What's the point of using the internet for studies?

I've just been in a rather heated team meeting during which a colleague and I presented on this new My Sunderland space, in which we highlighted the potential benefits of engaging with students in forms like online blogs.  We suggested that they are great for posting information, files, starting discussions, pointing to related links, etc.  Also, strong students tend to appreciate the capacity for engaging in online discussions that pique their interest, and past experience has proven that they can often assist their peers (by working through complex issues of by pointing to relevant online resources).

We pointed out that student lifestyles and the ways they engage with academic content have changed, and that we can adapt to these changes without having to change our current practices too much.  Data form our Virtual Learning Environment shows that students are accessing online notes at rather unusual hours and on unexpected days (including Christmas Day!).

Currently, as the module leader for a module (MAC201) with a large cohort I find myself dealing with multiple student questions on the same topic, and that I encounter an awful lot of repetition in my workload as I attempt to fend these off.  This was one of the reasons why I have, in the past, created student help files and provided annotated student essays as example resources.  Student feedback on my modules have been quite positive about providing these kinds of tools/resources.  One problem though is that the VLE is rather stilted and clunky place for hosting discussions.

Resistance

There was quiet a bit of resistance to the idea that staff can create blogs or communities around the material they teach.  Some of the concerns that were vocalised coalesced around the following points

 

• Additional workload burden for staff - who polices the space or ensures that students are on the right track?  How much extra time will this take staff to get familiar with posting content?
• No evidence that students benefit from online discussion space
• Fear of technology - Not all staff are technologically au fait so this might require staff development
• Anxiety that online replaces physical - staff were fearful that students would abandon physical sessions for 'inane' online 'status updates' that were poor replacements for engagement with staff

The argument was a little heated and rigidly entrenched. The majority of staff seemed to reject the idea that online blog or communities are adequate tools for academic engagement.  Do staff and/or students benefit from using these tools?  I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this matter

 

 

 

Don't rush through extreme Internet laws

Another post in a long series of complaints about the Digital Economy Bill...  It's getting closer and closer and the kind of action or pressure that the public can exert is getting shorter and shorter.  So, if you are concerned (as you should be) about the proposals and the implications of the Bill, then you should send a quick email to your MP to tell them what you think.  Over on the campaign site 38degrees you will find a pre-written template which requires little more than your name and address.

Here's my letter to David Milband (very little has been changed):

Dear David Milband

I’m sure you’ve been contacted many times about the Digital Economy Bill, in fact I myself have written to you about this already. I am writing now that Harriet Harman MP has announced that the Bill is definitely going to receive a second reading on Tuesday April 6, widely expected to be the day an election is called.

On Thursday, Harriet Harman gave no assurance that controversial parts of the Bill would not be rushed through in 90 minutes, despite concerns being raised by members from both sides of the House.

Please do not underestimate the strength of feeling on this issue. Over 17,000 letters have been sent to MPs in the last week - yet the Government still seems intent on forcing the bill through Parliament without allowing a real debate about the issues.

People like me, who are concerned about this issue, will be looking to see who has done everything they can to make sure this Bill is not crashed through on the last day before an election.

I would very much appreciate it if you could do everything you can to raise this issue with ministers and party managers to make sure that these provisions receive proper debate and scrutiny in a new Parliament.

I wonder if Mr Miliband is going to respond to this email. It would make a pleasant change if I ever got more than an out-of-office reply.

Time is pressing. Get involved.

A timely piece of propaganda from the music industry

Yesterday morning, feeling sickened by the current developments surrounding the Digital Economy Bill, I picked up my laptop to read the news and was confronted by yet another report which sought to offer some definitive conclusions about the impact of copyright infringement. The report in question, "Building A Digital Economy: The Importance of Saving Jobs in the EU's Creative Industries", seemed perfectly timed to both support the ideological machinations behind the curent Digital Economy Bill and undermine the mounting public resistance to the Bill. The fact that the phrase 'Digital Economy' features in the title is surely a coincidence, no?

