What I Learned

I'd certainly have to say that I know a hell of a lot more about using new media for politics than I did ten weeks ago, and have had my eyes opened to the potential of future technologies as well. But if I had to pick just a few things that really stood out, these would be them:

Usability Rules: The concept of usability was one I had never even considered before learning about it in this class. But, after learning about it, it makes all the sense in the world. How effective could your website be, no matter how awesome your content, if users don't know how to use it?

Enable the Influentials: This is another concept that just makes intuitive sense. A small percentage of the population influences the rest, and these Influentials are overrepresented online. Factoring them into any on-line plan is a must, as they can be the initiators of...

Create Viral Content: If your message spreads itself, you'll maximize your resources and be able to simply sit back and watch voters come to your side. While there's certainly no magic formula yet for creating such self-perpetuating content, there are important guidelines to follow. And definitely add a tell-a-friend link to everything!

Obviously, we learned much more than this over the semester, but these are three major concepts (two if you consider the last two one in the same, which in many ways they are) that I will certainly remember when planning any political website (much less any non-political site). And with that, how about one more cat photo? For whatever reason, both Isis and Penelope love to sleep in upside-down chairs. Weirdos.

Copyright and NY Times Editorials

Reading the final chapter in Vaidhyanathan's book and thinking a bit more about Lessig's speech got me thinking about how these topics affect blogs in particular. In my opinion, blogs have their greatest use in being a place where information from different sources can be synthesized. Bloggers will never be able to pursue a single story to the lengths that a Sy Hersch can, but they can look at reporting from several different sources and combine it in a way that makes a new and valuable point.

But what if the news sources stopped allowing bloggers to reference their sites? Certainly they'll never have a problem with blogs simply linking to their web pages, but what about excerpts? Most of the time excerpts are kept to at most a few paragraphs, and--like showing a clip from an interview that was conducted on another network or referencing a quote that showed up in a competing newspaper--this is probably considered fair use. But what about subscription sites?

Currently, the Wall Street Journal restricts their online news content to subscribers only, and the New York Times is about to do the same with their editorial page content. In the WSJ's case, they probably don't mind seeing a paragraph or two of a news item on their site showing up elsewhere (it would probably make buying a subscription seem more attractive to a reader, as she can see what she's missing), but it will be interested to see if the NYT takes the same approach.

The amount of content that will be offered under their new subscription system will actually be quite low, just a few articles a day. Considering that I'd probably be interested only in Krugman's and Rich's columns, and a conservative might just want to read what Brooks and that new hack Tierney have to say, that's just 3-4 articles a week. In such a case, seeing the juiciest paragraphs from these few articles excerpted on a blog might alleviate the need to pay $40 a year or whatever it will be to read the whole articles. Therefore, might the NYT crack down on excerpts--much less full articles--being posted on blogs? Certainly seems like they might.

If so, it would truly be a shame (of course, I think the entire idea of setting up a pay wall is pretty lame in the first place). Blogs are a medium that creates real political value for the country, and much of that is based on using copyrighted content as a springboard to explore new ideas. Some may belittle blogs' contribution or decry the rank partisanship that infuses most of these sites, but I think their net contribution to our political system is positive. This contribution moves even further into the black when existing ideas can be expanded upon, and restricting the content that can be excerpted would certainly diminish this. So let's hope the NYT continues to allow fair use excerpts; if not, it could be the first step in closing a promising new avenue for increased civic participation.

The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil

I just finished watching/listening to Lawrence Lessig's fascinating lecture on the challenges facing copyright law in the modern era, and it brought to my mind a topic that has a high degree of relevance to politics.

This topic concerns the first lesson of interest group economics that I learned back in my undergraduate days: a small group that is strongly affected by a particular law or regulation will have a much greater impact on shaping the rules than a much, much larger group that isn't affected as strongly on an individual level.

For example, the National Beer Wholesalers Assocation has been one of the leading proponents of killing the estate/death tax. Their membership really, really cares about this issue because many of these wholesalers are family owned, and would stand to gain an incredible amount of money if the tax were repealed. While this is an incredibly small proportion of the country, this group (and similarly motivated wealthy families) have been successful in almost completely eliminating this tax.

On the other side of the ledger are the 99%+ of the population that will never have to pay this tax, and would probably see it as a fair way for the government to realize the capital gains taxes that are never paid because the owner dies before cashing in. In addition, the approximately $30 billion a year in tax revenue the estate/death tax generates each year will need to be made up somewhere, much of it from those who do not face the likelihood of paying this tax.

However, most Americans care little if at all about this tax; it is thought of most often in the context of conservatives opposing it as an unfair tax, but still in a very superficial way. This is unsurprising: if one person stands to lose tens of millions of dollars from the tax and another stands to lose perhaps a thousand or two over many years, who do you think is going to make noise about it?

There are countless other examples of interest group economics, and I think our current copyright status in this country certainly qualifies as one of them. Before watching/listening to Lessig's speech, I had really only thought of it in terms of sharing music online, since that was really the only way that I had been exposed to it.

I've had a few experiences with music copyrights--basically using copyrighted music as a backing track to a video, a topic we discussed in class a bit last night--and those experiences were certainly more relevant to the stifling of creativity aspect discussed in the speech. For example, I think web video is enhanced considerably by being able to use popular music; it's a damn shame that it is basically impossible given the royalty structures most popular works fall under.

