking about the ways that we know and interact with these different but very familiar environments.  Using the work of Ingold and Shinkle, the session will also look to uncover the different roles of the body and sensoriality when we browse around, interact with and inhabit various online places. (Eve Forrest)

Week 11: Digital Photographic Cultures Online – Are we all photographers now? With photographic technology becoming cheaper and more accessible we can capture, store, print, upload and distribute our images like never before. This session will examine the explosion of amateur photography, looking at the different impacts and varying aesthetics of the photograph online. (Eve Forrest)

Week 12:  ‘Net Neutrality’ and the Future of the Internet -

Network neutrality is a complex issue that has generated intense levels of political discussion in the United States in recent years, and attention has turned to regulation in the UK. This session will consider the whether network operators should be prevented from blocking or prioritising certain network traffic or traffic from particular sources – effectively creating a two-tiered Internet – and who stands to gain from this (Rob Jewitt)

"Young turn to piracy to watch pay TV for free"?

In a Guardian article which should be filed under stating the bleeding obvious, it suggested that young people are using the internet to access television content ahead of broadcast.  The article went on to talk about the new Sky Atlantic channel which is looking to position itself as the UK version of HBO, as most of the content is pulled from their archives.

None of this is particularly noteworthy in and of itself, other than a rather bemusing claim that was removed stating that a "fresh wave" of piracy would ensure as people would look to get the channels content (most of the material consists of repeats that have no doubt been pirated or streamed already). Another claim about DVD sales being likely to slump seems to mirror an already established trend.

What was worth drawing attention to was the comment by dj1917 which I've reposted below:

People download television from the interweb, you say? With something you call a "stream" or "torrent"? Further research tells me that films, musical recordings and football matches are also freely available! I must say, Good Sirs, that young people today disgust me! As a gentleman on the cusp of my fourth decade, I was not previously aware of this heinous trend in technological thievery only known of by the young, with their funny haircuts and their eye-pods. I must praise you, Mr. Guardian, for bringing it to my attention. In future editions of your fine organ could you take some time to explain, in terms as if to an audience of elderly simpletons, as otherwise I may not understand, who these "Beatles" are, and what's all this I hear about horseless carriages?

That certainly ticked me.

The cost of free? Not this again.

(image courtesy of Gisela Giardorno, 2006, Flickr, CC)

Over on the Guardian's PDA blog professional songwriter and musician Helienne Lindvall (who previously published for BMG) has written a post in which she seems to find it "ironic" that authors like Cory Doctorow and Chris Anderson charge upwards of $25,000 for professional speaking appearances when they are proponents of "giving away content for free as a business model".  Lindvall points to a number of speakers who seem to be advocates of this approach, such as Seth Godin, Peter Sunde and Gerd Leonhard, who all seem to offer advice on what the music industry needs to do in order to adapt to the digitally distributed economy of bits and bytes.

Somewhat strangely, she bundles the Stanford law professer Lawrence Lessig in with these speakers, despite his interests being more aligned with reforming the punitive restrictions brought about by blanket copyright that prevents material that is no longer commercially viable from entering into the public domain.  After all, he, Hal Alberson and Eric Eldred established the non-profit Creative Commons sets of licences to accommodate this problem.

I've blogged on these topics before (for my MAC309 students) and it's worth watching the short video below if you aren't familiar with the 'free' thesis




I responded to Lindvall's original post highlighting the problem with the "irony" that only she seems to see.  Is it ironic that Doctorow and Anderson charge what Lindvall seems to think are disproportionate fees for live (or video-linked) appearances? No, not really given the arguments put forwards by these writers.

One of the core arguments around the 'free' thesis and its derivatives is that value traditionally associated with content that used to make money in a physical format (ie books, CDs, film, etc) is that content producers have to be more dynamic in how and where they solicit their economic recompense. If that means charging for their expertise and presence then so be it. This also seems to ignore recent data that suggests the creative industries are alive and kicking in Norway and the UK at least.

There seems to be a parallel with the live versus recorded experience with regards to musical performance. It's one of the reasons why the TED conferences are so expensive - if you want to be in the presence of 'celebrity' you pay a premium. Presence is what pays and what people seem to currently value.

Anderson's argument may have its flaws but one thing rings true, the enemy of the creative artist is obscurity. Artists can survive in a digital economy with the right foundations - they need to be able to justify their output is worth paying for and leverage the relationships and opportunities presented by the internet. They need to (re)connect with their fans and give them a reason to buy. This is why you'll find Doctorow making limited edition bespoke editions of his novels that retail at over $300 whilst Amazon bulk sell his hardbacks at a discounted rate (this was one of the themes of his novel, Makers).

Note: I'm not claiming that piracy is a legitimate way for consumers to interact with artists and their content, but I'd be disingenuous to claim that it doesn't take place.   If Doctorow and others can incentivise people to pay for their content in the guise of appearance fees then so be it. They are most likely leveraging the current economic climate and their present celebrity cache to their advantage.

In some respects these speakers are making the new economic conditions work for them.  Several of the commentators on the original blog piece have made the clumsy parallel that these appearance fees are the equivalent to the live music performance.  However, this isn't quite an easy equivalent to make, especially for a band where the fees are spilt.  It might work for solo artists...  It has been suggest that these authors are writing the books with the intention being they will make the real money by touring.

So, is it really that ironic?

[EDIT] It seems like Cory Doctorow has actually responded to the blog post pointing out that he seldom charges for public appearance at all. He does them mostly for, you guessed it, free.

