BigShinyThing

Last year the New York Times wrote a story about so-called Gold Farms — factories where Chinese workers would labour through the initial stages of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft on behalf of wealthy Westerners who couldn’t be arsed. Well now Amazon have taken that model and formed a new business out of it.

The Amazon Mechanical Turk is named after an automaton from the 18th century, ‘the Turk’, which could play chess. The wooden man, compete with turban, appeared to be powered by clockwork and even check-mated Benjamin Franklin at one point. The Turk was — of course — a fraud, with a human chess expert hidden in the rather obvious, rather huge box on which the model sat. Amazon have no interest in hiding their wizards in this way. For fees ranging from a few cents and not much more, workers — who call themselves ‘turkers’ — will perform menial, time-consuming tasks — such as identifying nuances in colour or shape — which can still confound automated computer systems. Originally conceived by Amazon to assist its own sites, Mturk.com is now a marketplace where many companies ‘employ’ workers to do everything from transcribing podcasts for 19 cents a minute to writing blog posts for 50 cents. Amazon, of course, takes a cut for every task performed.

Amazon says that Mturk provider “artificial artificial intelligence” which as a zeitgeist phrase is sure to produce more than one dissertation. According to Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services,

From a philosophical perspective, it’s really turning the traditional computing paradigm on its head. Usually people get help from computers to do tasks. In this case, it is computers getting help from people to do tasks.

Like all crowdsourcing, turking seems to thrive by provoking people’s need to contribute — to be part of something bigger. To test this, UCLA Design/Media Arts grad student Aaron Koblin invited turkers to draw up to five sheep at the rate of 2 cents apiece. Over 40 days and 40 nights, the sheep flooded in at a rate of 11 per hour. By the end of experiment, 7,599 turkers had participated. He collected 12,000 sheep and put 10,000 of them up for sale at a rate of $20 for 20 sheep at The Sheep Market. This blatant profiteering had some turkers up in arms: “they’re selling our sheep!” was the cry on one message board. Another poster wrote, “Does anyone remember signing over the rights to the drawings?”. Of course they had. If there was ever a moral lesson to be learnt from Web 2.0, it’s always check the IP clauses. But even after the student stopped taking admissions for sheep, and after ruthlessly exploiting his workers, more people wrote to him wanting to contribute sheep for free. Koblin says:

“Most of these people clearly weren’t in it for the money. They weren’t doing it so they could get 2 cents. It was more about participating in something larger.

This is of course the philanthropic view. A more cynical take on turking and on the gold farms in particular is that it is just a new economy take on old economy exploitation. Labour activists and lawyers point to the total lack of workers’ rights. Rebecca Smith, a lawyer for the National Employment Law Project says:

The creativity of business in avoiding its responsibility to workers never ceases to astound. It’s day labor in the virtual world.

The workers themselves take a more relaxed view — arguing that it’s basically badly paid Sudoku. According to one, “I think it’s something of a hybrid between trying to make money on the side and a diversion, a substitute for doing a crossword puzzle. It’s sort of a mental exercise.”

MTV news has recently succeeded in getting hold of the first footage shot inside Chinese gold farms. According to the segment, half a million Chinese now make a living from the acquisition and sale of World of Warcraft gold to US and EU gamers. GigaOM has an interview with the filmmaker, Ge Jin:

GigaOM: What does WoW gold farming suggest about the future of work?

GJ: I think these gold farms indicate that the game platform has the potential to engage more people in Internet-driven economy. The gaming workers in China don’t have skills like English, software or graphic design to participate in other forms of Internet-driven work, but they can communicate and navigate in a 3D game world whose tools and routines they are familiar with… So if more social and economic activities happen in an accessible 3D game world, people who don’t have access to other culture capital but gaming knowledge will be more likely to be included in global interaction.

It makes you wonder if all those $100 laptops for kids aren’t actually going to bridge the digital divide but instead create a whole new economy of third-world labour.

Turking story source and quotes from Salon.

