Hey, so this is my old blog about copyright which I haven’t looked at in ages because instead of researching, I’ve been sitting in front of a keyboard attempting to fashion something close to a thesis. It’s really fun replacing piles of journal articles and books with an empty page, empty pots of coffee and serious self-doubt. The wonders of post-grad study.

The deal is that I started second semester, which was amazing in itself and my new subject Covergent Journalism was all like “newmediahaveablogwritethingsweb2.0videohtml”. From what I gathered the general thrust of the plan was to blog while studying which was an awesome idea and that for our first week we should write about ourself. A sort of text based version of the awkward first tute where everyone stands up and desperately tries to relate something interesting and humorous about themselves to the class and fails horribly at both. So here’s my attempt.

I just graduated from a B.A (Media and Comm.) at Swinburne in 2007 and rather head straight back into study or actually face the terrors of full time work, I decided to go overseas. I did the whole America/U.K/Europe thing and tried to find myself but ended up only finding a few sweet bands, some cds, cheap beer and discovering how to make a snowman which was pretty cool in itself. I’ve also done community work for PBS fm, Syn fm and 3SSR when life hasn’t gotten in the way so I know my way around a radio studio. This is longest time I’ve managed to keep a blog alive which is an achievement in itself and I often wonder if I should expand the content I write about. Then I forget about it for a week or two and the idea doesn’t raise it’s ugly head again.

There’s too many things I love so I’ll stick to what I’m enjoying at the moment.

The Daily Show’s election coverage, playing music, transcribing bass lines, Miles Davis, Pavement, The Whitlams, drinking stout, filing cabinets, buying smart books I’ll never read, Dave Eggers, ABC vodcasts and podcasts, listening to Radio National (and therefore beginning to turn into my Dad), Running, enjoying some sort of weird schadenfreude watching my Melbourne’s Demons horrendous demise, The Dark Knight.

Things I hate? Racism, Violence and World Poverty. Yeah! Christ I sound like Bono. Umm Generally? Short sighted Government Policy, boring politicians and people, a lack of humour in the world, small-mindedness, central heating not working, Weezer’s last album, not having seen Indiana Jones’ last installment

Things I’m ambivalent about: John Birmingham’s blog. I’m not sure if I like it or hate it yet or if it’s just not as good as his previous work.

I need to learn how to work video and brush up on my html and flash which hasn’t been dealt with since 1st Semester 1st year. I also want to be radcore at audio and not just more than competent.

Blaregh. It’s 5am and I’m awake. It’s been a hectic few weeks with a bunch of rehearsals, gigs and recordings with various bands and half started thesis chapters and temp work which is why I’ve been not sleeping and running around in crazy circles instead. But one good thing about this lack of sleep is that I’ve been able to completely pwn my rss reader and catch up on a bunch of awesome articles which I haven’t had the time or energy to read lately.

The Future of Media conference was on in Sydney recently and there has been some great discussion about the difference between bloggers and journalists. One thing which really struck me about the difference between the two was coming across this blog. Olive was the world’s oldest blogger at 109 years old, and although I’ve only just started reading it, it’s an amazing chronicle of a woman’s life, of Australia’s history and a brilliant way to create a memoir. It me thinking that if the MSM wanted to do a story on Olive, she  would have got no more than three minutes at the end of the weather, or if she was lucky, one substantial article or an Australian Story piece. However, instead for a year she was able to tell her own story and connect with people around the world and do so much more through this new medium than was ever possible through old media channels.

Part of the discussion around FOM ‘08 and on this podcast is about the authenticity of blogs compared to trad. journalism. In terms of story telling, i don’t see Olive’s blog as being any less ‘authentic’ for being on a new media platform as opposed to having a half hour doco done on her life on ABC. The Cranky Geek’s podcast above does a wonderful semantic dissection of these words which really highlights the similarities between these two platforms. A journalist and a blogger are simlpy people who journal or write a log of the day. Both stem from that same format of diary writing, where either personally or on behalf of others, we look back at the day gone past and reflect on what’s happened and where we are going. It’s simply the production styles and formats which have distinguished for so long what is essentially the same function.

So I completely forgot my complete infatuation with MGMT - Time to Pretend. What a great song about nihilistic, life-avoidance scenester lives.

This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun.
Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.

