European Court Of Human Rights Reinforces Right To Access Online Content

Back in 2010, Techdirt reported on Turkey's habit of blocking Google over certain holdings on its various sites. Mostly these were YouTube videos it took exception to, but other services were banned too. An earlier case, from 2009, received less attention at the time, but has now led to a precedent-setting ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that could have a big impact on future cases in Europe, and maybe even beyond. 

On Techdirt.

Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style

A couple of months back, Mike wrote about how Psy's relaxed attitude to people infringing on his copyright helped turn Gangnam Style into one of the most successful cultural phenomena in recent years, and that includes becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube ever 

Ah yes, the maximalists will retort, this free-and-easy, laid-back approach is all very nice, but it doesn't put food on his table, does it? If you want to make a living from this stuff, you've got to enforce copyright to stop all those freeloaders ruining your business. Well, maybe not: 

On Techdirt.

How Much Would It Cost To Pre-Screen YouTube Videos? About $37 Billion Per Year...

Last week we reported that videos were currently being uploaded to YouTube at the rate of 72 hours every minute, and asked how anybody could expect Google to pre-screen such a deluge. Techdirt Insider xenomancer has gone a little further by working out how much it would cost to screen that material for potential copyright infringement, doubtless something the media industries would love to see imposed. 

On Techdirt.

YouTube Uploads Hit 72 Hours A Minute: How Can That Ever Be Pre-Screened For 'Objectionable' Material?

YouTube has announced that 72 hours of video is now being uploaded to its service every minute. Earlier this year, the statistic was that 60 hours of video was uploaded to its service every minute: 

On Techdirt.

If Piracy Is So Devastating, Why Are We Seeing An Unprecedented Outpouring Of Creativity?

One of the favorite tropes of the anti-piracy crowd is that all this unauthorized sharing is killing culture, pauperizing artists and generally making the world go to hell in a handbasket. The only pieces of evidence adduced in support of that position are the market reports put together for the copyright industries that (a) say the sky is falling and (b) base that analysis on the industries' own unsubstantiated claims. 

On Techdirt.

Collateral Murder, Collateral Damage

If you haven't seen the shocking but important video "Collateral Murder", which shows the callous gunning-down of Iraqi citizens (and the subsequent rocket attack on a civilian van with children inside), don't miss it on Wikileaks, its original source. Unfortunately, you may not find it on YouTube or other obvious video sites, since they have been taken down (although YouTube is back now, apparently).

A clear example of censorship, you might think, but in some respects its even worse:

Collateral Murder, with over 6M views, removed from YouTube after unknown US copyright claim http://bit.ly/aS3bMk

That's right, it was taken down on the basis of alleged copyright infringement, not because somebody thought it too shocking to be displayed. The idea that such an action would be taken because of an alleged infringement on somebody's monopoly, while the underlying cold-blooded massacre of Iraqi civilians is swept under the carpet, is of course, repulsive. But it's just another effect of the outdated law that is copyright - collateral damage, so to speak.

After all, copyright grew up in England for the purpose of controlling the flow of information, by allowing people to become itss "owners" - and hence a convenient throttle point:

The first copyright law was a censorship law. It had nothing to do with protecting the rights of authors, or encouraging them to produce new works. Authors' rights were in no danger in sixteenth-century England, and the recent arrival of the printing press (the world's first copying machine) was if anything energizing to writers. So energizing, in fact, that the English government grew concerned about too many works being produced, not too few. The new technology was making seditious reading material widely available for the first time, and the government urgently needed to control the flood of printed matter, censorship being as legitimate an administrative function then as building roads.

It should come as no surprise that copyright is still being used for the purposes of censorship - although often dressed up as if it were somehow "merely" a commercial issue (how that can be the case when we're talking about battleground footage is hard to see.)

This kind of abuse is one more reason why we need to abolish copyright completely: it is not only irrelevant to true creativity (artists don't need an "incentive" to create - they *have* to because of an inner compulsion), it is increasingly a threat to liberty in the online world.