We’ve said before that the corporations and content owners who will survive in the convergence age are the ones that set their content free to proliferate. Warner Music have today demonstrated that they utterly understand this. As Warner proudly exclaim on their press release:

Warner Music Group becomes the first media company to embrace power of user-generated content. YouTube to deliver innovative new architecture to help media companies harness the financial potential of user-generated content.

What Warner have done is hand over all their entire library of music videos as well as behind-the-scenes footage, artist interviews, original programming and other formerly proprietary content. In doing this Warner have given YouTube users creative carte blanche with both the footage and their music catalogue to remix, mess up and distribute as they please. WMG has thus become the first music company to exploit YouTube as a distribution channel — as the press release goes on to state:

More importantly, [Warner] becomes the first global media company to broadly embrace the power and creativity of user-generated content through a wide-ranging agreement with the category leader, enabling its artists to connect with a vast new audience in an entirely new way.

So far so thrilling. But how (I hear WPP, Viacom, Fox et al cry) does anyone — the artists, Warner, YouTube — plan to make money out of this? Here’s the science bit:

WMG will have the opportunity to authorize the use of its content by the YouTube community by taking advantage of YouTube’s advanced content identification and royalty reporting system, set for release by the end of the year. YouTube and WMG will share revenue from advertising both on WMG’s music videos and user uploaded videos that incorporate audio and audiovisual works from WMG’s catalogue. WMG’s music video library and special artist content will be made available simultaneously with the launch of YouTube’s content identification and royalty reporting system.

Some guy who runs the company, with a nice turn of phrase which we plan to nick, adds:

Technology is changing entertainment, and Warner Music is embracing that innovation. Consumer-empowering destinations like YouTube have created a two-way dialogue that will transform entertainment and media forever. As user-generated content becomes more prevalent, this kind of partnership will allow music fans to celebrate the music of their favourite artists, enable artists to reach consumers in new ways, and ensure that copyright holders and artists are fairly compensated.

We wish Microsoft and Viacom all the best in playing catch up.

Hackney council has been awarded £300,000 in damages after filing a suit for copyright theft against Nike. Back in May we wrote about how the sportswear giant had appropriated the city council’s logo without permission for a range of sportswear.

The payout is based on a percentage of global sales figures for the range, which included trainers, footballs and T-shirts. Nike has apologised and has also agreed to pay Hackney borough’s legal costs as part of the agreement announced today.

Jules Pipe, Mayor of Hackney, described it as a “great result” for the council.

“This is extra money to spend on sports activities in Hackney, and shows that it was worth standing up to Nike,” Pipe said.

This was always about more than cash — there is a serious principle at stake here. Just because we are a public organisation, it does not mean that big corporations can take what they want from local people without asking.

Source: Brandrepublic.

As part of their World Cup promotion, Nike has put together a nice little ad set on the legendary football pitches of Hackney Harshes. They’ve also released a line of World-Cup sportswear emblazoned with the Hackney borough identity. Problem is they didn’t bother to license it from the council first.

Hackney’s newly re-elected Mayor — Jules Pipe — is understandably not amused:

We have been using this logo for more than 40 years — since before England last won the World Cup! I was shocked that such a huge global company would use it without even approaching us for permission. Nike is one of the biggest sportwear companies in the world. They are selling this stuff everywhere — some of our residents have seen it in shops in Spain, and we have seen it marketed on the internet in Japan, Germany, the US and Italy. They have not offered a penny in compensation to the people of Hackney.

One way of putting this right could be giving us a fair percentage of the retail price and some sportswear for every school child in the borough. Nike have taken, for their own profit, something that belongs to the people of Hackney. They have now offered to meet us for talks and I hope they will have the decency to offer a fair settlement and save this going to court.

We have asked them to withdraw all merchandise until this issue can be settled. I also want assurances from Nike that all this kit has been ethically produced.

Mayor Pipe has pledged to spend every penny gained from Nike on sports development in the borough. Given Hackney’s ongoing financial problems, every penny would help.