Hands up if you still love vinyl, photos, CD, DVD, etc

Just over a week ago I tweeted a link to an article on www.telegraph.co.uk in which they reported that the majority of Britons are still quite firmly in love with physical media, despite the prevalence of iPods and other digital personal audio solutions.

The majority of Britons are still 'wedded to CDs, DVDs and books' - at http://bit.ly/9Z6Q7Dless than a minute ago via APIrob jewitt
rob_jewitt

The article was drawing on a survey conducted by Hewlett Packard (entitled 'Evolution of Digital Media') - a report I have not been able to track down.  If you find it please link me up as I'm a bit skeptical about the questions asked and they way the results are framed.  The survey of 1000 Brits (aged 16-60) seems to be part of a promotional strategy for HP's most recent media streaming server solution, but it did produce some interesting stats/facts which I'll list below.

86% - people access some form of digital media
95% - people who prefer physical books over ebooks
75% - people who prefer physical media for films (DVD, Blu-ray) over digital files (iTunes)
68% - people who prefer physical printed photographs over digital files
64% - people who prefer physical music (CD, vinyl) over digital files

The report claims people currently attach 'little monetary or emotional value to the digital content that they own' - a problem for digital content producers, but perhaps not one for service providers?  For instance, I think music streaming services like Spotify and We7 are pretty good (but not amazing; they still lack about 70% of what I typically search for) but the music is the driver of the business and the product itself is pretty ephemeral.  It seems people are fond of the tangible, although the survey suggests that this is a generational issue.

The 16-24 and 25-34  year old groups were the most enthusiastic consumers of digital services, but 39% of them are still buying physical media.

73% - people who can't see digital service replacing physical media
71% - people who have never lost their digital library and don't care about backups
27% - people who value their digital files at under £50

It looks like the switch to files may not be quite as dramatic as many people may have thought, although it's dangerous to speculate on the basis of such a small sample (and an opaque methodology copies are available on request from  020 3047 2000 or psguk@edelman.com).  We could argue that CDs are digital and not quite as distinct from other music formats, but let's ignore that slight gripe.

Do you still buy physical media?

MAC281 slides for the session on citizen journalism

These are extended versions of the slides I used in the MAC281 lecture this week.

"When is ‘disconnection’ not disconnection? When it is ‘account suspension’, of course."

A day or two ago, the news that campaigners against the Digital Economy Bill (or at the very least, Clause 17) wanted to hear was announced. Or so it would seem. The Guardian technology pages led with somewhat optimistic headline: "Plans to cut off internet connections of illegal filesharers dumped"

Background

First, a little context may be useful. This is drawn on what has commonly been referred to as the "3 strikes" rule, whereby people accused of copyright infringement via the internet will be given three warnings before disconnection (like the unpopular HADOPI law in France, which seems like the inspiration for Clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill). The role of peer-to-peer technology is central to this argument.

The Guardian story came off the back of a relatively small petition on the Number 1 website which highlighted the problems of the phrasing in the Bill, a point that will be picked up on again later in this post. The petition states:

The use of P2P is neither illegal nor exclusive to copyright theft. Many free software providers use this form of distribution, as does the BBC’s iPlayer. If citizens are innocent until proven guilty, ISP’s would be forced to monitor internet usage to ensure that no copyrighted material is being transferred. This flagrant disregard for privacy is comparable to forcing the Post Office to search through parcels for photocopied documents or mixtape cassettes. Such requirements would place enormous strain on ISP’s whilst failing to prevent the distribution of copyrighted material through hidden IP’s, http or ftp.”

Previous concerns have stated that the Internet is increasingly central to everyday life and that the act of identifying who was actually guilty of using peer-to-peer software to infringe copyright was difficult and ill-conceived, especially in shared households or on public 'cloud' based services. This is a point that is also addressed later in the same petition.

All of this is with the aim of cutting illegal peer-to-peer filesharing by 70% - something the Government, led by Lord Mandleson, is determined to do in order to appease the copyright industries. The Digital Economy Bill proposed a series of 'technical measures' including traffic shaping and disconnection for those the offending IP addresses the copyright industry identifies as being guilty of a crime. The major concern here is, of course, the lack of judicial process or the ability for the accused to defend themselves. The onus will be on the accused to prove they are innocent - people who may not have the technical knowledge or skills required to sift through router logs to be able to prove they were not responsible for the 'crime' they may be accused of.

What's changed (if anything)?

With the context established, let's consider the Number 10 response to the petition which got The Guardian and critics of the Bill excited (if somewhat momentarily):

[T]he Bill provides a reserve power obliging an ISP to apply ‘technical measures’ to a customer’s internet account to restrict or prevent illegal sharing. Technical measures might be a band width restriction, a daily downloading limit or, as a last resort, temporary account suspension. A proper independent appeal would be available against application of technical measures.

The key phrase here is 'temporary account suspension' as opposed to disconnection. It sounds much less punitive and more temporary than permanent. Jim Killock, the Executive Director of non-profit human rights group ORG, was quick to point out to several people via Twitter (myself included) that the phrasing was misleading 'government-speak'. To the Guardian's credit, they updated their news story with reference to Killock and the ORG's blog.

It's worth citing some of the blog post at length:

When is ‘disconnection’ not disconnection? When it is ‘account suspension’, of course.

The government therefore felt justified in a response to a petition on Friday in claiming that they were not intending to ‘disconnect’ families from the net after accusations of copyright infringement. If you think they mean that their internet cabling will still be plugged in at the wall, then that’s true.

If you think they mean that these families will be able to connect to the internet, well, no they won’t. Their connection will be switched off.

