BLOGGING

(I made no attempt to credit specific people with ideas/comments, sorry. If you really want credit, feel free to mention it in the comments to this post. –Richard)

CONNECTING TO LAST CLASS:

The relation of blogs to journalism.

Last time – we discussed what we would like in a media system if we were designing it ourselves and came up with a bunch of values (see last class’s blogpost).

· adding “choice” as a value

Kevin at the end of last class raised the point that the values we are seeking are in the system as a whole, but that any individual source need not embody them all.

TODAY: Looking at “News” sites (query whether they are news sites, and how we know):

We started with what seems like a liminal case, somewhere between a news site and a blog:

Huffington Post - · A news aggregator site, kind of like Drudge, with more of a liberal bent, with a focus on media and entertainment as well as politics, and it mixes together blogs with news.

o available at: o Powerlaw – a graph of distribution, logarithmic, not bell shaped, 80-20 rule, with a long tail

o e.g. Amazon.com can sell WAY more books because they can monetize the books which fewer people buy to more people, rather than having to stock only the most popular ones

o Netflix works the same way.

o Anderson argued that we would see more and more businesses monetizing the long tail

· Long-tail blogs:

o Technorati says that they have (4-6) links to them.

o closer relationship to the audience (not mass communication)

§ more personal connection (at least with those who comment) – can we really know that? Maybe it’s not the case at all.

§ it FEELS more attached to (a presumed intimacy with) with blog readers / audience than with book readers, for instance.

o can be more daring with a limited audience

o can deal with more esoteric / specific subjects (less pandering)

o money is less of a factor (lower costs), amateur

The Web Difference Question:

· which form of communication you analogize them to says a lot about how we view blogs.

· does comparing blogs to old media indicate a lack of a web difference or not?

Today’s topic was “Knowing on the Web.” For the first part of class, we delved into the murky world of philosophy, talking about the history of knowledge and Descartes’ Meditations. We finished by examining several controversial Wikipedia entries and the accompanying discussion threads.

Perfection and the Web
David Weinberger (DW) began class by bringing up the perfection-related idea we talked about last time: that the Web is always a little “broken.” DW thinks this is important because we tend to think systems “work” when they approach perfection: the more perfect they are, the better they are. But this is actually a trick we play on ourselves by defining what is “broken.” We could interpret a busy signal or 404 page as a sign that the system is broken, but we don’t do that. DW suggests that much of what’s good about the Web comes from the fact that it doesn’t even pretend to aim for “perfection.” We could have easily built into the architecture of the Web a mechanism by which broken links don’t show up as hyperlinks. But the cost of reworking that architecture would be so high that, in attaining a more perfect Web, we would end up with a very different Web.

DW then asked us to come up with other examples of things that can be taken as “imperfections” on the Web — things that are not controlled, but could have been. Tom pointed to errors in newspaper articles that we know are mistaken, but we leave up as a historical record of the error. This led us to wonder: how often do bloggers take down or edit posts they later learn are mistaken?

In an informal poll of bloggers in the class, we found out that sometimes bloggers go back and change mistaken posts, sometimes not. It may depend on whether the error is content-related, or grammatical. Things like getting names or genders wrong can be embarrassing, and DW and others often just fix those. But the students (i.e. Kevin) who don’t strike mistaken posts said they don’t do it to make sure readers don’t “think they’re going crazy.” DW said he sometimes leaves visible errors in case people try to link to it, and cited the craziness factor (i.e. “I could have sworn Chris was a guy!”). This is certainly an example of leaving the Web imperfect because it’s better that way. Another example of that, as Justin reminded us, was the “flaw” in MySpace code that allowed MySpacers to design their own pages in html.

Cutting against this idea that leaving “mistakes” online is a good thing, Dorcas noted that most people don’t bother to remove the mistaken or outdated parts. This can mislead people who get to that page thinking it’s fresh. DW pointed out that there would be ways to minimize this, but that in doing so we’d lose a lot of valuable info.

Another student questioned whether this “mistakes” thing is really a web-specific difference, and argued that these things happen with print media too. I argued the other side – I do think there’s a web difference here. Because it’s easier to make corrections, people online have a greater expectation that corrections will be made. (Although perhaps people often expect mistakes online in a way they don’t with traditional media – as DW pointed out, making it easier to publish also makes it easier to publish mistakes.)

