[-empyre-] youtube VS warner bros VS the users; circuits as technical objects

[Julian Oliver]

..on Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 10:36:04AM +0100, Gabriel Menotti wrote:
> > To be clear however The French government isn't outlawing photoshop so much as
> > ensuring that any digitally modified photograph needs to be distributed with a
> > notice that it has been modified. Photoshop, Gimp or other editing application
> > is still perfectly legal in this country.
> 
> Yup, sorry for not being clear about it, and thanks for explaining. =)
> 
> 
> > Unofficially allowing the upload of pirated material has been a primary strategy
> > in pre-Google YouTube's peer publicity model, no different from peer-to-peer
> > services that later switch to a pay model once a community feels dependent on
> > them.
> 
> That sounds more like drug-dealing than napster downfall. =) Blogger
> in Brazil was a huge failure because of this - there were free options
> out there, once the company that managed the national version of the
> service decided to charge for it. Nevertheless, some services become
> cultural standards either way, I just think the proccess can't be seen
> as a simple result of marketing strategies

I think it is strategy and process, in turn: provide a free service in the hope
it becomes popular by leveraging content you, as provider, do not produce.  The
more popular the content the more your service is used. User-generated content
can't always compete with an episode of Mitchell and Webb or an HBO hit and so
it is in the interest of the service provider to 'turn a blind eye'. 

As the service becomes more popular it attracts the interest of third-party
investors and the virtual capital of your company increases. At the same time
the risk of legal conflict increases. A race of sorts, the goal is to have
enough liquid capital to survive these inevitable battles meanwhile securing
your service as a dominant distribution mechanism, a 'standard' as you say.

Traditionally, corporations have necessarily worked just outside of the scope of
legal definition, defining new laws in their favour through survivng and/or
winning ambiguous or complex cases against them. In a Web 2.0 context the risk
within this legal metabolism is more readily distributed to the users. 
> 
> > The end result is a system of mutual benefit that sacrifices the occasional user
> > regularly enough to give outward appearance of legal obedience.
> 
> but isn't the user also benefited, in a way? after all, the service *is* 'free'

Yep, that's why I used the word 'mutual'..

Anyway, such services only appear to be free. In fact, they help sell bandwidth,
serve as a low-cost advertising platform for producers and generate a dependence
that is intended to be capitalised on later. Facebook is a good example here.
Facebook users are contributing to a bright future for advertisers, governments
and retailers by generously contributing to data-mines and trend-analysis that
will be used to sell products and predict population behaviour later. In this
broader sense, none of these services are at all Free, let alone standing as
acts of generosity:

	http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

> > An 'ecology' would be a better metaphor here than 'circuit', I feel. A 'society'
> > even better..
> 
> 'society' would suggest a too large scope for media analysis (and is
> not a very spatial metaphor! =)). i like 'circuit' because it
> highlights technical/ material aspects of the ensemble, while
> 'ecology' can be dangerous for sounding 'natural'
>

Hehe. Well there's nothing intrinsically unnatural about YouTube, the TCP/IP
protocols or vast redundant arrays of hard disks. They've proven to be well
within our nature. 'Natural' is just an old-fashioned, artificial construct to
conveniently delimit the man-made as an object of thought - another topic
altogether of course!

All said, I see your point.

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Madrid, Spain
currently: Madrid, Spain 
about: http://julianoliver.com