I posted this in response to Well Comm’s post, but I thought I’d repeat it here…
…it’s important to make clear that most people who are critical of the current intellectual property regime (myself included) are not anti-copyright. In fact, most–including Larry Lessig–are staunch defenders of copyright. The devil is in the details.
Most, for example, argue that the current term of copyright is out of whack. If you protect a copyright for 21 years–the original term of the Statute of Anne–that’s plenty if you are trying to encourage creativity. It means that if you write a book, you should probably write and publish another one sometime in the next two decades. People still get to protect a temporary monopoly, with out it getting (Happy Birthday, Mickey Mouse) stupid.
Likewise, when a kid on YouTube does a funny dance because a Prince song comes on, it shouldn’t result in the artist suing the parents. Again: that’s stupid.
And you shouldn’t be issuing patents for how to swing on a swing, or how to click on a link. Stupid.
And you shouldn’t sue teachers who show movies in a class, or artists who create new music based on old.
So, the battle here is not whether copyright should exist. Creative Commons REQUIRES copyright if it is to exist at all! The issue is getting rid of the stupid parts. To suggest that we can either have intellectual property the way it is today or not at all is disingenuous.
So, new tech happens every day. If we want to be able to know what future products are in 3 years, we need to look at what labs are prototyping today. So, how about augmented teality in a worn pendant, that follows what you do with your hands and layers data from the internet onto your world.
We have been building toward final pitches on our projects. Basically, this should represent a persuasive overview of the project, what measures of success you have, why you think we will attain it, and when we will we know that it has been attained (what are your measures).
Content
This should feel a bit like a funding pitch. Why should someone put resources into your project. In particular, you need to answer the following questions:
1. What is it you are offering? What are you contributing?
2. What makes you think people are looking for that? What is your evidence?
3. How are you going to find and connect with those people? Why will they come to your site? Who are your direct competitors for their attention?
4. What will you get from them and how? What makes them keep coming back (if that is central to your model)?
5. What are the informational resources (assets) you need to host on your site? Documents? Videos? Databases? Do these already exist, or will you need to build them?
6. How will your site be organized? How many pages will it have, and in what order? How do you move from one page to another? A sketch of a site map might be helpful here…
7. What does your site look like visually? At this stage, a sketch on a back of a napkin is fine: just something to show the layout and some of the design elements. Are there sites from which you are drawing visual queues?
8. If you know or have ideas about implementation at this stage, you can include them.
Format
The format is a 5-10 minute presentation. Think seriously about how to keep us interested. Assume that we have the attention span of an ADD gnat. I’ll likely video your presentation so that you have a record of it. Be clear, compelling, and creative.
Someone asked last night (Vivian?) and I mistakenly said all was left on the project was to start moving toward your pitch at the end of the semester. I forgot that I’m asking you to address any legal issues.
For many of you, this will be fairly easy: you need to think about where your site assets are coming from (few sites are built completely from scratch, though yours may be!), and how you will secure and document permissions and licenses for that material. For some, things get more complex. Will you have people uploading materials, and does that mean you need to make use of the DMCA safe harbor provisions? Will you be collecting private information about people and how will you protect that? Are you going to be providing a way for people to engage in any illegal activity, including things like piracy, libel, etc.? What about arguments? How will you deal with spam, and will that be addressed in your terms of use? Do you require contractors or others? Is there some structure needed to handle payments and does that require some organizational structure (incorporation or DBA for merchant accounts, for example)?
In other words, what is an early look of some of the legal issues you expect to encounter?
So, in the spring I’m on the hook for a few courses–most likely some sections of 501 and 505. However, I’m considering taking on a small number of students for a small group to either:
1. Do a bit of a deep dive in reading recent digital social theory and trying to make sense of it.
2. Doing a deep dive on the other side of things, and developing some cool geo-located (and possibly gaming) based stuff for the Android platform.
If you have an interest in this, drop me a note. In either case, I suspect it would count as an ICM elective. However, I’m going to be picky about who’s working in the group, and you should be aware that it (a) will be difficult and (b) won’t be a traditional course.
All this presupposes I actually have time to do it, which I won’t know for a little while yet.
One of the assignments this week is to watch the film Steal This Film 2. Actually, as you may have guessed, it’s not necessary to steal it, as it is licensed for free download. Now the question is how to get it. There is the easy way and the hard way.
The easy way is to google the title. You’ll find copies of the film on Google Video and elsewhere. That’s fine–the important thing is that you see the film.
If you go to the official site for the film, you will see links to downloads in much higher resolution: that is, non-postage-stamp sizes. Now, the problem with these larger files is that they are too big to be effectively hosted and downloaded. The XVID, for example, is over 600 mb. So, the links they have on the site are used to locate the torrents for those files.
It’s useful to know how to use bittorrent. It’s an important way of distributing large files like this one on the internet. Bittorrent disrupts the client-server model a bit. When you start downloading a file, you also serve chunks of that file to other people who are trying to download it. By distributing that process in a peer-to-peer way, you don’t need to have huge servers to host huge files.
The trick is, you still need to have some way of getting a handle on those files. Even if you don’t need a central server, you do need a tracker that tells you who is providing the file at any given time. The most notorious of these trackers is probably The Pirate Bay. (It should be obvious, I suppose, that bittorrent–like other peer-to-peer systems–tends to host a lot of “pirated” materials.)
To download a bittorrent file, you need a bittorrent client. My favorite is µTorrent. Once this is installed, when you click on a link to a bittorrent file, it will load into your client. Then just let it run. It will likely take at least overnight to download a large file like one of these–so just give it time.
Next week I’m asking you to think about your project from the perspective of the users. Obviously, you’ve probably done a little of this when addressing the competitive analysis, but you need to dig a bit deeper here, and figure out what uses and gratifications people are seeking and how you might be able to provide for these with your project.
One way you might do this is by establishing a set of personae for potential users. What are their names, their backgrounds, their attitudes, and how might they encounter and use your site. Providing a bit of life history, understand the contexts in which they use the web (where’s the computer? are they at work? how long do they have? why did they come to use it this time?), and exploring how important it is that you meet their needs.
Once you’ve figured out who these example users are–and they should be a kind of archetype of a user: power users and those who have just happened on your site for example–you need to provide some user scenarios. What are some of the typical ways in which people will use your site and why? What are their goals? How do you meet them effectively?
Most design processes these days make some use of personae. This may be limited to asking the client who a few of their most common types of users are. Or, in some cases, it may mean going as far as cutting out posters for each of the personae and posting them around the office so that you can ask questions of them as you are proceeding with your design.
