Be the Media: the state of the public webcasting platform

We’re on the verge of a media revival thanks in large part to open source technologies and the emergence of the blogosphere. In just a few days last week, my new media sites, CommonBits and CommonTunes received over a quarter of a million page views. This simply wouldn’t have been possible several years ago.

Both sites were built in just a few months at minimal cost because they leveraged the work of major open source efforts LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and BitTorrent to provide a community in which people could share large multimedia files [both sites run on Debian Linux and the server has never had to be rebooted – something I could not say running Web services with Microsoft server software].

And no one would have known about my sites without the blogosphere. Within a few hours of the CommonTunes announcement, bloggers in the U.S., Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan were helping to spread links to the site around the world generating over 120,000 page views in a single day.

Web enthusiasts have been particularly well educated and informed about the importance of media rights thanks to the efforts of Slashdot, BoingBoing, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, CreativeCommons et al. As a result, both CommonBits and CommonTunes have been well received.

But this is just the beginning of a much broader evolution of what I refer to as public webcasting. Emerging platforms and services are setting the stage for an exciting future in which just a few pieces remain missing.

From Blogs to Podcasts

Transparency is the blogosphere’s most important contribution to the media reform movement. Stories are being told that would not have seen the light of day a few years ago. Say what you wish about bias, credibility and quality, community sites such as BoingBoing, del.icio.us and blogosphere tools such as Bloglines and Technorati are helping to separate the wheat from the chaff. Mainstream journalists routinely read the blogosphere – in many cases to get their leads.

Blogging tools have empowered the “print”-based citizen journalist.

Seattle Times columnist Paul Andrews, who wrote about CommonBits in March, tells me that in the old days, newspapers publishers wanted to raise hell – and that’s what makes the blogosphere so exciting. It’s pure hell-raising - uncensored democratic speech at its best.

Meanwhile, the success of the iPod begat Podcasting, a technology whose relevance has been more fully hyped than understood. Podcasting’s been “cast” as a delivery vehicle for Wayne and Garth wannabes to broadcast from their own basement, but it’s really more than that. It probably hasn't helped that Podcasting was founded in part by ex-MTV VeeJay Adam Curry.

Podcasting happens to be an excellent tool for the “radio”-based citizen journalist, should they emerge in any number. Services like ODEO are going to make it even easier for novices to build their own broadcasts; users can even record episodes by phone. Podcasting has also helped broaden the distribution of quality radio content from DemocracyNow and On The Media to AirAmerica – a valuable contribution on its own.

But it’s time to put the term podcasting to rest. As Podcasting drove the adoption of RSS, the technology that indexes broadcasts, many Podcasting software clients extended its functionality to download any kind of file – including video and BitTorrents. Many people are using podcasting to download content to their desktop and watching and listening to programs there.

I’d like to suggest we begin using the term Webcasting.

CommonBits and Broadcast Machine: Tools for citizen journalists

I originally started CommonBits as a way to help progressives find and share political multimedia more easily, but Andrews’ article actually forced me to think more deeply about the platform that I’d built.

CommonBits’ use of tagging, RSS generation and BitTorrent hosting makes it possible for citizen journalists to distribute audio and video to a wider audience than ever before. “The CommonBits approach turns BitTorrent technology into something resembling an Internet broadcast network: liberal radio and TV on demand,” said Andrews. Even the lowest-budget citizen journalist or community organization can upload audio and video to CommonBits and distribute it on their own CommonBits’ channel at virtually no cost.

Around the same time, the Participatory Culture Foundation and Downhill Battle launched an open source project called Blog Torrent (now Broadcast Machine). Broadcast Machine makes it easy for organizations to run their own BitTorrent host and generate their own RSS feeds.

CommonBits and Broadcast Machine are both excellent platforms for delivering the coming wave of citizen media content. And there are others.

Prodigem offers a BitTorrent hosting service that allows people to sell their content. OurMedia and Archive.org offer a similar hosting service without BitTorrent but neither service has a particular community focus e.g. politics or music. Al Gore’s new company Current.TV is also making an effort to involve citizen media producers albeit more commercial.

The community aspect of these sites is important. CommonTunes was created to support the online music community and CommonFlix to support video sharing. OurMedia has a lot of community features as well.

The importance of BitTorrent as a distribution vehicle should not be understated. PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak recently alleged that Microsoft was employing underhanded tactics to discredit BitTorrent. As I wrote in Citizen Microsoft, none of this is new for Microsoft, a company literally willing to censor democracy in its Chinese blog service while American soldiers fight to establish democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I agree with Dvorak’s take – these tactics are similar to Microsoft’s campaign against Linux. Microsoft’s had five years to put file sharing capabilities into Windows and has failed to do so. That’s left room for people like Bram Cohen to build BitTorrent.

