Blog, by Shannon » YouTube

The death of everything!

Shannon — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:07:08 +0000

I am getting a little tired of reading blog posts and articles proclaiming the “death of this” and the “end of that.” Just a quick Google search turns up the death of beer (The Atlantic), the death of fiction (Mother Jones), the death of the open web (New York Times — actually an article I liked), the end of men (The Atlantic again), the end of the best friend (New York Times again) and the death of the Internet (quite ironic for a video posted on YouTube). Other things rumored to be dead or dying: newspapers, science fiction, the novel, print books and my sense of humor.

This hyperbole makes me weary. It is not really appropriate to proclaim the death of anything until you have actually viewed the corpse. But I often find that articles making such proclamations have very little in the way of real evidence to back up their predictions. Instead, they tend to reach for the worst conclusions based on scant evidence and overblown fears. I’m ashamed of these fine publications for succumbing to wild speculation just to bring in readers.

From now on, I will refuse to read an article that proclaims the death or the end of anything, unless it’s an obituary for an actual living being. I want to read about life, not death.

Filed under: Random Rants Tagged: Book industry, Books, Food, Internet, Magazines, Media, Newspapers, Science fiction, The death of, YouTube

Watch those viral videos disappear: Some thoughts on copyright paranoia

Shannon — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:10:52 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

If there is any right more misunderstood and more abused than the right to free speech, I believe it is copyright. It doesn’t help that copyright law is insanely complicated and has become conflated over time into a grotesque overprotection for big corporations’ stranglehold on intellectual property, rather than what Thomas Jefferson originally intended it to be: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” What Jefferson actually intended was to provide an incentive to creative persons to make their work public by enabling them to earn something from their work for a time, after which it time it would enter the public domain and thus enrich all of human knowledge. I know, crazy, right? This is America and there’s money to be made, so screw human knowledge.

Of course the corporate world quakes in their underpants at all of the flagrant copyright violating occurring in the Wild West that is the Interwebs. I mean, people are posting videos of their toddlers dancing to Prince songs. However will Prince earn a decent living with that going on? In many cases, it seems that these exuberant pursuits of copyright violating are way too exuberant. Take, for example, my current favorite Keyboard Cat video, which has had the soundtrack removed due to copyright violation. Leaving alone the notion that the sound violates copyright while the accompanying video is perfectly okay (scratching head at the logic behind that one), Keyboard Cat is clearly parody, which falls under fair use. And I’m not just saying that. There is such a thing as fair use — you can look it up.

Besides, videos like this one could actually help some flagging careers. (When was the last time you even heard of Hall & Oates?) Take that wedding dance video that has recently gone viral. Chris Brown was struggling with some minor publicity troubles, but now all is forgiven and his song is getting record downloads because of some cutesy home video that got posted on YouTube. Copyright, shmopyright — he’s raking in some dollars now.

Even when there are legitimate copyright violations, such as when the clip of the brilliant William Shatner reading Sarah Palin’s resignation speech on Conan O’Brien was reposted everywhere, it doesn’t make much sense to have it taken down (which NBC very quickly did). It’s a 6-minute clip from a television show — it’s not going to keep anyone from watching Conan or his advertisers. In fact, it may just help get viewers for the show. Publicity agencies bend over backwards to come up with dumb tricks that they hope will result in a viral video that will promote their movie or TV show, and often it lamely backfires. When you’ve got a genuine viral phenomenon on your hands, don’t look it in the mouth, is my advice.

The Interwebs is officially out of your control, corporate America. You can’t stop all those crazed fans from loving on your content and wanting to share it with their mailmen and former kindergarten teachers on Facebook. So why fight it? Surely you can figure out a way to make money off of it instead. Isn’t that what you do best?

Posted in Reactions Tagged: Chris Brown, Copyfight, Copyright, Copyright law, Fair use, Internet memes, NBC, News, Paranoia, Public domain, Resources, Thomas Jefferson, Thoughts, Videos, William Shatner, YouTube

What are blogs? And how can we use them? Resources list

Shannon — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:54:06 +0000

This is a list of resources I have collected to supplement a presentation I’m giving at work on the subjects: what are blogs, how can our nonprofit blog effectively, and what is Web 2.0 anyway? These resources include many of the examples in the actual presentation as well as supplementary reading materials.

View the presentation

About Web 2.0

The Machine is Us/ing Us — a video explanation of Web 2.0
Best Practices in Using Web 2.0 in Nonprofits – a wiki explaining Web 2.0 tools and how to use them
Guide to Social Media – a wiki specifically for nonprofits wanting to understand and use social media tools
NetSquared – a TechSoup project supporting responsible adoption of social media tools by nonprofits
Resource Sheet: Organizational Blogs – a long collection of resources about organizational/nonprofit blogging

Blogging Tools

Nonprofit Blogs

Blogs About Nonprofits Using Web 2.0 Technologies

The Blogosphere (finding blogs of interest)

Technorati — Find tagged content on all blogs
Global Voices Online — Aggregates content from blogs from non-Western locations
Nonprofit Blog Exchange – Aggregates content specifically from nonprofit blogs and about nonprofits that blog

Into Web 2.0

Tumblr – microblogging site
Twitter – microblogging site that integrates with text messaging and instant messaging (IM)
del.icio.us – Tag, organize and share bookmarks
Stumble Upon – review and rate web content
Digg – read and vote on web content
NGO Post – read and vote on web content discussing social welfare initiatives
Flickr – share, view and comment on photos
YouTube – share, view and comment on videos
SlideShare – share, view and comment on presentations
Wikipedia – world-famous collaboratively written encyclopedia built with a wiki
Wikibooks – collection of collaboratively written textbooks written using wikis
Facebook – well-known social networking site originally focusing on college students
LinkedIn – professional networking site
Dogster – social networking site for dogs
Causes on Facebook – nonprofits using Facebook to promote causes and raise money
IntraHealth Informatics’ Flickr site – nonprofits can share interesting photos to generate interest