A funny website (with an entire section about how evil SL is!)

First off, somebody needs to make it possible to copy paste from pdfs.

A lot of Benkler's arguments reminded me of some of the things we discussed in relation to Sammy, Lydia, and Sarah's video. He points out that new modes of communication allow people to keep in touch with people with greater ease and enable people to meet other people from completely different cultures across the globe. While we know, by virtue of our participatory culture projects, that technology available via the internet can easily be used for less-than-commendable objectives, it was reassuring to hear from Sammy, Sarah, and Lydia that most people just want to keep in touch with others who are important to them. Benkler seconds this. He seems to have a very positive outlook for the future of communication through the internet, proposing that free access to information will increase opportunity for those worse off to acheive equality with people who begin life well. I agree with a lot of points that Benkler makes and I'd like to share his optimism, but then I see sites like this:


It's sad because it's true. Right now the internet is a place where people can be assholes anonymously. Anyone can say/do/be anything whether good or bad. And while I think it's good that the internet has made it harder to kill opposing viewpoints, not all stupid viewpoints need to be glorified for the world to see.

Did you know?

[rant]
Did you know that, for some reason, video from Second Life must be taken in uncompressed 8-bit in order to preserve quality? Do you know how big uncompressed footage is? About a GB a minute. Sometimes more. Did you know that converting live footage into 8-bit changes the aspect ratio to 640x480? Which is not the same aspect ratio as footage from Second Life. That means, despite the fact that we originally converted ALL of our live footage into 8-bit in order to avoid rendering, we had to render all of the SL footage anyway. Do you know how long it takes to render almost 110 GB of footage? Forever. Do you know how long it takes to transfer that much from hard drive to hard drive? Forever. Especially if one hard drive only has a USB port. My estimate of our total footage, spread across 3 hard drives: 200+GB. Did you know that the editing in our SL project took us 11+ hours of straight editing? Yes, with no breaks in between, as well as a few more hours editing other pieces. Not including getting all of that footage into 8-bit or exporting at the end of the project. Just to put our project into perspective. :-) I think none of us ever want to see SL or Final Cut again.
[/rant]

Edit: 10am to 11:30pm is 13+ hours of editing, not 11. My brain is still so dead I can't even remember how many hours are in a day. Sad.

This week's sponsor: Me

That's why it's pink. It will go back to being black next time I post.

We are the pirates who don't do anything

The fate of the FM radio guy makes me sad. I practically lived off FM radio at one point and every time I go home I look forward to knowing the stations.

"The consequence is that we are less and less a free culture, more and more a permission culture." Lessig makes an interesting point in this sentence, but I don't completely agree with him or his sentiments. I don't see the internet as "'trespassing' upon legitimate claims of 'property.'" I like the "free" flow of information that is possible through the internet, but maybe that's only because I only benefit from it. I have no "property" that the internet can trespass on. I am not the filmmaker whose movie is being downloaded, the singer whose music is being downloaded, or the artist whose prints are being printed out at home. Lessig writes that "in our tradition, intellectual property is an instrument. It sets the groundwork for a richly creative society but remains subservient to the value of creativity." I like this tradition. To some extent, I feel like if intellectual property can't be used by everybody in whatever way, then all the movies and songs and tv shows or comedy shows that use lines or even references from other things with "value" then they damn well better be paying for every single word. At what point is something "stolen" from something else? Most people probably wouldn't have an issue with just quoting something else. But at what point is a quote too long? At what point are you no longer allowed to share things with friends? Example: 1. I watch a movie on TV (and I don't have one of those boxes that contributes to ratings). 2. I tape a movie on TV because I am going to be gone while it's airing and I plan to watch it later. 3. My friend doesn't get that station so I make a copy of my tape for her, so she can watch the movie. 4. VHS sucks, so I record the movie onto my computer. 5. Another TV-less VHS-player-less friends also wants to see it, so I send them my electronic copy of the movie. 6. They send it to two of their friends. 7. Who send it to two of their friends each. 8. It circulates more. At what point is this piracy?? To some extent I feel like "free" flow of information on the internet doesn't really negatively effect that many people. After all, if I like the movie, I buy the DVD. But obviously, I go to USC, so I'm not exactly poor. Some industries, like music, need to adjust to the change. It seem like many bands have already discovered that big money isn't going to be made by selling CDs anymore - that's why bands go on tour.

There's many ways people can "pirate" information off of the internet, but I must admit that BitTorrent is my favorite. For those of you who don't know how it works (and because I hate leaving a blog w/o a picture):

Unlike the p2p software that Lessig mentions, BitTorrent is actually competent at what it does. Yes, it can be used for legitimate means. How is this really different from me copying that movie from VHS onto my computer? Either way I end up with a copy on my computer. Either way I am enabling other people to also have access to the same copy. If it weren't for this sort of "piracy" then some really great remixes out there wouldn't be around. Maybe, like Lessig seems to want, it's time for our tradition to change, but for now I still value creativity over intellectual property.

Test Post

I will add more to this later - when I have time.