Please do not be confused by the government’s semantics. BIS and DCMS decided in the summer that they would not refer to ‘disconnecting’ users, because that sounds harsh and over the top. ‘Temporary account suspension’ sounds much more reasonable.

Language matters. What journalist is going to run a story on ‘temporary account suspension’ (yawn)? This is why the government has chosen these disingenuous terms: it‘s just more spin.

What we still don’t know is how long a family’s internet might be disconnected for.

A month? Three? A year? There is nothing in the Bill or any of the notes that we are aware of that might give us a clue.

‘Temporary account suspensions’ sound like the government would to suspend accounts for a few hours, or at most a day, to fit most people’s idea of ‘temporary’ and ‘suspension’. We doubt ‘suspensions’ would be so brief. We can assume what the government means to you and me is ‘disconnection’.

The issue here is what Killock referred to as 'government speak'. The phrasing of the response by the Number 10 website seems to hint at a compromise when the Open Rights Group suggest this semantic distinction is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public. A classic case of New Labour spin.

What is more alarming is that the power to determine the length of the suspension will be granted to the Secretary of State, based on recommendations from Ofcom (something I blogged about late last year). This is highlighted in a subsequent story in the Guardian yesterday when a Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) spokesperson was quoted as saying:

"If government decides to use technical measures the Secretary of State would be required to consider an independent report from Ofcom on whether they should be imposed, and on the most effective and proportionate measures."

Mandelson would then decide the upper limit for a "temporary" suspension – which the DBIS indicated would be at least a few days. Parliament needs to be consulted in order to establish the duration of any suspensions towards the upper limit of the punishment scale. The worrying issue here is laid bare in the article:

"an Order cannot be amended by parliament; it can only be accepted or rejected. Any government with a working majority will be able to get an order passed – and so would be able to implement a "temporary" suspension of indeterminate length without any legislative review."

The Government has all the balls in its court with this one, and on the current form, seem determined to push through their plans despite opposition. Only time will tell if they are able to do so before the General Election is called in May.

Take Action

The ORG are encouraging people concerned by this Bill to take action. If you are encouraged to resist this problematic Bill then write to your MP and write to your local newspaper demanding that they get your local MPs to reveal their support for these proposals. You can find convenient templates over on their wiki page here. Get involved

The Digital Economy Bill, Clause 17

About a week or so ago the Digital Economy Bill made it's second pass through the House of Lords. Lord Lucas has been one of the most vocal critics of the Bill, especially the controversial Clause 17 which gives the First Secretary of State (currently Lord Mandleson) the power to enforce sweeping copyright reforms without public consultation in the face of future technological developments. Briefly, this section of the Bill would grant the government the power to make changes it sees appropriate to help enforce the copyright held by the content industries (eg the music industry). These powers are so broad they can be applied to adapt any future changes in technology without consultation (emphasis needed!). The Bill also proposes to disconnect illegal filesharers from the Internet after three warnings - commonly referred to as the "3 strikes" ruling. If you want a quick overview of how serious this is, check out the video below:



Back in December '09 PC Pro reported on how Lord Lucas expressed some doubts as to whether the Government's plans to disconnect users, claiming that the entertainment industry hadn't done enough to encourage people to pursue legal methods:

"We need to bear in mind that the problems now facing the industry are, to quite a large extent, of their own creation ... The industry has been extremely slow to listen to the demands of its customers, and has had something of an abusive relationship with them, seeking to punish them before thinking of how to serve them better."

"It has taken a decade for the industry to produce sensible alternatives to illegal file-sharing, and the fact that a generation of people have become used to an illegality comes down to the industry’s sluggishness. It is still slow."

He also raised some concerns that the methods being proposed to pinpoint who was actually responsible for downloading illegal content was inaccurate - the harvesting of an IP address doesn't always guarantee that the person responsible for paying the bill is the person engaging in filesharing activity, especially in households where several people have shared access. The same could be said of the hospitality sector in which hoteliers, bars, cafes and conference venues offer free wireless access to patrons.

Educators have complained that the bill also endangers their businesses and internet provision to the general public (via city-wide cloud-based services) is also under threat because of the insistence that organisations providing net access should be liable for the actions of their customers. The British Library with its public Wi-Fi access would be in jeopardy.

In January 2010 Lord Lucas suggested a number of amendments to the Bill including adding a remedy to help prevent false claims from being made against the innocent by giving them legal recourse to pursue counter actions against the accuser. He also tried to add an amendment that would require copyright holders to detail actual damages done by file sharing in their reports to ISPs notifying them of infringement. There were a total of 299 amendments suggested by the House of Lords. Lords Razzall and Clement Jones proposed one amendment (no. 34) to Clause 4 that stands out, mainly due to its evocation of the Human Rights Act:

Compliance with fundamental rights

In drafting or amending any code, laying any statutory instrument, or taking any other action under sections 124A to 124L of the Communications Act 2003 or under section 302A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Secretary of State must demonstrate before such action is implemented that he has considered whether such action—

• a) is necessary and proportionate to the goal of protecting and enforcing copyright, and
• b) appropriately balances the interest of rights holders and the interests of the public in due process, privacy, freedom of expression and other fundamental human rights guaranteed by inter alia the European Convention of Human Rights and the EC Charter of Rights."

The safety and privacy of the general public must not be disregarded in lieu of the demands of the content industry.