Anyone who doubts that should look at the kind of clauses included in anti-piracy legislation like the Digital Economy Act, which allows websites to be blocked if they are alleged to hold material that infringes on someone's copyright. That will effectively allow the UK government to take down any leak of its documents, since there is no public interest defence in the Act. Had this been introduced as a law explicitly to block such leaks, there would have been an uproar over the censorship it implied; disguised as something to "protect" the poor creative artists, it passes with only protests from the usual troublemakers (like me). The stronger the copyright enforcement, the greater the scope for censorship: it's as simple as that.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Saving Clay Shirky

I am not an unthinking fan of everything Clay Shirky says, but I do find much of the stuff he writes thought provoking. In particular, I found his recent essay, “The Collapse of Complex Business Models” really spot-on in analysing the central problem faced by certain industries.

But not everyone seems to agree judging by this post:

That evening I reread the essay more closely, and the closer I read it, the less I liked it. At sunrise the essay had been an entertaining set of anecdotes built around an intriguing core idea; by sunset it had wilted, revealed as an entertaining set of anecdotes pulled from all over the map in the vain hope that there might, somewhere, be a theme that would hold them together.

The point about Shirky's use of anecdote is fair enough, although he's hardly the only person to adopt this rhetorical trick. Most "big idea" books follow the same pattern of getting their message across through easily-digested stories (but then, so does the Bible).

However, I did find problematic the following section of the critique:

Aside: here is Clay Shirky writing about YouTube:

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!)

which is, as of this date, no longer true. The most watched video made in the last five years shows Lady Gaga and a group of hired models dancing on an elaborate set in a video that embodies complex production methods, that is part of the Vevo channel (a joint venture between Google and major record labels) and that features product placements by Nemiroff Vodka, Parrot by Starck, Carerra sunglasses, and HP Envy [link]. Now there is a complex business model.

As a further aside, analysts Visible Measures add in all copies of a video together with spoofs and pastiches, and their list of the top fifteen videos is as follows.

1. Soulja Boy: Crank Dat (music video: Universal) - 722,438,268
2. Twilight Saga: New Moon (film: Summit Entertainment) - 639,966,996
3. Beyonce: Single Ladies (music video: Sony) - 522,039,429
4. Michael Jackson: Thriller (music video: Epic Records) - 443,535,722
5. The Gummy Bear Song (music video: Gummibear International) - 394,327,606
6. Lady Gaga: Poker Face (music video: Universal) - 374,606,128
7. Lady Gaga: Bad Romance (music video: Universal) - 360,020,327
8. TImbaland: Apologize (music video: Mosley Music Group) - 355,404,824
9. Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent (TV: Freemantle/ITV) - 347,670,927
10. Twilight (film: Summit Entertainment) - 343,969,063
11. Modern Warfare 2 (video game: Activision) - 339,913,412
12. Jeff Dunham: Achmed the Dead Terrorist (TV) - 328,891,308
13. Mariah Carey: Touch My Body (music video: Universal) - 324,057,568
14. Charlie Bit My Finger Again (user generated) - 288,666,331
15. Michael Jackson: Beat It (music video: Records) - 286,279,009

It seems that complexity has its place after all.

The first point is fair enough, but the following section actually undermines it. For notice that this long, impressive list counts "copies of a video together with spoofs and pastiches" - in other words, *precisely* the kind of stuff that has nothing to do with complex production. So the figures actually include all the stuff that Shirky is suggesting as an alternative to traditional production - hardly a valid way of arguing against him.

That's not the only place where the post is incorrect. Later on, it says:

Back to his Charlie story again:

Expensive bits of video made in complex ways now compete with cheap bits made in simple ways. “Charlie Bit My Finger” was made by amateurs, in one take, with a lousy camera. No professionals were involved in selecting or editing or distributing it. Not one dime changed hands anywhere between creator, host, and viewers. A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage.