What do you think this perfectly-timed report suggested? You guessed it - it painted a picture of unmitigated disaster for the creative industries. It suggests that within 5 years the total number of lost jobs in Europe could reach 1.2 million and that the lost revenue for the industry may exceed €240 billion in the same period. As you might expect, this report was welcomed by anti-piracy outfits including the BPI and IFPI who will surely use it in their political lobbying efforts, as it matches their projected fears.

As Herman and Chomsky might put it, this was a perfect example of 'flak' - an attempt to diffuse any of the pressure being directed towards the Digital Economy Bill by groups like OurKingdom, TalkTalk, the ORG and 38degrees. Thank goodness that someone has took the time to read the report and point out the flaws and suppositions inherent within the report. Ernesto over at TorrentFreak has highlighted a few of the major problems with the report:

- The report suggests that there’s a direct correlation between Internet traffic growth and lost jobs. That is, the more traffic that is generated on the Internet, the more money will be lost. This correlation is 1 according to the report, which assumes that all growth in Internet traffic will increase piracy at the same rate.

- The report makes another bogus assumption by stating that more traffic will mean more piracy and thus more lost revenue. It does not account for the fact that people might consume higher quality files which are greater in file-size. All projections are based on bandwidth and not the number of pirated goods.

- The report cites some academic literature which suggests that piracy leads to a decrease in sales. Studies that reported the opposite or a null-effect were carefully left out. This bias defines the entire outcome of the report. If they used studies that found a positive effect they would have found that piracy would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the years to come.

- The report uses fixed substitution rates. They assume that 10 downloaded albums results in one lost sale and this figure is not adjusted for the projected increase in piracy. One would think that the public’s budget for entertainment is limited and that the substitution rate would go down as piracy goes up

These are a few of the extracts - for more info read the original article here. You can also read the UK Pirate Party's response here, which includes some interesting material from the Terra Firma group who now own EMI.

Perhaps it's not surprising that such a report, originating from the aptly-titled BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy), would be timed to coincide with the call for the general public to write to their MPs, asking them to prevent the passing of extreme Internet laws that can result in web censorship if it protects the interests of corporate power.

Let's not forget that the corporate pressure has already resulted in the BPI (the UK recording industry's lobbying arm) having their way with the Liberal Democrats peer, Lord Razzall, with regards to amendment 120A. This amendment was copied almost word-for-word from a lobbying paper prepared by the BPI, and has been widely criticised as giving copyright holders too much power to close down sites on limited evidence. In a column for guardian.co.uk, activist and author Cory Doctorow has tried to make some sense of the subsequent Liberal Democrat u-turn over this issue. He also points to the origins of the leaked memo from the BPI (dated 8th of January) which later became Lord Clement-Jones's 3rd of March amendment.

Clearly, there has been an orchestrated attempt by the recording industry to put their case forward at the expense of truth and also at the potential expense of the British public's rights. Using distorted and one-sided economic projections as fact helps maintain the momentum in the favour of the recording industry whilst attempting to write into law some of the most oppressive web censorship that the UK has seen. The real concern is with whether or not many people or news publishers actually took the time to read the original report before paraphrasing it's claims. The issue around the veracity of data is crucial here - if it gets passed unchecked then the damage is already done. Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, sums up my feelings on the matter:

“I am fed up of hearing corporate propaganda being deployed in order to justify intrusions on our rights to freedom of speech, privacy and to a fair trial”

If this is democracy, I'm out.

MAC309 New Media, The Web, Society - Module Overview

I've just put what I think are the finishing touches to the module guide for the Level 3 module MAC309: New Media, The Web, Society. There may be some cosmetic changes to this guide in the future (everything is subject to change!) but it will be broadly similar to how the following extracts read. In case you are one of the MAC309 students taking the module, I thought you'd appreciate a little preview ahead of next week's sessions. There's also a Facebook study group setup here.

