January 22nd, 2008 — 5:48pm
Today piracy and modern youth culture are explicitly linked. In his book The Pirate’s Dilemma (2008) Matt Mason describes this current situation in a historical perspective. And he rightfully does so, because piracy has played a major role in the becoming of our modern society. Mason argues that piracy is more than the one-dimensional ‘threat’ that the media industry is calling it. It is – and always has been – an important catalyst for innovation. From all this he concludes that today’s occurrences of piracy are a sign of a change in the way we interact with information and cultural goods. The book deals with many examples of these changes and its implications, which makes it an obligatory reading.
Verscheen in het Nederlands op cut-up.blog.
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January 21st, 2008 — 5:56pm
Zojuist las ik net een interessant artikel van Richard Dijkstra, waarin onze hoge verwachtingen van de houdbaarheid van digitale informatie – zeer terecht – in twijfel wordt getrokken:
Vroeger haalde je je foto-albums uit de kast om herinneringen op te halen. Tegenwoordig starten we internet op en begint het allemaal bij YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, Hyves en andere online-diensten. Je hoeft zelfs niet meer op de koffie te gaan om de vastgelegde momenten met iemand te delen. Maar hoe is dat over 20 jaar? Is dan alles nog beschikbaar? En vooral: leesbaar?
Bron: SYNC
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January 8th, 2008 — 3:16pm
It almost seems that even the – normally utterly ignorant – Big Four understand the ‘problem’ of media piracy better than the European Union. While as we speak all major record labels have decided to give up on DRM, EU commissioner Viviane Reding has announced the plan to create a single European-wide market for online media content protected by a “truly interoperable, consumer friendly DRM system”. I think most people who know something about DRM will agree this plan is outdated, unfriendly to EU citizens and simply deemed to fail. DRM is defective by design!
To help remind the EU that DRM died in 2007, please sign this open letter!
For the Dutch readers who don’t know what DRM is all about, please read the article Wat is (er mis) met DRM? I wrote for Netcultuur.
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January 3rd, 2008 — 3:45pm
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