But Charlie didn’t “just happen” because Charlie is not the only story here. As YouTube became a phenomenon, those 174 million-and-counting views could only be delivered by acres of these:

which then shows us a picture of serried ranks of Google hardware in Google server farms.

It's true that the YouTube video was indeed held on these systems; it is not true "those 174 million-and-counting views could only be delivered by acres" of such massive, organised server farms. Unstructured P2P systems are not only capable of delivering this kind of volume, they have been doing so for over a decade, often under the radar of the established companies, which only sit up and notice when some of their stuff starts being shared across them.

In a way, the fact that this could be overlooked is a neat summary of what's going on here: the changes Shirky describes have already happened, but not everyone has noticed.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

How Hard Can it Be? DIY OCW

One of the miracles of free software is that it always begins with one or two people saying: “hey, how hard can it be?” The miracle is that they say that even when “it” is an operating system like GNU, or a kernel like Linux, or a graphic image manipulation package like the GIMP. Despite the manifest impossibility of one person writing something that usually requires vast, hierarchical teams, and months of planning, they just start and the miracle continues: others join in and the thing grows until one day, with the help of a few hundred friends, they achieve that impossibility.

I was told this story dozens of times when I was writing Rebel Code, and I'm always heartened when I hear it today in other contexts. Like this one - the Khan Academy, which is:

a 2009 Tech Award winning site with 12+ million views and 1200+ 10-minute "videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance".

The interview linked to above probes how Sal Khan managed to create an entire open courseware site on his own, without worrying about the basic impossibility of doing so. One reason for his success, he believes, is the following:

The simple answer is to put stuff out there and iterate, and not have a bureaucratic team that are better at shooting down each other's ideas and constraining teachers. I understand the need to constrain teachers, because you want to have quality control and make sure everyone is being reached. But the negative side is that you're also constraining very good teachers, and you're taking a lot of the humanity out of the lesson.

This happens at the textbook level as well, and the state standards. I think to some degree there are so many cooks in the kitchen that the final product that the student gets is extremely diluted. There's something to be said for fewer cooks in the kitchen - and if they're good cooks, the food will be a lot more fun to eat. (laughter)

That's my best answer. Several states apparently have had efforts along the same lines. The idea isn't mind-blowing: get your best teachers in the state, or in the country, and put a camera in the room - I don't use a camera, but you could put a camera in the room, or use a format like me - and have them teach. And put those videos online, and make them free for the world.

The expense is almost ridiculously low to do something like that. But time and time again, some of these states have contacted me and said "well, you know, it's getting stuck in meetings..." - and they really haven't produced any videos.

The best way to think about it is that it becomes very corporate. There is this view that it has to be very polished, and have computer graphics, and that the teacher has to have a script so that they don't say "um" or make any mistakes. And I think what that does is it takes all of the humanity out of it, and the humanity is what people connect with.

In other words, release early, and don't worry too much about the quality provided it's good enough to be useful.

The interview is quite long, but it's well-worth reading. I predict that this could turn into a very important project, because it's doing everything right - just as those other people who said
"how hard can it be?" did.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

YouTube Goes Offline and CC

Not earth shattering, but a further vindication of the Creative Commons idea:

We are always looking for ways to make it easier for you to find, watch, and share videos. Many of you have told us that you wanted to take your favorite videos offline. So we've started working with a few partners who want their videos shared universally and even enjoyed away from an Internet connection.

Many video creators on YouTube want their work to be seen far and wide. They don't mind sharing their work, provided that they get the proper credit. Using Creative Commons licenses, we're giving our partners and community more choices to make that happen. Creative Commons licenses permit people to reuse downloaded content under certain conditions.

You Know Your Software is Respectable When...

...big-name manufacturers start making hardware to support you:

Netgear has just announced its Internet TV Player, a set-top box that allows users to play content from video streaming sites like YouTube, directly on their TV. Perhaps of more interest is the device’s built-in BitTorrent client, which makes it an ideal TV-torrent player as well.