TITLE: MEDIA STUDIES SPECIAL TOPIC
CODE: MAC309
LEVEL: 3
CREDITS: 10
FACULTY: Arts, Design & Media
MODULE BOARD: Media and Cultural Studies
PRE-REQUISITES: MAC201 or MAC202
CO-REQUISITES: MAC301or 302
LEARNING HOURS: 100 hours (the exact nature of which is specified in the module guide).

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
Upon successful completion of this module students will have demonstrated:
Skills:

1. advanced skills in research and the development of an argument;
2. advanced written presentation skills

Knowledge:

1. knowledge and understanding of contemporary media theories relevant to an analysis of a particular topic
2. ability to apply this knowledge and understanding to an analysis of the media and to communicate effectively.

CONTENT SYNOPSIS:
This is variable from year to year. The module aims to develop students’ knowledge of an aspect of the media. It will be based upon theoretical approaches appropriate for final- year work, and will be compatible with staff research expertise.

LEARNING AND TEACHING METHODS:
Teaching will adopt a lecture/seminar approach, in which the former will normally be devoted to the exploration of theoretical issues, and the seminar to detailed analysis of a specific topic in the light of the ideas explored.

ASSESSMENT METHODS:
The module will be assessed by:
End of module essay (2,500 words) (assesses S 1 & 2; K 1 & 2) 100%

Module overview:

Today’s society is a complex one in which a pervasive media culture dominates social life to the point where it is frequently difficult to comprehend the myriad relationships between the media, society and everyday life. The emergence of the web and the Internet adds a further level of complexity to this.

What we see, hear and read is the product of a number of forces (political, economic, cultural, legislative, etc) and they shape or understanding of ourselves, our community, and our world. Currently, our media culture is undergoing a series of transformations - as new forms of entertainment, new venues for political debate, and new models of journalism emerge online, and as the established producers of media struggle to adapt to the various challenges posed by a read/write model of the Web. Cultural practices are changing, as are our understandings of what they might mean.

This module will explore how the cultural landscape has changed in relation to media and information technologies, how broadcast media and traditional publishing are converging with networked computing, and what implications these changes may have for society, politics, and culture more generally. The current era of the Internet ahs been referred to as Web 2.0 – a term which warrants detailed investigation. It will focus on cases drawn from new, information-based media: online news, blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube, mash-ups, social networking applications, peer-to-peer networks, video gaming, virtual communities, etc - but will examine them so as to understand the underlying relationship between media and society.

One key aspect of the module will involve a focus on the ideas put forward by contemporary technologists and business leaders looking to shape the future of new media businesses. Critical debates about the role the Internet plays in society will be considered. Some sessions will look at the architecture of the Internet and the role it plays in facilitating democracy, and what the future of the Internet might look like. Some sessions will consider the emergence of user-generated content and the ease and accessibility of free tools for self-publicising. The persuasive role of online rhetoric and branding will also feature.

Week by week outline

Week 1: Module overview and predicting the future
3rd Feb 2010
This session will provide students with a framework for engaging with the module. It was also introduce students to some of the ways they can engage with the module and its content using online services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious, etc. It will also touch on the role(s) played by technology when describing the future.

Week 2: New Media Monopolies: “What Would Google Do?”
10th Feb 2010
This session will drawn on ideas and themes raised by ideas associated with globalization, in particular how it pertains to global media ownership trends. It will also consider the emergence of the search giant, Google, and attempt to contextualize the shifting balance of power between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media

Week 3: The Network Effect
17th Feb 2010
Networks of data permeate our lives almost invisibly. How this data flows around the global network that is the Web is coming under increasing scrutiny in numerous circles concerned with copyright human rights, cyber warfare and e-commerce. This session will consider current arguments around the regulation of data and the neutrality of the Internet.

Week 4: User Generated Content: “The Cult of the Amateur”?
24th Feb 2010
This week’s session will consider the emergence and roles played by participatory culture and user-generated content (UGC). In particular, the session will focus on the argument put forward by journalist, Andrew Keen, that social media is potentially damaging to cultural activity by virtue of its escalation of the role of amateur to the role of expert.

