Copyright, Fair Use, and the Cultural Commons

William C. Uricchio, Co-Director, Comparative Media Studies Program and Professor of Comparative Media Studies, MIT hosts a panelists’ discussion of current copyright wars with a brief historical overview of copyright protection.

In 1790, when news traveled by horse and carriage, copyright protection was good for 14 years. Today, when a digital, networked society enables instant transmission of data, protection lasts 70-plus years. Uricchio notes, “Bizarrely, the faster information circulates, the longer we’re extending copyright protection. It seems totally at odds with where our constitution framers and case law emerged from.”

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Effective Examples of Educational Technology and Priorities for Future Investment

Panel discussion moderated by James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. James Duderstadt believes recent efforts to digitize scholarly journals, along with Google’s massive digital library enterprise, “could be as important as the Internet in changing the scaffolding for learning and scholarship in the world.” In this final panel of the iCampus series, Duderstadt asks his colleagues to take up the question of how to propagate or scale up successful initiatives in educational technology, so that they have a transformative impact on higher education.

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Sowing the Seeds for a More Creative Society

Mitchel Resnick explores how new technologies can help people (especially children) learn new things in new ways. His Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab has developed a variety of educational tools, including the "programmable bricks" that were the basis for the award-winning LEGO MindStorms robotics construction kit.

Resnick demonstrates the creations of children who participated in special engineering and software designing courses. He had posed the challenge of inventing something that could be useful to them in everyday life. The results included such unique items as an odometer for roller blades, a diary security system, an automatic toilet paper dispenser and a mobile, wearable juke box. Resnick has launched Computer Clubhouses in locations around the world where kids often have no access to computers. He believes that “success for an individual or a country as a whole will depend on acting creatively.”

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How to create a video podcast

Podcasting allows anyone to distribute free or paid media to the content hungry masses. With a few simple technology tools and a PC or Mac, you too can create a video podcast in 3 easy steps.


Overview

Anyone with a few pieces of technology and broadband can create their own channel, pump out content around the world, and join the ranks of the new media moguls. The same technology that has allowed individuals to build their own mini-media empires has also given corporations and established media brands new avenues for leveraging existing content and building new revenue streams.


Just one year ago, audio podcasting was taking its wobbly baby steps. Now, it’s an accepted form of new media delivery (see StreamingMedia.com’s assessment of podcasting from April 2005 here). The same scenario is occurring with video and will probably have an even bigger impact than audio. So how do we use video podcasting as a helpful tool in our streaming media arsenal?


Step 1: Produce It

There are several ways to capture your media, the two most common being taking existing content off the shelf or shooting it using a digital video camera. You can even use a webcam, and most digital still cameras have a video record feature. On a Mac with Final Cut Pro or iMovie you can capture videos off of a camera, or you can drag and drop your existing AVI, MOV, or other video file into your video-editing program. On a PC, you can use Adobe Premiere Pro or similar software to capture raw footage onto the computer.



(Below: Rendering video for iPod from iMovie)





Step 2: Post It

With myriad ways to deliver your content, you want to make sure you are using the proper channel for distribution. Video podcasting content can be protected by hosting the content internally and using a variety of formatting procedures to protect from downloads. The current trend by major content providers is to provide media with fewer restrictions and advertisements for revenue streams. Other strong channels for content are TV advertisements and other clips that are specifically designed to be spread virally.



(Below: Uploading a file to YouTube)







Most video podcast content is designed to be downloaded and spread virally, so we will look at some free methods to spread your content. New media outlets like YouTube and Google Video let you post your video content free of charge and simply paste a link into your website or blog. Easy, quick, and free, it’s no wonder we are seeing video podcasting take off. If you want to post your video and have it available for an iPod or to download onto a portable media device, you can simply upload your file to a server and post a link. More and more Fortune 1000 companies are posting marketing-related material in iPod-friendly formats to download, view, and share.


Step 3: Deliver It

The final step in the process is to actually distribute your content; technically your video does not become a podcast until it has an RSS feed attached to it. Most blogging software has RSS feed capability built in and will have your video podcast up and running in no time. Once you post your content online, simply copy and paste the embed code given by YouTube, Google Video, etc., or the link to your hosted file, and paste that into a new post on your blog.



(Below: Video on YouTube; note the selection of the embed code in the "About This Video" box)





Submit your RSS feed to iTunes and a host of other video podcasting services, and your video blog, or vlog, is up and running. Using a free feed service like FeedBurner can help you maximize your usage of links, tags, and images in iTunes so your content is easily searchable. Every time you post a new video, FeedBurner updates your RSS feed and alerts the distribution channels and your subscribers of your new content.


(Below: Optimizing a feed with FeedBurner for an iTunes podcast)






Final Thoughts

With any new technology, there is a learning and adoption curve so choose your content and the target audience for this new medium with care. Keep it short, simple, and easy to spread. This has been a very brief introduction to this process with the basics on how to get started. There are plenty of resources available for more detailed information on how to add more options and customize a process that will work for you. As part of a new media strategy, video podcasting and vlogging are incredible tools in the quest for additional revenue streams and more customers. With any luck, and a little help from you, vlog could be the word of the year for 2006.



