New Media ( Chapter 8 in Text)

Definition & the Information Revolution Changing economics Changing regulation Social Issues Social Challenges:
The Knowledge Gap Surveillance and loss of privacy Sharing and Market Hacktivism
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History of New Media

Since 1970s, but especially 1990s, nations concerned with the information highway Treated the Internet like an 1840s challenge of the telegraph Concern that to remain competitive in a global trading economy, nations needed to wire up Provide businesses, workers and consumers access to the Internet for education, retail, entertainment
Frontier metaphors often used Essential for economic transformation away from industrial to service/ information economies: the so-called innovation agenda In Canada, wired telco/cable providers dominated agenda: wireless only now emerging

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Building the Internet

Nations regulate telecommunications internationally: agree on bandwidth of electronic transmission, spacing of satellites, sharing of costs/ interconnection Also develop technical standards for interconnection ( IP protocols such as MP3) This is the international standards role of nations, businesses and technical experts in creating a market for technology, and ensuring consumers dont buy technology which will not work Business play a bigger and bigger role influencing this shadow world of standards: citizens underrepresented But: companies still need states to rule on standards
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Definition of New Media

Digital communication Used in the production, distribution and reception of communication Involves use of new communication networks: Internet as mass medium

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Information Revolution
Digitization: using computers to store,manipulate and transmit information in form of speech, text, data, and video more cheaply and faster than every before. Networking: distributed, fast digital networks wired and wireless Convergence: refers to merging of what were three separate industries: telecommunications, computing, and electronics or broadcasting
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Characteristics of New Media

Convergence of telecommunications and entertainment/broadcast media industries Wire or wireless communication Point to point or addressable Interactive ( two way) ( now multiple conferencing)
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Characteristics Continued
Interpersonal: ie. The terrain of telephony treats telephone calls ( discretionary contact between two consenting persons) as PRIVATE not PUBLIC communication ( where telco distributors are not responsible for content of message) Multiple: can be Mass/Broadcast which is PUBLIC communication ( broadcasters are responsible for message in exchange for spectrum monopoly: hybrid character) Now a grey area of semi public/private communication ( can monitor cell phones, amass, monitor and store unprecedented personal communication)
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Digital Communication
Where image text or sound is converted into binary numbers- ones and zeroes ( 0/1) Digital codes can duplicate, track store or play back complex kinds of content Strong when combined with ever greater chip capacity in computers, and bundles of glass fibre ( fibre optics) capable of carrying large quantities of information Current revolution: the Digital Video Disk DVDs: higher resolution, no rewinding,now coming recordable for storage and intending to replace CDS Also: wireless Internet ( games on the cell phone)
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Implication of Digitization
Drive to animation and special effects Actors worried about cyber simulators replacing them Domination of nature: totally simulated worlds? Question of authenticity of image

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The Role of the Media in the Age of Digital Reproduction

Walter Benjamin, a noted cultural scholar, suggests that the infinite reproducibility of the communication product ( CD, video, internet) due to its low marginal cost of duplication changes the nature of the work of art But western capitalism has conceived of the realm of ideas and expression as proprietary
Books, stories or photos may be copyrighted so they belong to the author and no one may borrow or copy them without permission, attribution or payment

The high risk nature of entertainment ( so called hit rule) calls for imitation or clones in popular culture ( riding the next so called fad or wave) Infinite reproducibility, repackaging,repurposing and presenting information as original There are many pressures on news or entertainment manufacture for cutting corners on production: ethical standards to prevent recycling content and presenting it as original are weak Cmns 130 digital watermarking is a weak barrier

Technical Potentials of the New Media

Costs of production dropping: makes media creation more accessible ( digital camera and access to the net) Costs of distribution down Interactive// less hierarchical Fastermore global

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The Internet
What: a vast network of high speed wires and satellite relays linking computers worldwide No central hub: thousands of computer nodes ( it is highly distributed) Uses a type of switching that is hard to trace: designed after WW2 in the RAND corporation to avoid worldwide military attack
Now used for: email, commerce, chat lines,file sharing etc. Sometimes synonmous with on line world
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Components of the Internet