[Via CMM News]

Swarm of angels invites 50,000 “angels” to each pay £25 to fund a £1 million feature film. The Angels are being invited in batches — first 100, now 1,000, next 5,000, 25,000 and 50,000 — with the level of input being determined by the donation (£25 being the entry level). The first very privileged 100 places have now gone, but the 1,000 Swarm is still open (just about). The film –when it comes out — will be produced under Creative Commons so as hackable and remixable as it comes.

A Swarm of Angels reinvents the Hollywood model of filmmaking to create cult cinema for the Internet era. It’s all about making an artistic statement, making something you haven’t seen before. Why are we doing this? Because we are tired of films that are made simply to please film executives, sell popcorn, or tie-in with fastfood licensing deals.

We want to invent the future of film. Call it Cinema 2.0.
To do it we need your help.

VJ Collective The Kleptones have just signed up to do the soundtrack so you’ll be in good company. Via Protein feed. [See also our earlier post about Mod Films]

The news is a symbolic nail in the coffin of the 30 second spot. Swedish director and screenwriter Vilgot Sjoman, who sadly died on Sunday, and director Claes Eriksson, had sued the TV4 channel after it put commercial breaks in the broadcasts of their movies in 2002. Two films, Sjoman’s Alfred and Eriksson’s The Shark Who Knew Too Much were made before Swedish broadcasting laws allowed commercial stations to put commercial breaks throughout movies and the Svea Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling saying that the station had violated the directors’ integrity and copyright because they had not given permission for the breaks. Story via Newsvine.

Digital Rights lobbyists the EFF have unearthed a catchy new euphemism: ‘ customary historic use’, a powerful little timebomb of a clause in draft US legislation, which is designed to outlaw any future nasty surprises (nasty to the established media order, that is) like PVRs or MP3 players before they even leave the drawingboard. A post on the EFF’s blog elaborates:

You say you want the power to time-shift and space-shift TV and radio? You say you want tomorrow’s innovators to invent new TV and radio gizmos you haven’t thought of yet, the same way the pioneers behind the VCR, TiVo, and the iPod did?

Well, that’s not what the entertainment industry has in mind. According to them, here’s all tomorrow’s innovators should be allowed to offer you:

“customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law.”

Had that been the law in 1970, there would never have been a VCR. Had it been the law in 1990, no TiVo. In 2000, no iPod.

Fair use has always been a forward-looking doctrine. It was meant to leave room for new uses, not merely “customary historic uses.” Sony was entitled to build the VCR first, and resolve the fair use questions in court later. This arrangement has worked well for all involved — consumers, media moguls, and high technology companies.

Now the RIAA and MPAA want to betray that legacy by passing laws that will regulate new technologies in advance and freeze fair use forever. If it wasn’t a “customary historic use,” federal regulators will be empowered to ban the feature, prohibiting innovators from offering it. If the feature is banned, courts will never have an opportunity to pass on whether the activity is a fair use.

Voila, fair use is frozen in time. We’ll continue to have devices that ape the VCRs and cassette decks of the past, but new gizmos will have to be submitted to the FCC for approval, where MPAA and RIAA lobbyists can kill it in the crib.

They’re only getting my hand-built, custom-designed audiophile music library when they prise the remote from my cold dead hand.

The BBC reports that royalty collection agency PPL has quietly introduced a new levy on anyone playing downloaded music in public venues. Never adverse to making a quick buck at the expense of long-term gain, the music industry has decided to sting digital DJs a whopping £200 (+VAT) a year for the right to perform using downloaded tracks — on top of the margin the industry has already negotiated with online retailers, and the existing license fees paid by venues playing any kind of recorded music for punters. Double-dipping? Sounds like it to us. Unreasonable? PPL disagrees:

Business affairs director Peter Leathem told Radio 1’s Newsbeat: “Rather than saying stop it, don’t do it, we’ve actually tried to embrace what people want to do and come up with a licence to be able to do that.” He said the £200 charge was “reasonable”, adding: “You don’t actually have to DJ using a laptop. You can use vinyl, you can use CD, so we’re saying that if it’s not worth your while spending £200 then don’t do it.”