Video Podcasting Resources


Podcast playback devices

Apple iPod


Creative Zen Vision

Sony PlayStation Portable

Archos GMNI 500


Mac editors/converters

Apple iMovie

Apple Final Cut Pro

Apple GarageBand


PC editors/converters


Adobe Premiere

WinAVI Video Converter

Tucows AVS Video Tools 4.2

Windows Movie Maker


Free video hosts

YouTube

Google Video

Internet Archive


Video search

Blinkx

Google Video

Singingfish


Feed help

FeedBurner


Blogging sites and software

WordPress


Textpattern

Blogger

Six Apart

Nicholas Rockwell: MTV's Streaming Guru on New Models of Online Video Distribution

MTV Networks' chief technology officer took part in an interview about the architecture of video distribution for MTV and VH1. Rockwell, whose experience in online media goes back to the late 1990s when he built the technical infrastructure at SonicNet, covers interactive video, streaming media, DRM and more in this interview.

Listen / Download the mp3 here.

ABC offers broadcast prime time lineup online - for free

ABC.com has launched their free online episode streaming service earlier today. Shows available include Lost and Alias among others, and are available to watch for free, albeit with ad's and commercials.

Check it out

New Media Lectures from the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Selections from a New Media lecture and workshop series including John Battelle, Dan Gillmor, and Craig Newmark

John Battelle, author of "The Search", on "Why Should Journalists Care about Search?"

Bob Cauthorn, City Tools, on "Building Local News Online Sites"

Regina McCombs, Startribune.com, on "Doing a Multimedia Story"

Jan Schaffer, Institute for Interactive Journalism, on "Your Media, Our Media, We Media"

Dan Gillmor, Center for Citizen Media, on "Integrating Citizen Journalism at Media Sites"

Terisa Estacio, KRON-TV, on "VJ TV News"

Craig Newmark of craigslist on "An Online Culture of Trust"

Kamika Dunlap, Kathleen Kirkwood, Martin G. Reynolds, Jane Tyska of the Oakland Tribune, on "Doing Flash Stories"

(part of a multimedia workshop for mid-career journalists, presented at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Mar 27-30, 2006)

Open Networks and Open Society: The Relationship between Freedom, Law, and Technology

SPEAKERS: John Wilbanks: Executive Director, Creative Commons and Hal Abelson: Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, MIT School of Engineering

ABOUT THE LECTURE:

Hal Abelson wants to deliver a one-two punch against the privatization of academic discourse. His weapons of choice? New global initiatives based on MIT’s own OpenCourseWare (OCW) and DSpace. Abelson owns to a “real anxiety that people are quick to talk about academic exchange under the rubrics of property and ownership,” along the lines of the motion picture, recording and publishing industries. He sees a profound threat -- that of eventual monopoly control -- to scholarly publishing. Out of self-protection, Abelson says, universities must pursue initiatives to ensure free and open academic publishing. Abelson exhorts universities to pursue their true mission of generating, disseminating and preserving knowledge, and defend against the encroachments of the commercial publishing industry, with its near stranglehold on journals and increasingly on ideas themselves.

John Wilbanks hopes to expand on this vision with Creative Commons, an attempt to permit authors and artists around the world to copyright their material with “some rights reserved.” His website provides free tools for licensing music, photos, video or written works, while permitting the dissemination of this work for noncommercial or shared use, for instance. Eventually, Creative Commons may encompass data and datasets, as well as patents and the transfer of biological material.

Watch the lecture (Real Player required)

Happy 1 year anniversary to me

I just realized this is my 1 year anniversary of starting work at the University of Oregon. What's happened in 12 months?

Launched the streaming media services pages
Launched the Brain and Education Workshop symposium
Launched the AAA ePortfolio project
Had a baby
Launched the Digital Audio Initiative Blog, and did some work for the project.
Launched a metadata repository for streaming audio assets based on the open source platform Jinzora (login with "guest" and no password)
Launched and brought a whole bunch of content online for the UO Channel

Ha, that's just the highlights. There's a a few different other things as well.

Happy anniversary.

ABC Takes Hit Shows Online — For Free

Starting in May, ABC will present free, on-demand streams of some of the network's most popular shows. The streams, which will be available the day after the shows appear on broadcast TV, will feature ads that cannot be skipped by viewers.

In a press release Monday, the Disney-ABC Television Group called the planned offering a "two-month-long experiment." Offerings will include the latest episodes of Desperate Housewives, which landed 5th in the Nielsen ratings in the most recently announced ratings period, as well as Lost and Commander in Chief. The network already offers those shows as commercial-free, $1.99-per-episode downloads on Apple's iTunes, where Lost has consistently been a top seller. The entire season of Alias also will be available.

Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group, made the announcement during a panel Monday at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's annual trade show in Atlanta. "It's an opportunity for us to learn more about a different model," she said, according to the Associated Press. "None of us can live in a world of just one business model. This is about the consumer, and how consumers use all the new technology. It's consumer first, business model second."

Streams will be encoded and offered in Flash 8 for both PC and Mac, and will be offered in two resolution and bit-rate combinations: 500x282/400Kbps and 700x394/700Kbps. ABC offered ten advertisers the chance to test in-stream broadband advertising models and purchase show sponsorships. Advertisers already on board include AT&T, Cingular, Ford, Procter & Gamble, and Toyota, and Universal Pictures, as well as Walt Disney Pictures, which is owned by the same parent company that owns ABC.

The Economics of Open Archives, Museums, and Libraries Part 1

"If Only We Knew Yesterday What We Know Today" - Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, reviews the progress made on day one of the conference, highlighting how academic and commercial thinking and markets overlap. The panel on archives, museums, and libraries opens with David Dawson, Head of Digital Futures of the U.K. Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council, outlining U.K. research and funding agendas and business modeling, including models for new relationships with public broadcasting. Kati Geber, Manager of Research and Business Intelligence at the Canadian Heritage Information Network, follows with an analysis of the scene in Canada, noting that 75 percent of museum visitors in Canada today begin their visits online.


Click here to watch the forum (Real Player Required)
Click here to listen to the forum (Real Player required)
Click here to download the audio (mp3 podcast)

The Economics of Open Archives, Museums, and Libraries part 2

The archives, museums, and libraries panel at WBGH in Boston continues with Howard Besser, Director of Moving Image Archiving and Preservation and Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University, describing work underway in moving-image and recorded-sound cataloging and preservation, and Ellen Dunlap, president of the American Antiquarian Society, describing the commercial relationships that this library has fostered for the past 50 years and how commerce and open content can work together. Sumir Meghani, Business Development Manager for Yahoo! Search, discusses commercial perspectives generally and Yahoo's stakes in particular in furthering open content by analyzing the new Open Content Alliance that Yahoo! has helped to launch.

Watch the Forum (Real Player Required)
Listen to the Forum (Real Player Required)
Download the Audio (Podcast mp3)

Ben Harper live

I've been listening to Ben Harper for years, and have always been enchanted with the power of his voice perfectly coupled and layered with the music style he plays. Here's a live in studio performance at KCRW's 'Morning Becomes Eclectic show' :


Click here to watch the video recording (Real Player Required)
Click here to listen (Windows Media)
Click here to listen (Quicktime)
Click here to listen (Real Player)

MPAA called to task at SXSW

Listen to this panel discussion at SXSW where a representative from the MPAA faced down an audience of geeks who called her to account for the MPAA's war on its customers and on technology.

It's typical that the MPAA only sends speakers to events where they're not likely to face an audience who knows how to call their flawed tactics on their talking-points, so this is a rare and delicious debate, in which the MPAA rep is utterly defeated.

Some metrics on the popularity of media players

"Podcasting is taking off and iPods are seemingly ubiquitous. Unique users of Apple's iTunes player should pass RealPlayer by mid-2006 with nearly 30 million users in the US alone. People are tuning in over twice as long with iTunes than with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. As broadband penetration increases we are spending more time on our computers."

The thing I don't quite get though, isn't iTunes at its core just a XML wrapper for Quicktime? I mean, it's not a codec. So the rise of the popularity of iTunes as a media player, simply means the rise of Quicktime.

Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

A girl signs up for a class. A couple hires an accountant. A group of co-workers decides to pool their money and buy a couple of lottery tickets. In the beginning, they're full of hope and optimism ... and then something turns. Stories of good ideas gone bad from NPR's 'This American Life' -

Click here to listen (Real Player Required)

Conservative Media, Liberal Nation

Eric Alterman, Professor of English, Brooklyn College, CUNY; and a Columnist for The Nation speaks about the uneasy relationship between the press and the left. The lecture took place at Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Watch Windows Media 300kbps
Watch Real Player 300kbps
Listen to the Audio Only

Sundance Film Festival Puts More Content, Emphasis Online

For the first time at the festival more than half of the short films, known as "Shorts," will run online. In fact, about 50 of 73 are available for viewing. It's been rare for filmmakers to let the public view their original content on the Web.

Watch 50 exclusive selections from the collection of Short Films from the 2006 Sundance Film Festival in Flash 8 video

Excursions into the New Psychology of Entertainment

This presentation is an academic look at entertainment, by Dolf Zillman, professor and senior associate dean at the University of Alabama.

"Given that the Age of Entertainment is upon us, it is astounding how little attention contemporary scholars have given to understanding what it is that draws us to entertainments and what, in cognitive and emotional terms, we get out of succumbing to the lure of these entertainments."

Click here to watch (Real Player)