Author Archives: pr

The online copyright war: the day the internet hit back at big media | Technology | The Guardian

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The Guardian looks at how internet users rallied to combat legislation like SOPA that restricts online use for the benefit of media institutions:

Stark points to a study by Musiksverige (Music Sweden), an industry association, that found music piracy in Sweden fell significantly after the introduction of Spotify, a streaming music service. “It shows what we have said all along: people want to reward artists for their work.”

Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s co-founder, agrees. “I’m hopeful right now. These are not soundbite issues, they are complicated. If you look at the work that Reddit’s community did investigating Sopa, you can see that there is a lot of thought going into these issues in the community. Like a lot of rights, I think we took our right to a life online for granted until it was challenged. I think we are on guard now.”

Media execs are on guard too. Many look to the music industry and fear they may be next. Since the peer-to-peer filesharing site Napster emerged in 1999, music sales in the US have dropped 53%, from $14.6bn to $6.9bn in 2010. The digital world is a lot less lucrative than selling DVDs.

Last year the movie industry made $30bn at the box office worldwide. Ed Epstein, author of The Hollywood Economist, calculates box office revenue accounts for just 10% of a hit movie’s money. The rest comes from cable and satellite channels, pay-per-view TV, video rentals, DVD sales and digital downloads. All that extra cash comes from sources that Hollywood once railed against, and pressed Washington to crack down on.

via The online copyright war: the day the internet hit back at big media | Technology | The Guardian.

The Mail simply threw Samantha Brick to the wolves | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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Great piece by Hadley Freeman about the Samantha Brick article that has sparked plenty of internet discussion this week (if you’ve missed this somehow, Brick wrote an article entitled ‘There are downsides to looking this pretty’: Why women hate me for being beautiful’ which was followed today by the pictures above)

Samantha Brick writes in her inevitable follow-up article about the reaction to her piece, “Until this week I never really understood the term ‘Trolling’ – used to describe when anonymous people viciously attack others on the internet. Now I do!” She sure does, but not in the way she thinks. The real definition of an internet troll is someone who posts something outrageous purely for the sake of getting a reaction – and the commissioning, editing and publishing of Brick’s article is trolling, pure and simple.

The Daily Mail uses its female writers in precisely the same way it uses its female readers and celebrities: frequently, centrally and, always, cruelly. Like an abusive husband, the Daily Mail courts women and needs women, but will always turn around and punch them in the face. Because the Daily Mail hates women.

via The Mail simply threw Samantha Brick to the wolves | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Girls Around Me

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A couple of days ago John Brownlee wrote an interesting post on Cult of Mac about an iPhone app called Girls Around Me. The app combined data from Facebook and Foursquare to display publicly available info from Facebook profiles of people nearby. He highlighted the potential interest this might hold for stalkers, and the subsequent publicity resulted in Foursquare revoking the use of their API and then Apple pulling the app from their store the developers pulling the app from the app store.

Plenty of people have written and tweeted about this since, with the most interesting commentary I’ve seen so far coming from Charlie Stross, who makes the ‘if you’re not paying, you’re the product not the customer’ point that is always worth remembering. He also observes:

And it is not in Facebook’s commercial interest to promote the use of privacy controls. If someone is using the privacy controls with all the settings jacked up to 11, it becomes very unlikely that long-lost friends and relatives will be able to make contact with them through Facebook. Which is a lost advertising opportunity, and therefore detrimental to the revenue stream.

And

It’s easy to imagine how we could make something worse than “Girls Around Me”—something much worse. Facebook encourages us to disclose a wide range of information about ourselves, including our religion and a photograph. Religion is obvious: “Yids Among Us” would obviously be one of the go-to tools of choice for Neo-Nazis. As for skin colour, ethnicity identification from face images is out there already. Want to go queer bashing? There’s an algorithm out there for guessing sexual orientation based on the network graph of the target’s facebook friends. It’s probably possible to apply this sort of data mining exercise to determine whether a woman has had an abortion or is pro-choice.

He ends with:

But as I said earlier, the app is not the problem. The problem is the deployment by profit-oriented corporations of behavioural psychology techniques to induce people to over-share information which can then be aggregated and disclosed to third parties for targeted marketing purposes.

via Not an April Fool – Charlie’s Diary.

Kony / phony

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So far I’ve not posted on the whole Kony phenomenon. I couldn’t really write much, as I was only able to watch about five minutes of it before being unable to take any more  overstylised manipulation.

Luckily, Charlie Brooker saved me the bother:

This Boing Boing post is also worth reading.

Finally, if you want to see something about child soldiers in Africa, I recommend two openly fictional films, White Material and Johnny Mad Dog.

3D film: have the wheels fallen off? | Comment is free | The Guardian

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Good discussion about the waning interest in 3D cinema:

We have seen experimental filmmakers, particularly those towards the end of their careers – Herzog, Wenders and Scorsese, to some extent – playing with 3D. It’s play, it didn’t feel like Herzog is committing to 3D. And we’ve had these turgid blockbusters and nothing in the middle. The kind of films that go up for Oscars – The King’s Speech – that draw in the people who see two or three films a year, those have not been 3D movies. That’s where 3D has missed a trick. If 3D was really going to transfer to the mainstream, then Bond would be made in it. With The Woman in Black – a prime candidate because it is all about things jumping out at you – they obviously made an explicit decision not to use 3D. There’s almost a stigma to it.

via 3D film: have the wheels fallen off? | Comment is free | The Guardian.

