Tactics+of+Resistance,+Small+(Participatory)+Media

=Week 8: Tactics of Resistance, Small (Participatory) Media= = = In this week’s reading in //Fighting For Air//, Eric Klinenberg talks about the //Village Voice//, a small media publication that began in New York City in the 1950s. Although the details are hard to see, here is a picture of the front cover from a 1955 edition:



The interesting thing about the //Voice// was that its relatively small size and local, independent ownership allowed it to focus on issues that really mattered to New York City. In 2005, the //Voice// was taken over by a big corporation, and started to lose its community investment and idea diversity.

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In 2007, the Gotham Gazette, and independent publication in New York City, interviewed Eric Klinenberg about his book Fighting For Air. In the interview, he discusses his thoughts on big vs. small media, and uses the Village Voice to illustrate his point. (This isn’t the whole interview, I only posted the parts I found to be relevant to this week’s reading. If you’re interested in reading the whole interview, check it out at: [)|Gotham Gazette-Klinenberg Interview]======

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** Gotham Gazette: ** But a lot of New Yorkers, especially community advocates, neighborhood activists, complain all the time about the lack of coverage of local issues. ** Klinenberg: ** Yeah, well, it’s an enormous city. I’m not saying that every community is adequately covered. My point is: As we look across American cities and communities, we find that local information about them has become more of a luxury good. But New York is not immune from this pressure of consolidation.
 * Gotham Gazette: ** In New York City, there is no Wal-Mart, and there are still plenty of places to have an over-caloried coffee besides Starbucks (though there are more than 170 Starbucks in the city, and counting.) How is media consolidation affecting New York City in particular? ======
 * Klinenberg: ** Truly local coverage has become a luxury good. So the wealthiest cities are still getting a decent supply of local information. New York is the most competitive media market I know of. People in Los Angeles and Chicago envy New York for the diversity of its local news.

** The Death Of Alt? **  The other dramatic story has to do with the transformation of the alt weeklies. The Village Voice is now managed by two libertarians from Phoenix, Arizona. They merged New Times with Village Voice Media, they took the name, Village Voice Media, but the controlling party are these two from Phoenix. They came to town, they fired veterans, they imposed conditions that were so difficult for others that they resigned, they lost an editor. In the view of many veterans at the Voice, they crushed the spirits of the newspaper and tried to impose a style whose fit for the city remains open to question. For example, many people at the Voice were concerned that there was a political purge, that [co-owner] Michael Lacey wanted to take the progressive voice out of the Village Voice. The Village Voice long ago lost its tight connection to Greenwich Village. It became a New York institution and somewhat of a national institution as well, but it’s always had this distinctly alternative voice, and the voice of Michael Lacey and the new Village Voice management is alternative only insofar as frat boy contrarianism of the kind that we associate with the party that’s in power right now is an alternative; in my view that’s not very alternative at all ** Gotham Gazette: ** This is on the basis of your reading the issues since the new owners took over? ** Klinenberg: ** I think we’re still watching the Village Voice change. I’ve been reading the New Times publications for years, and I’ve had countless conversations with former New Times employees, current New Times employees, as well as those with other alternative weeklies, about the way that company does business. The standard operating style of the New Times weekly papers was to pare down the editorial staff so that they had fewer full-time reporters than papers like the Village Voice used to have. In the cultural coverage, they have a number of movie reviewers, music reviewers, who do content for all of the Village Voice media chain papers; that means a smaller number of perspectives. ** Gotham Gazette: ** You are talking about what the chain was like before it merged with the Village Voice Media, and you are also talking about what has happened in other cities. I wondered if there is evidence that this has happened here. ** Klinenberg: ** The jury is still out. I haven’t seen the Village Voice replace all the people who resigned or were fired. ** Gotham Gazette: ** I have seen stories though that say they are hiring. ** Klinenberg: ** I see ads. ** Gotham Gazette: ** So, you don’t know for sure yet. ** Klinenberg: ** I’m pretty certain they have not exceeded the number of employees they used to have. The style of management in this company is that you have smaller newsrooms. They have quotas; reporters have to get work out more quickly. Some of the reporters I spoke with [in other Village Voice Media newspapers] complained that when you have to produce reported stories quickly, you’re more likely to go after public companies or non-profits, whose financial information is more readily available, than do deep investigations into the private sector. ** Klinenberg: ** What I’m most concerned about is uncompetitive media marketplaces. Big might not be bad, if by big you meant big journalistic staffs, big studios filled with all the live djs and reporters. But what we are seeing is big companies downsizing -- reducing the number of live local human beings producing original content. So in my view we’re getting big companies, small journalism… We once considered local news and information to be necessary for democracy in this country; we have a profoundly local political system.

