Podcasters act now to stop anti-podcasting UN treaty!

Boing Boing writes that some organisations apparently try to enforce broadcasting/webcasting rights.

The Broadcast Treaty is an attempt to force the world’s governments to give a new right to broadcasters, a right to control the use of works they don’t own. The Broadcast Right will allow broadcasters to stop you from copying or re-using the programs they transmit, even if those programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed or composed of uncopyrightable facts.

And this should then be applied to webcasting:

The webcasting right will break podcasters‘ ability to quote and re-use each others‘ work (even CC-licensed works), and other video found on the net. It will allow podcast-hosting companies like Yahoo to tell people how they can use your podcasts, even if you want to permit retransmissions.

Given the discussions about net neutrality, DRM, etc. I guess that we will, in 10 years or so, look back at the era of the 90s and the beginning of the new millenium as an exceptional time when things were free, readily mashup-able and rather convenient. A weird era that promised freedom, but didn’t last…

The inefficiency of blogging about „Snakes on a plane“

Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab writes about blockbuster films vs snowball effects caused by blogs. In particular, it’s about an article on the USA Today Website:

America’s noisy Web wags were dealt an even more sobering blow 10 days later when Snakes on a Plane opened nationwide to a decidedly flat $15.3 million box office. Before its premiere, Snakes had been the latest blogger darling, as swarms of online film geeks prematurely crowned it the summer’s big sleeper.

Umair now argues, that the film cannot be seen as a blockbuster, but rather that snowball effects are taking place and hence the real success is yet to come:

That implies that, unlike blockbusters, Snakes should earn larger returns going forward than in the past – it should make more and more money (per given unit of time/whatever, rather than less and less, as blockbusters generally do).

I don’t agree with that. The snowball effects of the blogs were a thing of the last couple of months. By the time the film hit the theatres, the blogosphere had already sufficiently promoted the film so that snowballing was over and the typical blockbuster characteristics come into play again. I don’t think we can assume any further snowballing by now.

And in response to the article in USA today: just how much effect did the author think blogs can cause? It’s ok if hundreds or even thousands blog about something and create a „hype“. But I think we all know that this does not mean, that everybody who reads the bloggers will automatically go see the movie (and pay for it).

The reason why the blogosphere is so „powerful“ when it comes to politicians and celebrities is, because in this particular case it is all about reputation.