UN-star Galactica

For the last weeks I have been glued to my torrents watching the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica (two episodes to go!). In case anyone objects to the downloading, I own the entire series on DVD, save for the unaired ones of course. To me there is no doubt that Galactica is the best drama out at the moment, in any genre. It deals with the big topics of our era: torture, evil, genocide, religion, power, war. If cultural relevance required a measure, it could be called the Galactica.

However, its relevance seems to have inspired the U.N. I was surprised to learn that yesterday there was a panel at the U.N. discussing the issues of "human rights, children and armed conflict, terrorism, human rights and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faith" portrayed in the series. The Today programme even had a spot on it, although both the journalist and John Humphreys could not disguise their contempt.

Frakkin' well done.

Update: Galactica is not just for geeks.

What is digital content?

Continuing with the coverage of the interim Digital Britain report, something has been bothering me since I read it, so I went back and browsed through it again until I realised what it was. According to the UK's chief technology policy-makers, we still seem to be living in the 20th century. Why? Several reasons: the only mention to Web 2.0 is in the glossary; some of the technologies being pushed are proved failures with the public; it believes DRM offers a solution to piracy; it blatantly ignores the content delivery revolution that is about to take place; but most importantly, it ignores user-generated content by insisting on the outdated view of the top-down content provider.

There are few things that can drive me to anger, but chiefly amongst those is the insistence by the copyright industry and regulators to ignore that nowadays content is much more diverse to what it once was. The first sign that the Digital Britain report has some very outdated ideas about content creation and distribution is the baffling emphasis it places on Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). DAB radio is a broadcasting standard that replaces FM, offering better quality, larger amount of metadata, and more stations in the same spectrum.You may be thinking what is wrong with this? I'm quite fond of DAB in a way, I have a receptor in my kitchen, but what I object to is the fact that DAB has not proved popular with the public because it is what I call a mistimed technology, much similar to the DAT tape in the 90s. Mistimed technologies are those which are a clear improvement over their predecessors, but they come to the market almost at the same time as a much better technology comes along and renders the mistimed technology obsolete as well. There is therefore no incentive for users to upgrade to the inferior technology, so many stay with the older and inefficient one until they upgrade fully. In the case of DAB radio, most people still use FM radio, very few have bothered switching to DAB, and a large sector of the market, particularly younger audiences, are using online delivery instead. DAB is the new DAT.

But as I have already hinted at, the biggest problem when it comes to digital content is the fact that the interim report practically ignores the user-generated revolution. Yes, there is the obligatory mention to UGC and Youtube, but then the drafters have no idea what to do with it other than to mention that digital technologies lower barriers to new providers such as "the wide range of services now catering to ethnic minority communities and to specialist interest, the development of community services, of user-generated content whether on YouTube or on social networking sites". In one dismissing paragraph the UGC revolution is relegated to fringe status akin to Gaelic stations, World Music and train-spotting. So, UGC is on the radar, but the report makes sure that whenever it talks about content, it is talking about institutional content. In a Pratchean use of the word, it is clear that whenever they talk about traditional Content, we are supposed to read it with a capital C, while what the rest of us do can be written without pressing the shift key.

What I find disheartening is that the report insists that the solution to UK-based content creation is through more funding for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. We can then expect more failed digital channels from the BBC, as well as more publicly supported mind-numbing reality shows, when the real innovation lies elsewhere. BBC 6 Music struggles to top 300,000 listeners; BBC 3 struggles with similar viewing figures, while the high-brow BBC 4 has been criticised for not offering good value for money. In contrast, a live recording of DiggNation in London attracted ten thousand screaming fans; Facebook boasts 8.5 million UK users, Youtube has been visited by 20 million Brits in 2008, while Wikipedia had 9.6 million users last year. There is a generational shift that policy-makers seem to completely ignore. Their idea of digital content seems to extend to whether they can listen online to the Today programme on Radio 4. The turning of the century completely missed them.

It is perhaps unfair to compare hits between media, but this is a point that has to be made. The next generation of content users has no interest in the BBC and DAB, they want Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. It is about time policy should be drafted to reflect that nowadays the word content goes further than Radio 2.

Not The New York Times

An expensive and complicated spoof of the New York Times has hit the streets of Manhattan (with accompanying website). The headlines offer something akin to a liberal wish-list, from the end of the PATRIOT Act, to the passing of a new law called the Safeguards for a New Economy (S.A.N.E.) bill. There are also clever adverts throughout the site. In one, De Beers Diamonds offers to donate an artificial limb to a person who lost theirs in one of Africa's diamond conflicts with the purchase of any diamond.

I love complicated pranks, particularly mischievous yet harmless ones, so I am in awe of the scale of this one. I w0nder if the authors have crossed a line. I am not familiar with parody legislation, but it seems to be much stronger in the U.S. than it is here in the UK. I am however wondering at the domain name (www.nytimes-se.com), which seems to be too close to the real thing. Given the fact that there is no provision for parody in domain name registration procedures, it seems likely that if challenged the website could disappear (which would be a real pity). My guess however is that the New York Times will sit this one out, it does not really dilute the brand, and it is somehow flattering to be singled out for such a monumental spoof.