Earlier this month the Joint Select Committee on Human Rights also claimed that sections of the Digital Economy Bill needed clarification. The technical measures and the powers that are to be given to government were not "sufficiently specified". The fear here is that they might result in sweeping powers which restrict the freedom of expression and the privacy of individual users. Andrew Dismore MP and chair of the Commitee stated:

"The concern we have with this Bill is that it lacks detail ... It has been difficult, even in the narrow area we have focussed on, to get a clear picture of the scope and impact of the provisions."

One of the real concerns is with the lack of "due judicial process" to people accused of illicit filesharing. There is a real fear that the burden of proof will lie at the feet of Internet users who may be unable to prove they are innocent as they may not have the knowledge or skills to do so, nor the space to react to accusations accordingly.

Get involved and find out more by clicking the banner below:

Tracking musical expenditure: January

This is the fifth monthly installment in a yearlong project to monitor the amount of cash I have spent on music and music-related activities. In case this is the first time you've stumbled across this blog then the inspiration behind this series of posts was a report (.ppt) published by the UK-based think tank, Demos, which stated that file-sharers typically spent more money (£77 per year) on music than non-filesharers (£33). The suggestion here is that pirates are the best customers, or at the very least are the ones willing to part with the most cash.

January was a busy month for me. It was filled with quite a few purchases of 'old' music media (ie CDs) - well a few by my standards at least - and a few live concert ticket purchases. In total £119.66 was spent on music and music-related activities. The latter category includes any money that was spent on the back of music purchases, like concert merchandise and/or refreshments that would not otherwise have been purchased were it not for the musical event. This brings the running total to date up to £942.10.

Going back to the music purchases, out of that £119.66 only £36.81 was spent on music (ie singles, albums, etc). The bulk of the money was spent on live concerts and tickets. Also, some of the music purchases included non-traditional music media such as video game downloads for the Guitar Hero series. If I strip down the sales to money spent on what we would classify as chart eligible singles and album the monthly expenditure comes down to a more meager £25.96 - all of which was spent on buying both the Vampire Weekend albums twice (to give as gifts). That brings the money spent on albums and singles (the measure in the Demos report) in at £80.24

I have to admit that I did not expect to reach and surpass the figure that Demos placed as the average spent by pirates after only 5 months. There's still a long way to go in this experiment, but one thing seems to be sure and that is this music lover still contributes to the musical economy.

And did I fail to mention that Massive Attack have an album out in February? There's at least one purchase for next month.

As usual, you can see a detailed breakdown of expenditure here.

MAC281 Cybercultures - Module Overview

Not to be left out, any of my Level 2 students signed up to take MAC281 Cyberculture can now take a preview of the module below. The full module guide is a little more uptodate and is subject to change before teaching starts. There's a Facebook study group setup here. It's empty now but classes haven't started yet. Be sure to join and post/share anything you think your fellow classmates might be interested in.

TITLE: CYBERCULTURES
CODE: MAC 281
LEVEL: 2 CREDITS: 10
FACULTY: Arts, Design, & Media
MODULE BOARD: Media and Cultural Studies
PRE-REQUISITES: MAC129
CO-REQUISITES: None
LEARNING HOURS: 100 hours, the exact nature of which is specified in the module guide

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
On successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated:

1. knowledge and critical understanding of the theoretical concepts and issues and debates relating to the study of cyberculture;
2. an understanding of the history and key concepts of cyberculture;
3. the ability to apply these concepts in the critical analysis of various forms of cyberculture;
4. the ability to communicate information, arguments and analysis cogently and fluently

CONTENT SYNOPSIS:
This module allows students to continue their study of cybercultures from level 1 (MAC129). Students will explore topics such as: the relationship between the internet and the music, film and television industries, blogging and journalism, cybersex, podcasting, digital art, the representation of virtual reality in popular culture, cyber-nations, and open source communities.

TEACHING AND LEARNING STRATEGIES:
Illustrated lectures will demonstrate key concepts while tutor-led seminars will provide a forum in which to explore and critically discuss these issues.

CONTACT TIME:
Lectures: 12 hours
Seminars: 12 hours
Self-directed study: 76 hours

ASSESSMENT METHODS:
End of Semester Written Assignment (2000 words) 100%
(assesses Learning outcomes 1,2,3,4)

MAC281 Week by Week Schedule:

Week 1: Introduction to the module & a short history of Cyberculture – An overview of the module content and assessment

Week 2: The Music Industry and the Net Part 1: Producers, Profits, Pirates & Peers - This session will consider the crisis facing the music industry posed by recent changes in the organisation and distribution of music in the age of the Internet. The primary focus will be on the industry. It will consider the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange and the role played by BitTorrent technology upon the music industry’s traditional business model.

Week 3: The Music Industry and the Net Part 2: The Suits vs The Scene – This session will consider the new opportunities presented to music fans provided by the Internet. It will reassess some of the claims made by the music industry in context of actual audience members and analyse some of the reasons "pirates" give regarding ‘sharing’ music via the Internet.

Week 4: Podcasting: Radio and Convergence - An increasing amount of radio is now consumed via platforms other than the traditional wireless, with both streamed audio and now podcasting becoming more mainstream. New platforms have also offered new opportunities to new players and new media forms that can be shifted in both time and place.

Week 5: ‘Wikinomics’, Crowdsourcing & Participatory Culture – The knowledge and resources of millions of people can now be harnessed through self-organising groups via blogs, wikis, chat rooms, forums, peer-to-peer networks, and personal broadcasting platforms, etc. This session will consider the impact of low-cost collaborative production tools via the Web.

