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Posts from the ‘electronic entertainment’ Category

Mar 11

CTF Snap Judgement

There was a big announcement by heritage minister James Moore this week about “streamlining the Canadian Television Fund and Canadian New Media Fund into a new “super-fund” in 2010.

I haven’t posted on it, as I haven’t had a lot of time to dig into the details, but my “snap judgement” is that the move is problematic (to say the least) on a number of fronts.

At it’s core, I think the concept of streamlining and consolodating Canada’s media and entertainment sector funding is not necesarrily a bad idea, but I think this move opens a number of really troubling areas:

1) The jury is out on how exactly the “smaller independant” board will be constituted, but it seems safe at this time that broadcasters will have a much larger voice in that board, which is almost entirely the opposite of what those lobbying for an “independant” board wanted, for obvious reasons.

2) Opening the fund up to broadcaster-owned producers is a really sticky wicket. I don’t mean this to be rude, or a muckraker, or impugn the excellent work done by many of my friends and co-workers – but the goal of a large segment of broadcaster owned production is to fill as many content hours as cheaply as possible. Developing programming from that goal is almost diametrically at odds with what the fund was created to do, which was foster high quality content with large economic impact, high visibility, and export potential. Just the increase in volume alone is troubling givin the vast oversubscription to the old CTF.

and the big one

3) From the article: “The fund will favour projects produced in high-definition and require applicants to design their projects across a minimum of two distribution platforms, including television.”

(Sigh)

I will get into this at length another day but the increase in popularity of “new media”, and the rise of “digital convergence” does not mean that you re-purpose material across several platforms. If we have learned anything about the changing media landscape in the past decade it’s that consumers consume different types of material in different ways across platforms. The material I watch on my iPod (and how and when I watch it) is not the same as the material I watch on my tv, nor in a movie theatre, nor on my computer. When you require producers to attempt to leverage their productions across multiple platforms, you are nearly guaranteeing that they will fail in one (and possibly both) of them. Requiring that applicants to a new media fund also be working their project in film or television, makes about as much sense as requiring applicants to a book publishing fund to have recorded a hit single, or applicants to an arts grant being able to run a 4-minute mile. Tying everything together does not foster excellence anywhere – it makes it more likely that projects will fail, and it mandates mediocrity (and underperformance) across the board.

Mar 10

ISP’s, and the art of the double-sided CRTC arguments

Classic ad for Corbin suits found via Styleforum

I got an e-mail today referring to this article about Rogers and Shaw’s CRTC presentations. In specific the e-mail asked whether the quote, “ISPs are pipes, not broadcasters,” by Ken Engelhart, Rogers’ head of regulatory affairs – meant that ISP’s were conceding that net neutrality was, in fact, the preferred practise for ISP’s in this country.

I think there’s two important things to remember here:

1. Everything being said at the current CRTC hearings has been in respect to the issue of promoting Canadian new media content. In particular the CRTC is investigating whether (amongst other things) an ISP levy should be used to encourage Canadian new media growth the same way Canadian broadcasters pay a levy to go into a fund to support the production of Canadian television, or radio stations pay into a fund to support the production of Canadian music. In this theatre the ISP’s absolutely don’t want to be seen as “broadcasters” because they then have a president obligation to promote the development of Canadian content – it’s in their advantage to play the “we’re just a utility” card.

2. “But Brad” you ask, “how can they then turn around in several days, at the upcoming Net Neutrality hearings, and argue the exact opposite?” The important thing to remember in that, epxected, outcome is that Bell’s argument for traffic manipulation in that case is to “protect the network”. It’s not necessarily that the ISP’s want prioritize some content over others – they’re arguing that the strain on their networks is significantly more than capacity and they must have the right to defend it. It’s mere coincidence that the only tool they have to do that, is to prioritize some content over others.