Week 5: The Cost of Free
3rd Mar 2010
The Web has brought with it many innovations that have transformed how business takes place. This week’s session will look at the impact that “free” information is having by considering examples taken from popular culture including free news, free music, free email, and free software amongst others. It will also consider the arguments of Wired editor, Chris Anderson, that “free” is the price of the future

Week 6: Competing With Piracy: “The Pirate’s Dilemma”
10th Mar 2010
Building on the arguments put forward in previous weeks, this session will consider the impact of peer-to-peer piracy on the cultural industries. It will consider some of the rhetorical and legal strategies advocated by proponents of the various media industries (eg., MPAA, RIAA, IFPI, BPI, BREIN, etc) and it will position them against the backdrop of changes in the practices and habits of media consumers.

Week 7: Tag, You’re It! Playing Games With Digital Photography
17th Mar 2010
With image technology now cheaper and more accessible than ever before we can capture, upload and distribute our photographs globally, within seconds. However new applications and inbuilt GPS allow users to do other interesting things with their camera. This session will review the different roles of photography online, as well as look at the ways that this technology is encouraging various interactions with users and their everyday space.

Week 8: Viral Media: Forward/Retweet/Embed/Share Link
24th Mar 2010
Social media is redundant without the capacity to share material with like-minded people. Many recent success stories like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr take advantage of the capacity to share content in such a way that it spreads rapidly, like a virus. The session will consider the implications of viral media across a number of examples including news, politics, advertising and celebrity culture.

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

Week 9: Reliability & Reputation: Who Can You Trust?
21st Apr 2010
The Internet has provided a vast platform for information dissemination. Whereas the modernity brought with it reputations that were often cemented in the authority of powerful institutions, the contemporary era is one in which reputation is contingent. The power of the crowd and peer-based contributions via services like Wikipedia are forcing raising questions about the extent to which trust is managed. This session will attempt to engage with those difficult questions

Week 10: The Cult of Mac
28th Apr 2010
The last decade has seen the Apple brand grow in stature off the back of loyal support from a diehard legion of acolytes often referred to as a cult. This session will consider the success and failings of several Apple marketing campaigns, as well as an exploration of the contribution made by the Apple fanbase to the company’s success.

Week 11: Virtual Sex
5th May 2010
The Internet has enabled a diverse range of sexual activity to flourish online. Using the popular virtual world Second Life as an example, this session will consider the representation of sexual practices and preferences in digital spaces.

Week 12: Concluding Statements: Where Do We Go From Here?
12th May 2010
This session will attempt to tie together the various themes and issues that have been raised on the module. It will consider recent online trends and attempt to contextualise them against the background of shifting policies and regulations that will impact on Internet-users in Britain and Europe. Time will also be allotted for discussion of the imminent assessment task.

Screenings
There will also be a number of screenings scheduled on the module. They will NOT take place every week. The screening dates are as follows:

• 19th Feb 2010
• Us Now (2007, US, Ivo Gormley)
• Watch online: http://watch.usnowfilm.com/

• 5th Mar 2010
• Good Copy, Bad Copy (2007, Denmark, d. Andreas Johnsen)
• Watch online: http://www.goodcopybadcopy.net/
  

• 23rd Apr 2010
• The Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999, US, Martyn Burke)
  

• 30th Apr 2010
• Wonderland: Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace (2008, UK, Fergus O’Brien)

Hope that's alright....

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 interesting week for misleading statistics

A few technology news headlines have attracted my attention this week that seem to be somewhat less than honest. Some of the ones that stood out included the 10% surge in BBC iPlayer traffic following its inclusion on the new PS3 Slim which in turn has been reported as bringing about a massive sales spike in Sony PS3 units following the slimmer redesign. The other noteworthy report involved the claim that 7 million of the 61 million UK residents is engaged in illegal file-sharing activity. Let's take a little look at those claims...