This part of the discussion concluded with most of us recognizing that systems make decisions about the proper balance of control and accuracy. CNN makes these kinds of decisions all the time: they may “get it wrong,” but they can go back later and correct. Typically, though, CNN will want more control than, say, DW wants to have over his blog.

Knowledge: history and meaning
We then took up the question of knowledge: what is it really, and where does it come from?

(DW got pretty excited about using his “visual aid,” which led to a brief but animated discussion about various outdated media like overhead projectors.)

He showed us a USA Today crossword puzzle that he himself (and not a research assistant!) had completed – much to John Palfrey’s surprise. (Perhaps law school professors have become too reliant on RAs?) Anyway, the right answer to the “have no doubts” clue was “know.” But DW pointed out that knowledge didn’t start out that way – as being about certainty. It began as a practical distinction ancient Greeks had to make in everyday political life. In Athens, citizens (at least rich, white, land-owning ones) could get up and argue their views to the people. But some way of sorting out the stupid opinions from the interesting ones was needed. This is how philosophers started out investigating the meaning of “knowledge.” It wasn’t enough that what the person said was TRUE – the person had to be “justified” in believing it. Most of the subsequent philosophical efforts centered on the meaning of justification.

DW then asked us what “true” means. Is it “true” that John Palfrey has a Thinkpad? Yes. We could see “true” as meaning “everyone can/ would/does agree on it.” But we could also see it as being independent from what people think, and being purely about existence (Conor’s view). Yelena thinks it includes both objective and subjective components.

DW drew some interesting figures on the board, one representing a person’s head (the “knower”), and another representing a laptop (the world). He suggests that if the statement represents or matches the world, then it’s “true.” Kevin points out that it’s not the thought that’s true; it’s more like running an experiment – determining truth doesn’t require people. The experiment verifies the claim, and the process is what makes something true. DW said that there’s lots of debate about this stuff, but reiterated that truth requires some type of correspondence between the statement and the world. This is called the “correspondence theory of truth,” and it’s dominated Western culture for many centuries.

Descartes and his Meditations
We then turned to discussion of Descartes’ Meditations. Damien outlined Descartes’ basic idea: he wants to question the veracity of everything that isn’t verifiably true. To that end, he starts on a project: can he tell whether he’s awake versus dreaming?

Conor elaborated on how Descartes goes about this project in the Meditations. Descartes eliminated all thoughts or beliefs that were based on potentially fallible sources. For example, anything he gets through his senses is potentially faulty because his senses have deceived him in the past.

So, in Meditations, Descartes goes through a process thinking he can examine all his beliefs. Senses are out because they’ve fooled him before, and could fool him again. DW asked: why don’t we doubt our senses the way Descartes did? JP suggested that it’s because we’re not philosophers… Richard said it’s because we don’t care whether what we’re getting from our senses is “fundamentally true” – we are pragmatists and the senses work for us most of the time. Yelena added that we trust our senses out of necessity – there are no alternatives, except paralysis. Finally, another student noted that we’re usually right about our senses, and when we’re wrong, we learn from it – so it’s a workable system of reliance. There’s a difference between mistakes in our senses and random hallucinations.

DW then asked: how can Descartes doubt that 2+2=4? Doesn’t he “know” that for sure? Damien responds by saying that this part depends on Descartes’ belief in a deity – someone who could arrange the world in a way that would completely convince him of its truth.

Then, after a very confusing moment about whether 2+2 really does equal 4, DW brought up the idea of “the malignant demon.” (Apparently Descartes had to talk about this as a demon because of the religious constraints of the time – one couldn’t talk about God as being deceptive.) DW asks why Descartes engaged in this extreme experiment (so extreme that he was doubting whether he has hands!). (Ultimately Descartes goes on to discover “I think, therefore I am,” and on the basis of that, he’s able to build back everything he reasonably knew before. DW admits that it doesn’t hold together very well.)