An end to the knitting saga

I never knew knitting was so popular. Yours Truly had a strange day yesterday, being quoted in The Times, and interviewed in the Daily Mail. The story has travelled far, it has been reported in Wired, Down Under, and even on the CBBC Newsround site (you know you have made it when a story you broke gets reported on the CBBC). To top up a crazy day filled with knitting puns and forgotten Doctor Who episodes, the BBC itself invited me for an interview in E24, BBC News 24 entertainment programme.

The experience was bizarre to say the least. I was invited into the BBC studio in Edinburgh, which is located in a small building in Holyrood Road. I was expecting something bigger, but there were only two people there, and the actual studio was a table with some chairs and a picture of Edinburgh as the background. No staff, no cameramen, just an automated camera, instructions to talk to a plastic cup (literally), and this guy talking into my ear. The interview was over too shortly, and I probably came across as either an illegal immigrant passing off as a university lecturer, or as an over-intellectual geek who needs to get out more (note to self: DO NOT make nuanced legal points in an entertainment program). I felt a bit ambushed, as the person who followed me was a BBC Worldwide exec saying that they invited Mazzmatazz to contact them to reach an agreement of some sort. The interviewer said that Mazzz had just contacted them and had asked where she could get in touch, so everyone wins.

This is a good resolution to all involved I believe. Hopefully the fans can continue knitting Oods, the BBC is seen listening to fans, and we have a nice collection of Dalek puns to ponder. And of course, we do not get a clear legal answer of whether the written instructions for doing something constitute a separate copyright to the artistic work that gave origin to it. Ilanah at IPKat thinks that this could be considered analogous to software and source code. Quite an interesting analogy.

Did I just lose a week pondering Daleks and knitting? I DO need to get out more.

Of fan art, mash-ups and licences

It's week two in the Knitting Wars (or Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Copyright). I have been surprised by the level of interest this is generating in the blogosphere, it has been ORGd, EFFd and BoingBoinged, it has also been picked up by the knitting community (I did not know there were so many angry knitters out there!) I have also been interviewed by The Times, so the story may have legs (which in Internet terms means that it will be on the radar for at least a fortnight). There have been some other interesting responses, such as one knitter siding with the BBC, and an excellent article by Jonathan Bailey on where this all fits in the wider fandom picture.

I think that the reason why this story has generated such interest is that it is seen as the typical Amateur David versus the Greedy Goliath. The blogosphere is particularly suspicious of any attempt to remove and take down things (remember the HD-DVD fiasco?) The story also fits well with the picture of corporate greed gone mad, and Brits also love to moan about the Beeb.

I must stress that I do understand why the BBC would want to defend their intellectual property. Doctor Who fans should understand that improved production values are expensive, and that the BBC needs to secure funding to continue giving us quality programming. However, I have to log my complaint about the horrible episode "The Doctor's Daughter", you could literally see the sterling signs in the eyes of the writers when they thought of a new Doctor Who spin-off directed at the teenage market. Even David Tennant seemed embarrassed by the whole thing. Similarly, it has to be said that the Adipose dolls were being sold on eBay by unscrupulous knitters, which appears to have prompted the whole action.

However, copyright owners should recognise that it is the fans who make or break their intellectual property, and as such, one should be very careful when biting the hand that feeds you. Danny O'Brien made the excellent point that it was the fans who kept the Doctor Who franchise alive during the 90s. Copyright owners should also finally understand that just because someone knits a Dalek or an Ood, they will still buy official merchandise.

This brings me to the wider question of fan art. The explosion of user-generated content tools means that it is easier than ever before to make one's own interpretation of a loved character, and to distribute it to the public. Creativity knows no copyright boundaries, and fans are likely to enhance and reinterpret works of popular culture in imaginative ways. Fan fiction, fan art, and mash-ups do not detract from the original work, they enhance the brand. The problem of fan art will not go away with angry cease-and-desist letters, it will only get worse.

Why then not recognise this in the law, and find ways of allowing legitimate non-commercial fan art? Lessig already suggested as much in Free Culture, and Creative Commons is part of a solution. However, it is extremely unlikely that large corporate owners will adopt CC in the near future, so perhaps other solutions are needed. I believe that fan licences are the way forward.

This is already taking place. Microsoft has created a Machinima licence with its Game Content Usage Rules, which allow fans to make derivative works of Xbox games as long as they are non-commercial. Blizzard has also created a Fansite Kit, which allows fans to download high-quality images for use on their own WoW sites. See, smart content owners know that the fans are their best marketing tool, why fight a futile battle against user-generated content, when you can make it work for you?

By the way, the name of that Dalek is "Extermiknit".