Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Blogs using Video
There's an interesting trend in the blogosphere of late - the use of video as a linkable, malleable datatype. Traditionally, text and photo content have been the main blog elements for commentary and linking. This is simply because today's tools are oriented towards linking to newspapers, magazines or other web sites such as the New York Times, Newsweek or The Guardian. It has been much harder to comment on television shows or films that have provided memorable moments, heated debate and outright controversy, simply because there was no way to deliver the original video material web log readers. That's starting to change.
In the newspaper industry, the old saying was that "today's news is tomorrow's fish wrap." It gave solace to reporters and politicians alike, because a mistake of the day would be, more often than not, relegated to the dustbin of history and into obscurity. That all changed with the World Wide Web, Lexis/Nexis and the Google cache. Blogs have magnified this even more, by keeping news events in the media ecology, sustaining complex discussions and even determining what become the memes that "stick."
The similar saying for television is, "the show is hurtling through space to Mars," referring to over-the-air television broadcast signals cast off and forgotten because there really was no way to archive or reference the thousands of hours of television commentary and coverage. That has changed as well. Capturing these video streams used to be the domain of C-band satellite junkies with VCRs recording 24/7. The results were fringe but landmark movies such as "Spin" [1, 2] and "FEED" [1].
However, with personal video recorders (such as Tivo), peer to peer networking and gigabytes of free server space on the Internet, this has allowed bloggers to post videos as easily as text and picture, and even to provide video responses to video.
Some notable examples of late include:
Much of what is happening requires the capture of broadcast video. Fortunately, home recording of video has been firmly established in the United States since the Betamax case of 1984. The display of such video can be defended by fair use, but because it is subject to case law, bloggers using such video will no doubt be subject to scrutiny by copyright owners with much deeper pockets and larger teams of lawyers. And unlike hyperlinking, most folks using video have made outright copies of the video source. Here's hoping the blogopshere can continue to pioneer the use of video, but it will have legal obstacles and challenges, that's for sure.
In the newspaper industry, the old saying was that "today's news is tomorrow's fish wrap." It gave solace to reporters and politicians alike, because a mistake of the day would be, more often than not, relegated to the dustbin of history and into obscurity. That all changed with the World Wide Web, Lexis/Nexis and the Google cache. Blogs have magnified this even more, by keeping news events in the media ecology, sustaining complex discussions and even determining what become the memes that "stick."
The similar saying for television is, "the show is hurtling through space to Mars," referring to over-the-air television broadcast signals cast off and forgotten because there really was no way to archive or reference the thousands of hours of television commentary and coverage. That has changed as well. Capturing these video streams used to be the domain of C-band satellite junkies with VCRs recording 24/7. The results were fringe but landmark movies such as "Spin" [1, 2] and "FEED" [1].
However, with personal video recorders (such as Tivo), peer to peer networking and gigabytes of free server space on the Internet, this has allowed bloggers to post videos as easily as text and picture, and even to provide video responses to video.
Some notable examples of late include:
- Michelle Malkin on MSNBC show Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 19, 2004. In a heated exchange between guest and host, noted conservative commentator Malkin insinuates, but will not state, damaging facts by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against presidential candidate John Kerry. [link] [direct video link]
- Joho the Blog, provides a video rebuttal to a video segment from News.com about bloggers at the Democratic National Convention. While showing that bloggers need basic video training (such as not shooting against a bright window in the background) it is a step towards connecting readers more with the personality of bloggers. [link]
- Outfoxed Rebuttal and Re-Rebuttal by Jim Gilliam, co-producer of the documentary critical of FOX News. The Outfoxed documentary has provided, for many, a smoking gun about the conservative agenda of the "fair and balanced" news channel. FOX commentator Bill O'Reilly goes on NBC's Tim Russert Show and attacks the Outfoxed film. As an example of a third volley via video, Gilliam takes footage from the NBC broadcast and overlays facts and figures to rebut O'Reilly. In another clip, he interweaves parts of the Outfoxed film with Bill O'Reilly's assertions. A great example of digital video tools being used in the discourse.
[link1, link2]
Much of what is happening requires the capture of broadcast video. Fortunately, home recording of video has been firmly established in the United States since the Betamax case of 1984. The display of such video can be defended by fair use, but because it is subject to case law, bloggers using such video will no doubt be subject to scrutiny by copyright owners with much deeper pockets and larger teams of lawyers. And unlike hyperlinking, most folks using video have made outright copies of the video source. Here's hoping the blogopshere can continue to pioneer the use of video, but it will have legal obstacles and challenges, that's for sure.
