Something I missed probably because I was either in deepest Shropshire or deepest Surrey…but the only ever London pirate tv station Network21 transmitted in 1986 just under ITV for a year in 1986…and the program was arts based and they lobbied (unsuccessfully, although nighttime TV and cable/satellite probably answered some of those needs) for community access to TV, and even got city funding…remember this is a time where Kiss was a successful pirate, it could have been possible.

Genesis P even pops up at some point, and Brion Gysin in this clip, along with EVP phenomena, Rolling Stones in drag, pop performances and Warhol’s Trash, amongst many. This is truly experimental, weird, funny, odd, dated, amazingly good and amazingly low-tech TV.

TV COULD have been like this, instead we get the shit that is X-Factor and Big Brother. Sigh.

Sadly it got raided on it’s first birthday.

(I would usually say thank you to Boing Boing for this, but weirdly their post about Mr Gysin doesn’t even mention the amazing and very interesting source of the video, which I tracked down after a short hunt. Like hello? Maybe Pirate TV grows on trees in Cory’s world? Or he can’t receive it up in his balloon )

If you’ve not tuned into Rise and Shine, so far you’ve missed ladies made of Magma saving Christmas, missing cats, Paris goes to Belgium in a currently very fashionable Italian Euro Disco vocoder stylee and a punk Santa breakin’ the law, well internet tubes – with yours truly on sleighbells!

Quite interesting seeing/hearing the songs develop by the guest songwriters and video & chat contributors, they are moulded (or maybe forged in the heat of battle over 3 hours from 7pm to 10pm until Christmas Eve.

New songs will appear here:

And don’t forget to chip in for charity here:

OK this post has been brewing for a long while – so it’ll be a long one. Deal.

About a month ago I joined Twitter – people were quite surprised, 2 years ago I’d expressed my hatred of Twitter at Podcamp 06 (the audio is floating around somewhere) so me eventually joining Twitter was a surprise.

Why the turnaround? Well one of two things; I feel as part of my job I need to keep abreast of these technologies, and the other that I’d missed hearing about whole conferences because the podcasting community had pretty much decamped wholesale to Twitter, and thus most of the conversations don’t happen outside, or unless you are subscribed to 100s of shifting blogs. Unlike previous times, the only central point was…you guessed it – the ubiquitous Twitter.

So has my attitude changed? Yes and no.

Back in 2006 I decried the fact that Twitter and social media were sucking the life out of real life friendship – there wasn’t really a point to going to see mates to find out how they are when you can read it on a Facebook or Twitter update. I think the social effects of sites like Facebook since 2006 has partly proven me correct, people seem to be using technology to offset traditional contact with friends, and there seems to be a wider base of shallower friends, what I call acquaintances, but under an umbrella of frequent updates so connected as if they are close friends. It’s a sham; a bad reflection of a true friendship. Obviously it’s also a good, keeping people in touch who are the other side of the world and bringing people together, so it’s not all bad. But I find it ironic that through technology I’m more likely to see someone 100s or 1,000s of miles away, but then never see friends down the road in the flesh.

Crazy Half Life

Robert Scoble talked about half-life of a conversation recently; I think in James Gleick fashion it’s useful to try and measure the speed at which these conversations are moving, the stress vectors. It’s obvious that Twitter is a very different animal to Livejournal, despite not that different technology and only about 7 years difference in launchdate, but really in speed they are worlds apart.

Part of the attraction of Twitter is it’s Google-like simplicity, it does one thing, and does it well. Compared to blogging or email, the conversations seem fairly one-sided, like a blog (really most people there are talking about themselves, the amount of PR/marketing and new media evangelists is horrific); but without the depth you can maintain in a blog. The conversations are quicker – gone in 15 minutes or quicker, and very volatile – no not that people get angry but the posts disappear off-screen quickly, and are gone.

So like a more acceptable version of those kids on the bus txting continually, it’s blogging with hyper A.D.D. But this seems to be the way social media is moving – into the realm of fast immediate mobile-friendly short conversations, throwaway, shallow.

And with video – like 12seconds I can see it becoming wham-bam-thank-you-Mr because the time constraints of following 100 or 1,000+ people and the flood of audio and video media means the message has to survive the tl;dw or tl:dl (too long; didn’t watch or too long; didn’t listen) of mobile phones, iPods and online media. Will this affect the message? Of course it will. Or there will be two streams, one of the refuseniks producing niche longer programs, and a massive pool of really short shows with no content.