So again — why do this crazy experiment? One student used the analogy of creating art on a blank canvas – you need to start with a clean slate. Richard added that Descartes seems to be cutting it all down to the most basic thing that can’t be disproven – he’s creating a super-strong foundation for the “building,” which makes it harder to refute.

On a side note, DW asked: how helpful is Descartes’ method for making political decisions? The answer seems obvious: not very. We tried to envision two politicians debating, and then one asking, “How do we know we’re all here?” Suffice it to say that we don’t need that kind of certainty in the political realm.

Stepping back, DW concluded that Descartes was aiming for the perfection of knowledge. But the problem is that, in seeking such perfection, you end up with basically nothing. And the only way Descartes is able to build it back up is by saying that God wouldn’t allow him to be wrong about various things (his senses, for example). Descartes has tried to say the only things we can put in the “knowledge” category are those which pass the really strict test. And over time, the bar of certainty has been continually raised. We circled back to the crossword puzzle, which defined knowledge as that which we know for sure – it’s about certainty, not justification.

Phew. After all this profound talk of philosophy and Descartes, we turned to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia and “knowledge”
We started with Shakespeare’s sonnets. The Encyclopedia article is mostly about the sexuality of the object of the sonnets. DW was surprised that the article might as well have been called, “Just how gay are the sonnets?” The Wikipedia article is much different. It lists a number of “contenders” for the mysterious W.H., for example, instead of simply saying who it was.

Then we talked about the discussion section attached to the Wikipedia article. Apparently most of the discussion centers on the identity of W.H., but also on the sexuality of Shakespeare himself (and what to say about it). There’s a question of whether or not the W.H. question should even be talked about at all in an article about the Sonnets. So even settling the fact – who is W.H.? – wouldn’t necessarily settle the issues. (Christina was initially impressed that the Wikipedia community was keeping all these comments up, but it turns out that you can’t delete discussions…who knew?)

The discussion pages raise the broader issue of the purpose of Wikipedia entries. Is it just about presenting competing views (what other people have said is true)? Or is it about presenting “truth”? DW made the point that there are decisions being made about what’s a mainstream dispute and what’s not. (For example, there’s very little discussion about Shakespeare’s death date.)

We then moved from Elizabethan England to Colonial America to talk about Sally Hemings. The controversial issue was whether she was the mother of Jefferson’s child. The Wikipedia discussion was interesting in that there was no real consensus or closure about this stuff. There was also lots of talk about the DNA evidence – and that there were four Jefferson males who could have been the father. DW thought it was interesting that this is all back in the discussion page and not on the entry page. Others commented on the debate over the more stylistic aspects of the piece (opening with “Sally Hemmings was the chambermaid of Thomas Jefferson” etc.).

Chiming in appropriately, JP talked about his interviews w/ young people in which he and Dana ask how students start research projects these days. Most said they start with Google and then Wikipedia, linking to external sources for verification. But, interestingly enough, they almost never edit the entries, even when they find mistakes. He wonders why more people don’t edit (other than the alleged group of drunk German grad students at the helm).

DW said that in all of these controversial articles, there are statements put forward as the clear truth; and then there are statements qualified by phrases like “some believe that.” We looked at the Swiftboating entry for signs of these “weasel words” (which Kevin argued were not as commonplace as DW suggested). “Were criticized” was one example. Conor gave us an overview of the Swiftboating discussion pages: most of the argument was about the appropriateness of the introductory paragraph. As for the article, DW thought that it wasn’t an unreasonable presentation of the basic issue.

Finally, the JFK assassination page. Students noted that the tone of the discussion is pretty contentious, especially with regard to the authority of the Warren Commission report. Evan suggested that this article is an outlier. He would compare it to the 9/11 conspiracy theories and the corresponding Wikipedia pages. (DW explained that a separate assassination page was created because the JFK page was getting overridden with conspiracy theories.)

Class ended with DW posing a broader “web difference” question: what is the analog in the real world for what we’re seeing here in the discussion pages of Wikipedia? Justin suggested that it is talking to friends and reading books. But DW said he doesn’t know anyone with the depth of knowledge and obsession demonstrated in these Wikipedia discussions. Another analogy was made to peer review in academia.

