Essay Resource: Lawrence Lessig: Laws that choke creativity

Another TED Talk (I’ve been watching a bunch for a different course).  We already encountered Lessig earlier, and now he discusses user generated content, which is relevant to fandoms and remix cultures.

There’s some history of the music industry and early broadcast, with the ASCAP creating a legal cartel, and BMI using music in the public domain and “remixing” it.

Lessig argues that the 20th century has been mostly a read-only culture, and that the internet, through user generated content, remix culture, and amateur culture (which is not necessarily low quality, but done out of love, not for money), will lead to a read-write culture (which we may have had a long time ago). The importance is that the technology and tools of creativity are now open to everyone with computer and internet access.

Lessig looks at the law and how it has not come along with common sense ideas – that they presume that remix is theft, because remix is a copy, and a copy is theft. Here, he looks at the extremism on both sides – taking down every remix that uses copyrighted material, or trying to give up copyright and ignore it altogether.

Lessig argues for a path somewhere in between. However, he says that government have failed.  He looks to a private solution, and the role of competition. He argues that content creators need to promote their work as being more open (allowing artists the choice of how their music is used), and that read-write culture enabling companies have to embrace it, creating a system of competition between free and not-free content.

Again, Lessig probably has a large body of work and writings on which to draw from that will be relevant to the discussion of fandoms and remix cultures.

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

Essay Resource: Charles Leadbeater: The Era of Open Innovation

This is a TED talk by Charles Leadbeater, who discusses open innovation, talking about how the users are producers, as opposed to traditional organizations. The traditional model is of special people and special places (closed) who make content for passive consumers. Now, in a more open organizational form, the consumers also make content. Traditionally, there were limits to consumer interaction, like in newspapers, they could write in a letter or have a comment. But bloggers today don’t want to be journalists necessarily, but be engaged in a conversation. This shows how different actors have different views about the role of who and what participants are, and what their goals are.  This has implications about copyright, digital rights. Perhaps Leadbeater has further literature to investigate also.

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html

RB: The Historical Relationship Between Star Trek Fan Films and Paramount

In doing some initial research work for my essay on fan culture and copyright, I have looked into the relationship between Star Trek fans who create their own fan films, and how CBS or Paramount (the copyright holders to Star Trek) have reacted.

It seems this has changed over time – perhaps due to the profitability of Star Trek – it seems that the copyright holders were more strict about allowing fan productions in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, when previous Star Trek movies (before the JJ Abrams 2009 “reboot”) were being released and the Voyager and Enterprise series were still online. However, there may also be a relationship over time with a greater prevalence of online fan films, as well as interactions that led to changes and mutual understandings about not profiting from fan films.

According to a 1997 Wired Magazine article, in 1996, at the same time as the buildup to the release of the film Star Trek: First Contact

“Viacom Inc. sent a barrage of cease-and-desist letters to webmasters of Star Trek fan sites carrying copyrighted film clips, sounds, and insignias. Under threat of legal action, many Trekkers shut down”

While at this time, Lucasfilm had a policy regarding fan content of Star Wars fanfiction – that they are not for commercial gain, and protect the “image” of the characters, Viacom did not respond to requests for clarification of their policy at that time.

But by 2005, things had changed, Star Trek Enterprise was off the air, and there were no more movies or tv shows in the works. Wired Magazine profiled a new fan show, Star Trek New Voyages, that continued the original 60’s series. While these are fan productions, Wired noted that

“Each New Voyages episode is produced with the help of a growing network of Star Trek professionals. The makeup supervisor for the new episode…worked on one of the many Trek TV series…The script is by D. C. Fontana, a story editor for the original Star Trek series…And it will star Walter Koenig, the actor who played navigator Pavel Chekov in the original series”

Perhaps this institutional support had a role. But Paramount also had a clearer policy, as according to Wired:

“Paramount permits Trek-related fan projects, as long as the creators don’t profit from them”