Week 6: Weblogs and the Rise of Citizen Journalism - Today, thanks to weblogs and mobile phones that can send photographs, anyone can be a journalist. New media evangelists claim traditional structures are crumbling as digital technology breaks down barriers and heralds a new age of transparency and participatory democracy. Will citizen journalists change our view of the world?

Week 7: The 'Actualities' of Virtual Realities - An exploration into the history, application and cultural and social impact and implications of virtual reality. The lecture will draw on key examples of VR from popular culture and industry as well as its use as an actual technology.

Week 8: Video Games, Narrative and ‘Play’ – The history of digital games stretches back over the best part of half a century yet academia has been slow to engage with this interactive form beyond offering moral objections. Currently, gaming is one of the most profitable media industries. This session will consider the ways game scholars have attempted to situate and explain this ‘new’ medium.

Week 9: Virtual Sex - This session will examine the representations of sex and sexual practices as facilitated by virtual worlds such as Second Life. We’ll examine some of the contemporary debates made around virtual worlds including claims made about its liberating potentials for sexual expression.

=====SPRING BREAK=====

Week 10: Digital Photographic Cultures Online – Are we all photographers now? With photographic technology becoming cheaper and more accessible we can capture, store, print, upload and distribute our images like never before. This session will examine the explosion of amateur photography, looking at the different impacts and varying aesthetics of the photograph online.

Week 11: ‘Net Neutrality’ and the Future of the Internet - Network neutrality is a complex issue that has generated intense levels of political discussion in the United States in recent years, but relatively little attention from regulators in the UK. This session will consider the whether network operators should be prevented from blocking or prioritising certain network traffic or traffic from particular sources – effectively creating a two-tiered Internet – and who stands to gain from this

Week 12: Open Source Communities – The open source revolution is underway. Many digital media products (software and hardware) include some form of open source technology, which has helped keep the price down to an affordable level and push research and development forward. Who are the winners and losers in this brave new world?

Lectures run 2-3pm in the cinema (207) on Monday afternoon. You are also expected to attend the seminar at 11am (rm214) or 1pm (rm214) following day - Tuesday. Attendance is compulsory.

MAC281 Indicitive Reading

Week 1: Introduction to the module & a short history of Cyberculture

• David Bell (2001), An Introduction to Cybercultures. London: Routledge
• David Bell (2004), Cyberculture: the key concepts. New York : Routledge
• David Bell & Kennedy, B. (2000). The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge: London
• David Gauntlett (2004), web.studies: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age (second edition). Arnold: London

Week 2: The Music Industry and the Net Part 1: Producers, Profits, Pirates & Peers

• Andrew Leyshon et al. (2005). ‘On the reproduction of the musical economy after the Internet’ in Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp 177-209. http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/2/177
• Lawrence Lessig (2004), Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, London: Penguin Press (ebook available here)
• Felix Oberholzer & Koleman Strumpf. (2004). ‘The Effect of File-sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis (March): http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
• Wiliam Patry (2009), Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Andrew Sparrow (2006), Music Distribution and the Internet: A legal guide for the music business’ Aldershot: Gower

Week 3: The Music Industry and the Net Part 2: The Suits vs The Scene

• Ian Condry (2004). 'Cultures of music piracy: An ethnographic comparison of the US and Japan' in International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3 pp 343-363.
• Matt Mason (2008), The Pirate’s Dilemma: How hackers, punk capitalists and graffiti millionaires are remixing our culture and changing the world, London: Allen Lane (ebook available here)
• Lawrence Lessig (2009), Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy, London: Bloomsbury (ebook available here)
• Chris Rojek (2005), ‘P2P Leisure Exchange: Net Banditry and the Policing of Intellectual Property’ in Leisure Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp 357-369.
• G. W. Woodsworth (2004), ‘Hackers, Users, and Suits: Napster and Representations of Identity’ in Popular Music and Society, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp 161-184.

Week 4: Podcasting: Radio and Convergence

• Richard Berry (2006), ‘Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star? Profiling Podcasting as Radio’, Convergence, Vol. 12, No. 2. http://con.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/2/143
• Chris Priestman (2001). Web Radio. Focal Press
• Henry Jenkins (2004). ‘The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence’ in The International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol.7, No.1 (Spring 2004) http://ics.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/7/1/33
• Henry Jenkins (2006) Convergence Culture. New York University Press.

Week 5: ‘Wikinomics’, Crowdsourcing & Participatory Culture

• Jean Burgess & Joshua Green (2009), Youtube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, Cambridge: Polity
• Jeff Howe (2008), Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, London: Random House
• Henry Jenkins (2006) ‘Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century’, MacArthur Foundation white paper: http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
• Charles Leadbetter (2008), We/Think: Mass innovation, not mass production, London: Profile.
• Clay Shirky (2008), Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, London: Allen Lane
• Don Tapscott & Anthony D Williams (2008), Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything – Expanded Edition, London: Atlantic Books

Week 6: Weblogs and the Rise of Citizen Journalism

• Mark Deuze (2007), Media Work, Cambridge: Polity
• Dan Gillmor (2004) We the Media. USA: O’Reilly
• Andrew Keen (2008), The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the rest of today’s user-generated media are killing our culture and economy, London: Nicholas Brealy
• Steve Outing: What Journalists Can Learn From Bloggers http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=75383 and What Bloggers Can Learn From Journalists http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=75665

Week 7: The 'Actualities' of Virtual Realities

• Howard Rheingold (1992), Virtual Reality. Simon & Schuster Inc
• Steve Jones (2006) ‘Reality and Virtual Reality: When virtual and real worlds collide’, Cultural Studies, Vol 20, Nos 2-3: pp.211-226