Ultimately we were all left wondering whether Wikipedia has any kind of analog in the non-Internet world. Is knowledge all about certainty? Do you only “know” something if you can logically justify why? Are traditional notions of perfection simply inapplicable to the internet – and is that a good thing? These were all questions we addressed in class, and ones we’ll no doubt revisit throughout the remainder of the course.

For the next class, you’re assigned to read one of several Wikipedia articles, especially its discussion pages. That’s because I want us to be able to talk about what sorts of issues can be settled and which ones can’t. Do we think there is a single knowledge about these issues that can be discovered and known once and for all?

But some of those articles are long, and the discussion pages can be endless. So, don’t feel obligated to read all of them. Find a few juicy discussions that seem to bear on the question of what we can know.

Also, I get shy about talking about what I’ve written, so please treat the readings in my two books as optional.

Sorry to change things at the last moment. I’m new to this. Well, new-ish.

Finally, I hope the connection to the question of perfection will be clear. Is knowledge perfectable? Is the Web making us stupider by throwing up more and more bad info, and distracting us from the path of truth? Or is truth not so much a path as, well, you tell me…

See you on Monday.

– David Weinberger

Perfect DRM/ good pricing: a good thing?
Copyright underenforcement in some areas, like animations involving video games – free advertising for them. “Permissive use”/ “implied license.” Could be casualty of perfect control/good pricing.

Possible future scenario: Fisher Ch.3 – perfectly enforced “fairness.” Utopian or dystopian scenario?

Issue of tangible ownership of IP.
-“first sale” doctrine. Tangible stuff you can sell (i.e. @ secondhand bookstores). In digital world, no “first sale” doctrine, because subject not to outright sale, but a contractual license. Terms can be absurd, like not being allowed to read Lessig’s book aloud.

“Web difference” – technologically, sharing easier in digital media (because of compression technology, i.e. mp3 format), but legally almost impossible. Also, digital media is “non-rivalrous” – if I have mp3, I can “give it” to you and still have my own identical copy. iTunes enforces an imperfect scarcity on this via ITMS (share with a limited number of people) – negotiated solution between music companies (licensor), Apple (licensee) – listener, by the way, is the sublicensee.

Q: do you look at it from perspective of artist, for whom any licensors you might have is the market, or from perspective of users, from which non-rivalrous element is the part that matters?

Another “web difference” – reduced cost of production. “Breakage” concept – LPs that break when they’re shipping. This is an example of a cost of recording media which record companies passed on to consumers.

Pandora – much cheaper way of doing music publicity.
Audacity – much cheaper way of making music.
Both mitigate against record companies’ usefulness.

Apple doesn’t make that much on the sales of iTunes songs, they make the money on peripherals (hardware, software, services). Would like music prices to be low, but not trying to squeeze out max on per-song basis.

JP can’t say how much Apple gets per-song. Independent web searching says it’s about 10 cents, of which credit card companies take a big chunk. Very small margins, again make most of their $ off of iPods, other peripherals.

Q: can you argue that there’s no copyright violation when you download a song you have no other rights to on LimeWire?
-Nobody will make this argument.

“Secondary” copyright violation.
Key doctrines:
-Sony (US 1984): if you’re selling a product that’s capable of substantial non-infringing use, not liable for infringing use of users.
-Napster (9th Circuit 2001): found to be liable for copyright infringement of users. Basic gist: Sony doesn’t apply because almost all use is infringing. Napster knew what users were doing – central index system. Statements by Fanning that showed he knew what was going on.
-Aimster (7th Circuit 2003)
-Grokster (9th Circuit 2004): unlike Napster, was decentralized. Able to initially avoid liability because knew less of what was going on.

Various parties asked Supreme Court to modify Sony standard:
-Petitioners: Sony shouldn’t apply “when the primary or principal use of a product is infringing,” even if capable of substantial non-infringing use.
-Solicitor-general: liability if overwhelmingly used for infringing use, defendant’s business depends on infringing use.
-Lichtman & Landes: secondary liability should be imposed if the defendant could eliminate or greatly reduce level of infringement without significantly reducing quantity & quality of lawful use.
-Arrow (didn’t get that, see slide)

Response: Sony should be preserved because:
-innovations depend on it (e.g. TiVo, iPod, CD burners)
-chilling effects of more stringent, unclear standard
-variety of new business modes reduce need to modify the law to protect entertainment industry
-better ways to reform (streamlined civil enforcement systems, alternative compensation systems)

Grokster end result:
-leaves Sony basically intact.
-modified “inducement” theory – you’re liable for 3rd parties’ infringement when you promote & sell your product marketing the infringing uses of it.

