- Air-L - lists.aoir.org

socio-technical problems of film downloads...
by Gina Neff 24 Oct '01

24 Oct '01

Frank's dream is a great one -- however, in the early ventures to do just that--establish sites for downloading films--legal definitions of distribution came into question. A couple of sites tried to be web distributors for independent (mainly) movies. The problem, however, was with the way film production contracts are written. Many filmmakers obtain everything--from rights to songs on the soundtrack to talent--contingent on the distribution level of the movie. World-wide distribution rights for a song on the soundtrack require a whole different league of payment than for "festival rights." Similarly, there are problems with contingent payment for actors and screenwriters whose contracts often stipulate pay structures based on distribution and percentages of sales. Legally, the web is international distribution, and while there was a market demand for films that hadn't been picked up by distributors, the tangle of contracts on the production side prevent production companies from being able to explore the option. Distributors, though, could get involved in internet distribution, and at the Toronto film festival a small distributor just announced the online distribution of one of their features, which is the first to be offered online by an independent distributor. The major studios have only recently formed a couple of alliances for video on demand, Movies.com (Disney and News Corp) and Movie Fly (MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner), and infrastructure costs alone are estimated at least $50 million. Microsoft's Intertainer launched last week in some digital cable and broadband markets with the 8,000 programs and movies they obtained distribution rights for. If Intertainer's initial pricing is any indication, it's not going to be cheap--$8 per month for the service and $3-4 per movie. Gina Neff -----Original Message----- From: Frank Schaap [SMTP:architext@fragment.nl] Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 7:07 AM To: air-l(a)aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] more net films <snipped zillions of great films> <dreaming>with the internet at our fingertips, wouldn't it be great if you simply could go to movie.com or documentary.com and every movie would be there, download the movie (pay for it when necessary, I imagine some of the old stuff would be free downloads), watch it or burn it to DVD and show it in class.</dreaming> Frank. -- The Cyberculture, Identity and Gender Resources ==> http://fragment.nl/resources/ _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l(a)aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l

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Re: [Air-l] more net films
by Frank Schaap 24 Oct '01

24 Oct '01

<snipped zillions of great films> <dreaming>with the internet at our fingertips, wouldn't it be great if you simply could go to movie.com or documentary.com and every movie would be there, download the movie (pay for it when necessary, I imagine some of the old stuff would be free downloads), watch it or burn it to DVD and show it in class.</dreaming> Frank. -- The Cyberculture, Identity and Gender Resources ==> http://fragment.nl/resources/

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One more movie
by Randy Kluver 24 Oct '01

24 Oct '01

The beginning fifteen or twenty minutes of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times is hilariously funny, but also helps the students to understand the critique of modernism, Taylorism, and Fordism. I show it in our Introduction to the Information Society course to help students see a contrast between the "efficient, modernized world," and the networked, information world. Randy Kluver Information and Communication Management FASS 3, #04-16 National University of Singapore Singapore, 117570 (65) 874-8755, fax (65) 779-4911

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NCA
by Andrejevic, Mark 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

Is anyone looking for an NCA roommate (at this late date)? Previous plans for lodging have fallen through, so I'm looking for anyone interested in sharing hotel costs -- just send me an e-mail if you're still looking. Thanks, Mark Andrejevic Fairfield University

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FW: [netscan] 2.0 Release
by Ellis Godard 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