Going back to the interest group economics topic, the copyright holders--in particular the labels, publishers, producers, and distribution companies--are obviously the ones that are affected most by copyright issues. Time-Warner is going to care a hell of a lot more about this than I ever will. Thus it is no surprise that we are where we are today, with a digital space that has eclipsed all fair and unregulated use of media, and a burgeoning guerilla war against private citizens for at most a 5% drop in sales.

I certainly have hope that we'll figure this out over the coming years, but it is clear that this issue needs to be made more relevant to normal people's lives. As Lessig says, the copyright holders have effectively framed this debate in a simple way as one revolving around property; it will not be an easy to task to shift that frame towards one of creativity. But there's always hope; and it's nice to know that there are some very smart minds working on this issue...

Friday Cat Blogging

The last cat blogging of the semester, so here's a few more of what cats do best, sleep (or get ready to sleep):



Penelope chilling out quite well considering that she has a camera right in her face. Below, Isis shows the contortions that cats can sleep through; keep in mind that all cat parts in the picture are hers:



And, finally, since it is the last week, here's one more bonus shot of them when they were really young:



I certainly hope you all enjoyed this series over the course of the semester. And if you hate cats (and if so you're certainly not alone), I hope this at least softened their image a little.

My Wife Is Awesome

Look what I get to bring in to work today:

Regaining Strength

Still in recovery mode after the awesome event last night.

Fair Use?

The excerpt from Laurence Lessig's "Future of Ideas" paints a disturbing picture of the"generic-ization" of movies as a result of applying copyright laws:

“Ten years ago,” Guggenheim explains, “if incidental artwork . . . was recognized by a common person,” then you would have to clear its copyright. Today, things are very different. Now “if any piece of artwork is recognizable by anybody . . . then you have to clear the rights of that and pay” to use the work. “[A]lmost every piece of artwork, any piece of furniture, or sculpture, has to be cleared before you can use it.”

The question I have is, what ever happened to fair use? News organizations and others have long been able to use relatively small segments of copyrighted works in their reporting, I assume because showing one question from an interview or news report hardly violates the rights of the copyright holder. So why is it now such a big problem for movie makers to include a fleeting glance of the coca-cola symbol?

I would have to imagine that part of the problem is that for-profit companies not only work incredibly hard to protect their brands, but also attempt to make money in any way they can. There was certainly a time when movie makers could create a film without worrying about this issue, but once the floodgates opened to challenging this use it snowballed. In addition, corporate brands probably fall under a different statute than creative works in terms of fair use.

I think Lessig is ultimately right that property rights need to be reevaluated in light of the recent technological changes our society has faced. There needs to be an understanding of fair use of copyrighted works that makes sense. I'm not sure exactly what these changes would involve (that would probably require reading the rest of Lessig's book, for starters), but it's pretty clear from the examples he presents that the current situation is strangling creativity in movie making, much less in other mediums.

Ethics and Political Web Videos

After reading the assigned chapter on the ethics of persuasive technologies in B.J. Fogg's book, I'd like to expand a bit on what I wrote about yesterday regarding web video. As the IPDI authors make quite clear, the lack of accountability for web video authors has allowed many unethical videos to be distributed. They predict that as the quantity of videos out there goes up, the number of unethical and manipulative videos will rise as well. I explained a bit of my reasoning yesterday for disagreeing with IPDI's major worry--that unethical web videos will come to have a major impact on the coming electoral cycles--and after reading Fogg's chapter I have a bit more to add.

In discussing the ways that technology can be used to unethically persuade, Fogg lists six different ways in which this commonly happens. I think the first is applicable to the current status of political web videos:

Ethical issues are especially prominent when computer technology uses novelty as a distraction to increase persuasion. When dealing with a novel experience, people not only lack expertise but they are distracted by the experience, which impeded their ability to focus on the content presented. (p.215)

I think this is exactly the way that some of the political web videos of the last cycle were able to cross the ethical line. Ten years ago, professionally edited video almost always came from credible, established sources. As a result, it was rare that video was used for outright manipulation. But today, it is easy for almost anyone to make such videos, and I think that in some ways the public hasn't caught up to this fact.

When a user views one of these videos--especially if the overall message of the video is something he or she is inclined to believe--the newness and uniqueness of the experience short-circuits the normal fact-checking region of the brain. Instead of asking whether the content shown was perhaps taken out of context, the viewer walks away simply believing that Cheney is incredibly mean or that John Kerry sat on stage with Jane Fonda at an anti-war rally. After all, it was in the video!

I think this was particularly the case with the Jib-Jab video, and the authors of that piece certainly could have gotten away with much, much more dishonest content. As mentioned in the IPDI piece, animated web videos often can get away with more extreme content, with the report suggesting that humor is the way they are able to do so. I agree that humor helps, but I also think that it is because watching such a Flash video is such a new experience for most people. They've never seen anything like it, so their reaction isn't to parse it for accuracy, but to simply enjoy it.

But will this always be the case? I'd like to think that the number of people who click on the irritating pop-up ads designed to look like system messages for your computer has gone down as people have become more familiar with the fact that it's a dishonest manipulation, and the same will likely happen with political web video. As the newness of the concept wears out and viewers become more familiar with the medium, they'll take a more critical eye to the actual content of the videos.

Today, political web video makers can get away with a lot of dishonesty, because many of the viewers are still blinded by the science of it all. And there will always be those videos that get made and distributed by highly partisan Influentials, given the lower ethical threshhold, say, an anti-Bush voter will have for anti-Bush content. But as political web videos become less of a novelty and more of an expected part of the political communications process, authors will have to clear a higher ethical bar. In the end, as I said yesterday, it will be the responsible, high quality, effective web videos that end up being the difference makers.