How older viewers are rescuing cinema | Film | The Guardian

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This article on the resurgence in cinema viewing by an older audience is relevant for AS Film Studies FM2:

Until recently, cinemas were seen as pretty much a no-go zone for older people. There might be the occasional “silver screening” in a teatime slot, but the rest of the time noisy youngsters would hold sway – crunching popcorn, spilling Coke on the floor and texting during the show. On screen, vampires, aliens, superheroes, childish fantasy, gross-out comedy or preposterous spectacle would probably prevail.

All of the above are still in evidence, but different fare has also come to the fore. In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a cast of ageing national treasures grapple with the tribulations of later life. Grown-up dramas such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Descendants, The Ides of March, The Iron Lady and The Artist have elbowed their way in.

The arrival and success of such films reflects a little-noticed revolution. Older people are returning to the big screen. They want something different, and the industry is trying to give it to them.

via How older viewers are rescuing cinema | Film | The Guardian.

3D films lose lustre as home-grown hits win cinema box-office battle | Film | The Guardian

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The combination of disappointing 3D films and surprise hit indies is evident in this look at the overall UK box office trends for 2011:

Despite a record 47 films released in 3D last year, including the final Harry Potter and the latest in the Transformers franchise, box-office receipts for the format fell £7m to £230m, reducing its share of total ticket sales from 24% to 20%.

The Lion King’s re-release in 3D failed to impress, as did Kung Fu Panda 2, with half its audiences opting to see it in two dimensions. As a result, the average takings per 3D film slumped from £8.5m in 2010, when there were just 28 in the genre, to £4.9m, according to a report by research firm Enders Analysis.

Meanwhile, the films performing well at the UK box office are frequently very different to huge budget 3D blockbusters

Home-grown hits enjoyed a record year, taking the second and third slots at the UK box office, in a triumph of storytelling over digital technology. Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning turn as King George VI helped The King’s Speech into second place with £46m, while adolescent comedy TV series turned feature film The Inbetweeners Movie netted £45m. The King’s Speech was made on an estimated budget of £9.5m, The Inbetweeners Movie on only £3.5m.

Their performance meant British films, both Independent and US-backed, took 36% of box office receipts, their biggest share in 10 years. Of those, 14% were independent films, the highest share achieved by features without foreign investment.

via 3D films lose lustre as home-grown hits win cinema box-office battle | Film | The Guardian.

Bang, bang, you’re dead: how Grand Theft Auto stole Hollywood’s thunder | Technology | The Guardian

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This article is an interesting profile of Rockstar and the GTA series. If you are reading this here, however, I’m pretty sure you have heard of Rockstar.

The fastest-selling cultural product in history was created by people you’ve probably never heard of. While this year’s Oscars honoured films in which the movie business sweetly congratulates itself on its own birth – The Artist, Hugo – the most dollar-hoovering entertainment release ever is not a film, still less an album; it’s a video game. Coming out last autumn, Modern Warfare 3 – a blockbuster military shooter made by a Californian game studio called Infinity Ward – took just 16 days to gross $1bn, beating by one day the previous record set by a film about blue people in space. And it wasn’t a freak accident. Global annual sales of video games now dwarf cinema box-office and recorded music: in 2010, games grossed $56bn, film tickets $32bn and music $23bn. (The film industry as a whole still made more, at $87bn.) Even social games on Facebook are enormous business: Zynga, the firm behind Farmville and Words With Friends, is responsible for 12% of Facebook’s revenue. Hollywood is old-school now. And one company in particular has played a pivotal role in this media revolution over the past decade: Rockstar Games.

via Bang, bang, you’re dead: how Grand Theft Auto stole Hollywood’s thunder | Technology | The Guardian.

Comment is free readers on … the sexualisation of girls | The people’s panel | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

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This article could be useful for those A2 Media students doing case studies related to the representation and / or sexualisation of young girls.

I was first scouted at the age of 14 by one of the world’s most prestigious model agencies. I was told that my life had now changed and had to be perfect: bikini waxes, leg waxes, lots of water, perfect skin and having to stay slim were all on the agenda. I had just about started my period by then. When I put on seven pounds to become a whopping seven and a half stone, it was commented on before I’d made it halfway through the office.

I did my first topless shoot a year later for a well-known photographer, and they were photographs that oozed sex. They will tell you that it wouldn’t happen in the UK, that it’s illegal; I would ask you not to be naive. My father shuddered and wept when he saw them in my model book by accident. He wanted nothing to do with it ever again. I quit modelling at 18 and went to university, tired of seeing my 15 and 16-year-old colleagues on Vogue front pages looking like they were all about sex, while overhearing men saying things I couldn’t repeat about girls I knew to be still awkward about kissing boys.

via Comment is free readers on … the sexualisation of girls | The people’s panel | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Is the UK Music Industry Sleepwalking into a CD Crisis? « Music Industry Blog

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This is an interesting article about the current state of the UK music industry. It seems the rise in digital sales is not matching the drop in CDs. As we hear that Game may well go bust shortly, the signs for physical media and those who retail them are not good.

CD sales are falling at an alarming rate: though digital album unit sales grew by 5.6 million, CD album sales fell by 12.3 million. So the digital growth was less than half of the physical decline in absolute terms. A worrying ratio at this stage in the development of the digital market (i.e. when it should be maturing, not just getting started).

via Is the UK Music Industry Sleepwalking into a CD Crisis? « Music Industry Blog.