Netgear is a company that has its finger on the pulse of what users are doing and want; this is a clear sign that BitTorrent is mainstream now.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody

And Now for Something Completely Different...

Instead of suing people who upload your content on YouTube, you put up *better-quality* copies, and try to sell something off the back of them:

For 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

We know who you are, we know where you live and we could come after you in ways too horrible to tell. But being the extraordinarily nice chaps we are, we've figured a better way to get our own back: We've launched our own Monty Python channel on YouTube.

No more of those crap quality videos you've been posting. We're giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What's more, we're taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what's even more, we're letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

But we want something in return.

None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.

It's still a bit limited, at least they're trying.

Open Source Invention

Here's an interesting point about a new trend in "publishing" inventions directly to YouTube:

This is a very good article in the New York Times about publicising inventions via Web 2.0 tools like YouTube. The piece concentrates on Dr Johnny Chung Lee, a 28-year-old inventor who became a YouTube celebrity by posting Wii hacks, including how to make a muilti-touch whiteboard, and the mind-boggling video on generating real 3D gaming experiences. The videos went viral, and attracted 2 million and 6 million views respectively.

...

Something not mentioned in the NYT piece however is the patent implication of Dr Lee's practices. Patenting requires novelty, therefore by making his inventions public before filing for a patent application would invalidate any later request. However, by placing his inventions on YouTube, it also precludes anyone else from trying to patent the invention. This is, for lack of a better word, open source invention.

Indeed, and an interesting example of how openness can help stymie intellectual monopolies.

The Marvellous Mr. arXiv

Paul Ginsparg is one of the key players in the world of open access. Indeed, he was practising it online before it even had a name, when he set up the arXiv preprint server (originally known simply by its address "xxx.lanl.gov"), which has just celebrated its half-millionth deposit:

arXiv is the primary daily information source for hundreds of thousands of researchers in many areas of physics and related fields. Its users include the world's most prominent researchers in science, including 53 Physics Nobel Laureates, 31 Fields Medalists and 55 MacArthur Fellows, as well as people in countries with limited access to scientific materials. The famously reclusive Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman posted the proof for the 100-year-old Poincare Conjecture solely in arXiv.

Journalists also use the repository extensively to prepare articles for the general public about newly released scientific results. It has long stood at the forefront of the open-access movement and served as the model for many other initiatives, including the National Institute of Health?fs PubMedCentral repository, and the many institutional DSpace repositories. arXiv is currently ranked the No. 1 repository in the world by the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.

"arXiv began its operations before the World Wide Web, search engines, online commerce and all the rest, but nonetheless anticipated many components of current 'Web 2.0' methodology," said Cornell professor Paul Ginsparg, arXiv's creator. "It continues to play a leading role at the forefront of new models for scientific communication."

Given his pivotal role in the open access, it's good that Ginsparg has expanded on that rather compressed history of his work in a fascinating romp through both the creation of arXiv and his own personal experience of the nascent Internet and Web.

Here's a few of the highlights:

I first used e-mail on the original ARPANET — a predecessor of the Internet — during my freshman year at Harvard University in 1973, while my more business-minded classmates Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the future Microsoft bosses, were already plotting ahead to ensure that our class would have the largest average net worth of any undergraduate year ever.

...

At the Aspen Center for Physics, in Colorado, in the summer of 1991, a stray comment from a physicist, concerned about e-mailed articles overrunning his disk allocation while travelling, suggested to me the creation of a centralized automated repository and alerting system, which would send full texts only on demand. That solution would also democratize the exchange of information, levelling the aforementioned research playing field, both internally within institutions and globally for all with network access.

Thus was born xxx.lanl.gov, initially an e-mail/FTP server.

...

In the autumn of 1992, a colleague at CERN e-mailed me: “Q: do you know the world-wide-web program?” I did not, but quickly installed WorldWideWeb.app, coincidentally written by Tim Berners-Lee for the same NeXT computer that I was using, and with whom I began to exchange e-mails. Later that autumn, I used it to help beta-test the first US Web server, set up by the library at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center for use by the high-energy physics community.