Even if their logic was 100% verifiable fact (and I’ve pointed out elsewhere in my posts about these arguments that there’s much bigger network issues than BitTorrent traffic, or the so-called “high volume users”) my core argument has been that it doesn’t matter what the reasoning is. The moment you allow any traffic prejudice for any reason, the fight is lost, because you’ll never have network transparency again. And that’s simply too much power to hand over to anyone, no matter how noble their rationale is (or isn’t). “Net Neutrality” is a bubble – once it’s punctured it can’t be reconstructed. You can’t just violate it “to protect network integrity” and assume that it will stand for content priority, or end-user access, or equal access against ISP-affiliated services – it really is an all or nothing deal.

Feb 25

The Courts and Technology: Head Scratching Edition

illustation (c) Jacob Palme

It’s time for another quickie round-up of three court cases that are on my mind this week. What do they have in common? They’re all tech-related, and they’ve all got me scratching my head.

  • Ontario Judge rules that Canadians should have no expectation of privacy from law enforcement on-line. This ruling (among other things) asserts that law enforcement officers do not have to get a warrant to require an ISP to surrender logs of your on-line activities. The Ars article does a fine job of detailing the case, and also the slippery slope this entails – but as MGK points out this is almost certainly going to the Supreme Court. Christopher (who is as adept at blogging about law as he is with blogging about Rex the Wonder Dog) – lays out both pro and con arguments quite succinctly.

    Why is Brad scratching his head? There shouldn’t be an expectation of privacy on-line, I know IP addresses are inherently public… but a lot of things that we do don’t have the expectation of absolute secrecy, and I’m not comfortable with surrendering them to law enforcement without judicial oversight either.

  • The charges that have been finally brought in the Terry Childs case are as just as strange as the case itself. If you missed this bizarre story from the summer here is a very good recap. The nutshell version is that Mr. Childs was a network admin who refused to give up passwords to the network he maintained for the city of San Fransisco. So they put him in jail. There are undeniably quirks to everything involved with this case, so everyone will have their own graph point for Mr. Childs ranging somewhere on the spectrum between “eccentric” and “dangerous” – but it should still be setting a very troubling precedent for folks in the IT sector.

    Why is Brad scratching his head? As it now stands, the city has essentially put Terry behind bars for over six months, on five times the average bail for murder, and is now charging him (a certified CISCO network admin) with “having access to three modems”. Does that ring any alarm bells for anyone else?

  • As much as I try to stay away, the gong-show like atmosphere of the Pirate Bay trial keeps pulling me back in. Somewhere, out there in the multiverse, there is a nuanced – challenging – lawsuit going on. A lawsuit where informed parties are intellectually jousting on the legal ramifications of running BitTorrent “trackers” which contain no copyright infringing materials on their own, but are used extensively (and in some cases, exclusively) to facilitate copyright infringing action (consider them as to the digital age what “head shops” were to the 60s). Sadly we don’t get that trial. Instead we get a Swedish prosecution that kind of (but not quite) can use “IRL” correctly in a “RL” court proceeding, and then follow up that feat with todays show-stopper – presenting “expert witnesses” who have, at best, a “shaky” understanding of how the technology works – and use a handful of screenshots as “evidence”.

    Why is Brad scratching his head? Did Elliot Ness ever try to bring down Al Capone on the irrefutable witness of Tintin in America? Maybe this is actually a brilliant strategy in hiding.

    Hiding in disguise.

    Okay, it’s a big Swedish train-wreck… and I. cant. stop. watching.

Feb 11

1 Comment

Network Shaping is Bad. Period. Full Stop.

News out of the US that representative Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is trying to sneak anti-net neutrality language into the stimulus bill.

In a nutshell, the senators amendment would tie additional broadband funding in the US with amended legislation that would allow ISP’s to implement “network management techniques” ostensibly to deter child pornography, and movie piracy, and the like.

I recently noted the different approach to piracy in Canada and the US – but here’s yet another concrete example as this amendment appears to be driven by the MPAA in their ongoing anti-piracy campaign.