We think they’re missing the point of media convergence, cramping creative style, and being greedy — they’ve already been paid! Besides, £200 is a lot of money for most DJs, and after all, who is it who does most of the work in getting new music in front of the punters?

Clearly imitation is no longer the sincerest form of flattery for luxury brands. The International Herald Tribune reports that both the landlord and vendors at the Beijing Xiushui Haosen Clothing Market have been ordered to pay $13,000 in compensation to six luxury goods companies after being found guilty of selling pirated goods, or preventing the sale of them.

According to the US Commerce Department, international companies lose more than $60 billion a year because of piracy in China. The case is believed to be China’s first copyright verdict successfully upheld against a shopping mall landlord and is only part of a huge crackdown into counterfeiting that began last July. China prosecuted 158 people for counterfeiting and imposed 376 million yuan in fines in the 15 months sending September 30th, 2005, according to the State Adminstration for Industry and Commerce. The agency has also investigated 6.77 million business entities and 283,000 markets nationwide resulting in the closure of 6,273 places that made and sold fake goods.

Bizarrely, Vogue is now reporting that Chanel is being sued by one of its own suppliers for counterfeiting. The fashion house faces charges of counterfeiting and “abusive termination of [ongoing] contractual relations” by World Tricot, which is seeking £1.3 million for breach of contract and £2.3 million for counterfeiting. Chanel is, of course, countersuing, claiming that the action is a publicity-seeking stunt. Vogue reports on the vagaries of proving style theft:

After nearly four hours of testimony during which the commercial court’s presiding judge, Jean-Pierre Lucquin, struggled to compare unusual evidence comprising a sample of white crochet and a crochet Chanel vest, he proposed that the complex case be tried in front of a mediator. Both companies must now agree to the mediation before January 20 or the case will have to be tried again.

See previous post, ‘The end of the line for cheap chic?’

Also an interesting treatise on the nature of copyright law:

Can I Get An Amen? is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective on perhaps the most sampled drum [loop] in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track Amen Brother by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.

Listen and learn. On a similar theme, check out leftfield hiphop DJ Edan’s Sounds of the Funky Drummer project: a 60-minute mix of 80s rap records all of which sampled James Brown’s Funky Drummer breakbeat.

1. As iPod sales start to slow down, we’re betting on a fierce brand-extension war between Apple and the other online music brands. Competitors have already started to emerge — see MTV’s tie up with Microsoft, Urge.
2. In the same sector, we tip Napster to learn from Google and Yahoo’s mapping successes, and to offer a programming interface (API) for subscribers, so people can build their own software systems using Napster content — expect customised jukeboxes, recommendation systems and music-based games to flourish online. The benefit to Napster? Kudos to the brand which accrue from others’ innovations, a wider audience, and increased advertising opportunities.
3. We’re waiting for a Friday night TV show which features real-time ’stupid shit’, news and interviews contributed live via 3G mobiles by amateur viewer/reporters out and about around the UK and worldwide — the trash culture flipside of OhMyNews. Expect flash celebrity for a few contributors to follow, and a big spike in phone sales.
4. Still on TV, we expect at least one channel to broadcast experimental blocks of ‘ad-free’ prime time programming to test the waters of post-interruptive-advertising television — probably initially sponsored by a major car brand.
5. Flyposting will be banned in London as Ken sides with the Government on a ‘respect‘ agenda.
6. Sophisticated services offered via Skype will be the surprise eCommerce success story of the year, with third-party developers exploiting the ubiquitous telephony provider’s APIs to provide simple, effective voice access to information, retail and search services in exactly the way that screen-based systems thus far haven’t, for the mobile multitudes.
7. Namecheck BST when territorial disputes over mining rights in polar regions recently exposed by global warning become a major news story, and a source of growing international tension.
8. And a big ‘we told you so’ if Interpol reveals that an unlikely counterfeiting alliance of criminals and ‘just because we could’ hackers has adopted open source development methodologies to make undetectable fakes of a major currency, which subsequently has to be completely withdrawn from circulation, redesigned and reissued.
9. Long odds but not impossible: Sony’s launch of non-Sony-branded hardware or media, in an attempt at a fresh start after the horrors of 2005.
10. We will be saddened but not surprised if a PC virus takes out one of the emergency services for at least a day.
11. 3G. Finally. Yes we’re surprised too.