Even if you pass Sony, you can get nailed on inducement theory.

Q: what is “inducement”? “Purposeful, culpable expression and conduct.”
Not pertinent: knowledge of infringing uses, product support.
Pertinent: advertising illegal uses; targeting customers known to engage in illegal uses; failure to adopt infringement-reducing technologies (insufficient on its own); “commercial sense” of the enterprise depends on illegal uses (insufficient on its own).

Ambiguity: meaning of distributor intending/encouraging infringement.

Likely effects of Grokster:
-Grokster and Streamcast are finished.
-technologies whose developers have consistently adopted neutral postures towards the uses to which they are put will survive (e.g. BitTorrent)
-lawyers will advise clients never to acknowledge purpose of fostering illegal uses
-NOT a big impediment to technological innovation
-P2P will continue to grow (? – debated)

Would Sony have passed inducement? Sold cabinets custom-made for “librarying.”

Class comment: movie industry eventually made a lot of money on VHS & successor DVD – to what degree do these “disruptive” technologies create opportunities for the established players

2 kinds of copyright infringement: vicarious, contributory (see slides for more detail).

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Should we adopt an alternative system to copyright for digital media?

Class comments:
-good idea but implementing it is practically impossible. Resistance to tax.
-too backward-looking: preserves old numbers for size of pie.
-music companies’ resistance to this?
-increases # of people who will have access, will incentivise more innovation
-more efficient market: eliminates distribution problems
-doesn’t take into account peoples’ differing enjoyment of media in general (TF: charge subscribers to broadband or some other proxy for use)
-what’s in the system? Effect on other economic arrangements, like ad-supported ones (e.g. Television)
-would this make advertising less a part of culture generally? Big shift in all media if that’s the case.
-Private sector can do it better. Coop should be the primary method, government the fallback? Also, to what extent has regulation shaped the market as it is? Private players now completely dependent on government-granted copyright protection.
-To work, would have to be on a very large scale – this mitigates against a bunch of little coops starting up.
-Distortion of price information.
-The web makes possible much more nuanced price discrimination. Amazon has experimented with selling books at different prices to different people at different times.

Sum up:
Social norms on web
Clear primary liability for copyright violation. Secondary limit unclear.
Do we try to refine current law, or new alternative?

Thanks to Aaron, not myself as just hasn’t figured out the blog yet…

DW: is the broader question here less one of gender but one of whether we want or expect the web to be a way to get around or past stereotypes that have plagued us offline? Web utopians would like another chance at it because we screwed it up in the real world. People like me don’t like to hear that the same old crap is emerging online. But you would expect if there were real differences between the web and the offline world, you’d think they’d emerge here. I hope that this issue will be a persistent topic, not just a 5 or 10 minute discussion in class.
A: While restrictions based on filtering or gender archetypes aren’t positive, maybe it doesn’t have to be bad thing that there are different webs, in the sense that people just do different things with the web as individuals.