Thus, the show was distributed for free, and has survived by labor and cash donations. In 2005, Variety profiled another Trek fan series, Hidden Frontier, also saying that:

“It’s all volunteer; the only reason Par isn’t shutting them down for copyright violation is that they’re scrupulous about not profiting from the series”

By today, as seen on the “Fan Films” section of a major Star Trek news site, there are numerous fan productions being created today and distributed for free. Thus it seems over the past 10-15 years, an environment has been created that allows the proliferation of these projects – perhaps partly to the role of new media and crowd sourcing, new media and new ways for fan distribution, but also perhaps the ability to tap into professional networks and the creation of an understanding (even if not formally written) between the distribution company and the fans.

DQ: Fandoms and Participation

In Chapter 4 from Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture, amongst the topics discussed by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green, are fandoms, and participatory culture, and the nature of the relationship between the fandom culture and the corporate culture that owns the base material. I’ve seen this personally through watching various fan communities.

Star Trek: Phase II Fan Series

One instance is the vast array of Star Trek fan series, made by fans, taking place within the Star Trek universe. Many are high quality and have high production values, the group above even recreated the bridge set from the Original Series. What is interesting is how the copyright holder, CBS, responded – it has allowed the proliferation of these series, as long as they do not make a profit from it, a sort of indirect approval, though not an engagement. However, stakeholders outside of the corporate sphere, such as some actors who had guest roles, or people involved in writing original stories have contributed their services, playing guest roles in some of the higher profile fan series, or even contributing a script that never made it to screen originally.

The Journey to Hawkthorne Video Game, inspired by an episode of Communtiy

Another example is the “Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne” video game, inspired by an animated episode of Community that was animated ala an early video game. Fans came together to develop the concept into an actual game, as a community. As a lurker on their reddit myself, I’ve been fascinated by the organization and interaction of the community members, and the ways in which they participate. They have systems of participation, with tasks for people with coding skills and those without, and just by playing the versions coming out and finding bugs, people are are consumers are also contributing to the community. Likewise, NBC and Sony, the copyright owners have not stopped the project (which is non profit), but neither have they directly approved it. Though some people involved with the show, like writer Megan Ganz, and several of the actors have mentioned the game and tweeted about it.

The question here, is how should media companies respond? They may be hampered by directly encouraging it for legal reasons, but they should use it in some way. Can this value be counted, even if it cannot be directly harnessed, or counted into ratings? How do and how can media companies take the depth of their fandoms into account when making business decisions?

DQ: Search and Personalization

While reading Stalder and Mayer’s article on “The Second Index,” I realized that in my Information Science classes, when discussing search engines, we’ve learned a lot about how PageRank works, but not how personal information is factored in. Is this because those algorithms are proprietary, or do we just not focus on it due to the course material? Does focusing on PageRank make it easier to sidestep the messier social and privacy implications of factoring in personal information within the context of an engineering or programming class?

The other thing about personalized results is that sometimes I don’t want to see only what I want – the ability to metaphorically “browse the bookshelves” is becoming harder as more personalization occurs. There’s an argument that indivduals’ gain greater perspective, and that society gains a common discourse by having certain things in common. For instance, the original YouTube homepage would show the same featured videos to everyone, but now, when logged in, the homepage videos are highly personalized, and I find that they are often within the same little bubble of topics, and I am not recommended new videos outside my small sphere. Does this have economic implications as well as social and cultural ones? Might I be bored with my small circle of videos without seeing anything new and be tempted to leave the service?

DQ: “Endism,” Regulation, and Politics

The reading by Verhulst talks about the assumptions underneath media regulations, taking a soft technological determinist view to explain a technological paradigm shift, marked by convergence and a need for a new regulatory regime. Some of the assumptions that Verhulst dispels reminded me of the idea of “endism,” discussed in The Social Life of Information by John Seeley Brown and Paul Duguid, a concept related to technological determinism, that new technology will end the press, end education, end intermediaries, end politics, end government, etc.

