YouTube was launched in February 2005. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for US$1.65 billion in Google stock.
The anthropology class at Kansas State University has created a video about the history of YouTube and speculates briefly on its future.
For a full script of this video, along with references and notes, see here.
George Lucas is joining the Web 2.0 bandwagon and allowing fans to create mashups of Star Wars. Wow, what a guy? Impressed? Happy? Don’t be!!!
â??Star Warsâ?? fans can connect with the Force in ways theyâ??ve only imagined beginning May 25, when StarWars.com launches a completely redesigned website that empowers fans to â??mash-upâ?? their homemade videos with hundreds of scenes from â??Star Warsâ?? movies; watch hundreds of fan-made â??Star Warsâ?? videos; and interact with â??Star Warsâ?? enthusiasts from around the world like never before.
With an innovative, interactive site that allows users to navigate to multiple â??Star Warsâ?? worlds, a new video focus, and groundbreaking â??Web 2.0â?? features â?? including a unique online multi-media mixing platform from Eyespot â?? the new StarWars.com will unveil its redesigned website on May 25 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the â??Star Warsâ?? Saga.
Among the most compelling features of the newly redesigned StarWars.com is the incorporation of an online video-editing tool provided by Eyespot. It allows users to add their own video shots to more than 250 scenes and music taken from all six â??Star Warsâ?? films and create their own â??Star Warsâ?? movies to share with others.
Unfortunately the material the creative fans will create will not belong to them but will remain in the hands of George Lucas. The fan-created videos will run along with commercials profits split between Lucasfilm and Eyespot.
The idea of users being drafted, fooled, enticed into doing the work for someone else has been called digital sharecropping by Lessig. This refers to the situation where the work is carried out by poor day laborers while the landowners sit and reap the rewards of another’s creativity.
Read more about this over at the Volokh Conspiracy
Back in May last year I wrote about a case of plagiarism from my university. The interesting thing about this plagiarism was that it was a teacher who had stolen part of a masters thesis written by two students whom she had supervised.
At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone. (this blog in May 2006)
The local newspaper reports that the case has been under review again and that this time the plagiarizing researcher is not being defended. She has, according to the experts, not followed good research practice and the case is clearly one of plagiarism.
The embarrassment must have been bad when the department defended the plagiarizing researcher, but now that the guilty opinion has been delivered it must be really bad. In addition the whole department that defended her actions as common practice really has egg on its face now.
Good. Stealing other peoples work is not acceptable. Stealing from students is unacceptable and really quite pathetic.
Via Boing Boing I came across to Oscartorrents.com which is a new game from the people at The Pirate Bay. Basically its a search engine for films from this year’s Oscar nominees. But my favourite part is a piece of colorful, but well written propaganda filed under the heading ‘Legal’ Notice
To all intellectual property landlords: we are aware that OscarTorrents might annoy you — but contain your righteous indignation for a while, and think: we’re only linking to torrents that already exist. Face it: your membrane has burst, and it wasn’t us who burst it. Your precious bodily fluids are escaping.
You haven’t beaten us, so why not join us? Think of a new business model that doesn’t involve overpriced pieces of plastic and skanky cinemas hawking cheap carbohydrates while relying on $6/hr projectionists who can’t keep a film in focus — not to mention insulting your audiences by (to pick a few examples) surveilling us with nightvision glasses, searching bags, 30 minutes of commercials and bombarding us with ridiculous anti-piracy propaganda. Take a look at yourselves. Is it really any wonder we’re winning?
You got to hand it to them, they sure know how to annoy the people they dislike. They also know how to hit the right buttons.
MIT is holding it’s fifth conference on Media in Transition with this years theme being Creativity, Ownership and Collaboration. This may be a wide theme but the conference itself sounds interesting.
Our understanding of the technical and social processes by which culture is made and reproduced is being challenged and enlarged by digital technologies. An emerging generation of media producers is sampling and remixing existing materials as core ingredients in their own work. Networked culture is enabling both small and large collaborations among artists who may never encounter each other face to face. Readers are actively reshaping media content as they personalize it for their own use or customize it for the needs of grassroots and online communities. Bloggers are appropriating and recontextualizing news stories; fans are rewriting stories from popular culture; and rappers and techno artists are sampling and remixing sounds.
The deadline is fast approaching (5 January) but all they need is a short abstract (200 words) – read more here.