DW: Moving on to copyright: you are HLS students who have taken copyright classes with some of the best legal thinkers in the world. I was a humanities major. I hope to talk about copyright as a social/cultural issue. I’m somewhat qualified to talk about this as I have some first-hand experience with copyright as an author. What should I think about copyright? What do I get out of it? Why should I publish things?
A: Because you want to make money (copyright gives you a number of rights, including the ability to sell copies of your work – or rather, someone else sells your stuff, they insist on a copyright, and they pay you).
A: It gives you something to sell. It makes something yours.
DW: these are two different things. A year ago I self-published a children’s book on Lulu, it’s published under a Creative Commons license, you can go to my blog Joho, you can download it for free, or buy it on Lulu, who gives me a much better royalty than from a traditional publisher. So I don’t need copyright to make money.
A: It gives you exclusivity. If the market were larger for your novel, were it not for copyright, people would just pass around free unauthorized copies.
A: Copyright supports the entire publishing industry, which is what gets your book to the bookstore.
DW: from my personal experience, that’s a lot closer to the phenomenology of the experience. The entire economic system is based around copyrighted stuff that really is secondary to me as an author. I just want them to put the book out there, and to do that I have to give them the copyright.
A: Authorship – for a lot of authors, they want people to recognize that’s my idea, that’s my thing. The reason anyone creates anything, they want it to be their thing, recognition of the artistic accomplishment. Prestige.
A: It also builds the brand around your name, your reputation. J.K. Rowling can charge a lot more for her third book than her first because people know who she is.
DW: suppose someone else copies my book, imagine that there’s no economic impact, but you’d still think it’s unfair. Fairness is the ostensible topic of today’s class, we’ll see if we get to it.

DW: Moving on to Lessig’s Code 2.0. If you have a piece of property, and you want to protect it, what do you do?
A: Pass a law. Build a fence.
DW: And for intellectual property what is a fence?
A: DRM. Websites that don’t let you copy the text, PDFs that disable functions.
DW: What are defaults?
A: Normal settings, usually you can change them.
DW: Facebook’s Beacon was all about defaults.
A: Facebook had a relationship with certain third-party websites, and when you bought something on those websites, a popup would show up on the bottom right corner of the screen.
DW: this was an egregious example of customer manipulation. The popup said, we will show this information on your Facebook profile, and you pick yes, tell my friends, or no. If you didn’t press the button, it defaulted to yes. That program is on by default in your Facebook account, and unless you went to your Facebook profile and changed it, it will pop up.

DW: Why did Lessig think that Reeves was ultimately wrong?
A: Lessig thinks both fences and laws should be used, in whatever mix is most efficient.
A: Because the web is always developing, and there are so many reasons why you do things, it’s difficult to figure out when you’re doing something illegal. Doing it by law cuts out too many instances that you might want to happen.
DW: As an owner, my intentions might be completely different than what gets enacted in copyright, and that specificity can’t be enacted in law, it can only be done by my particular fence. In order to enable the range of actions, then the default should be open, there shouldn’t be a law that bars certain actions, that’s what Reeves was arguing. But there are also some reasons why we might want open defaults. But first there are reasons why we might not want open defaults.
A: If you have owners who are not very savvy who don’t understand what the defaults are and don’t know how to prohibit actions, they may end up making horrible mistakes.
A: There’s a public good benefit that underlies the copyright scheme which is that people are adding to a pool that others can draw from, and that has to be taken into account when you consider the costs. Private people won’t be taking into account the public good.

DW: Public goods like Wikipedia are so cool because you know you can go there and add to it or take from it and not run afoul of copyright laws. Why are open systems so great?
A: Transformative and derivative uses which build on previous works.
A: Mashups and mixes.
A: The flip side of the public good problem is that it’s so much cheaper to copy than to create. It might actually deter creating if people can’t get protection for their works, not just for economic reasons but for credit/attribution. It could be a disincentive to people to lose control of their works.
A: There’s a problem here in that there’s an assumption that the internet world can operate on a completely different set of rules than the real world, which is untenable. You’ll want to avail yourself of multiple channels, and if the defaults are open in one place where they are closed in the real world, do you lose your rights other places? It’s difficult if you have these two huge worlds with different rules. It’s disruptive to the institutions that have been built up around a certain default.
A: Maybe it’s not a terrible thing if it’s disruptive to the world as we know it.
A: There is a difference between the costs of copying and the costs of creation. While new technologies have lowered the costs of copying, they have also lowered the costs of creation. We’ve seen this in the music industry. Maybe it’s okay to dismantle the recording industry because it was based on a scarcity that no longer exists. For text, it’s essentially free to “publish” on the web. For film/movies the costs have gone down somewhat but they’re still pretty high, maybe that’s one area where distributing movies for free online really hurts the traditional industry.