This seems similar to Verhulst’s discussion about differences between non-regulation and self-regulation, and the myth of having no intermediaries. Self-regulation still requires work, and communication between industry and government. And despite the end-to-end nature of the physical infrastructure of the internet, intermediaries do exist, whether they are search engines, ISPs, or other gateway actors.

What does it mean to build policy off of technological deterministic and  “endism” assumptions, versus a more nuanced view? What types of regulation regimes will take hold from these assumptions? Does it empower certain actors and stakeholders over others? What results may come about from Verhulst’s assumptions? How hidden are these practices that dispel the myths of technological determinism and the end of intermediaries, and what can be done to un-black-box them?

RB: Through the Monitor

When I use my computer in my room, I often hook it up to my Samsung SyncMaster B2230 Monitor. I purchased it from Amazon.com a few years ago, but besides that, I don’t know where it came from. Time to being investigating!

The monitor I use every day – but I have no idea where it comes from beyond Amazon.com

My goal was to find out more about how the technology was made – where, what factories, what materials, and more. My first thought was to look at the product description on the Samsung website. I didn’t find much here – although it did say that my monitor is ENERGY STAR(R) compliant, and EPEAT(R) Silver Standard, meaning that they are engineered or produced in ways that are at least partially environmentally friendly, or use less power. While that was good to know, it didn’t give me specifics.

I then turned to the corporate Samsung pages, and found a page about global procurement – there was some information on how to apply to become a supplier in Samsung’s global production chain, and information on business ethics, but it still didn’t give me the specifics I needed.

I turned to look at the monitor physically. Not finding anything about its production on the box, I turned to the back of the monitor, finding the ubiquitous “Made in China” label.

The label on the back of the monitor

Indeed it was made in China, in a place called Zhongshan. This gave me a few clues. I figured I try looking at the Chinese version of the Samsung site, and did a few Google searches, eventually finding a listing of sites from their global network. I found that in Zhongshan, there’s a factory or company which is a production subsidiary of Samsung called China Printed Board Assembly. This in turn is a part of Tianjin Samsung Electronics Display Co. Ltd., which created circuit boards, printed board assembly machines, and millions of monitors.  Beyond that, it was very hard to find specific information about the company. There were some possible maps of these sites, but the map pins didn’t seem too accurate. Even though I know the name of the subsidiary company or factory where my monitor was probably made, I don’t really know much else. There were several sites that listed the companies as subsidiaries of Samsung. There were some phone numbers to these companies in some of the official Samsung documents, and I suppose given enough time, and someone to translate Chinese, I would be able to dig deeper into this.

From here, I couldn’t follow the path any further back – it would have been a great opportunity if I had been able to get all the way down the supply chain to the actual resources, metals , and plastics used in the making of the monitor. Though I would imagine after its manufacturing, it would go on a ship across the Pacific to the west cost, where it would be shipped by truck or railroad to an Amazon warehouse, who then ship it to me when I order it.

In general, supply chains are very much blackboxed – whether it is concerning the origins and manufacturing of hamburger meat, my clothing, or my monitor. By using subsidiaries, or contracting with various suppliers, as it seems that Samsung and many other companies do, the information becomes more disparate and harder to find. In one sense, this is a complication of increasing globalized supply chains, but in another sense it makes it easier for businesses to lessen consumers’ abilities to find “sausage making” information. Perhaps the valuable metals used to make the inside of the monitor cause conflict in Africa, or the factories that make the monitor may contribute to coal pollution. While the blackboxing of supply chains makes it much easier for us to act as consumers, not knowing what’s really inside also separates us from the social and environmental impact that our consumer decisions have. Especially the physical environmental effects – while I know that the monitor is Energy Star certified, I don’t often think about the environmental impact about the truck that delivered the monitor to me, the ship that brought it from China, the energy used by the factory, or the environmental harm by mining the metals and making the plastics for the monitor.

