Day: June 27, 2007

The cult the amateur and other nonesense

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 2 Comments

Eoin Purcell
I have yet to read the book (damned if I’m linking to it), but I will. If I find it is as bad as the author interviews suggest I will say more. If, as I think unlikely, I change my mind I will say so, loudly!

Andrew Keen
It would be very difficult for me to express exactly how angry this guy is making me. He is loudly proclaiming the evils of web 2.0 and blogging while holding out the Main Stream Media some kind of knight in white armour who we have for some obscure reason ignored. He holds out a selection of Straw Men to be shot down with swift blows of little substance and less meaning. He decries the hidden agendas of web 2.0-ers (in this interview he can be heard discounting the value of Wikipedia without admitting that he writes for Britannica Blog [though he does have a link on his own BLOG]

A selection of his quotes from this interview:

    “undermining of authority, undermining of mainstream media, the undermining of expertise”
    “wet dream for pr people . . slippery dishonest pr people”
    “nobody really knows who anybody is”
    “cultural anarchy”
    Anonymity . .
    “nobody knows who anybody is”
    “creating media of spin and lies rumour and innuendo”
    “nobody knows their agenda”

And how is it all going to be paid for:

    “Much of it is advertising”
    “Traditionally you had a clean distinction between content and advertising”

It’s like in his world Main Stream Media isn’t paid for by advertising but by some magic system. Is the journalist somehow immune to the agendas he discusses in this interview? Immune to commercial pressures because between him and the advertiser lie a few managers? Come on.

What annoys me the most is that he is using the very same techniques he derides so snidely to market his own book and campaigns for greater media literacy while ignoring the proliferation of discussion on the web. The reality is that he is a man with an agenda (sell more books) using exactly the same spin tactics he supposedly shuns.

He suggests that the web is somehow responsible for the Bush presidency and the war in Iraq happening (yeah I fear the link escaped me too) and shields the Main Stream Media from criticism on that point too. But what is worse he lambastes the web for undermining authority while earnestly suggesting that one of its failure is that it did not undermine the authority of a sitting president of the United States enough to prevent him going to war? You cannot have it both ways sunshine.

Th truth is that Main Stream Media is embracing the very technologies he abhors (look at CommentisFree)> What is more, had the Main Stream Media been quicker, their dominance of the medium would by now be almost assured, they had the brands to levy, the personalities and resources to deploy, but they failed to react and face now the task of unseating upstarts if they can before they achieve the dominance they have been used too.

Still annoyed at the pomposity of the man, enraged at the fact that such sloppy think might warrant a post but unable to contain the need to post about it
Eoin

Oh and in case you are afraid I am going off the deep end over one piece list to this one too he does it again here.

The end of copyright (At least as we know it)

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 3 Comments

Eoin Purcell

Its not quite my thing: Aerosmith
But they do put on a fantastic show. I saw them last night in Marlay Park in South Dublin. The weather held and the band seem to be moving into Rolling Stones territory in terms of ability to just keep on Rocking (as it were).

What struck me on the evening though was not the band, or event he venue. What hit me was that literally thousands of people were recording, photographing and bootlegging the concert on a diverse range of cameras, phones and video cameras. It surely will not be long before the material hits YouTube or some other online video service.

The other element to the problem though is that no one seems to think this kind of copying is unfair. After all you pay €70 just to see them play and why not take a few snaps, record your favourite song as a memory, so what if you share that with 100,000 or 1,000,000 people on YouTube, isn’t Aerosmith lucky to have such a great fan base?

Finger in the dam
And it hit me then that there was simply no way of stopping it. You can pursue the people responsible individually (hardly effective) and stop the material coming online (close down sites and ban certain videos) but those measures will prove either entirely negative or ineffectual. One because the individual cost will be greater than the reward and the other because videos will simply move to another site that does allow pirated or bootlegged material.

So what do you do and how will the reality that affects live performance hit other forms (I am thinking, naturally, of books). At first it seems a different game. Books can hardly be recorded live. But they can be photographed and passed about. You only need to look at Scribd to see copyright protected material I am FAIRLY sure isn’t posted with permission.

If the logic of the concert holds and I pay €20 for a book am I not entitled to share a few images with my friends and online buddies on Scribd?

Leaving us with a fairly clear shift away from respect for copyright convention as it now stands and is enshrined in law (I have to admit I feel like I am living the Nine Shift shifts now). If the majority do not respect the law, do not see the logic of the law and flagrantly breech the law without fearing retribution, is there any point of keeping the law?

I know my thoughts on this are rough and I need to think it through much more but it sure begs some questions!

Wondering
Eoin