DW: with an open system, we can get more innovation. Remember the end-to-end argument; we get an option value that is incalculable. In a purely open environment (not that I’m necessarily recommending it) we create a world where all content is available to everyone, which we never had before. Like it or not, that’s what we have now. Keeping that in mind, what do we lose in the default of openness?
A: Anything new. We wouldn’t have new music if people weren’t going to get paid (assuming that in a world of pure openness you don’t get paid).
A: I disagree, I think with music specifically that people will still be able to make tons of money because they can sell out shows, and now music beyond the radio top 10 is available and can become popular. I think the best music comes from people who aren’t making tons of money. There’s a hatred for sell-outs, musicians become worse when they hook up with the Britney Spears phenomenon and start sounding the same as everyone else. It’s the best thing for music right now.
Response: My statement was based on the assumption that you can’t make money. Assuming you can sell out concerts knocks my argument out.
A: But a lot of artists, especially smaller artists, are likely to spend as much money to go on tour as they will make on tour, and they’re really just going on tour to get more exposure.
DW: would we create on the web the same bi-polarism that we get in the world that we’re coming from?
A: This gets to the economics argument again, which is important. If you look at really expensive works, there is a definite argument that whatever the economics are of an open world on the internet, you lose the incentives to make the hundred-million dollar blockbusters due to the inability to aggregate wealth with a different incentive structure.
DW: what do we lose with an open default?
A: Maybe alternative methods could come forward, people could sponsor artists. Instead of studios interested in making money with movies, we can have “bill gates” sponsoring movies that are worth being sponsored? Art can become more like art again.
A: Isn’t this just a value judgment? To say that independent artists are somehow better?
A: If you think that money conveys information, the fact that some artists make more money than others suggests that some artists bring more value than other artists.
A: In an open culture people have no protection from having their small, easily reproducible works being ripped off.
DW: Someone who is producing that sort of thing is more likely to suffer from openness, as opposed to someone who makes a work that is harder to reproduce.
A: What about having a quality filter? Studios and movie industry creates this function, without them you would have to yourself sift the good from the crap.
DW: as an institutional author, I know there is an industry that has no interest in purveying crap, and that is a function. This is similar to the argument made by Andrew Keen in Cult of the Amateur. There is of course at least one counter-argument, which is, have you looked at mainstream media recently?

 http://www.runnerspace.com/news.php?do=v….

I wanted to give an example of answering the question “What is the Web?” So, let’s answer by saying, “The Web is a standard.” My plan then was to compare HTML to the Dublin Core; thankfully I didn’t try to get <u>that</u> into the last few minutes, too. Anyway, the Dublin Core is a standard for online documents that includes fields for author, language, and publisher, all of which are lacking in HTML. The proposed new version of HTML (HTML 5) makes a different set of decisions about what elements to include. My point was supposed to be that if the Web is a standard, that standard consists of decisions based upon anticipated uses…which is exactly what the End to End principle says we should <u>avoid</u> in network design. That’s not a criticism or a contradiction. In fact, standards always require us to make such decisions, based on anticipated and desired uses. Even the Internet’s design overall assumes that it’s good to pass information openly, freely, and in mass quantities.

But I jumped so far into the weeds of HTML 5, and tried to say too much too quickly, that there was no possibility that I communicated any of that. Sorry!

I hope the larger point of the session was clear, however. I’d say it’s something like this: We’re not going to be able to define the “it” of the course too clearly, but that’s fine. The Web is deep and important enough to resist easy definition, and there’s no reason why we should rule out of discussion areas of the Net based merely upon their technical protocols. Further, there are many useful ways of taking the Web: As standard, medium, social phenomenon, market, sphere, technical infrastructure, new public space, etc. These ways themselves stand in complex relations, each raising its own set of questions and issues. Since it’s not going to be a neat and tidy topic, we will do well to pay attention to how we’re taking the Web as we proceed with our discussions…

It’s the Friday before the beginning of the course. I am looking forward to it – only slightly (i.e., completely) nervous since I haven’t taught a college course in 22 years -  because it will challenge assumptions I’ve gotten lazy about. Is the Web substantially and significantly different from what came before it? Is it transformational, over-hyped, both or none of the above? I’ve sure got my presumptions going in, but I don’t expect them to last long. At least I hope not.