At the moment, BitTorrent’s technology can be used for illegally copying movies and TV shows over the Internet. While downloading a movie, BitTorrent’s technology takes parts of the file from different sources simultaneously, thereby facilitating a quicker download of the movie – what geeks term peer to peer or P2P.

Under the terms of this agreement, Bram Cohen, founder and CEO of BitTorrent, has agreed to remove links which direct users to pirated content. It is said that the deal might also pave the way for eventual adoption of BitTorrent’s technology by movie studios for new, legal services. Bittorrent is currently used by an estimated 45 million people and has become a bete noire for the movie and TV industries. This move signals Cohen’s intent to cuddle up to the mainstream – potentially with an eye on future legitimate content distribution deals. He even disclosed in September that his company had raised $8.75 million in venture funding to develop commercial distribution tools for media companies.

However, as Wired points out, the decentralised nature of P2P technology means that piracy remains hard to trace and prevent. This agreement with Cohen will not prevent determined internet users from finding movies or other materials using tools or websites other than Cohen’s, it simply removes the most high profile player from that particular game.

MIT’s adverblog reports that

Microsoft has applied for a patent for control-based content pricing, which describes a scenario in which viewers are charged higher fees if they skip commercials or replay sports highlights.

Microsoft’s patent application reads:

In an implementation of control-based content pricing, a content server distributes media content to a client device in response to a request from the client device to receive the media content. A valuation application allocates a cost to the client device when the media content is distributed to the client device. The content server receives a view control input from the client device that indicates how the media content is to be rendered and the valuation application adjusts the cost according to the view control input and how the media content is to be rendered.

MIT picked up on the story from TechDirt via AdJab.

Almost 100 clips, from shows such as Walking With Beasts and Tomorrow’s World, are for the UK public to use for free in their own creative works. BBC Radio 1 launched the scheme with a competition to produce a music video.

The clips, mostly a few minutes long, range from animals to landscapes and art. The Creative Archive licence under which the clips have been released says they must not be used in commercial or campaigning ways and must not be used to defame other people. The British Film Institute, Channel 4, Open University and Teachers’ TV are also set to make more material available.

More information is available via the BBC website.

Although the PSP is designed primarly to play games, it can also store digital photos, play MP3 files and play video. There are a number of portable video devices on the market already – pocket computers, mobile phones and media players. But none have had the crucial support of the film studios who are already producing films in formats suitable for the PSP. The PSP also has the added attraction of a widescreen format and a bright screen that makes it possible to watch outdoors.

It helps that Sony has its own film studio but Fox, Universal, Paramount and Buena Vista have also pledged to produce films for the device. Of the majors, only Warner and Dreamworks (rather critically) have yet to embrace the format.

Films for the PSP come on a new disc format, the Universal Media Disc (UMD). The disc can hold three times as much data as a CD – enough for a ‘DVD-quality’ movie. According to the BBC, more than three million UMD movie discs have already been sold in the US, with two films – Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse and House Of Flying Daggers – selling 100,000 copies each in the first month since launch.

But despite being a hit in the US, UMD is not faring so well in the classic early-adopter market of Japan. A recent survey of Japanese PSP users found that only 10% had used it to watch a UMD movie. This may be due to the explosion of file sharing culture where high broadband penetration and file sharing software such as BitTorrent is enabling users to download films and TV programmes off the Internet illegally. Moreover, most of this content can be easily converted to watch on the PSP with some pirates already providing ‘PSP friendly’ versions of films and shows. Ironic that a company such as Sony may be giving consumers the very tools that they need to undermine their business.

The International Olympic Committe (IOC) is fiercely defensive of its intellectual property (IP) rights. Woe betide anyone at Athens 2004 who was caught on their way to the stands wearing non-sponsor-branded clothing or drinking the wrong soft drinks.