World Wide Web Internet Service Providers (AOL Time Warner; Sympatico,Telus, Shaw@Home, AT&T) Portals ( MSN) Browsers: Explorer, Netscape Search Engines and directories ( Google, etc)
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Rate of Diffusion
Each generation of technology ( telegraph, telephone,radio, satellite to cable TV, VCRs) had an increasingly rapid rate of diffusion Key is where it reaches mass or majority ( 60% or more) of consumers. Internet has done so within one decade: only other technology to do so, but not quite as fast were the VCR and cell phones Now well over 75% of Canadians have access: that number rises to 100% under 25 The Internet the fastest techology in rate of social adaption
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Impacts
Changed the way we work Accellerated space time compression: globalization processes Convergence of computers and distribution allows greater efficiency of control and communication Much cheaper to sell via Internet than in person ( 1/100th cost per transaction for banks, airlines) Average person is now estimated to spend 187 hours a year on line ( source: Penguin Media and Information 2003)
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Social Transformations of the Internet

Utopic Visions
Breaks oligopoly power Allows user control over media selected, compiled, used Provides new forms of social connection beyond space based New communities of interest may form ( beyond borders) Together with other technologies allow development of artificial intelligence/body/intelligence augmentation A Democratic Realization

Dystopic Visions Reinforces and extends it ( US controls 65% share of world Internet server hosts) Keeps user in invisible walled gardens Has enabled social predation: largest use for pornography /weapons and illicit drug/and stalking on line New market intelligence aggregating in unprecedented scope: data shadows and on line surveillance Few use the Net for political news, mobilization: while alt.news and other organizations are growing: commercial search engines bury them so they are difficult to findthus an authoritarian politics continued, not a democratic one

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World Wide Web

Between 22 and 800 million sites less than half indexed Main search engines:
Google (500 m page estimate) Alta Vista294) Yahoo Iwon, Northern Light Fast
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Industry Structure
No one owner of Internet ISP providers route through a tangled web of other providers One dominant PC software manufacturer: Microsoft ( Internet Explorer)
Decade long anti trust suit settled out of court Like AT&T, US Department of Justice concerned about dominant market power, and predatory competition

Until 1990s, little competition between telephones and cable companies: now starting Late 1990s a wave of Stock Speculation and large scale mergers for dot com sector just before its crash AOL ( which owns Netscape) tookover Time Warner: sign of new technology surpassing old Emergence of little known Netscapes of Power
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Ideology of the Internet

Electronic Freedom Foundation
Neo liberal/New Media Free Egalitarian Decentralized Ad Hoc Open and peer to peer Experimental Autonomous Anarchic

Media Oligopolies ( Incumbent Media)

Social Responsibility model: but self not government regulation For Profit Hierarchical Systematized and Centralized Planned Proprietary Pragmatic Accountable Organized Reliable Source: Richard Campbell, Media and Culture, 41.

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The Business Case for On line Start Ups

Sector characterised by rapidly falling costs
Transistorization etc. Costs for average computer falling 30% per year ( just 0.01% of costs in 1970)

E commerce applications growing, but still less than 5% of retail( slower than supposed) Personal messaging ( email) very high Use for Information /Research high: but rise of subscription media ( eg. Newspaper on line, growing only among global travel segment) Drive to get video downloadable for entertainment (video cell phones banned in washrooms) Still largest volume of business is porn worldwide

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Globalization of the Internet

US has privatized domain names but retained control over their allocation This is a sore point for Europe and other powerful economic regions Internet content providers are estimated to be 98% English, 87% commercial, and dominantly US in origin Other foreign governments now trying to:
Invest in promotion of infrastructure Offer government services on line Promote the development of indigenous services
( eg. Canada: New Media Content Fund at Telefilm and the Canadian Television Fund)
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Canadian Shape of Convergence

Links telecom and broadcast and news No computer sector Does link portals and so on First impacts of convergence have been to de-localize news and media production
Consolidation of media production Centralization in a few cities
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Regulation of the Internet

Canada s CRTC decided in 1999 not to regulate the Internet : to leave it to open competition Australia and Europe are taking very different directions 1996 US Telecommunications Act ( calling for deregulation) is opposed world wide:
It is essentially impossible for one country to act as a content gatekeeper for a world community Michael Epstein, quoted in Campbell, 57.