From Broadcast to Webcast

Just as consumers can now replace their land-line phone service with Internet-based voice services (VoIP), the next generation living room television may be primarily an Internet device.

For example, Griffin Technologies recently announced its iFill software that downloads multiple Internet radio streams to your iPod nearly replacing the need for its year-old RadioSHARK which did the same for broadcast radio. Television will likely be the next medium moved from broadcast to the Internet.

The UKNova site already offers BitTorrents for a variety of radio and television from the BBC. People from around the world can now enjoy British content on their computer. If it weren’t for the draconian lobbying efforts of the American entertainment industry and folks like Microsoft, we might have a similar service here in the U.S. already.

With a $99 EyeHome from ElGato.com and you can watch any content you download from the Internet on your living room television today. New televisions will be network enabled to play media from any personal computer. Combining the EyeHome with software such as iPodderX a site like CommonBits is pretty close to this already. (While Apple's iTunes is about to offer Podcast support, I'm not expecting it to support video or BitTorrent downloads which makes it entirely less interesting. Besides, Apple is likely to heavily censor the directory listings.)

Although I don’t want to ignore the obvious race, class and economic issues keeping people from broadband Internet access, the platform for citizen media distribution is nearly here. We just need more citizen content providers.

Looking Ahead

In this week’s Seattle Weekly, Knute Berger writes that it’s now time to defend public broadcasting funding cuts from the Republican’s deficit producing militarism despite the mediocre, watered-down content. “So while much of public television's programming is lame, we must once again wearily mount the barricades to defend its right to be lame,” says Berger.

I worry that fighting public funding battles individually such as this just plays into Republican strategies. Fighting for CPB further portrays progressives as intellectuals out of touch with mainstream Americans and diverts our energy from emerging efforts that have so much promise.

Perhaps independent media is ready for rebirth. If you’re a budding citizen journalist, get out there and get online. CommonBits would love to share your content with the world.

If you’re a nonprofit organization with multimedia content, consider hosting it via BitTorrent. Get it out there! What are you waiting for?

Progressive think tanks and funders could take a cue from Participatory Culture and (humbly) CommonBits to invest in projects that lead to developing new forms of journalism, new platforms for distribution and new ways of thinking about the need for accurate information in our society.

I’m very interested in your feedback. Please feel free to post comments below or email me.

Comments

[praca za granicą]

nice atricle, thx

[John]

You are right, what was I thinking.

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[Calder Lorenz]

Hey,

As promised, here are the details about NowPublic V3

We will be going live tomorrow between 6am and 6pm (pending the servers showing up to work). You can find a sneak peak here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clorenz/

Feel free to drop me a note with your comments. Thanks. My email address is
clorenz(at)nowpublic(dot)com.

Yrs,
Calder

[Calder Lorenz]

Hi,

As promised, here are the details…

It looks like the NowPublic V3 beta program will be starting next week. Let me know if you want to join us. We’d be very interested in what you think. My email address is clorenz(at)nowpublic(dot)com.

Thanks,
Calder
Email: clorenz@nowpublic.com

[Calder Lorenz]

Hi,

We’ve quietly been working on the next release of NowPublic and it is now – finally - in testing. We still have a few seats left in our beta group so if you’re interested in getting an advanced viewing before we launch please let me know.

In the coming weeks I’ll post additional details here but please feel free to contact me in the meantime. My email address is calder(at)nowpublic(dot)com.

Best,

Calder Lorenz,
Director, Contributor Relations, NowPublic.com

[Jake]

Thanks for a concise rundown of this ripe moment in independent media development.

I've been giving a lot of thought to the opportunity for bridging the legacy public media systems and the emergent web-based media movement. From mission to business model to technology - there are a lot of good reasons for public radio and television to embrace the more participatory and distributed "citizen" media efforts underway, and leverage the still significant assets of broadcast towers, staff, community connections, and audiences in the tens of millions. And in many ways public media could be an ally with some valuable experience to bring to bear (as federal funding receded to a relatively small percentage of support public media has learned the hard way how to give content away for free as a public service and still sustain nonprofit businesses through listener support and sponsorships).

But there are a huge gaps in attitude, approach, and culture, and it's entirely possible the opportunity will be lost, and public media will remain on a parallel and perilous path, increasingly under pressure politically, financially, and competitively.

