Industry Meme

Changes to Industry Meme dot com

2008-02-05T13:13:15Z

After three months in the wild as something of an editorial/aggregator for following news and opinion regarding online file sharing, p2p and the surrounding culture. Industry Meme as an experiment in introducing online conversations to film executives, the industry trust and piracy units in the UK is evolving.

On the right hand side you will see aggregated feeds, selected posts from across 100’s of online blogs, feeds and opinions. These are sourced and tagged daily.

They are you first port of call for delving into popular, well known and sometimes lesser known sites, all publishing news and opinion forming commentary on online file sharing, p2p and it’s effect/relation to the film industry.

Industry Meme is currently investigating narrowing down these feeds, cultivating a useful tool for industry executives out in the open, on a publicly viewable site and exploring more of a push/pull relationship with it’s subscribers via email mail outs.

If not already, you may subscribe here.

For those interested in subscribing to the feeds in their own way via RSS, browser or desktop app. The main feeds are;

*Name* [*update period* - *brief*]

Traditional industry meme content can be found here or by clicking ‘blog’ from the header at the top of the page.

The new editorial for the site will be towards identifying where and how conversations are happening rather than covering them - it is necessary at first to facilitate the industry’s involvement and ability to find and digest online conversation, before any meaningful editorial.

In the main, content will be posted daily with a leading story from the online community featured.

NB. Feeds are constantly evolving with both new sources being added and old removed to refine content.

A Welcome back to returning visitors and hello to new friends alike.

MTV Networks to put entire South Park Catalogue online in 2008

2007-12-02T19:52:39Z

MTV Networks will make every episode of South Park available for free online in 2008. The availability of South Park signals the start of much more of MTV Network’s back catalogue being made available in this way. [Via Reuters]

The release via Reuters does not stipulate whether the show will be released unencumbered, however much has been made of Comedy Central’s early foray into online distribution where they have an extensive amount of unprotected content at their www.comedycentral.com.

TechDirt brings an interesting opinion to the table, that from it’s origin the popularity of South Park stemmed from the sharing of the show online. Indeed South Park has often dealt with online culture and online piracy. [Via TechDirt]

Nearly a decade ago Comedy Central was attempting to take down sites that held copies of it’s flagship show. But now sites such as www.southparkzone.com are huge hubs of community activity for the show. MTV Networks is perhaps releasing the material as such to enter this community and hopefully ‘improve the conversation‘.

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Elsewhere: 2nd December 2007

2007-12-02T17:36:24Z

Elsewhere. Quick links from across the internet.

Dozen’s of torrent tracker sites expected to cease as Dutch Web Host changes it’s policies. [Via NewTeeVee]

CBS owned Last.fm facilitates new music recommendation engine on The Pirate Bay. [Via The Register] / [Comments]

Contrasting opinion from content producers. Film’s director praises the file sharing networks while it’s producer attempts to sue. [Via TechDirt]

Kangaroo: BBC Worldwide, ITV and CH4 plan joint online platform

2007-12-02T19:53:02Z

This week plans were unveiled for a single distribution platform from BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4. While the project has referenced the Freeview platform, IPTV services and existing online content delivery platforms such as Joost. It is unclear how the platform would interact or not with the BBC’s existing iPlayer, Ch4’s 4OD and the forthcoming ITV online delivery portal. [Via The Register]

The Register and The Guardian originally leaked the conception of ‘Kangaroo’ in June here The Register/The Guardian.

Commentary on the articles finds users in two camps. While there seems to be an appreciation for the resolution that such delivery of content is now an important and worthwhile venture, the application of the delivery and assumed ‘mired’ reliance on both DRM, the Windows Media platform and a ‘pay-for-download’ model is considered to be outmoded. Especially in the face of the availability of the media online from file sharing sites - who are offering the video for free, at higher quality and with more end user protection in terms of how their details and systems are used.

See commentary here and here. (From The Registers June and November articles respectively)

The Guardian’s Owen Gibson offers a great FAQ (frequently asked questions) on the concept of a multi party platform;

Early commentary on AfterDawn’s announcement surmises the general reception of the news amongst the pro-sharing communities online.

I was going to comment… but thought better of saying what I think of the BBC and the way they totally ignore input from the PEOPLE WHO ARE FORCED TO PAY FOR THEM!!!

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Elsewhere: 2nd December 2007

2007-12-02T16:15:38Z

*While Industry Meme attempts to provide an exposition online commentary and reporting around a specific topic or article, occasionally there are stories and or links that will be shared as just links. Such stories may have a direct relationship to the site’s intentions or may be part of a broader catchment of online developments affecting content and film online.

Virgin Atlantic purchases online series Kate Modern [Via NewTeeVee]

EMI reportedly removes it’s funding from the RIAA and IFPI [Via ZeroPaid]

New Tee Vee propose a new film aesthetic - The “cinema vlog-ité.” [Via NewTeeVee]

French proposal for a three strike policy on illegal file sharers

2007-12-02T19:53:18Z

Last week the Financial Times reported on a new french proposal in which internet Service providers would make available details of users sharing and downloading illegal movies and films on their internet connection. Effectively, frequent and high bandwidth users taking part in such file sharing as deemed illegal would face an initial warning, a further warning should they persist and finally would lose their internet connection upon repeated activity .