Let me make this as clear, and concise as I can: The moment content producers allow ISP’s to make a “value” judgement — of any kind — as to data they carry on their network, producers have lost. You have set a precedent that allows the ISP to become the content gate-keeper who will forevermore determine what legitimate services customers will have access to. Read more

Feb 6

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The Piracy Battle – Two VERY different approaches

missed-the-boat

I found it interesting that on the same day that American producers were again renewing the call to battle piracy (although, unsurprisingly not mentioning the latest US legal judgement that a pirated download does not constitute a “lost sale” for calculation of damages… something I’ve long argued the MPAA and RIAA are using to cloak far more systemic problems with their respective business models) I was having a conversation with a couple of Canadian producers on Network Neutrality touching on similar issues (most of the Canadian ISP’s now looking to “shape” all that congesting BitTorrent traffic).

I’ll have much more to say on this as the Net Neutrality hearings at the CRTC heat up – but I wanted to share one of the key points that came out of my discussion that I’m not sure I had heard expressed with such crystal clarity before (and my apologies I can’t recall who actually made the point):

Without absolute network neutrality, content producers will never be able to provide legal content alternatives as effective as illegal ones.

Like the Napster/iTunes evolution, until a legitimate alternative exists which offers most of the benefits of the illegitimate one, you will never win the fight. And without true network neutrality, the capability to implement such a system would be limited entirely to those who own the infrastructure, essentially creating a new caste of “super broadcasters” to gatekeep access to audience.

One of the above discussions struck me as horrifically quaint, while one seemed refreshingly forward-thinking. Can you guess which one’s which?

(illustration via Education Week)

Jan 26

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Still no link between videogame violence and actual violence… shocking.

video-game_violence

Professor Christopher Ferguson, writing for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling confirms what many of us have suspected all along: despite decades of data there no significant link between playing violent videogames and school shootings. There is also no significant link between being an altar boy and school shootings, bowling and school shootings , or Bob Geldof and school shootings. Is anyone else surprised that this discussion is still going on, even given that horrific acts of school gun-violence far pre-date the invention of the videogame?

“It has been observed that a small group of researchers have been most vocal in promoting the anti-game message, oftentimes ignoring research from other researchers, or failing to disclose problems with their own research. As some researchers have staked their professional reputation on anti-game activism, it may be difficult for these researchers to maintain scientific objectivity regarding the subject of their study.”

The article is most interesting for some of the fairly pointed criticism that Ferguson directs to those who have conducted studies over the previous decade noting, among other things, that it may be easier to get grants to search for negative results.

Like news coverage, even in academia it looks like the “shock headline” is what, ultimately, pays the bills.

(via GamePolitics)

Sep 10

Save the Internet Fundraising Drive

Yes I’m surviving TIFF ’08, thanks for asking. It’s been a great year, but I’m very much looking forward to getting to the weekend and sleeping for several days. More recap later.

I just got a brief e-mail from Timothy Karr, the campaing director of the (excellent) SaveTheInternet.com that they are looking to raise $25,000 today to help them fight Comcast’s appeal of the FCC’s precedent-setting August ruling against Comcast’s network throttling practises.

I’ve written before why network neutrality is so important, especially why I believe that conceptualizing the internet like a utility, not a content channel is fundamentally key for consumers and producers of digital content.

SaveTheInternet.com has been one of the most vocal supporters in fighting some very deep pockets in the US to promote the concept of network neutrality – and given the influence that US policy tends to have globally, I strongly encourage everyone to help support them and spread awareness of their fight.

[ Edit – Some generous soul has also set up a $300,000 fund to match any donations made today – so if you were on the fence about putting your money where your mouth is… now’s your chance to double your impact! ]

Full e-mail after the jump.
Read more

Aug 20

A few links on music blanket licensing

It’s been a busy week so forgive me if I lean on other sites for content:

Ars has an interesting article about Jim Griffin, a consultant for Warner, talking up “blanket” licensing for digital music. While this would seem to be a huge step in the right direction for a major label – like so many things – the devil’s in the details. Read more