...

That sceptical attitude regarding the potential efficacy of full-text searching carried over to my own website’s treatment of crawlers as unwanted nuisances. Seemingly out-of-control and anonymously run crawls sometimes resulted in overly vociferous complaints to network administrators from the offending domain. I was recently reminded of a long-forgotten incident involving test crawls from some unmemorably named stanford.edu-hosted machines in mid-1996, when both Sergey Brin and Larry Page graciously went out of their way to apologize to me in person at Google headquarters for their deeds all those years ago.

...

no legislation is required to encourage users to post videos to YouTube, whose incentive of instant gratification comes through making personal content publicly available (which parallels with the scholarly benefit of voluntary participation in the incipient version of arXiv in 1991.)

Fascinating tales from a fascinating life.

YouTube: A Video Commons?

I've noticed increasingly that the "young people" seem to watch YouTube rather than that old-fashioned thing called "TV". Here's a nice piece in the Guardian reminding us that YouTube is much more than a super MTV (what's that?), but is fast turning into a kind of visual Wikipedia: if somebody was able to digitise it, you can probably find it.

YouTube is best known for its offbeat videos that become viral sensations. But among its millions of clips is a treasure trove of rare and fascinating arts footage, lovingly posted by fans.

Being able to regard YouTube as a video commons: just one more reason to get rid of 18th-century copyright laws.

Has YouTube Just Been Saved?

On Open Enterprise blog.

IOC Stays True to Olympic Spirit...

...the Beijing Olympics spirit, that is:

the IOC sent a take-down notice to YouTube for a video posted by Students for a Free Tibet.

The video, which showed a pro-Tibet candle-light vigil in New York City and images from the March protests in Tibet, was dutifully pulled by YouTube. However, it was unclear what infringement the IOC was claiming. Although their famous interlocking rings were briefly shown, that would seem to be a trademark, not covered by the DMCA. Even if they claimed the rings were copyrighted creative content, their creation in 1913 places them firmly in the public domain (on copyright, the trademark remains -- but the DMCA isn't for trademark). Luckily after a number of sites questioned the action, the IOC withdrew their complaint.

How Many Out of Ten for Number 10?

Number 10 has a new look for its Web site...and it's rather good (love the blues). Moreover, it's gone all Web 2.0: Flickr stream, YouTube channel - even Twitter.

That's all well and good, but I wonder whether Team Number 10 has taken on board what Web 2.0 is really about: listening to the community of users (that would be the electorate, Gordon), not just dictating in an authoritarian manner.

Time will tell whether it's a real sea-change, or all just Spin 2.0....

Update: Turns out it's something *much* richer....

Coming Down Hard - in Favour of Downloads

A study about downloading finds:

Music companies need to stop resisting and accept that illegal downloading is a fact of 21st-century life

...

"The expectation among rights holders is that in order to create a success story, you must reduce the rate of piracy," Garland said. "We've found that is not the case."

The authors of the study argue that music rights holders need to find "new ways" and "new places" to generate income from their music, rather than chasing illegal downloads – for example, licensing agreements with YouTube or legal peer-to-peer websites. In other words, they ought to do the musical equivalent of giving away free ice-cream and selling advertising on the cones.

So far, so boring - I and others have been writing this stuff far ages. Except for one tiny detail: the study comes not from deranged bloggers like me, or crypto-communists bent on underming the entire capitalist system, but was conducted

by the MCPS-PRS Alliance and Big Champagne, an online media measurement company.

In other words, *their own research* shows that their *fight* is hopeless. Will they listen? Don't hold your breath....

In Google We (Don't) Trust

Here's a little reminder why you can never trust Google, even if it has the best intentions:

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

Yes, that includes *you* - not that you've ever watched anything dodgy there, of course....

Compiz is Cool – and Why That Matters

On Open Enterprise blog.