The Public Radio Exchange (prx.org), was created in part to fill these gaps and spur innovation in public media, and push for the new "public webcasting" to join forces with the best of public media.

Cheers,

Jake

[Michel Bauwens]

This is a great overview of recent developments. I had done something similar 2 weeks ago, for a book I'm writing on 'peer to peer theory' and which I'm updating through a newsletter (http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p )

I hope the following excerpt is not too long. Of interest are the many endnotes which document the statements in the maintext, if they do not come through, they are available at the URL above.

It's a draft, but complements some of your own comments I think.

Michel Bauwens
EXCERPT: TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Distributed technological networks are the most important infrastructure for cognitive capitalism. But as a communication infrastructure, the dominant transnational corporations could for a long time rely on their own private telecommunication networks. The internet has radically democratized access to this kind of infrastructure, to everyone with access to a computer. Similarly, for its cultural hegemony, the dominant social system has relied on "one to many" broadcasting system, which require a heavy capital outlay, and are controlled by monopolistic corporate interests, in charge of 'manufactured consent', and in other countries, by the state itself. The stranglehold of corporate media is such, including its hold on our very psyche's (we 'think like television' even when we've not been watching it for years). It has become all but impossible for any social minority (except religious and ethnic groups which can marshall vast resources themselves) to have its voice heard. Media reform seems definitely beyond reach. However, though the internet is also characterized by a certain commercial exploitation, and by very strong commercial entities such as Yahoo, as a whole, and as a distributed network, it is not owned nor controlled by commercial entities, but by a network of various entities: commercial, governmental, nongovernmental, etc... It contains the historical promise of an 'alternative information and communication infrastructure', a many to many, bottom-up resource that can be used by various social forces. Mackenzie Wark, in his Hacker Manifesto, distinguishes the producers of immaterial use value, from the owners of the vectors of information, without whom no exchange value can be realized. The promise of the internet is that we now have a vector of information production, distribution and exchange, that functions at least partly outside of the control of what he calls the 'vectoralist' class. The situation seems to be the following, and we use the distinctions drawn up by Yochai Benkler in his "The Political Economy of the Commons" essay. The physical layer, networks, and communication lines, are widely distributed between commercial, state, and academic interests, with no single player or set of players dominating, and the computers themselves are widely in the hands of the public and civil society. The logical layer, especially TCP/IP, and increasingly the various aspects of the read/write Web, the filesharing protocols are still systematically rigged for participation. The content layer, is on the one hand subject to an increasingly harsh intellectual property regime, but, commercial players are themselves subject to the logic of the economy of attention and the Wisdom Game, dictating policies of information sharing and giving, in order to get the attention. Next to the commercial portals, which may or may not play a nefarious role, the public is widely enabled to create its own content, and has been doing so by the millions. While part of the previously existing Information Commons or public domain is disappearing, other parts are being continuously constructed through the myriad combined efforts of civil society users.

This process is in full swing and is what we attempt to describe in this section. Below, I reproduce an adapted version of a diagram from Hans Magnus Enzensberger, which outlines the difference between 'repressive' and 'emancipatory' media. Without any doubt, the emerging alternative media infrastructure has an overwhelming number of characteristics of being an 'emancipatory' medium: 1) it is based on distributed programming; 2) each receiver is a potential transmitter; 3) it has mobilization potential; 4) it is characterized by interaction and self-production; 5) it enables a political learning process; it allows collective production by equipotent participants; 6) the social control is effected through self-organisation. Just compare this list to the characteristics of corporate television! Thus, the historical importance of these developments seems overwhelmingly clear. This does not mean that the alternative internet media infrastructure automatically leads to emancipation, but that it can certainly enable political processes in that direction.

Let us now summarise these developments in technical terms. In terms of media, the broadband internet is rapidly mutating to enhance the capacities to create distributed online publishing in the form of the Writeable Web (also called read-write web) and blogging in particular; the distribution of audio programming is possible through internet radio and various audioblogging developments such podcasting (audio content, music or video distribution through iPod or MP3 players), and other types of 'time-shifted radio' such as mobcasting ('casting' to mobile phones), and even Skypecasting (using the popular Voice over Internet Telephony software Skype , but for broadcasting purposes, especially Internet radio programs). Audiovisual distribution is possible through the emerging video blogging (vlogging ), but mostly through broadband P2P filesharing systems such as Bittorrent and Exeem , now already responsible for the majority of internet traffic . While Exeem is still in development at the time of writing this paragraph (June 2005), Bittorrent is considered to be a major innovation making easy broadband-based audiovisual distribution all but inevitable. A wide variety of associated services is being developed by small companies or cooperative groups to assist citizens in their own production of audiovisual material .