Hooray for beefy synth chords which pile up on each other like a drunken game of ’stacks-on’, a great hook which sounds like the smallest casio you can find screaming above an electronic choir and the best video clip i’ve seen in ages.

It hasn’t been a busy month, just one of those months where copyright pales into significance compared to some massive life issues. Oh as well as being in bands, doing radio and working my guts off. Hence the lack of postings, but in any case I’ve managed to bash out a rough first chapter and I’m currently avoiding reading Senate reports, so I must be doing something right (?!?).

Thanks to (con)temporary:

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”

The Whitlams - Melbourne

Despite their over-wrought production and attempts at epic balladry, I am a Whitlams fan - mainly because of their over-wrought production. However, I’ve always hated this naff, trite attempt at setting my fine city towards some sort of musical accompianment, considering what The Whitlams have done previously, Melbourne pales in comparison to sterling efforts like Royal in the Afternoon. The worst offense in this song is the bridge, where a sachharine keyboard sits under some trite lyrics:

If I had three lives

I’d marry her in two

I’m dreaming of a time

That we sit when the music stops.

Then why did I get goosebumps when listening this song the other day? Because immediately following this bridge comes forth a verse which highlights Tim Freedman’s skilfull attempt at painting wonderful character sketches.

She has an aversion to conviction

She’s more confused than ever

Won’t pay her fines and wonders when the cops will get her

She calls her dog the bear and walks me with him to the corner in her pajamas

What a great summary of a person in a verse and I love that crapness and brilliance can be in such close proximity in the one song.

P.J Harvey - The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore

I miss the 90s and there’s no-one who can encapuslate this era better than P.J Harvey. The song is a wonderful bookend to a decade which held festivals, moshing and CDs up like demi-gods.  I’m tempted to simply dump the entire song in here but i’ll be satisfied with half.

Speak to me of heroin and speed
Of genocide and suicide, of syphilis and greed
Speak to me the language of love
The language of violence, the language of the heart
This isn’t the first time I’ve asked for money or love
Heaven and earth don’t ever mean enough
Speak to me of heroin and speed
Just give me something I can believe

The whores hustle and the hustlers whore
Too many people out of love
The whores hustler and the hustlers whore
This city’s ripped right to the core

What desperation, what imagery and what a wonderful lyrical connection to the album title Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. This is the guts of life. With a scungy guitar behind P.J’s voice giving it added impetus and authenticity by the time P.J starts her falsetto yelps at the end of the song, you’ve already ran a street scene in your head and seen the worst a city has to offer.

Joanna Newsom  -Peach, Plum, Pear

I’ve actually listening to Ms. Newsom non-stop but because I’ve got this song on two different albums, this one has stuck. It’s a bit more brittle than her other work, a bit more sad and contradictory and it’s got a certain depth of melancholy playfulness which goes deeper than any of her other work.  You can feel a scene leap out of her harp and on to the page of a children’s book but much like the Brother’s Grimm there’s adult seriousness here. The choral final lines of

Peach, plum, pear

Peach, plum

are a wonderful simplistic ending to such a complex song with it’s jarring bass and vocals which jump here, there and everywhere.

And we were galloping manic
To the mouth of the source
We were swallowing panic
In the face of it’s force

There’s something more here, which makes this such a great song.

James Brown - Sex Machine Pt. 1 and 2

I don’t really need to explain anything here but it’s simply the bravado, arrogance and the groove of James Brown. The horribly long, contrived and awesome leap to the bridge. The self-referential patter mid-song. And the groove? Again. Wow.

Against Me! - These Anarcho Punks are Mysterious

This song has aged for me immensley over the course of the year mainly because I’ve listened to it heaps, but there’s certain parts where it simply lifts. What makes this song special is that it doesn’t need production wank or driving drums to make the song lift. Regardless of the setting - acoustic, live, record - it simply does of it’s own accord because it’s one of Against Me!’s best songs. Especially when placed against the endearing but occasionally jarring Reinventing Axl Rose, this song stands superior.

Let’s try to keep
As much emotion out of this
As possible.
Let’s try not to remember any names.

All of a sudden,
People start talking about guns,
Talking like they’re going to war
‘Cause they found something to die for.

If you ever need a case against political aggression it’s these two lines. They should be remembered.