Week 8: Video Games, Narrative and ‘Play’

• Mia Consalvo & Nathan Dutton (2006). ‘Game analysis: Developing a methodological toolkit for the qualitative study of games’ in Game Studies: the international journal of computer game research, Volume 6, Issue 1. http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/consalvo_dutton
• John Dovey & Helen Kennedy (2006), Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media, Open University Press
• Aphra Kerr (2006), The Business and Culture of Digital Games: Gamework and Gameplay, London: Sage
• Simons, J. (2007), ‘Narrative, Games, and Theory’ in Game Studies: the international journal of computer game research, Volume 7, Issue 1. http://gamestudies.org/0701/articles/simons
• Jason Rutter & Jo Bryce (eds) (2006), Understanding Digital Games, London: Sage

Week 9: Virtual sex

• Feona Atwood (2009), ‘Intimate adventures: Sex blogs, sex “blooks” and women’s sexual narration’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 12 (1): pp. 5-20
• Feona Attwood (2009), “‘deepthroatfucker’ and ‘Discerning Adonis’: Men and cybersex’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp.279-294
• Robert Alan Brookey & Kristopher L Cannon (2009), ‘Sex Lives in Second Life’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol 26, No 2, pp. 145-164, 10.1080/15295030902860260

Week 10: Digital Photographic Cultures Online

• Kris Cohen (2005), ‘What does the photoblog want?’ Media, Culture and Society, Vol 27 No 6, pp 883 – 901 http://mcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/27/6/883
• Julia Davies (2006) ‘Affinities and Beyond! Devleoping Ways of Seeing in Online Spaces’, E-Learning Vol 3 (2) pp 217 - 233 Available at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/freetoview.asp?j=elea&vol=3&issue=2&year=2006&article=8_Davies_ELEA_3_2_web

Week 11: ‘Net Neutrality’ and the Future of the Internet

• Paul Ganley & Ben Allgrove (2006), ‘Net neutrality: A user’s guide’, Computer Law and Security Report 22, Vol 22 Iss 6, doi:10.1016/j.clsr.2006.09.005
• Lawrence Lessig & Robert W. McChesney (2006), ‘No Tolls on The Internet’, Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/07/AR2006060702108.html
• Gireesh Shrimali (2008), ‘Surplus extraction by network providers: Implications for net neutrality and innovation’, Telecommunications Policy, Volume 32, Issue 8, doi:10.1016/j.telpol.2008.06.005
• Dave Everitt & Simon Mills (2009), ‘Cultural Anxiety 2.0’, Media, Culture & Society, Vol 31 (5): pp. 749-768
• Jonathan Zittrain (2008), The Future of the Internet – And How To Stop It, London: Yale University Press (ebook available here)

Week 12: Open Source Communities

• Chirs DiBona, Mark Stone & Danese Cooper (2005), Open Sources 2.0. USA: O'Reilly
• OSBR.CA The Open Source Business Resource (2007), ‘Defining Open Source’ http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/issue/view/35
• Steven Weber (2005), The Success of Open Source, London: Harvard University Press

See you next week...

Children of the net..

I was recently reading a blog post by Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkmen Centre for Internet and Society, which got me thinking. I normally like what Ethan has to say and I encourage you to check out his site which touches on his thoughts about 'Africa, international development and hacking the media'. In the blog post he talks a conference he attended in which Don Tapscott (co-author) of Wikinomics fame presented.

Essentially, the blog post summarises Tapscott's major argument in the book, something I've touched on in the course of teaching my Cyberculture (MAC281) and New Media & Society (MAC309) modules. I've mentioned him a couple of times on this blog. For those of you unfamiliar with the thrust of the main argument it goes something like this...

Tapscott watched his kids grow up in the 1990s and was amazed by the effortless way in which they used technology. The demographic born between 1977 and 1996 was the first to 'grow up in a digital age ... bathed in bits' (2008: 47), which Tapscott refers to as the Net Generation. This generation is distinct from previous ones due to the myriad ways in which they not only consume media, but scrutinise it, and re-purpose it. In Zuckerman's blog recounting Tapscott's presentation, the latter claims that the kids of this generation are more interested in reading web content rather than reading books (he cites Rhodes scholar, Joe O'Shea, as an example) or watching television.

We might conclude this is a problem, or we might embrace this. “If you spend 24 hours a week being a passive participant, consuming tv – as Baby Boomers did – you get a certain sort of brain.” If you spend those hours searching, researching and building connections, you get a very different brain

I feel Tapscott sets up a bit of a false argument here, which Zuckerman reiterates (nb: I'm not trying to suggest that Zukerman thinks this - he is recounting Tapscott). He claims these are not passive consumers but rather, are driven by a desire 'for choice, convenience, customization and control by designing, producing and distributing products themselves' (ibid: 52). There seems to be a dubious binary set up which equates:

old media vs new media
television vs internet
passivity vs activity

There is a wealth of ethnographic research from European Media/Cultural Studies scholars which disputes such a simplistic understanding of audience engagement - something we cover here on our Media Studies modules (MAC201). Qualitative research in this area paints a varied and complex set of cultural negotiations and competences from, say, a television audience. The work of David Buckingham, David Gauntlett, David Morley, Charlotte Brundson, Ien Ang, Janice Radway, Dorothy Hobson, etc all point to this being the case.

Overall, Tapscott's desire to challenge the assumption that the Internet is making kids dumb by focussing on the ability of young people to forge new connections, engage in distributable editing, scour and research a topic using online tools results in their being an overemphasis being placed on the power of the Internet.