Living with Numbers

‘Social Gaming’ as I call it, attaining friends for sheer number volume and grooming/attracting/whoring yourself to get people to click that ‘Add friend’ or ‘Follow’ button is not new – Myspace and millions of teenagers have been playing that game for years. But the simplicity of the user interface coupled with the prominence of the Following / Follower stats (thank GODDESS they didn’t make the mistake of calling it “friend’ like Myspace and LJ, what a psychological drama minefield that has been) has led to an almost messianic obsession with collecting followers. It makes the obsessive ‘I wanna be your friend’ popularism from when you were in school seem somehow quaint. At least those teens weren’t pushing a ‘brand’ and a hidden business/marketing plan.

Also interesting is a new breed of people who seem to be trying to create a career being a Social Media Whore – consultants or new media professionals, it’s like the professional bloggers of yore (who interestingly have stormed this Social Media space in the same way traditional broadcasters invaded podcasting, using their ‘name’ status and existing readership and other channels to promote their Twitter/Friendfeed to trounce any ‘competition’) except with one difference – blending the prosaic and mundane with the insights and links of old, all in 140 characters, leading to a sort of silent film / talkie divide between those using all media – video, microblogs, maps, moblog photos, work AND play, and those just pinging their Twitter from their blog when they post.

But is it possible to eat off linklove? Can online respect alone pay the bills? Is it a new way of working (I know of people who have gotten work via Twitter and other social media), or just TwitFactor? Your 15 seconds are up, Mr McLuhan43553.

Top of the Class

Something that has always bothered me about social media – and new / rich media (interesting term there) as a whole is that it’s nerdy. white, usually male and most definitely middle class. I’m sure loads of people will now point to exceptions, but it bothers me that diversity isn’t there – when 2nd and some of the 3rd world can now have access to at least mobile networks there isn’t a desire or a knowledge to blog, vlog, podcast, communicate? Is this a purely leisure class pursuit? Is it because the barriers to entry are too high, these shiny toys are way too expensive, from computers to bandwidth to servers? I do feel personally there aren’t enough different voices, and a lot of existing voices ‘retweeting’ or reposting the same old.

Talking class, it’s interesting that sociologists are studying the online habits of teenagers of differing class strata and/or money / social groups. Danah Boyd is doing some interesting work in this area – Facebook vs Myspace was a contentious one from 2007, I can see similar tribal loyalties affecting who signs up for Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. I wonder if Twitter classes as mid-30s male IT geek in it’s demographic? Certainly to progress past the posts about software ‘mashups’ (grr) and Rails coding it needs to widen it’s appeal – the one sided nature of most conversations and marketing spiel as well will put people off – the ability to track conversations is hard, which as Mr Scoble would say at this point, is why Friendfeed wins in that regard.

Hierarchies in the Clouds

I find it interesting that there is already what is called a Twitterati. but no Facebookati or Bebo Mafia, and it’s already acquired a (jokingly?) negative connoitation. Every bunch of people online creates a clique, but not many have such a visible metric to affirm their status. So you get usually the same old names, with 1,000s of friends, beseiged by their success, so they talk to each other and themselves. Reciprocity failure, the gift that keeps on giving.

Rustle the Brand / Public good?

So the new model that people are building is one of branding yourself (I did say they were in marketing) – but corporate bloggers could tell you tales of drunkeness and cruelty and the problem of openness vs public image. Now multiply this to a whole life, where the personal, prosaic and professional are blended together, where people share drunken tagged photos and videos on YouTube and Facebook (better change your Privacy settings!) with a profile linked to your LinkedIn CV. Now you can develop nicknames and personas, but it does raise interesting issues on what employers expect to know and what employees share (or more interestingly get shared about them), and how those feeds interact and cross-relate. And how it could all go very, very wrong (see the whole Russell Brand debacle for a broadcast version of this).

Is there a public good in social media? Is the act of sharing seen as a public good, or is it just an act of vanity or self promotion? Will people share if it endangers their brand? Or just self-censor so the conversations and connections become banal?

Web 2.0 – Where’s My Money?

Free content isn’t free; someone has to spend time making it, someone has to spend money storing it; someone at YouTube or Twitter has to spend expensive nights awake trying to work out how to make money from it. People have made money from other people’s ‘free’ content though.