Feist - I Feel it All

Give me three simple chords, distorted to start a song and give me a groove which is undeniable to follow it up. There’s the voice with the brief whispers behind it, the descent into the chorus, the return to the theme and the high piano notes balancing against the rhythm section and Feist’s playful vocals throughout turning a simple song into an restrained exercise into space and vocal sound.

Kick drum on the bass drum floor

Good line. Don’t know why.

Mates of State - The Re-Arranger

This is an amazing song off an average album but it does what Mates of State do well. The syncopated organ bass, the vocal histrionics which fly across the song like soaring angels and the layered harmonies create a building base as the song continues. What I love about these guys is that they never settle for a simple pop song. At 2.30 the song explodes. A quiet re-arrange leaps into hundredstrongchoir territory with a thousand voices and a kick drum which tears through the centre. Then they bring it back with one of their classic restrained bridges before slowly building back up towards an elongated end which simply re-inforces what they’ve been doing amazingly all through this song. Harmonies, syncopation, beat and vocal scaling on a massive scale. Oh and I forgot the speedy start and brass intro which is in complete contradiction to the drawn out end and they manage to get there somehow. I don’t know how.

I was searching for my seventh song but I can’t believe I forgot this one. Amazing. Amazing.

cbf passing it on, I don’t think I actually know people in my blogroll apart from LF. LOLZ.

I could be wrong, though, as I’m not really a reader of blogs. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the book review sections of the New York and Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Bookforum, the Atlantic, Harper’s, TLS, the New Republic, etc., as well as the British newspapers like the Guardian and Independent, which I read online. Yet even in those publications I often find that the pieces I’m excited to be reading are the exception rather than the rule. I’m all for cultural gatekeepers because there’s way more out there than I have time to read and it’s not always easy to find the best of it.

From Death of Criticism - salon.com

This is a great article about the death of serious literary criticism in newspapers by at the moment and the current trend towards democratisation thanks to amazon etc. It’s not at all ideological and provides a balanced look at the effect the Internet is having on declining newspaper purchases.

That being said, that phrase really stood out for me because it’s one which heaps of people parrot incessantly without much cause for thought. It’s the classic, ‘the Internet’s has way too much information OMG I can’t keep up!!!!’ argument and after much thought I don’t think it holds up.

It’s true that the internet has the potential to hold an infinite amount of information, that’s why it’s more beneficial for knowledge storing than a bookstore or a library, there’s no actual physical restrictions. However what phrases like this seem to ignore is the awesome searchability of the Internet.

…it’s not always easy to find the best of it.

This is a phrase which is becoming increasingly worn out. Amazon has an amazing recommendations system, it’s only recently that we’ve had a search engine like Google, with an algorithm so awesome and powerful that they have to feed it four times daily so it doesn’t turn loose and destroy the world, and we’re currently in the midst of a meta-revolution where everything can be tagged, ranked and filtered a thousand times over to serve anybody’s searching purposes.

This ‘too much information’ argument stopped holding weight for me when I went second hand book shopping yesterday. It was a sizable store in Carlton and there were two levels packed to the roof with books. My first thought? I’m never going to get through all this. Apart from the vague categories which books had been lumped in together, there was no guide as to which books were good, which were horrible, which classics were good classics for people like me who enjoyed Oscar Wilde but hated anything by the Bronte sisters. In actual fact, in this bookstore there was too much information and no way to sort it! I still enjoyed getting lost in a bookstore for two hours, it was awesome. But it destroyed the oft repeated fiction that somehow information was easier to find offline. If anything the better search techniques available online have just augmented the information we previously had access too.

Sure we might not read it all, but I think if we’re talking about cultural gatekeepers, I’d trust amazon after using it for a year just as much as Peter Craven.

This guy explains this much better in his book, everything is miscellaneous.

Also I think it’s important to remove web 2.0 from this discussion. Or at least I want to. To me it seems like a catch-phrase which may die in a few years and is more of a marketing concept than a valid term which can be used in academic discourse. Of course now I need to find something to replace it.

Furthermore I think it’s good to separate that term from the issues at stake. As shown in my e-book post, these are issues which are having an effect. Those problems are more vexing when considering libraries are buying more e-books in place of physical objects in their collection. Sure it’s cool if it works and more students will get access to knowledge but in situations like this one, it’s a horrible idea.