I can see why he wants to embrace the optimism of the Internet especially when online behaviour seems to be coming under attack from neuroscientists like Baroness Susan Greenfield and Gary Small, as well as cultural critics and authors like Andrew Keen and Nicolas Carr (you can watch some footage of Carr below, taken from a forthcoming BBC Digital Revolution project). We can add to this the concerns of educationalists who fear that student use of the Internet is fostering an uncritical and superficial sense of engagement with information.



Implicit in this camp is the assumption that there are some potentially problematic changes occurring - the Internet has encouraged a new form of informational engagement - one which sacrifices depth for sporadic leaps from section to section or site to site. Carr fears we have sacrificed our contemplative approach to thinking. This sounds like the passivity mentioned by Tapscott in relation to TV in another guise.

I'd like to think that is a middle road here, what sociologist John Thompson refers to as an 'interaction mix' - that consumption of media is nebulous and works across platforms. Creating artificial divides between media use is misleading at best. What are we to take from Tapscott's argument: that television is a passive activity or that the reading of books is inferior to Internet-use? What do we take from the opposing camp: that new media habits are potentially changing how we make sense of information? It seems to me that this divide between old and new media is a straw man argument - one sets up the other to create a false argument that serves the best interests of those starting the posturing.

All new media forms will require new literacies - the argument over whether one is better or worse than another is misleading when taken in isolation.

An era of mass collaboration?

This week's MAC281 Cyberculture lecture raised the subject of 'wikinomics' (Tapscott & Wiliams, 2006; 2008) or crowdsourcing (Howe, 2006; 2008) - the the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. Different people have called it different things. At one point folksonomy - the social tagging of data that helps large groups of people classify material (eg Furl, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, etc) - was pretty popular.

The general claim was that this form of collaborative production is one which will be come to dominate 21st century organisations, and move us away from what Clay Shirky (2008) identifies as the legacy of the 20th century: large scale projects driven by the efforts of the state or by businesses competing in the marketplace. The slides I used in the session are below:

Mac281 Wikinomics And Colloborative Production

View more presentations from Rob Jewitt. (tags: wikinomics collaboration)

Several writers have clamoured to talk about this type of behaviour as having the potential to affect change, often for the better. Businesses can harness the power of the crowd and their collective intelligence in order to innovate; culture will benefit from a democratic sense of inclusiveness whereby everyone who has something to contribute to a topic can do so.

Advantages?

In the area of research and development (R&D), the ability to bring in more ideas from a wider community of interested parties may seem attractive. Many companies still rely on internal R&D departments for innovation, which can become hindered or obscured by the bureaucratic processes of established institutional behaviour. Opening up to new ideas can breathe a lot of life into a company. Indeed, Tapscott & Williams (2008: 97-108) identify a number of examples whereby the creation of 'ideagoras' have had a positive impact on a business's growth.

Take Innocentive for example. Founded in 2001, they connect:

"companies, academic institutions, public sector and non-profit organizations, all hungry for breakthrough innovation, with a global network of more than 160,000 of the world's brightest minds on the world's first Open Innovation Marketplace™"

Using an established network of geographically dispersed 'thinkers; they are able to find innovative solutions to a variety of different problems

This kind of behaviour doesn't have to be restricted to the realm of business. A few weeks ago the BBC carried a story whereby the wisdom of crowds were being tapped to sort out data consisting of images of far off galaxies. The project is part of the Galaxy Zoo 2 project - dubbed 'citizen science' - where amateur astronomers can identify different physical features of heavenly bodies. The spacial recognition project is more effectively undertaken by humans than by computers.

This is not the first time humans have been a better alternative to machines - I recall reading how Charles Arthur blogged about humans being used to defeat anti-spam 'captcha' fields on websites back in 2006. Humans can solve visual tasks like this a lot quicker and more effectively than computers.
Many companies have integrated the open source operating system, Linux, into their business work flows. This has saved them money in the guise of expensive enterprise licences for things like Microsoft Vista, but also has the benefit of a huge collective pool of programmers and developers frequently eager to solve problems.

There are also suggestions that the ability to harness the wisdom of the crowd will bring about an era of mass innovation via information exchange, with a reciprocal pay off for democracy.



Disadvantages?

There may be some perils involved in this type of behaviour. Companies might see the benefits in crowdsourcing and choose to cut their expensive overheads (read: staff) in order to make a greater profit, especially in these economically testing times. Farming ideas or tasks out to the crowd can seem like a cost effective process especially when financial incentives for the crowd may be lower than established methods of getting things done.


Of course, there is a very famous phrase which has become an Internet meme in and of itself: 'Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups'. Theories surrounding public choice suggest that the majority are never as effectively organised as powerful minority interests (eg the RIAA or MPAA versus file-sharers). Some critics of the Web 2.0 revolution such as Andrew Keen are quick to suggest that large scale access to new social tools doesn't always guarantee an enriched cultural domain - how many videos of dogs on skateboards do we need to see?

Whether or not we are living in an era of mass collaboration is contentious. There may well be examples of peer production in many quarters - from the collaborative production of knowledge in the guise of Wikipedia; the creation of products for avatars in virtual worlds like Second Life; the efficient use of empty CPU cycles across distributed computing networks a la folding@home; etc - but to what extent is this truly symptomatic of a sea-change? How inclusive is this 'mass'? Wikipedia may be editable by anyone, but there are indications that a minority of users are regular contributors. This seems to be more like a self-selected hierachy than a 'flat' form of organisation.