-----Original Message----- From: masmith(a)microsoft.com [mailto:masmith@microsoft.com] Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 2:13 PM To: Netscan Mailing list Subject: [netscan] 2.0 Release Netscan Netscan Community Research at Microsoft Research Data Mining Social Cyberspaces since 1997 Netscan Beta 2.0 Now Available! Netscan social accounting services for Usenet What is Netscan? Netscan is a social accounting reporting service for the Usenet. Netscan provides reports on the activity of newsgroups and the histories of authors in those newsgroups. The Microsoft Community Research Group created Netscan as a service to the research community and a test-bed for enhanced community services. Research Sociologist Marc Smith leads a small group of developers creating next generation community interfaces. How can I use Netscan? Netscan is publicly available at http://netscan.research.microsoft.com. New Data Keeping up with Usenet is a big challenge. Growing rapidly, the Usenet feed is larger than 60GB a day. Netscan now provides data for all the newsgroups we get in our feed from January 1, 2000 through the end of August, 2001. Coming soon is data for September 2001. Look for quicker data updates coming in the near future. Our new interfaces are now available! Netscan offers reports on all Usenet newsgroups that we receive in our news feed, currently 130,000 newsgroups. Through Netscan you can access newsgroup reports for any day, week, or month starting from the first of January, 2000. Use Netscan to track the activity of your favorite newsgroups and read the most active threads in any newsgroup. Newsgroup report cards Get a focused report on any individual newsgroup we track. Thread reports for newsgroups Sorting threads by size should be a common news browser feature, but it isn't. Netscan now provides reports on the biggest threads in every newsgroup for every day, week, and month in the data set. Crosspost network visualization See the patterns of interlinked newsgroups starting from any set of anchor newsgroups you select. Author Tracker Identifying the most valuable authors in each newsgroup can be an effective vector for finding the most valuable content. To explore this approach, Netscan now offers an Author to Thread report that lists the most frequently active participants in each newsgroup and the threads they contributed to most often. This can be a great way to highlight the most valuable content in each newsgroup. Tree Map of Usenet Get an overview of the entire Usenet in one glance! Tree Maps are an interesting way to visualize large hierarchical structures -- like Usenet! Our Tree Map service allows you to zoom into just the neighborhood of newsgroups you are interested in and generate maps for any month in the data set. Try it here. Join our Netscan Mailing List Join the Netscan mailing list and get updates about Usenet, Online Communities, and new services. Your E-mail: Subject: Message: Recent Articles The Netscan Project: Mapping the Social Geography of Usenet News April, 2001 Is Microsoft Smart- or Just Successful? May 15, 2001 Calendar January 7-10, 2002 - Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, HICSS 2002, See in particular the Persistent Conversation minitrack and the HICSS Digital Library. April 20-25, 2002 - ACM Computer Human Interaction Conference CHI 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota Related Links Tree Maps for space-constrained visualization of hierarchies Cyber Geography Atlas MIT Media Lab Sociable Media Group Conversation Maps Microsoft Research Social Computing Group Microsoft Research Collaboration and Multimedia Group Communities in Cyberspace is in second printing Edited by: Marc Smith and Peter Kollock Communities in Cyberspaceis devoted to exploring new forms of social organization and the changing concepts of community as social groups develop within computer networks. Contributors examine changes in the nature of personal identity, social organization and the connections between real-world communities and their extensions in cyberspace. Communities in Cyberspace is published by Routledge and is now available In association with Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com and other booksellers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Thank you for your continued interest in the Netscan Project. We sent this message because you subscribed to our mailing list. If you'd rather not receive future e-mails about news, developments, or updates, please reply to this message with the word 'UNSUBSCRIBE' in the SUBJECT line. Please see the Netscan privacy policy Copyright 2001, Microsoft Corporation --- You are currently subscribed to netscan as: godard(a)virginia.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-netscan-3636D(a)list.research.microsoft.com

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Firstgov
by 70COMPTON 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

***I'm looking for journal articles that discuss the start of the Firstgov site. Many thanks for any data or sources you might have.*** Angelica Compton Media Studies Catholic University 70compton(a)cua.edu

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more net films
by David M. Silver 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

Folks, In another, non-air thread I'm in with my friend and colleague Phil Thurtle, we've been discussing teaching materials and films in particular. With Phil's permission, I'm forwarding a recent post of his. Some of them have been mentioned, others not. Enjoy! david silver **** From: Phillip Thurtle <thurtle(a)u.washington.edu> FIRST RUN FILMS "Lain: serial experiments" This is a Japanese anime television series about a young girl who begins to use the Internet and starts questioning her identity. Much more compelling than other films of this type(Matrix, etc.) and gets the students to begin thinking in international and gendered terms regarding this issue. Chris Marker's _La Jetee_ is a great meditation on time in an extensively surveilled society. This is the film that Terry Gilliam based _12 Monkeys_ on. "Colussus: The Forbin Project". This film wonderfully captures how fears of nuclear invasion during the cold war is transferred to the technology that we use to stop the invasions. "Tron"? "The Andromeda Strain". This film is especially pertinent today with the fears of bioterrorism. The movie "Momento" is also important for thinking about identity and memory in a highly mediated society. David Cronnenberg's "Existenz" has some provocative scenes regarding human/user interface. DOCUMENTARIES "Ducktators" is a great documentary on the use of cartoons during world war II. "The Last Angel of History" is a very cool film that explores the relationship of PanAfrican identity, new technology, and outer space themes through the exploration of the works of Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, George Clinton, and Sun Ra. "Death by Design" is a film that looks at technology and art and scientific representations. "Japan Dreaming" one of the more informed takes on the development of Japan's "synthetic" pleasures. "Optimum" is a historical film that looks at themes of the information society in historical context. It covers, Jeremy Bentham, Charles Babbage, and Francis Galton. A scholarly as well as a gorgeously produced film. "A Mobile World" investigates telecommunications development from the perspective of citizens from Helsinki to the Ivory Coast. It especially concentrates on the use of a "global" discourse as a means for marketing electronic devices. I hope this helps- Phillip

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Search for Articles
by Colleen S. Walsh 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

I'm looking for journal articles that discuss the role of the Internet in political lobbying. Many thanks for any data or sources you might have. Colleen Walsh Catholic University 25walsh(a)cua.edu

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community built online encyclopedia
by Bunz, Ulla K 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