One shouldn’t bunch up advocates like Lessig, Litman and others in the tech determinist bundle. If anything it’s more tech determinist to use technology to lock down your work and not trusting people. I’d argue the copy-left crowd are way more pro-culture and pro-people than beady eyed, knowledge hoarding bastards who try and time your reading habits to the second and then ask if you’d like to continue reading.

It’s ridiculous I can write on my blog but not my thesis. ARGH.

Apparently my browsing timehas expired. WTF?! Could you imagine if a book told you that? Is this not insane?

I can’t actually write. I’ve discovered this after starting my first chapter four times. I have nothing else to do today but write and I can’t actually do that and it’s kind of depressing. I have a concept and have fleshed out a chapter but when you can’t put ideas down on paper your past few years of education feel like an extravagant waste. I’ve read so much on this topic I’ve reached breaking point and need to put something down on paper but I can’t so I’m at this massive impasse. Adding to that I’ve just been on an awesome trip to brisbane so there’s no reason why I can’t just get started. Shit.

So to make myself feel kind of productive I checked the Library catalogue. My hold was cancelled. Shit. So I checked if the book was in. It was out. Shit. So I access the electronic book which has been so lovingly paid for by Swinburne Library for poor chumps like me who have their hold cancelled and their book taken out by someone else and attempt to print out a chapter.

Me: *Tries to print out a chapter*

E-book: SOOZZZZ!!! U CAN ONLY PRINTZ OUT 6 PAGES ROFLOLZORZ!!!111!

Me: Uhhh…but I haven’t accessed this book before.

E-Book: SOOOZZZZ SIX PAGES ONLY PRINT LOLLLL!!!!!111!

Me: Fuck. I haven’t accessed this book before and I just want to learn. I mean I’ve technically already paid for this book with my university fees and in any case all I want to do is read it on a couch like if I borrowed a book from a library. It’s not like I’m going to be making counterfeit copies of Adorno’s The Culture Industry.

So I call up the Library and the response? You should just read it online.

It’s not the freakin’ point. This is what it’s all about when people talk about architectures of control. I love authors and creators and I think they are all rad and should get lots of money and high fives and maybe a few backslaps. I don’t want to rip them off. I went to a movie two weeks ago. I paid full price. But shit, I’m a student who’s paid for a book I should be able to access it in any format I choose. And in any case I should be treated like a student and not like a potential pirate or thief.

The e-book is a ugly piece of technology which locks down the most free of all technologies - the book. I love books. I have a bookcase covering one wall in my room filled with books. Some are bought new, some bought second hand, some borrowed *cough* stolen from friends and some handed down. But the point is these were transactions we were free to make, because copyright law doesn’t treat these transactions as theft or a loss of income for the copyright owner but as first-sale rights which are due to any normal human person. On the e-book however you aren’t even allowed the privilege of transferring the format in which you view a work. And that’s transferring a format not blindy counterfieting.

And don’t talk to me about photocopy rights of only allowing 10% of a work copied. That rule is enforced in society without photocopies digitally scanning every book and shutting down after 10% has been copied or photocopy police standing next to every university photocopier. Why? Because a) that would hinder the flow of information b) it’s not reasonable. Instead we rely on human respect. In fact I’ve never copied more than a chapter of a book and that’s all i wanted to do. But the e-book wouldn’t let me.

These quotes are from an interview between media theorist and activist Geert Lovink and Danish journalist Stirne Bjerre Herde.

[T]he political class is nowhere near ready to engage with the idea that we have left behind representative democracy and its inherent push to create majorities. When it comes to politics we have to think big and better vote for a hand full (sic) of parties. In many Western countries there is still only a choice between two or three parties. In terms of prosperity that would be comparable with the consumer goods on offer in a Cuban state supermarket. In fact, as you indicate, the ‘popular’ parties of the past struggle with a steady decline of membership. They have compensated their lack of proper representation with an increase of PR means. Politics has become a business opportunity for spin doctors. We do not need to repeat the Situationist critique of the society of the spectacle here. It would be much further build on Jean Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum and how this disembodied archipelago of signs called mutates when it enters the Web 2.0 age.

These points about the complete collapse of the political structure on the internet are interesting. I’m glad that Lovink sees the internet as a place of resistance and negotiation, where the simulacrum of Baudrilliard’s, is able to be twisted and distorted. How will mass politics survive in the age of the niche and the long tail? Should we be seeing stronger representation from minor parties?