Copyright and Borrowing Ideas
In //Free Culture//, Lessig calls the consumption and regurgitation of ideas “Walt Disney Creativity”. This is the process of drawing from stories and concepts already in existence, altering them in some form, and then re-releasing them to the public. Disney is a prime example, because they were one of the first to reuse well known fairy tales in a very different manner.

Here is a brief history of copyright by Russell Rains. (This video is part of a lecture in regards to the music industry.) media type="youtube" key="xpuNPIQjDOk" height="385" width="480"

Much of “Walt Disney Creativity” is based on the use of public domain works.

“A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright and  which may be freely used by everyone.” – from a University of North Carolina website, http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

The process of using public domain material is not uncommon. To put it into perspective, the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) credits William Shakespeare with 750+ movies and television shows. This list includes adaptations such as: -//The Lion King//, based on Hamlet -//10 Things I Hate About You//, based on The Taming of the Shrew -//O//, based on Othello -//Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead//, based on Hamlet -A "Dilbert" episode, based on Romeo and Juliet -//Romeo & Juliet vs. The Living Dead//, based on the play Romeo and Juliet, but incorporating zombies

The borrowing of ideas is not only from print to Movies and Television. Video games are also common grounds for borrowing. In 2010, a video game based on Dante’s Inferno was released. -[]

Ulf Hagen explores the sources of video game ideas in his thesis, “Where Do Game Design Ideas Come From? Invention and Recycling in Games Developed in Sweden” (despite the title, it is not solely about video games in Sweden). In it he describes how a video game was designed based on a movie based on a graphic novel. “As told earlier, the film Wanted is loosely based on a graphic novel (comic book) by Marc Millar, and although most features in the transmediated game Wanted: Weapons of Fate (no. 20) are borrowed from the film, a few game ideas are obviously taken from the book, since they occur only in the book and not in the movie (that applies for example to some of the characters in the game). In an interview by Michael Thompson, the director of the game says that the game tie into both the film and the book. “Story-wise, it's heavily connected to the movie... but visually, it has some hook-ins to the comic”. “ -@http://www.digra.org/dl/db/09287.25072.pdf

=**Piracy**= ==

In the first part of the Lawrence Lessig book, "Free Culture," talks all about piracy and how it effects society. The most interesting part of the reading has to be how basically every aspect of media and technology could be accused of piracy, yet they are all so quick to file lawsuits against the general population. Here are examples of how these technologies have all committed some form of piracy.
 * Film: An example of piracy in film is Walt Disney and using the Brothers Grimm fairytale stories.
 * Recorded Music: An example of piracy in recorded music is the example of Edison and Henri Fourneaux and their inventions of machines that produce music.
 * Radio: An example of piracy in radio, is that the radio doesn't pay the artists to play their songs.
 * Cable TV: An example of piracy in TV, is that they don't pay the people to show their creations on TV.

Four types if file shares content: Out of these four, the fourth is the only legal kind of sharing content.
 * 1) Some using sharing networks to completely replace buying the music legally.
 * 2) Some use sharing networks to share a sample of the music with their friend, who then usually decides if they want to buy the whole CD or not.
 * 3) Some use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or would not have purchased off the net because it is too expensive.
 * 4) Some use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that they want to give away.

