MORE THOUGHTS ON OWNERSHIPA little more about copyright and content control (prompted in large part by Mark Glaser: see post Online and Tsunami almost directly below). There seems to be a widespread belief that anything that appears anywhere on the internet is available for use. We saw in the tsunami coverage, where the powerful personal videos, shot by tourists, were shown over and over again on TV, often without any credit given to the amateur journalist. (I remember reading about a Danish TV that wound up selling a piece of amateur video, which it had been given by a friend of the shooter, to other broadcasters for $20,000.) It's easy to get stuff. If we can't directly download a photo, sound file or video from a blog or web site, it doesn't take much to take a screen shot or fire up recording software to grab the stream. This wasn't a big deal when connection speeds were slow and the primary uses for internet material was "off net." A tiny 72 dpi photo wouldn't reproduce in print. Streaming audio stuttered and jerked and stopped all together. Broadband deals with the latter problem; the fact the publishing platform is increasingly the internet deals with the former. As a creator, I take some pride in what I create, whether it's a blog post here, a photo at Flick'r or anything else I put up. I choose to let it all go under a Creative Commons licence, allowing anyone to take my stuff and do what they want with it, as long as they follow the conditions of the licence (non-commercial, credited, etc.) But I put this stuff up where anyone can find it and I have no way of tracking its use. The photos I have at Flick'r, for instance, are all publicly available in a variety of sizes, right up to a screen-filling 1024 pixels wide. You want one? Pick it out, choose the size you want and download away. If you want to use it for commercial purposes, I'll never know. Years ago, if you'd wanted one of my photos, I would have had to physically give it to you. Unless I was selling through a gallery or on a street corner, I knew who had my images and why they wanted them. Copyright and Creative Commons licences rely to a great extent on trust when we create in an environment where we have no way of knowing where our stuff is going. They rely, too, on a widespread understanding of what rights creators have and a respect for those rights. Some of my students have trouble with the concept. They "get" copyright, but figure that it is the end use that determines whether it is being breached. If they are using someone else's stuff for what is in their eyes benign or "honourable," and if it's credited, what's the problem? This is a potentially huge problem as citizen journalism grows. We can all be journalists, but we have to rely on the honesty of strangers to ensure that our rights are not abused or, if there is value in what we create, that the value flows to us. At the very least, this is a situation that cries out for easy, well-developed and locked-in metadata that makes it clear to anyone the who, the what and the how (as in how you can use it) of the files. Proper, respectful use would still rely on the integrity of the end users, but it could make tracking easier, particularly if married with an effective "internet identity" system.
When mainstream media is running uncredited video, when there is widespread downloading and use of copyright material and when there is little understanding about the legal rights of creators and the responsibilities of users, a technological fix may be all that we have. |
PRETTY TO LOOK AT
Philippe Roy travels to Beijing and presents some striking images. (And if you scroll down there's a great cartoon about blogging.) |
ONLINE AND TSUNAMIOnline Journalism Review has two great articles that cover how online media came of age through the citizens coverage of the Indian Ocean tsunami. Online Citizen Journalists Respond to South Asian Disaster by Shefali Srinivas has the introduction: "An army of online citizen journalists quickly provided the world with essential first-hand accounts, photos, sounds and video of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated South Asia." In Tsunami Video Alliance Portends Future Distribution for Amateurs by Mark Glaser looks at how amateurs and professionals came together to distribute amateur tsunami videos and asks if what happened is viable without proper rights or a payment mechanism for creators.
Glaser's article raises an issue that is eventually going to hit and potentially hit hard: the widespread use of video, audio and other online content without explicit consent of those who created the files and who hold the copyright. More thoughts on that later. |
MORE WAR JOURNALISMTonight, PBS's Frontline follows Nick Hughes into Baghdad for his report on the dangers of being a journalist in Iraq. (According to the email press release I got, show time is 9 p.m.; check local listings.)
As FRONTLINE/World returns to your television screens this week, our lead story, "Reporting the War," will give you an eyewitness feel for how precarious it is these days for journalists in Iraq, and how dangerous much of the country remains on the eve of U.S.-sponsored elections. From the press release:
For Hughes it's the beginning of a revealing and disturbing odyssey as he takes us behind the scenes to follow journalists like Rory McCarthy of the British Guardian and Dexter Filkins of the New York Times as they go about trying to do their work in an increasingly terrifying environment. Hughes quickly discovers that the constant barrage of car bombings, ambushes, kidnappings, and beheadings has turned much of the country into a "no go" zone for reporters. "I can't be my own eyes and ears anywhere and that's very frustrating," says the Washington Post's Jackie Spinner. Yet Hughes also shows reporters -- and their Iraqi assistants or "fixers" -- making heroic efforts to document what is happening in Iraq. The cost is high. Fifty-four journalists and media workers have been killed in Iraq since the war began in March 2003. That's nearly the number of reporters killed in the entire Vietnam conflict.
The show also has reports from Darfur and China. |
ONLINE OPTIONGetLocalNews.com, which runs 5,000 "community web sites" in the U.S. in making a pitch for partnerships with media interested in tapping into citizen journalists. According to Paid Content:
Local news sites now looking for ways to incorporate citizen journalism can partner with a company that's been doing it for five years. Options range from local-exclusive agreements based on cross-promotion and revenue sharing to nationwide arrangements.
The idea makes some sense, but you have to wonder about the willingness of newspapers and other legacy media to share what they consider to be their market. |
TESTING THE LAWThis may be a landmark case: the Electronic Frontier Foundation will argue in court that bloggers, like journalists, must have the ability to protect their sources. The EFF is representing Apple Insider and PowerPage, two web sites that have been sued by Apple computer over reports they published on products under development. Apple is asking the courts to compel the sites to identify their sources. From the EFF press release:
"Bloggers break the news, just like journalists do. They must be able to promise confidentiality in order to maintain the free flow of information," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Without legal protection, informants will refuse to talk to reporters, diminishing the power of the open press that is the cornerstone of a free society."
SOURCE: MACINTOUCH |
Last update: 1/30/05; 10:21:53 PM .