Hate and offensive contents are of growing social concern ( especially sexual predation on the Net)
1996 US Communications Decency Act made it a felony to transmit obscene, indecent, or harassing material on the Internet where children might see it: struck down n grounds Internet no different from a book store: not like broadcast ACLU v. Janet Reno, 1998)23

Rise of filters/ ratings? On line entertainment

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Hacktivism
Development of Open Source Code: Linux which is free open source operating system challenges Microsoft File sharing coops of the type of Napster ( trading MP3s) growing junk and growth of viruses Romantic vision of small content providers surging on the net Eg. The garage bands now can find an audience; the poet self publish, the digital video camcorder allow the production of broadcast quality documentaries for $20,000 versus 1.2 million in the TV industry A technologically optimistic view: technology as emancipatory, revolutionary shattering the powers of entrenched business, cultural authorities
What Winseck in the courseware calls fantasy

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Intellectual Property Law

Part of Intellectual Property Law Governs the realm of inventions ( Patent Law) and brands or names ( Trade Mark Law), Trade Secrets ( Commercial Law) and Copyright

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The Canadian Copyright Act

protection For the life of the author plus 50 years Where the creator has the sole right to perform the creative act, grant permission or a license to reproduce it, or copy it. What is not copyrightable:
Facts but the compilation of them ( i.e how they are interpreted, is) Ideas- unless they are manifest in a drawing, paper, or written form ( see Vivian and Maurin, page 365)

Copyright: important in book publishing, sound tracks to films, films, music All TV and radio based on copyright payment to the performers they use Increasingly important in international trade, all forms of academic expression
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Canadian Copyright Agencies

CANCOPY: 130 courseware SOCAN

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US Digital Millenium Copyright Act ( 1998)

Computer users who copy or distribute the digital expression of others without their permission are liable to prosecution ISPs may avoid liability if they police and remove offenders Arose because of spread of MP3 ( a digital compression technology)
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Napster
Before 1999, just 5 companies, court cases on price fixing underway
Developer launches Website wi 2 mi per day Called P to P networking Allowed visitors to search for files on other MP3 users hard drive and download to burn their own CDs: control over compilation shifts to consumers freeware: since Napsters server did not house or archive the music, the owners thought they were exempt from copyright law and reasoned that prosecution should happen at the individual level: since so dispersed and large ( estimated in the millions a month) it was believed it was not possible to enforce Cmns 130 the law

The Napster Case (see Fleras: 262)

Musical Recording Industry argued Napster infringed copyright even Metallica! Damages estimated in the millions Refused to admit free sampling in fact increased exposure to music: eventual purchase Lined up a number of musicians to argue that the financial damage was to artists ( not the the multinationals)
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Napster defense
An information source Not housing or copying Intention to move to a subscription service Struggled to settle out of court Agreed to charge a monthly fee Purchased by Bertelsmann Lost Case
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Effects of Napster
Now usurped in the market ( Morpheus , Kazaa and others) but trying a comeback Victor? : to large companies:
BUT they introduced 2 tier pricing to allow new artists to break in They reduced price of CDs More services experimenting with subscription and transaction fees Major transformation in Music Happening

Victor? To consumers
Forcing a major rethink of copyright Hierarchy of value: new versus brand artists merit more protection Should IP be free? It takes a community to raise an artist.

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The Argument
Fleras: intrusion of commercial interests and government regulation has compromised the regulatory potential of the Internet
McLuhan: the inception of a new media casts into sharper relief the premises, priorities and power relations of existing media ( page 249).
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Crucial Questions
Should those who control the medium also control the message?
Cases: GayTV and Shaw Cable BCE /CTV and Independent Film Sympatico(Bell) and Oliver Hate Site

Issue is: will gatekeeper show preference/discriminate against competitors, or evade responsibility?
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The Consumers Guide to the New Media

1.Question Everything that is seen, heard or read in new media. ( no FDA) 2. Conclude almost everything is to make money for someone. Assume everything is a potential threat to your privacy:
Source: John Pavlik The Structure of the New Media Industry: in The Media Entertainment Industries, Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
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The Myth of Convergence

Not new Since 19th century Telegraph and global news agencies born together ( Winseck) AT&T ran RCA/Films until State department busted it In Canada today, we have one of the most consolidated media systems in the world, with a high degree of cross-media ownership
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Risk and Political Economy Game

Inventors of new technologies generate new patents ( ham heaven) When market become established: patents bought or litigated ( crisis of capital for development) Incumbent industries either block development or buy out new technology If new technology threatens core business of old, then predatory behavior, or massive buyout If new technology too risky, then businesses buy not make new service. Thus new technologies rarely challenge the incumbents, but over 50 years can see major change in owner players: market efficient at reducing risk and adapting to change