In a different context Raymond Williams once claimed, 'There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses'. Is there not a similar thing occurring here? Might there be a broader danger in assuming that what appears to be a mass is not already a form of collective intelligence based on a meritocratic principle? There is no doubt that the Internet has enabled for a variety of different voices to find an outlet for expression, but I have some reservations about group-think activity being a 'new' mode of organisation; might it not resemble other forms of collective behaviour? Groups have, on occassion, been swayed to think along conservative lines. I'm thinking here of focus group studies in audience research whereby certain characters and opinions might come to dominate and sway a session.

This may not seem to happen in contexts such as Linux development where code is written on a functional basis, however that doesn't mean that there aren't philosophical questions to be asked about the relative appropriateness of the decision making process which informed the construction of one aspect of software functionality over another. Form and function are not separate from each other and what works for one might not work for another.

File-sharers fight back?

The MAC281 Cyberculture lecture this week dealt mainly with the responses file-sharers have given in relation to years of music industry rhetoric which has sought to label them as criminals. I've included a link to the slides I used in the session below (best viewed in full screen due to small text on screen grabs):

Mac281 The Suits Vs The Scene 2008 9

View more presentations from Rob Jewitt. (tags: mac281 piracy)

One of the issues that tends to get brought up time and again by filesharers is the issue of copyright infringement in a digital age. In the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything the authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams identify a demographic born between 1977 and 1996 as the first to 'grow up in a digital age ... bathed in bits' (2008: 47), which they refer to as the Net Generation or N-Geners. They claim that this generation is distinct from previous ones due to the myriad ways in which they not only consume media, but scrutinise it, and re-purpose it.

Tapscott and Williams go on to suggest that these N-Genres are not passive consumers but rather, are driven by a desire 'for choice, convenience, customization and control by designing, producing and distributing products themselves' (ibid: 52). They go on to highlight the creation of Napster in June 1999 by the then-student Shawn Fanning as an example whereby a young man with an idea was able to create a piece of software to share audio files amongst friends, which then went on to pose a serious threat to the established distribution model for the music industry.

A similar example can be found in the guise of Jesse Jordan who was a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, during 2002. Jordan developed an internal network search engine which enabled anyone on the institutes network to search the public folders hosted on the network, which just so happened to include music files. When the RIAA caught on to this side-effect of the network search tool, they branded Jesse a pirate and demanded he pay them $150,000 per infringement - a total of $15,000,000 (see Lawrence Lessig, 2004 for more details) - money he clearly didn't have.

With some guesses putting the amount of web traffic now taken up by file-sharing as high as 50%, it would seem like these N-Geners are bringing about a philosophical rethink with regards to how we make sense of copyright and intellectual property in a digital age:

The ability to remix media, hack products, or otherwise tamper with consumer culture is their birthright, and they won't let outmoded intellectual property laws stand in their way (Tapscott & Williams, 2008: 52)

The emergence of Web 2.0 platforms and user generated content has further entrenched this type of activity. In a more recent book Lessig (2006: 196) recounts the example of digital creativity in the guide of Anime Music Videos (AMVs) whereby young people spend hours re-editing anime cartoons to perfectly match a piece of music before posting their creations to the Web. One company in particular, Wind-Up Records, didn't see this as an example of creativity but rather, as an example of copyright violation and ordered a take-down. Instead of seizing this as an opportunity to connect with fans or engage with customers they assumed a fairly traditional position.

It is this atypical type of industry reaction which irks the N-Geners and actually stands in the way of creativity and innovation, and helps contribute to a sense of 'net banditry' (Rojeck, 2005) amongst file-sharers. Less than a decade ago the mainstream music industry was dominated by a handful of global players - EMI, SONY/BMG, Universal, Time Warner - who had an established business model which had served them well for many years. Key to this was a firm grip on distribution outlets for their products. Music had to be written, recorded, produced, marketed and physically transported around the world - an expensive business. The creation of services like Napster and zero-cost search tools played a part in transforming that traditional relationship. The advent of digital audio compression techniques (e.g. MP3) also played a substantial part in that process. We shouldn't forget that these developments helped bring about an attitudinal shift.

To paraphrase the recent Creative Freedom Foundation campaign, the distinction between using and copying artefacts in a digital age has become blurred. The movement towards digitisation, rapid search and zero-cost distribution has enabled a remix or 'mash-up' culture that enables people to be creative in new and exciting ways. We need a legal system which reflects that. We need a copyright system which is fit for a digital age We need a legal system that reflects the behaviour of a multitude of people who breach current intellectual property laws on a daily basis.

We don't need what the New Zealand authorities have been proposing recently whereby ISPs will be forced to take down internet connections and websites of anyone accused (nb: not actually convicted) of copyright infringement. Section 92A assumed that people would be guilty upon accusation irrespective of the circumstances. There are all sorts of problems with this law which TorrentFreak cover here. A small reprieve came today when John Key announced that the implementation would be delayed until March 27th.

This might be a temporary reprieve however and more pressure needs to be applied, especially when the lobbying power of the world's copyright holders are in play. They are rich, powerful and organised. What happens in New Zealand could easily happen elsewhere if pressure is not applied. The Irish music industry (as represented by IRMA) has already succeeded in getting one of the biggest Irish ISPs to block access to file-sharing sites and it won't be long before others are forced to follow - this is despite the fact that sites like The Pirate Bay have not been deemed illegal in Ireland. An organisation with deep pockets has pressured an ISP into censoring the Internet on behalf of a commercially driven entity.

What does this tell us about censorship and network neutrality? It tells us we should be worried about the future of digital content.