Back to what Samsung did show me on their website, the Energy Star and EPEAT certificates, is a way of unblackboxing these supply chains to some extent –  various certification programs by 3rd party groups provide a window into the manufacturing and business practices. It is not directly sharing the information, but rather I have to trust their judgement and rating process to get an aggregate rating – a system that still blackboxes much of the actual realities of the supply chain. Though it is still not the same as having all the information, it is a positive step for consumers’ ability to make more informed decisions by knowing more about how the products they buy get made.

DQ: “Un-Black Boxing” the Humanity of Devices

Reading the New York Times’ iEconomy series (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) helped “un-black box” several things, including domestic and international labor involved in making and selling Apple products and their business practices.  While I had heard of Foxconn through the news, this was the first time I read about Apple’s corporate tax rate strategy, larger structural issues in the market that cause labor pressures, and the retail working conditions.

A Foxconn factory line. When we think about the labor and practices behind devices, this is probably what we think of, because of the focus of the news media. (Photo from the New York Times)

Labor in retail helps get devices into consumers’ hands (image from the New York Times)

I think there’s an interesting imbalance in general between what we consume related to new media, especially in the device market, and what we know about the processes and choices behind the devices, which the New York Times seems to be emphasizing in this series. I would ask how come we don’t know about these practices – the labor, the business strategies, the working conditions, etc.?  Does it need to take investigative journalism pieces like this one to expose it? Is it a lack of interest or care by consumers? Or do businesses intentionally suppress or make this information harder to find?  What is the role of the news media, or watchdog groups, if any, in un-black boxing the human stories within our technological devices? Is there a way to promote worker standards, greater public information about the manufacturing of devices, without harming competition in the marketplace? These may not necessarily be questions we need to grapple with – we can continue buying new technological devices blissfully unaware of the work that went into getting them into our hands – but they are questions we should be asking.

Welcome to the Bytegeist

Hello, my name is Richmond Wong. I am currently a junior at Cornell University, double majoring in Information Science and Science and Technology Studies.  In general, I’m deeply interested in the interaction between people and technology, whether on an individual level, like human computer interaction, or on a more aggregate social level, such as technology policy.  I’m interested the policy implications of science and new technology, especially information technology.

Many of these posts are or were intended for my class blog, for INFO 3200: New Media and Society, which I took in Spring 2013.  As such, some posts are cross-listed, though I will try to indicate which posts originated from the class blog.

You can find out more about me at my personal website.

DQ: Thinking Physically About the Internet – and the Environment

Andrew Blum’s discussion of the physical nature and infrastructure of the internet in Tubes and in his photo essay on Wired, helps open the black box of the internet, allowing us to peer into the inner physical workings of something that is often thought of in abstract or virtual terms. Like in our earlier discussions regarding new media hiding labor, new media can also hide the physical infrastructure under the internet, as well as the work needed to maintain it. How does recognizing the physical geography of the internet change our perspective on on our actions on the internet?

This is an issue that I have been exposed to and thought about before. I would point out one major implication of thinking about the internet in this manner is realizing its environmental effect. In the public discourse, new media are usually  thought of  as “environmentally friendly,” as they use less paper, require less travel by car and plane, and other reasons. Yet because of the physical nature of the internet, there are very real-world impacts on the environment that are often hidden within the “black box.” For instance, the New York Times discussed the power needs and pollution effects of data centers. The mining of metals for electronic devices can cause environmental harm. While the issue of the environment was outside of Blum’s scope, he did discuss how real world factors, such as the availability of massive amounts of power, helped decide where some internet centers should be located. What other problems are uncovered by recognizing the infrastructure of the internet?  Besides the environmental problems, are there social inequalities or social justice problems that occur based on the physical geography of the internet?  Should this change how we think about, and how we use the internet?  As our dependence on new media and internet technologies for information increases, we will have to start to confront these types of questions.