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The Critical Political Economy View: Lost in Cyberspace by Dwayne Winseck

Sees Intellectual Property Disputes as masking the larger problem: oligopoly of power and control Internet now dominated by big players, not an ideal perfect competition Convergence not new: 19th and 20th century waves and predicted in Canada since 1971 In Canada:
Rogers allied with Microsoft and AT&T CanWest: news and TV and radio Bell Globemedia, CTV,Expressvue, Globe and Mail and Sympatico, largest ISP
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Impacts of Cross Media Ownership

Now vertically and horizontal companies can control all aspects of message Should those who control the medium also control the message? Yes: allows economies of scale, more money reinvested in content, better assumption of risk, more choice and convenience for consumers No: debt means less investment in content, loss of jobs, avoidance of risk, less choice and higher prices for consumers ( Winseck, 326)

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Canadian Argument
Canada does have more choice among services Highest level of cable, cell, Internet penetration in G-8 Chronic shortage/ market failure in high cost production Shrinking public investment in non commercial or community media Indicators News
More news services, fewer private foreign news bureaus, more reliance on wire services; diminishing number of jobs

Indicator Entertainment
Digital channels not allied with big Canadian companies on verge of bankruptcy Cant get carried by cable companies, or carried at too high a wholesale rate Services high level of repetition( estimated more than 66% reruns) Lag of asymmetry: late on video file swapping, speed of video downloads

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Winsecks conclusion
In short, there is a resilience in the old media that will not yield Incumbents battle new entrants and either buy them up or forge partnerships, or force them out of business People still mostly rely on TV for their political information Internet works to extend and conserve existing market dominance in cyberspace
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Netscapes of Power
Must watch netscapes of power: rise of gatekeepers and walled gardens
Trend to bundling services for convenience Styling information services for personal preferences and not challenging these ( narrower and narrower homogenous taste communities) Technologies of discrimination: owner preference in placing subsidiaries at front of retail shelf and burying competitive service providers
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Fleras: Rhetoric and Reality ( p.269)

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Rhetoric & Reality

Subversive/Freewheel Egalitarian Anarchic Power to the People Globalizing Free Empowering and Enlightening Diversity Corporatized/Control Ehaves/Ehavenots Authoritarian power to the dollar Americanizing Marketing and Advertising Make Money Conformity
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Social Issues: Surveillance

Network architecture is now smart Before, telcos did not know the content of messages Now, they do. Bits are monitored, stored in charting flow and effective service Nortel and Cisco can establish network architectures which:
Identify each traffic type-Web, email, voice, videoand isolate the type of application even down to specific brands, by the interface used, by the user typeand individual user identification or by the site address (winseck:331)

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Surveillance 2
Rise of cookies ( spies on content, personal information and preferences jeapordizing privacy) Technological potential of building a complete data shadow of the consumer, to better market to them Emerging self regulation of services
Eg restrictive private contracts for use, limiting video downloads, for example, in absence of regulation permitting it. Or: @Homewide open powers to remove offensive matter which is too prone to authoritarian censorship

Still major fights: first over spam ( reaccessing your email accounts, and next data shadowing/market surveillance)
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The Walled Garden

AOL Time Warner term Disney too Keep users within designated zones for as long as possible ( Winseck, 335) How?
By creation of content and service menus, organization of hyperlinks, bias of search engings, network architecture, promotion, content synergies,elimination of bypasses Creation of walled gardens: safe, predictable, branded Eg: Disney assumes role of immigration officer in AOLs world: if people enter their site, and then leave AOL, contract can be cancelled ( Winseck, 336)
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The Information Gap

Rest of the World is less than one-tenth on the way to cyberspace Vast continents ( Africa) left out of global information highway Rich consumers and those educated elites the first to embrace computers and the Internet Poor, uneducated slow: many countries do not have policies to help individuals(eg. Computers in the home), although do help schools
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The Knowledge Gap

Information and Knowledge gap is widening: despite mass penetration of the Internet in Canada, still high levels of illiteracy, ( under 25%) relatively low levels of university education ( several points below Europe), and growing child poverty: estimates place one in four to one in three kids below poverty level Structurally higher levels of unemployment, precarious jobs Gendered landscape of technological control
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