Thursday, March 08, 2007

Links 3/7/07 - the trouble with video

The problems with webcasting from the Adirondaks, the French say "you can't video that!... if video's so great, why isn't Jeff Jarvis the next Ze Frank?

In New York, new gov Elliot Spizter issued executive order No. 3 mandating webcasting of all public meetings be webcast by July. But, he didn't mandate any money to help foot the bill for more bandwidth or infrastructure. So, the Adirondak Park Agency, nestled way up in the mountains has requested an exemption. In this WAMC report the APA explains that it would be not only too bloody expensive (about $75 grand a year) but also that they just don't have the IT to do it. Yep...Governor, we've got an access problem...

In France new legislation may just make it a criminal offense to be a citizen with a cameraphone. PaidContent relays the message: The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that makes it illegal to record acts of violence by anyone other than professional journalists, according to InfoWorld (via Yahoo News). Operators of websites that publish such images also could face prison or a fine of nearly $100,000, warned French online civil liberties group Odebi (the name is a play on the French word for broadband). yikes!

Meanwhile Jeff Jarvis is in London at the Online Publishers Assoc. gathering and gives a great rundown of Jeff Rayport's talk on video. But there are some problems--namely like the one in France, but also about video in general: like the difficulty in searching, plus the issue of how are media outlets going to handle "citizen" video contributions--if they begin to rely on citizen video contribs, will they eventually give a royalty of some sort? Esp. if they're going to be "harvesting" the video? and there's problems of access, and there's problems of fair use, and there's lots and lots of issues that Rayport's enthusiasm for video doesn't seem to consider.

Sometimes the prognostications on the future of media sound like they're made with a textbook in one hand and the I-Ching in the other...


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