One of the assignments in my senior level "Communication and New Technologies" class is a group project called Tech Update. Students love it, and sometimes you get real jewels. In small groups, students are required to find new technologies or new applications of existing technologies and report on (positive and negative) effects these technologies have on society in general, and our lives in specific. I'd like to share today's Tech Update topic with you, because I think it is very related to some of the discussions we've had on this list, such as the community built listserve database we are currently considering. Today's Tech Update will be about Wikipedia [http://wikipedia.com/] an online, community built encyclopedia. It exists in multiple languages (though the English site is largest). EVERYONE can edit EVERY PAGE of this online encyclopedia. The site/database is backed up once a week. Obviously, this creates many issues, such as credibility of information, active history shaping, etc., but what an excellent example of community built cyber culture! What a very exciting discussion topic, and what a wonderful case study this would make. ulla ******************************************** Ulla K. Bunz Ph.D. Candidate, Teaching Assistant University of Kansas 102 Bailey Lawrence, KS 66045 785-864-1160 ulla(a)ukans.edu ******************************************** Never Surrender ... ********************************************

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In the event of catastrophe: Legislating through the Internet
by Jennifer Stromer-Galley 23 Oct '01

23 Oct '01

Some of you might be interested in what the Democrats are proposing the nation do if Congress were forced to flee for a prolonged period of time from the Capitol. ~Jen Annenberg School for Communication University of Pennsylvania jstromer(a)asc.upenn.edu http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/jstromer ================================== NEW DEMOCRATS ONLINE -- NEW DEM DAILY -- Pithy news and commentary from the DLC. ================================== [ http://www.ndol.org ] 23-OCT-2001 Legislating By Any Means Necessary The anthrax attack on Senator Daschle's office, and the brief shutdown of Congress to allow biohazard teams to check out the Capitol and the members' office buildings, have led to some quiet but serious talk in Washington about what to do if future attacks make regular Congressional deliberations impractical or unsafe. (The American Enterprise Institute went a step further with a ghoulish panel discussion entitled "What If Congress Was Obliterated?" about the constitutional implications of a full-scale terrorist attack on the Capitol.) Believe it or not, there's precedent for Congressional action in physical emergencies. During the Revolutionary War, as the British army advanced on Philadelphia, the Continental Congress was forced to scramble and run for the hills in order to evade capture. But members of Congress agreed before their evacuation on a place to reconvene and carry on our fledgling nation's business -- most notably, to continue handling the purse strings of government during the prosecution of the war. (During the War of 1812, of course, the British actually burned the Capitol and the White House, but withdrew so quickly that the operations of government were not significantly interrupted.) No one is expecting this kind of contingency, but additional interruptions of Congressional sessions are entirely possible. According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House has been prodding Congress to give the President spending authority to keep the government operating for as much as 30 days at a time if lawmakers can't convene and the necessary appropriations for cabinet departments expire. ("Even before the anthrax scare," the Journal noted in its Oct. 22 report, "pressures generated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks played havoc with the year-end congressional schedule. Anti-terrorism and airport-security bills have consumed time and created new obstacles to action on appropriations and other bills pending at the time of the disaster.") The pros and cons of the White House's idea aside, the specter of an enemy aiming to disrupt or destroy the Capitol points to the need for Congress to have back-up plans for convening and carrying on with the nation's business. There are obviously several state capitols near Washington that could theoretically provide temporary facilities for the U.S. Congress in a pinch, but modern information technology could also allow for another scenario: an electronic Congress. Here's how it could work: * A website could easily be built that would facilitate virtually all of the business normally conducted on the floors of the House and Senate, or in committees -- from debates, to mark-ups to votes. * The site could just as easily be built to be administered through the Internet, so physical proximity to the box where it's actually running would be irrelevant. In a national emergency, if the Capitol itself is in danger or is actually attacked, members could log on from wherever they are. * The means of authenticating a member of Congress would likely need to be several cuts above a simple password -- possibly involving bio-metrics, or human verification -- so the best system might require members spread around the country to go the nearest state capitol or city hall to use special kiosks there. * Once online, just as in the offline world, staff from the offices of the respective chambers' majority leaders would have administrative access to control the agenda, and other members could log on to enter arguments into the record and vote. * The site could be open to the public on a read-only basis, so citizens could watch their representatives much as they can now on C-SPAN. This scheme may not be as not as far-fetched as it might initially seem. Congress is already a generation behind much of the private sector in using information technologies to conduct business in the absence of physical meetings. Indeed, long before September 11, there were proposals circulating for electronic voting and web- enabled debates and committee meetings so that members could spend less time in Washington and more time in their states and districts. We admire the dedication of Congressional leaders in believing they should set an example for the country by returning to normal business as quickly as possible after the anthrax attack. But we can overcome terrorists by our brainpower and our technology as well as by our courage. At a minimum, Congress may want to consider technological means for conducting some of the nation's legislative business when members can't physically convene in Washington, as potentially a good thing in and of itself. At the same time, they could create a contingency plan for keeping Congress running, even if the Capitol is shut down.

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