I’ll quote Bicyclemark and Richard Bluestein from a Citizen Reporter podcast:

“BicycleMark: But then again sometimes I look at conferences and I think ‘What have we done?’. I’ve seen some very expensive conferences taking place…but you look around and you go ‘Wow look all this money that’s been spent so these people can talk to each other’ and I guess make business deals.

Richard: You know what bothers me…It’s interesting though that the business people that schmoozed and squeezed the money out of VC’s – they are not having any sort of problems paying for their health insurance, they’re still flying first class, you know what I mean..That’s the case pretty much anywhere in Silicon Valley…the people that Twitter everything and talk about the trends and eat constantly…just constantly! They just fucking always have plenty of money…they’re relying, they’re sucking off people like us that produce content…If you have a business based on podcasting or video…or streaming, there wouldn’t be any website if there wasn’t people makiing stuff. Most of the time they aren’t paying anything for that content.”

What the quote displays is the widening digital and social divides is also reflected online – the differences between rich and poor, free creators and paid producers, those with VC money and those with not and different classes. The internet has been seen as the great Communicator, crossing boundaries of race, class and gender, yet people are getting rich reinforcing those differences. Rich media indeed.

And the book publishers (Mr O’Reilly invented the term to sell books remember) and people who created startups and got the sponsorships and VC funds (and even refuse offers from Facebook) are the ones who got rich off the podcast (failed) boom, or the recent online video goldrush. Only the fail whale of the economy will put a pinprick into this small bubble. Maybe Baron von Blubber should sue.

But the ethics of making money off someone else’s content – which might not be owned by them, well I think it’s dubious at best. Funny to hear people moan about 99% of the videos on YouTube not being ‘monetizable’ – what you want people to post videos for free that conveniently fit into your business model and sponsorship deals? Do you want gold-plated hundreds and thousands on that cake or are you gonna eat it as is? No I’m surprised the companies have been very lax in revenue sharing, apart from some laughable contracts – it’s the media that brings people in, support it. Or it dies…oops too late.

Summary

Maybe the economy will change all this – unemployed people become social media professionals, selling their network as much as their skills (why does that sound like some 21st century cyber Austen novel?) and have time to create amazing videos on YouTube. With no house, rent or need for food. And pigs tweet.

I think it’s more likely the freebie time other than kids at school or retired people is over; companies are going to have to attract people to create media for them, especially if it has to be short snappy and sweet. Yeah the conversational tweet/video microblogging will stay; but podcasting and online video are going to have a tougher time. When people are stressed about their rent, they aren’t going to make loads of Mentos videos…unless it’s of protests. Maybe like with the Obama campaign we’ll see a start of mass use of social media as a political tool, if so that does give me hope.

I’d like to think doing an own goal on the Net is known as doing a Metallica; like being Dooced, it’s where you go against your own fans (as with Metallica and Napster, and recently having a go at bloggers daring to write about them). But that’s restricted to aging non-technical metal leather blokes right? WRONG.

Let me tell you a story:

There’s an unsigned rock band in Scotland, they’ve got a buzz around them, mostly created around demos pushed around the internet with the band’s permission. They do an interview with a blogger, who posts some of the said demos with the band’s permission. The band becomes a hot ticket as part of all this attention, and signs with a major label. So everyone’s happy then? Band have got big deal, blogger and others who caught on early got the scoops, the fans got the demos and are likely to buy the LP to hear the final tracks and others. All butterflies, yellow brick roads, unicorns and fluffy kittens?

Nope.

What actually happened was over a week ago the blogger, Ed from 17seconds got a DMCA takedown via Google/Blogger from Columbia, for an interview done before Glasvegas, the band, signed with them. The kicker? Well the tracks weren’t even available anymore. And originally were there with the band’s permission (implicit or otherwise, they were posted free at their site I think); when they owned all the rights, anyway, as they were then unsigned.

What this reveals is the utter stupidity (and doing a Metallica-ness, damn need to work on those verbs) of Google, Columbia (aka Sony BMG), Glasvegas and the DMCA. Google for pulling stuff without question – like Prince does with NPG Productions on YouTube, using the DMCA like confetti even when he doesn’t own the rights – Columbia for obviously doing a standard ‘buy everything’ deal with Glasvegas, and then strangely infuriating the fans and bloggers who put the band in the charts by regarding their initial promotional support as reason for litigation, Glasvegas for doing what bands like the Clash did before them and sign with $$$s in their eyes not realising probably what complete CONtrol means and probably not caring about the people who got them there, and DMCA evil piece of litigation that made this whole sad sorry state of affairs possible (apparently right or wrong the offending piece has to be taken down for 10-14 days? Is that true? If so, that is really a chilling effect).