Lovink’s next quote is also pertinent:

Let’s start with the observation that the Internet itself has become less and less democratic. This may be unavoidable as millions of ordinary users do not want to get involved in complex issues around (global) internet governance. The very idea that the Internet itself could be new digital public domain, like squares in the past, or the fourth estate in the age of the industrial revolution, does only exist on the level of tiny content particles. Increasingly users delegate power and responsibility over the network architecture into the hand of large firms such a Google where they trade their privacy against the free use of incredible web services such as Google Earth and YouTube. Let’s face it: there is less and less autonomous infrastructure, in a time when it is so cheap and easy to run a web or email server from your own bedroom. This lack of self-organization has an impact on the structure of the online political interventions that you asked about. We can hardly speak anymore of ‘tactical media’ in this respect. Even do-it-yourself is no longer an appropriate image. What we see happening is extremely fluid and instable ’smart mobs’ (Howard Rheingold) that gather, connect, act, and then disappear and dissolve the built-up structure.

I’ve always been interested in how few internet users have the ability to create their own architecture. Unlike the early days of the Internet where everyone was a geek, early adopter or a tech-head nowadays we have a large proportion of the population online and they have less knowledge about the nuts and bolts of code and programming than their own cars. I’m guilty of this as well and I even began a multimedia course, hoping to be all net savvy but of course I got horribly bored and dropped out. This lack of control does have major issues for the future of DIY and the ability to create. I don’t think this negates concepts about democratising media, but i think being unable to control spaces and sites within the web could have a lot to do with the weird, political space which is currently being played out across the internet.

I’ve discovered the breaking point between the relaxed academic, who might write some papers after they finish gardening on a Sunday and the viciously, sadistic academic who lives, breathes and experiences nerdiness to the nth degree. What is it you ask? Making up words.

If you read through a normal paper, there might be about four words which you don’t know the meaning of, like deontological or epistemology but you go to a trusty dictionary and the definition is there, easy to understand and useful. This is the domain of the weekend academic, who uses long, convoluted words in an attempt to confuse their reader but fail because of the humble dictionary.

However the hardcore academic isn’t put off by this problem. Rather than find more complex, obscure words (s)he instead will go one further and make up words, not found in any dictionary. Success! Try and understand me now reader, the academic brays, while spending their entire introduction defining new terms which have never been used before (and probably won’t be used again) in an attempt to ‘clarify’ (for that word read: muddy) their argument.

However, while I usually don’t have time for academics who make up obscure words because the English language isn’t good enough for them, I have found myself falling increasingly in love with Axel Bruns’ term produser (as I write that I can already hear everybody laughing, ‘that’s not a word!’).

Axel uses it as a term to describe a number of trends which typify web 2.0.

Produsage is based on the collaborative engagement of (ideally, large) communities of participants in a shared project

Users of Amazon or Google act as co-produsers of these services even without having chosen to do so, as their usage generates information which helps to further refine the performance of these sites.

He uses the term in reference to information/knowledge production systems like open-source software and Wikipedia and this article on produsers sums up his general argument. While I like the term I feel it’s almost too restrictive. In web 2.0 everybody is a produser, with the capacity to both produce and consume on a wide basis. I think the problems with restricting it to communities (and emphasising large communities) means that it denies the option for someone to be a user and producer on a small scale basis. While amazon and google encompass a large proportion of internet users who both produce and use content, Wikipedia doesn’t and I think more could be done to emphasise the capacity of everyone to be a produser.

Recent Nielsen studies show that  

84 percent of Australian and 88 percent of New Zealand internet users use Web 2.0 for sharing content such as photos, links and video and once consumers establish familiarity with CGM (Consumer Generated Media) style activities, they then typically progress to become more involved with more advanced CGM activities such as actively editing and commenting on CGM content (77% of Australians and 78% of New Zealanders) and creating online content in the form of uploading video and music (69% of Australians and 76% of New Zealanders) to the web.

This isn’t just about open-source geeks or even about web portals and services like google and amazon but networks of sharing content between people which don’t even need the avalanche of rules and communal responsibilities which Bruns suggests these practices entail. Sharing consumer created media (photos, videos and ideas) can happen over networks large and small and I think it’s important to tear this phrase away from a limited open-source, Wikipedia or Sims mindset and place it as part of the day to day experience of people using the web.