Sony's sales and why they might not be so impressive

There have been several reports that Sony is having a very successful PS3 Slim rollout. Popular games blog, Kotaku, noted that the redesigned PS3 sold more units in Japan in the first three days following the relaunch (150,252) than it did back in November 2006 when it was originally released. It sold 88,000 units in two days but there were issues with supply levels at launch, so not everyone who wanted one could get their hand on one.

The more interesting PS3 story came from VG247 courtesy of Chart-Track director, Dorian Bloch, who claimed that UK-based PS3 sales in financial week 36 were up over 999% on the week prior. This is a story which has snowballed and appeared in several other places. Great news for Sony. Or is it?

On the surface the 999% or 1000% sales boost seems impressive but this has to be seen in the harsh reality that very few people were likely to be buying the older PS3 model when the new slimmer model was about to be launched at a reduced price. It's not hard to see why a huge sales spike may occur when very few units were being sold in the week prior - but it makes for great headlines!

What is also unclear is exactly how many of these purchases were by new customers. Many existing PS3 owners have expressed an interest in trading their older machines in for the new model (the local GAME store where I live was accepting a trade-in deal of one 80gb PS3 plus two games and £60 cash for a new slimmer PS3).

This might not be so great for Sony after all. Sony are still producing the PS3 slim at a loss and require customers to purchase software in order to offset these losses. If they are selling lots of new units to existing customers who already own plenty software then they are unlikely to profit dramatically from these impressive sales figures. Also, Sony get no financial gain from the second hand hardware or software market. The more new customers the PS3 redesign attracts, the healthier Sony's bank balance.

It's understandable that Sony would want to view its new product launch as a success, given that the PS3 languishes in third place in the console hardware sales. It's also no surprise that Sony has announced a massive ad campaign to push its new hardware in the Christmas run in (with a campaign budget of £82 million!). Whether or not the PS3 proves to be the success that Sony needs it to be remains to be seen, especially since it experienced its first full year loss in fourteen years.

How many filesharers?

The other attention-grabbing (and more worrying) story that warrants a little exploration involves the claim that 7 million UK residents are file sharing criminals. This figure is one which has been around for some time now. The BBC ran a report back in May which cited the figure in a government-backed report. The report was issued by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) and can be found on their site (.pdf here). Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report put into context the impact illegal downloads had on copyright industries and the UK economy as a whole.

This figure of 7 million criminals is quite catching, seems precise and scientific and has helped perpetuate the notion of digital criminality amongst UK web users. It was also calculated that these file-sharers had access to £12 billion worth of free content. It has also helped keep file-sharing and its supposed criminality in the media spotlight in recent weeks - something Lord Mandelson has been using to great effect in his attempt to lobby for hard-hitting punitive measures against file-sharers.

Credit needs to be given to the BBC who took a second look at that figure of 7 million and decided to see if they could locate its origin, following an enquiry from the audience of the BBC Radio 4 show, "More or Less".

The figure may have been reported in a government document, but it's not a government figure. It transpired that the government commissioned a report from the CIBER research group at University College London, which contained the number. The CIBER report mentioned the figure four times. However, the figure actually came from yet another report from consultancy firm, Forrester. It doesn't end there. The Forrester report doesn't actually contain the 7 million figure despite the CIBER citation. The figure actually comes from a different piece of research called the Jupiter Industry Losses Project, which was an industry funded (BPI) attempt to gauge P2P use and the related losses produced by such internet use.

That's right. The official sounding figure cited by the government-backed report actually came from the British recording industry which has a vested interest in putting a figure on its losses at the hands of P2P users so that it can then lobby government to change policies and laws favourable to the industries interests. That explains why Lord Mandleson has been so anti-P2P in recent weeks...