Now where does it leave us? There seems to be one of the periodic crackdowns atm – Teenage Kicks have been threatened also, although that was the Baitles who tbh are like Prince litigious as feck. And no-one wants defends the rights to post ‘illegal music’ do they?

What tends to be less said is that these are less than ‘illegitimate’ bloggers in most cases, they’ve got the go-ahead, the contacts etc – and still get hassle even after being told it’s OK. So the official route is no less difficult, but ‘legit’ or not the record labels and their pluggers and marketers depend on these blogs in part to promote their music – they court them, as they do with DJs and remixers with acapellas and instrumentals, they lure them with the latest tracks. It’s no suprise, there isn’t a darkened back door where these ‘demo’ or pre-release MP3s are leaking out like fleeing rats; the record labels GIVE THEM to the blogs. Or the bands, or the marketing departments, or managers, or agents.

So hence irony of turning around and biting the hand that feeds you.

What to do? Well what about this – goto the Glasvegas Myspace page. Befriend them. Post a message pointing to 17seconds or the Don’t be Evil post. Then unfriend them

Tell your friends not to buy Glasvegas’s album and/or download or give them a copy until Ed or someone hears back. In fact fuck it boycott all Sony BMG if you want (who due to a contact I used to have used to be quite cool about all this, regularly releasing tracks for remix and review, unlike another frequent offender EMI who I’m glad to see are going down the pan May they rot in hell. They caused my own Cease and Desist – ooh remember them? How quaint they seem now – but anyway it’s sad to see Sony BMG join that cabal of stupidity).

Because I’m sure, Glasvegas being a Glaswegian band might not like being asked whether they are men or whether they are mice. Or that they are just now Columbia’s prison bitches…and might see these messages and respond. Doubtful, but one can try.

Following on from a Boing Boing post – and this great article by Mark Dery and have been researching this new Orphan Works Act and have been rather disturbed and worried. It reads like a land-grab on Intellectual Property rights that only the rich stock libraries or famous artists could afford to register or submit their works to the online registries. I think the worry is justified given that so much is available online and copyright owners have little control over what gets pirated or published without their consent, and without credit. Just saying ‘I couldn’t find it’ is not enough of a defence IMO, if acceptible for damage mitigation – especially or commercial use of images or music.

People might think this stance is paradoxical given my background and past on these issues – well I am a photographer and designer by trade too – and although this law might be great for mashups (doubtful, since the record companies already register via publishing, and most have the funds to do so) I also do believe in compensation for artists and photographers for the work they do if commercially used – by and large people who remix culture don’t charge because of the legal issues; OWA might change that (for good or bad) but I personally feel a little sick that my photos, designer work or music could be used without permission because I don’t have the $$$s or time to register them with these fictional online registries – it will bias against people who are semi-pro or amateur, or small businesses.

I think a better model might be one that defaults to Creative Commons Non Commercial – kind of like a proper public domain law for orphans, that where there is a question mark non-commercial uses are OK. I think most of the objections to this law are around monetary issues – I think most people already are not bothered by non commercial uses of their works, as it’s fairly unpoliceable on the Net anyway, but usually small scale and doesn’t do any damage – but I can see a lot of objections to commercial uses of ‘orphan’ works, ethically, monetarily or artistically.

And tbh this seems a total corruption of what Orphan works were supposed to cover – it was supposed to be older but uncredited works that have fallen out and now into copyright law and had a grey status, like the musical works that weren’t extended pre 1976, or privately published works by companies long gone.

Not some kids photographs from 2008 that he or she couldn’t afford to register….

Sadly this silly piece of legislation is more likely to put back the whole orphan/fair use debate back many years, since creators are going to take one look at the lack of commercial control and unworkable time and expense registering their portolio of work here and go ‘I don’t like this’ whereas the whole issues of orphans, public domain, fair use and such like are really important and need better laws that allow people to create remixed works but allow some semblance of control for all artists and creators over how their work is used, especially commercially since companies tend to have the better lawyers…and that’s where most of the disparity lies.