With the help of the UK government’s Olympics Bill, drawn up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to establish the legal framework for London to stage the Games, the IOC is tightening the screws even further ahead of London 2012. The BBC reports that, in the interest of protecting the Olympic brand from other brand-owners ‘cashing in’ on the event, the new bill will make it illegal to combine words like games, medals, gold, 2012, sponsor or summer in any form of advertising. The IPA is not amused, and argues that fines of up to £20,000 for breaches of the Bill will rule out any sort of 2012 ‘halo effect’ for businesses in the UK. According to IPA legal director Marina Palomba, as quoted in the BBC report:

Blatant ambush marketing has to be prevented but there are already laws in existence to prevent that.

This is new legislation which gives the event holder unparallelled power. Why should the IOC have the monopoly on the terms London, 2012, summer, gold, silver and bronze?

London businesses in particular will be paying for these Games but they are being deprived of benefiting from them because they will basically have to pretend they are not happening.

At this point, the Government has come down firmly on the side of the IOC. Will the IPA manage a last lap sprint and get restrictions softened? Keep track of the Bill via our favourite source of Parliamentary intelligence, TheyWorkForYou.com.

Apparently, Microsoft has beaten Apple in the race to file a crucial patent on technology used in the portable music players. Although Apple introduced in the iPod in November 2001, it did not file a provisional patent application until July 2002 and a full application was filed only in October that year. In the meantime, Microsoft submitted an application in May 2002 to patent some key elements of music players, including song menu software.

There are a number of portable music players on the market but the iPod dominates, accounting for three out of every four portable music players sold in the US and contributing almost one third of Apple’s total sales. Piper Jaffray, the US analysts, predicts that Apple will sell 25 million iPods this year, bringing the total sold in the four years since launch to 35 million.

News of the dispute over the patent emerged – surprise surprise – on a blog, Appleinsider, which has run spoilers on Apple products in the past. It could lead to Apple having to pay a licence fee for the technology of up to $10 per machine.

A spokesperson said Apple would continue to try and get its patent recognised and could take the case to the patent office’s appeals board. The company said in a statement, “Apple invented and publicly released the iPod interface before the Micosoft application was filed.”

Micrsoft is also taking on Google in the courts. Microsoft launched a lawsuit against the search engine last month, accusing it of poaching a top executive to head a new research laboratory in China.

Maybe they should have called their marketing department instead of the lawyers: ‘Look! Someone loved FedEx so much they made all their furniture out of it/our packaging is strong enough to make tables out of’ … and so on.

Wired has the full story. The website which sparked the litigation is still viewable at www.fedexfurniture.com.

Or maybe it is some clever marketing ploy … it’s getting increasingly hard to tell.

The Guardian reports:

A young internet entrepreneur from London is launching a legal battle against Apple Computer to try to overturn a ruling on the ownership of a website address. Benjamin Cohen, 22, is applying to the high court for a judicial review of his dispute with Apple over the address itunes.co.uk. Mr Cohen registered the name in November 2000

The full story is here

The article is here
.

The BBC reports the key findings from the Envisional research: “It’s now as easy to download a pirate TV show as it is to programme a VCR,” said Ben Coppin.

According to Envisional 18% of downloaders were from within the UK and that downloads of TV programmes had increased by 150% in the last year.

Exact figures are difficult to pin down, but it is thought that about 80,000 to 100,000 people in the UK download TV programmes.

A typical episode of 24 was downloaded by about 100,000 people globally, said the report, and an estimated 20,000 of those were from within the UK

The industry has coined the term “time-shifting” to describe this trend of being able to watch what you want, when you want. The more retro phrase is video on demand.

The BBC ran a trial of what it calls the Interactive Media Player (iMP) last year, which was based on a peer-to-peer distribution model.

It let people download programmes it held the rights to up to eight days after they had already aired. It is looking to do a more expansive trial later this year.

The BBC already allows radio fans to hear programmes they missed online up to a week after broadcast.

About six million people in the UK now have a fast, always-on net connection via cable or phone lines.

A typical episode of 24 was downloaded by about 100,000 people globally, said the report, and an estimated 20,000 of those were from within the UK.