=Is online piracy a good thing?= By Mairi Mackay CNN A Pirate Bay server, confiscated by police last year, on display in Stockholm's Technical Museum. But, the copyright war is far from over. The fierce battles between corporations and pirates over how to control information on the Internet will continue to be fought. Here we ask two players in the fight to command how movies, music, video games and more are distributed on the Internet -- Monique Wadsted, the lawyer prosecuting The Pirate Bay case for major motion picture studios and record labels including Sony BMG and Universal, and Magnus Eriksson, co-founder Piratbyran, the loosely formed group of theorists, artists and programmers most famous for founding The Pirate Bay **--** whether online piracy is good thing. Monique Wadsted, Swedish lawyer** What is going on now is actually a plundering of author's works. If some authors find it good to market their products using file-sharing they are free to do that. But, that is not what is happening at the moment. What's happening at the moment is that authors' and rights holders' works are file-shared against their will and that is not acceptable. It's a big threat to the creative industries and the creators, as such, of course. If you as an individual are going to use your money only to buy the latest computer and the latest broadband and not pay anything for the content, well, what will happen in the future? Somebody has to pay for the production of the content. It doesn't seem really fair that the only ones that are earning money on file-sharing are the producers of computers and broadband. We know that not everybody that downloads movies would have gone to the movies but, of course, movies and DVDs are specifically a product that once you have consumed it, it is consumed. Many of the people that download are not film geeks, are not nerds. They are ordinary people and for them, as long as it's possible, they do it. But, they understand it won't go on forever. Even younger children understand it's impossible to be able to take part of new movies and new music without paying for it. There are a lot of legal services, but it's very, very hard to compete with "for free." If you do a pirate service, you don't have to take into consideration anything at all. You don't have to take into consideration your existing business relations, you don't have to take into consideration your agreement with the authors. You don't have to take anything into consideration. I don't think you have to participate in illegal activities to be innovative. If we take the Spotify [music-sharing site] guys, it's a perfect example of very good, creative, innovative business that is totally legal. And there are a lot of people around the world finding solutions and trying to build services. So, hold on. For the majority of artists, file-sharing has been beneficial. It's just a small minority that were heavily marketed by the industry in the past that suffer losses, mostly because people spend their money on a broader selection of music. File-sharing is a neutral endeavor. It has great opportunities to be at the center of a dynamic cultural life where you don't need large resources to participate and get a global reach where hidden gems from the cultural history can be revitalized. On the other hand, if you are stuck in the manufacturing paradigm, file-sharing will seriously hurt your business. Access to the Internet is becoming a fundamental basis for being able to participate in the culture and politics of late modern society. The more important this communication gets, the more important it becomes to keep it neutral and open, not in the hands of politicians or corporations. Cinema is doing better than ever. They calculate losses by looking at the number of downloads and imagining that all of them would have been a purchase if they hadn't been downloaded first. The film industry is very centralized, which means they have a really hard time adjusting to changes in the market. For example, due to file-sharing, people discover a broader range of films than before but cinemas have done nothing to work with this insight. In today's economy, innovation and new expression comes from the margins, from unexpected directions. Giving access to all is the best way to promote the creative diversity that makes society resilient to changes and shocks. The option to monitor all communications, fight all new digital technologies and spread a culture of fear in what should be a free and open communication network is not a desirable option. The Internet revolution meant that we created a global network where any digital entity could connect and exchange information with any other. Anti-piracy efforts must be seen the light of a counter-revolution against this that goes all the way to the very infrastructure of the Net. http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/17/online.piracy.for.against/index.html
 * LONDON, England (CNN)** -- Lawmakers have come to a decision in Sweden's landmark copyright case, finding the four men behind one of the world's most popular file-sharing sites, The Pirate Bay guilty of collaborating to violate copyright law and jailing them for a year.
 * NO
 * YES**
 * Magnus Eriksson, Co-founder Piratbyran**


 * ==What do you think? Is piracy a good thing or a bad thing?==

Also here are some other links to other websites about piracy:
 * 1) http://news.cnet.com/has-online-piracy-reached-a-tipping-point/
 * 2) http://www.riaa.com/physicalpiracy.php
 * 3) http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-piracy.htm
 * 4) http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/03/06/money-college-downloads-piracy-still-a-thorn-for-music-industr/

All of these links have some interesting information about piracy and how it is portrayed in the media, and what it actually does to the media.

One Last thing on Piracy: In Japan the comic books and the comic book clones are a huge example of piracy. Why don't they sue the copycats? When asked it all comes down to lawyers. They claim to not have enough lawyers to sue all of the copycat publication so they don't do anything about it. Here are examples of comic books and then their counterparts:

=**Real:**=

www.nla.gove.au/.../annrep04/images/astroboy.jpg

=__**Pirated:**__=

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JGgzOkYhIb0/R1pNHPzoG8I/AAAAAAAAA2I/fse4XWv7kr4/s400/astro_boy_birth.jpg

These are both very similar, yet the second one is stolen from the one above. Here is a perfect example of where piracy is obvious and wrong, yet these people are not charged with piracy while people in all other aspects in the media in the United States are charged all the time with many different aspects of piracy.