It gets worse. The actual report was never published publicly and the industry declined to pass it over to the BBC but they managed to get in touch with Mark Mulligan, one of the report's authors, who revealed some interesting methodological assumptions. The report estimates that there are 6.7 million illegal file-sharers in the UK. It arrived at this figure when multiplying the total number of Internet users in the UK (estimated at 40 million by the report despite the UK government putting the figure at 33.9 million) against the percentage of the population engaged in file-sharing.

As for the estimate of the piracy percentage, that comes from a 2008 survey of 1,176 UK households. The survey actually found that 11.6 % of respondents admitted to using file-sharing software, but this figure was inflated to 16.3 % to account for "under-reporting". It's not quite clear how this figure was arrived at but it was based on the assumption that some respondents would lie about their P2P use, and Mulligan claims to it be 'based on evidence'.

The differences between these figures are staggering and produce vastly different results. If the lower figures are used instead it transpires that only 3.93 million UK residents are criminals, not 7 million.

And finally...

What does this all mean? Can we actually trust the figures used by goverenemtn and industry alike? As Nate Anderson (over at Ars Technica) puts it:

"The problem isn't that such calculations are done; they can serve as useful tools for industries and even for policymakers. But problems develop when the numbers are ripped from their original, provisional context by repetition and citation, eventually taking on the force of Fact. When such "facts" end up being used to make policy, the problems are compounded."

Statistics and facts are not always what they seem. Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and regular Guardian writer, puts it slightly differently:

"As far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise”

I'm inclined to agree, but there is a worrying point to these examples of misreported statistics and over-inflated figures. If they go unchecked, they become powerful rhetorical strategies that can gain momentum and if repeated enough times in the right places can take on the appearance of 'truth' from which it is only 'common sense' to act accordingly. I wonder how successful the new PS3 actually is and are shareholders seeing the benefit of increased sales? Does this equate to more inward investment in the technology at both the software and hardware levels, and does this bring benefits to the end user? Can we really believe the figures bandied around by the recording industry and what are the consequences if they are not contested? Who benefits from being disconnected from the internet on the back of wild exaggerations?

Net neutrailty doomed in the UK?

I've just been ploughing through the UK's Digital Britain report and I was shocked to read the following from page 22:

The Government has yet to see a case for legislation in favour of net neutrality. In consequence, unless Ofcom find network operators or ISPs to have Significant Market Power and justify intervention on competition grounds, traffic management will not be prevented.

This is a pretty big indicator for the future from Stephen Carter who has a bit of a reputation as being pro-market. It seems to me like he is edging towards a pro-market position when it comes to the delivery and regulation of Internet bandwidth. By suggesting that it is in the best interest of the ISPs to traffic shape data, offering preferable rates to those organisations or customers who can afford to pay more for a guaranteed service, seems to fly in the face of the reports other grand claim in the report: to provide universal connectivity for all.

It seems like a contradiction in terms. Ditch net neutrality in favour of supporting big business and the market place, let the end user (ie us!) make do with a two-tiered, slower service. How does this sit with a universal service for all?  After all, the report only seeks to guarantee a connection speed of 2 Mbps  by 2012.  The current UK average is 3.6 Mbps according to Ofcom.

The Byron Review

In case you missed it, back in September 2007 the UK government commissioned a review of the risks children faced from exposure to harmful or inappropriate material on the internet or in video games. As someone who has researched and taught in the area of 'media effects' myself I was expecting the typical tirade of simplification and behavourist assumptions that tend to dog these types of investigations.

I have to admit that I was a little bit dubious as to the outcome of Dr Tanya Byron's review. However, it seems I need not have been so concerned as the study seems to have been very well considered and quite constrained. I think Byron and her team deserve some praise and recognition for a balanced review.

I have not managed to read the full review document yet, so I may still change my mind, but I am impressed with what I have seen thus far. Of course, there are bound to be a few fall outs from the findings - in particular the advice for a hybrid rating system for games under and over the suggested 12 certificate may lead to more parental confusion than assist them in making informed decisions but one could argue that the present combination of BBFC and PEGI advise already does that.

The full report can be found here