Is it just me, or is most furniture really ugly? While spending time at a furniture store today (mostly to kill time) I was struck by the realization that most of the stuff in the store (not a small store) was really ugly. It was not only ugly it was expensive and ugly. Itâ??s the kind of furniture that seems to be in bad furniture advertisements (and stores) but never in peopleâ??s homes. This is obviously wrong since the stores seem to stock and sell the stuff.
Furniture is also a true sign of growing up. The first apartment is usually filled with furniture collected from everywhere from donations to cheap second hand stuff (some of which should have been thrown away long ago). Buying new furniture is a painful and expensive experience.
Therefore the first real sign of maturity or rather the real sign that a person is becoming a responsible adult is when he or she takes a large pile of hard earned cash and buys and expensive sofa â?? instead of a new stereo, car or holiday abroad.
The definitive sign of maturity (bordering on old age) is when one takes a large pile of hard earned cash and buys matching cutlery and platesâ?¦
This still does not explain why most furniture is so uglyâ?¦
Yesterday was buy nothing day. All I can say is that the buy-nothing idea was not particularly noticeable at Ikea. So I must consider myself a buy-nothing failure. Here is some information about the day.
Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If youâ??ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if youâ??ve taken part in the past but havenâ??t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?
Read more over at Adbusters.
Oh well, there is always next year…
From Matthew Rimmer we get an update on the copyright situation in Australia where the Australian Parliament is viewing an amendment of copyright (Copyright Amendment Bill 2006).
Matthew writes that instead of creating a US style defence of fair use or even reforming the defence of fair dealing, the Australian Government has actually narrowed the defence of fair dealing in respect of research and study. There are new minor exceptions on time-shifting, format-shifting, non-commercial use by libraries and archives, and satire and parody.
However, such provisions have been so narrowly framed that they are largely unworkable and inoperable.
Search engines, such as Google, will be in particular strife in Australia under such a regime. In addition, the Australian Government is providing copyright owners with stronger technological protection measures and a wide range of remedies.
A Parliamentary Committee will hear half a day of debate next week on the topic. Some of the submissions of interest are from: The Australian Digital Alliance, The Australian Libraries Copyright Committee, and the submission of Google.
Organised people plan ahead. They have pension schemes and stock portfolios. Itâ??s all very grown up. Its one of those things you know you should do â?? but somehow you donâ??t. When the topic comes up in conversation there is always someone who has prepared and planned while the rest fall ominously silent.
I wish I planned ahead, I wish I could find the interest to consider life in twenty, forty and maybe sixty (but that might be pushing itâ?¦) years. The only share I have is framed and hanging on my wall.
This Svensk-Dansk-Ryska Telefon Aktiebolaget was founded on November 14, 1901 in order to establish Ericsson in the Russian market and to provide telephony services. The original certificate was a copper engraving bearing the Swedish, Russian and Danish coats of arms and an Ericsson telephone. In 1917 all assets were sold to The Russian Telephone Company but following the revolution the telephone company was nationalized and the money was never paid.
Among the founders of the company were Henrik Cedergren, Wilhelm Montelius (Chairman of Telefon AB L M Ericsson 1905-1916), Knut A Wallenberg, Marcus Wallenberg Sr., Den Danske Landmandsbank and Stockholms Allmänna Telefon Aktiebolag. Other well-known founders were Arvid Lindman (Swedenâ??s Prime Minister 1906-1911 and 1928-1930), and Princess Marie of Denmark (related to the Tsar family).
Did the owners of these shares talk loudly of how they had planned their future? Did the people who were forced to listen become embarrassed and silent?
As you may have known yesterday was the international day to protest against DRM. For more information see http://drm.info. Despite the fact that I defended my PhD and partied until two. I pulled myself out of bed at 6am to get dressed in yellow overalls and demonstrate outside Chalmers University at 7.30. At about 9.30 stopped handing out leaflets and took a well deserved break.
This did not mean that we were done for the day. Oh no. At 11.30 we gathered at the center of town to continue our demonstrations until 1pm. The results? We handed out well over a thousand leaflets, we were interviewed by two newspapers and my headache never left me for a moment.
It was a brilliant way to celebrate my new life as Dr. Klang. This is the first time I wrote Dr. Klang! Feels kind of strange, but nice…