All your Net are belong to us

It seems appropriate to end on a geeky post title :) My last post will be pessimistic, which is delicious because I am a very optimistic person. However, when it comes to "Big Tech" practices in America today, it seems clear that ethics are sorely lacking. I remind you of Convio, which purports to be left-wing but actually provides service and consulting to anti-gay groups. How different are they from Symantec or Microsoft, which pretend to be progressive but then turn around and provide censorship software to the Chinese government (or in the case of MS, also vote against gay rights in Washington.

That said... I ain't no technological determinist. I don't think technology changes society; usually it's a two-way street. The Internet didn't change Western society -- rather, changes in Western society CREATED the Internet. And it's only a matter of time before the same thing happens in places like China and Saudi Arabia, where the strictest restrictions are placed on Internet technologies.

Avoiding the law

The short excerpt from Lessig's "The Future of Ideas" has me wondering what he has to say in the rest of his book. Having just reviewed some of the web videos on the IPDI site, the excerpt led me to think about the possibilities of web videos. Lessig makes it a point to show how copyright laws and "clearing rights" are inhibiting the creativity and innovation of traditional film directors:

“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.”

Clearly this burdens the artist with unrealistic expectations. And this is where, in looking at Internet political communications, there appears to be some wiggle-room for the online activists who put together web videos. Rather than risk having their traditional film stopped by judges or taken to court, online filmmakers, particularly anonymous ones, have the flexibility to do things that wouldn't normally be allowed.

Take, for example, the ad that Colorado Families First put out against Marilyn Musgrave. The ad shows a Musgrave lookalike sneaking over to a soldier (who is in the midst of firefight) and stealing his money. Musgrave went ballistic over the ad, and if I recall correctly, they pulled it... even though CO Families First took down their website and changed their name, it kept circulating on the left-wing blogs because of its humor and strong message, and to this day, you can still find the ad on the Internet.

So, the flip-side of this is that these videos then become more partisan and more extreme. If there's no one to stop you from using whatever material you want, and if your product is going to be viewed by a very specific political audience, there are no real-life barriers to making the most negative, mean-spirited movies.

Jib-Jabbing

Having been an RA at IPDI when "Under the Radar and Over the Top" was drafted, I'm pretty familiar with the material and personally spent several weeks scouring the Internet for web videos. With the benefit of post-Election hindsight, I'm struck by two observations:

(1) The impact of Flash. Eric Blumrich, who made some pretty intense anti-Bush movies in Flash, commented on this for the report and also at the panel we held at GWU. His point was that Flash is relatively easy to learn and master, and anyone with a few hours can put together some pretty incendiary political advertisements/movies. Flash is interesting because, unless you're working with a very high skill set, it retains a crude quality -- but that may be a part of the appeal. It makes it look underground and real, not unlike Edwards' podcasts, which (I believe) are edited to look purposefully like they have a human touch.

(2) In thinking about our past conversations about the digital divide, and in reference to the report's reference to high bandwidth as a requirement for viewing streaming video, it seems like the circulation of these videos, while powerful, remains within a very specific demographic. We're talking about people who either have high-speed Internet at home, or more likely, have it at college or work. Which means we're largely talking about white-collar workers with desk jobs. I don't doubt that these videos can be powerful--I've seen them myself--but I do think it's important to remember that their effectiveness is generally restricted to a segment of the population. Are there technologies (such as Flash?) that can help make web videos more accessible?

Additional thought -- we can't forget that some organizations professionally produce videos that go straight-to-Web. For instance, Robert Greenwald, director of Outfoxed, produced a video for Progressive Majority. We show it at receptions and such, but it's mostly viewed on our web site. A great option for non-profits or campaigns for whom buying air time doesn't make sense.