In exchange for the clampdown on illegal downloading, the music industry has agreed to make individual downloads of archive French material available on all types of players by dropping digital rights management protection (…)

However, consumer groups and, even, some of Mr Sarkozy’s own members of parliament yesterday attacked the proposal for a new internet policeman as a threat to civil liberties (…)

[Via FT.com]

The article does acknowledge the significant and multiple legislative changes required by the French Government and Law that would need to be undertaken in order for this system to work while maintaining consumer protection laws.

The FT also ran a forum topic on the article which has led to perhaps more level headed commentary than can be seen on pro-file sharing sites. As such it is worth visiting here.

Elsewhere online coverage of the proposal has received mixed opinion. AfterDawn’s users have commented on both the unfeasibility of the planned action as well as the emotive erosion of civil liberties.

ZeroPaid draws interesting parallels to earlier UK plans to involve the ISPs in dealing with copyright infringement.

PP-International draws on reports countering the effectiveness of the proposal and draws commentary from french consumer advocates as quoted below.

French consumer advocates aren’t as excited. UFC Que Choisir, which has attacked both Apple and the music industry over DRM restrictions in the past while applauding another law that calls for the end of DRM lock-ins, called the agreement “very tough, potentially destructive of freedom, anti-economic and against the tide of the digital age,” in a statement seen by Reuters.

The Reuters article and reference for the PP International article can be viewed here.

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Radiohead In Rainbows

2007-12-02T19:54:24Z

Almost two months ago Radiohead released their latest album exclusively online, an album produced without a contract with any record contract or label [Via Zeropaid]. The consumer could pay as little as a 45pence handling charge or contribute a higher sum to digitally download the album in DRM free MP3 format. Offered alongside the digital download was a premium disc box at £40.00.

While there has been much made of the success that Radiohead may have had from this venture. Following reports that nearly ‘All’ users paid nothing [Via Associated Press], and opinion to the contrary over at Blackrimglasses.

You might like to take a look at ComScore’s original press release here.

See Afterdawn’s summary here.

Conversation on the relatively pro-sharing sites has very little to do with the music, indeed general consensus seems to object to both the handling fee, the limits of the exercise beyond PR and more interestingly the lack of quality of the downloaded album (as covered by Yahoo!).

Regardless, other artists are following suit and there is something of a flippancy from staunch pro-saring site TorrentFreak as to the industry’s reasoning behind such activities in their post ‘Downloaders Confuse Ozzy Osbourne to Go on Tour‘.

Regardless, more artists are opting for a similar distribution route, from Saul Williams to Ray Davies. However it can be perceived from such commentary that such methods are not consistently endearing an artist to the online ’sharing’ community outside of an established fanbase. At least in regards to a respet of their copyright and/or the value of purchasing rights to listen to their music.

On a side-note Billboard has been reporting that Radiohead’s back catalogue has seen a significant rise in sales post the online release of In Rainbows. [Via Billboard.com]

It is worth pointing out that additional Radiohead media, in this case their new promo, has still been presented online prior to official release. Not so much much leaked as Yahoo! suggests, but under the auspices of the video director sharing the media with the online community at the director’s own site. [here]

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Torrent site traffic - Mininova

2007-12-02T19:53:47Z

TorrentFreak [link] is reporting that torrent tracking site Mininova entered the top 50 most visited sites online yesterday. Alexa (an online tool that analyses and produces reports on global web traffic). Currently the site ranks at 68;

While Alexa’s ranking system is often under discussion as to it’s validity, confirmation of the scale of torrent downloads is reported on Mininova’s own blog. Currently they anticipate to have served 3,000,000,000 (3 billion) downloads, download is confirmed as;

To avoid some confusion: we’re counting the number of times a .torrent file is downloaded from our website, not how often the data described in the .torrent file is completely downloaded by a peer.

We also reached new heights in the Alexa statistics, Mininova currently ranks as one of the 60 biggest websites in the world.

Via [Mininova/blog]

Response across the two sites mentioned has been supportive of the facts presented. As both sites are pro sharing this is not uncommon. It is worth pointing out the sophistication of commenters on the site. At TorrentFreak connections are drawn between the earlier leaked MediaDedender emails detailing Mininova as a site difficult to dupe with fake torrent uploads.

Via [TorrentFreak Comments]

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How to comment

2007-11-05T16:44:07Z

Commenting on Industry Meme is an integral part of beginning to engage online communities. Commenting on an article is as easy as supplying your name and an email address.

To leave a comment click on the ‘Leave a Comment’ link:

What is Industry Meme?

2007-11-05T15:48:30Z

The Meme.

Within the film industry it is common for film professionals to refer to it as the ‘Industry‘, likewise in other industries.

The aim to posit a cultural opinion that is transmittable is surmised by the ‘Meme‘ of the site’s title. Meme being defined as;

“a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation”

“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches…”

From Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) [Link]

It is also amusingly defined as;

Leftist pseudo-intellectualese or linguistic affectation, generally used in the pejorative, employed to designate a commonly held position, thought or expression as worthy of or susceptible to attack or denigration by superior leftist “critical thought” which the employer possesses in abundance.

By the dictionary to educate the politically incorrect. [Link]