Transmission Project - innovation

Open Video Conference

admin — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:48:36 +0000

The Open Video Conference (OVC) is a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of online video. The first Open Video Conference was host to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live broadcast. The event earned coverage in WIRED, NewTeeVee, BBC News, Filmmaker Magazine, and The New Yorker.

OVC is a showcase for technical and creative innovation in online video. But the Open Video Conference transcends technical details and grapples with some larger questions:

With so much free stuff out there, how will creators get paid?
Do we need to change the rules of copyright?
Who decides what you watch?
Who knows what you watch?
Is online video a force for good? Or is there just too much weird stuff out there?

This year, OVC is bigger and better. Join us for two days of inspiring talks, hands-on workshops, parties film screenings, and much more. Whether you are an artist, a developer, an entrepreneur, a student, or just a citizen of the web, OVC will spark your imagination for what’s possible with open video.

Observations on the FCC Open Internet Workshop at MIT

Ben Sheldon — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 17:06:50 +0000

The Transmission Project staff took a field-trip to yesterday’s FCC Workshop on Innovation, Investment and the Open Internet. As a 3.5 hour, 12 panelist show (plus 2 moderators, a introductory framer, a commissioner and a video introduction from Chairman Genachowski), it was surprisingly engaging. The key question of the evening seemed to be framed as “Business isn’t so bullish on internet anymore, what’s changed?”

Despite the contemporary focus on Net Neutrality, that phrase was nearly never mentioned. Instead, the panelists answered the key question of “what’s changed?” from a number of angles:

New technology enabling better (or worse, depending on POV) Quality of Service (van Schewick, Standford Law);
Market Power or absence of robust competition for ISPs (Greenstein, Kellogg/Northwestern);
Declining profitability of network deployment (Weldon, Alcatel-Lucent);
Declining interoperability, especially on mobile networks (Glueck, Skyfire);
Shared ethos and goodwill have been replaced by business management and unclear rules (Berners-Lee, W3C; and Hyatt, Conduit Labs);
Network management/QoS inconsistency between networks (David Clark, MIT);
The looming threat of as-yet-undefined regulation (Kim Riley, Camiant);
Government and Google threats (Tykeson, BendBroadband);
The internet has moved from an emerging platform to an established one (Yoo, UPenn Law)

The primary takeaway I had was “Network Management/Quality of Service (QoS) is acceptable (even beneficial) so long as it is initiated by the user, not the network or application provider”. Everyone on the panel seemed to agree that this was acceptable, and innovation would emerge around the mechanisms and models for providing this to users.

No one talked about vertical integration of networks and content providers: Comcast-NBC was mentioned just once near the end. Tim Berners-Lee was the only person on the panels who tried to represent the point of view of a end-user: indifference to the network architecture and concerns over personal privacy.

In regards to how the FCC could act, David Clark made a plea for FCC-led facilitation for consistency among network providers, rather than regulation.

Outside the panel, Brough Turner (sitting in the row in front of us) told us that much of the workshop discussion was moot: the current US economic model for network deployment won’t create robust competition.

The diversity scorecard of the panel was 11 men, 6 women; 12 white, 5 not.

World’s Fair Use Day

Belinda Rawlins — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:31:30 +0000

World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD) is a free, all-day celebration of the doctrine of fair use: the legal right that allows innovators and creators to make particular uses of copyrighted materials. WFUD will take place at the Newseum in Washington D.C. on Tuesday January 12, 2010, and will be organized by Public Knowledge (PK), a Washington D.C.-based non-profit, consumer-advocacy group. PK works to ensure that communications and intellectual property policies encourage creativity, further free expression and discourse and provide universal access to knowledge. As part of its campaign to return balance to copyright law, PK hopes to use WFUD to educate the public about the importance of fair use in an information society.

WFUD will be widely attended and will provide attendees with a unique opportunity to network with policymakers, artists, academics, business innovators, media professionals, press, and consumer advocates.