Wikepedia’s home page today
“For the past sixty years, TV executives have been making the decisions about what we watch in our living rooms. Kyncl would like to change that. Therefore YouTube, the home of grainy cell-phone videos and skateboarding dogs, is going pro. Kyncl has recruited producers, publishers, programmers, and performers from traditional media to create more than a hundred channels, most of which will début in the next six months—a sort of YouTV. Streaming video, delivered over the Internet, is about to engage traditional TV in a skirmish in the looming war for screen time.”
I was fascinated by “Streaming Dreams” by John Seabrook and the role Robert Kyncl, who brought streaming to Netflicks, is playing in transforming YouTube fron the most watched network in the world, but only for 15 minutes at a time, to a creator of original high-quality content that threatens annihilate cable, Network TV, and Hollywood all at the same time.
Enter the new web privacy bill before Congress making the whole tech community turn upside down.
“Supporters of controversial antipiracy legislation face a struggle to regain momentum after the White House sided with irate Internet companies and users over the weekend and complained that the proposal could hurt innocent companies and undermine cybersecurity.”
I realize that everyone on the web is involved in the fight over current legislation, from Google to Wikipedia. But I just wonder if what is really at stake here is the battle between web generated content and Hollywood generated content. Hollywood depends on a very close control of over it’s high priced output to create scarcity value. The web, as the New Yorker piece points out, is exactly the opposite. There is an infinite amount of content on the web and what rises to the top is a purely democratic matter. People vote with their eyeballs. There is no control over the means of production. I don’t want to get all Karl Marx here on you, but what the web does is level the playing field and make content something that we all get to choose, rather than some network executive who green lights yet another Mork & Mindy.
I for one am for interent freedom. How about you?
We apologize to the GMP tumblr community. We have opted to blackout today in support of stop PIPA-SOPA. Please visit us there to connect with your Senators to let your voice be heard.
Jack Varnell-
Social Media – Curation
The Good Men Project
https://goodmenproject.tumblr.com/
One issue that SOPA and the US Government have failed to address is how the Internet actually works. I have had server contracts with UK suppliers, and the suppliers have provided co-location as protection with full mirroring and three net entry points on three continents. Under contract you have no power to control the co-location – the supplier chooses this based on market price and capacity. And as per best practice the locations are as geographically distant as possible. On one occasion that left me with a server in the UK and co-location to Texas and Hong King at the… Read more »
Yeah Mork and Mindy was one of the last great shows.
Thanks for the education.
Hey, I liked Mork and Mindy! 😉 Seriously, though. It *is* about control. With the Internet, the MPAA/RIAA doesn’t have complete control of the distribution channel anymore. To get your videos/music, you don’t have to go into a MPAA/RIAA approved store and buy the MPAA/RIAA approved content that gives the MPAA/RIAA the most money. Instead, you could go to the artist’s website and get content from them without the MPAA/RIAA being involved at all. They don’t like this and are willing to kill the entire Internet to restore their “rightful place” as sole content gateway. Of course, the most frightening… Read more »