All these developments taking together mean that the creation of an alternative information and communication infrastructure, outside of the control and ownership of the state and corporate-based one-to-many broadcasting systems, is well under way. These developments are not the product of a conscious activist strategy as the one proposed by Mark Pesce and practiced by players such as Indymedia, but it also to a large degree the natural outgrowth of the empowerment of the users, who, whenever they by a WiFi hub, or install Skype for personal usage, or any other natural act of ameliorating their own connectivity, are building this alternative infrastructure, from the edges onward, step by step, and this is also why it seems quite unstoppable . In a sense, this is another example of the 'production without a manufacturer' or 'the supply-side supplying itself'', explained in 3.1.A (and notes).

These technological developments form the basis for a new practice of citizen-produced 'journalism' or 'reporting' (for lack of a better term) centered around the phenomemon of blogs, and augmented by the other techniques we have been discussing . See the example of the Korean OhMyNews , working with 35,000 citizen reporters and 40 staff members, as an example of a new type of hybrid journalism. These developments are a new vehicle for the production of 'public opinion', for the creation, expression , distribution and sharing of knowledge. And it is both supplementing and competing with the traditional mass media vehicles that used to mold public opinion . It represents an important opportunity to distribute views that fall outside the purview of 'manufactured consent'. Clay Shirky has called it a 'process of mass amateurisation' , an analysis that is related to my own concept of 'de-institutionalisation', a key aspect of peer to peer process which I discuss in 3.3.C.

All this outpouring of expression, news and commentary is interlinked in a blogosphere, which has developed its own techniques to distill what is important, from what is less important. Similar with the broadcast model is that the blogosphere still has hubs and connectors drawing large crowds, but different is that it creates the possibility of a "long tail". This means that whereas in the broadcast world the distribution curve bottoms out at the end, with no resources left for minority interests, in P2P media, this bottoming out does not occur (the curve flattens before reaching the bottom), because the possibility exists of creating thousands upon thousands of micro-communities, organized by affinity. David Weinberger, focusing on the role of the blog for the individual, says it is 'an expression of 'the self in conversation' , that is available as a permanent record (through the innovation of permalinks,which create a fixed and permanent URL for every entry, unlike webpages which were always subject to change and disappearance). A crucial innovation for the spread of blogs has been the development of RSS feeds , i.e. Really Simple Syndication, which allows internet users to 'subscribe' to any blog they like, and to manage the totality of their feeds through their email, RSS reader software, or online sites like Bloglines.

Therefore, in physical terms, for the evolving telecommunications infrastructure, the broadcast model is being replaced by the ‘meshwork system’, which is already used by the Wireless Commons movement to create a worldwide wireless communications network that aims to bypass the Telco infrastructure . Several local governments aim to aid such a process . For Yochai Benkler,the development of a "Open physical layer" based on open wireless networks, the so-called Spectrum Commons, is a key precondition for the existence of a "Core Common Infrastructure".

In such a system a wide array of local networks is created at very low cost, while they are interlinked with ‘bridges’. Communication on these networks follows a P2P model, just like the internet. Mark Pesce has already developed a realistic proposal to build an integrated alternative network within ten years , based on similar premises, and with the additional concept of developing a 'Open Source TV Tuner' which he predicts will completely overturn traditional broadcasting. (The same technology could also be used for phone calls, once hybrid WiFi phones are available .) He has developed serious arguments about why 'netcasting' is not only economically feasible, but superior to the broadcasting model . There are also already commercial versions of ‘file-serving television’ models such as the one pioneered by TiVo as well as the different plans involving TV over Internet Protocol . "Radio Your Way" is a similar, though less popular, application for radio and there is a similar broad array of internet radio developments . Telephony using the Internet Protocol , recently popularized by Skype, is similarly destined to overcome the limitations of the hitherto centralized telephone system. P2P is generally seen as the coming format of the telecommunication infrastructure, even by the industry itself, and confirmed by my own former experience as strategic planner in that industry. British Telecom has declared that by 2008, the entirety of its network will have been converted to TCP/IP protocols.

While mobile telephony is strongly centralized and controlled, it will have to compete with wireless broadband networks, and users are busily turning it into yet another participative medium, as described by Howard Rheingold in Smart Mobs.

In the above phenomenology of P2P, notice that I have taken an extreme literal definition of P2P, as many hybrid forms exist, but the important and deciding factor is: does it enable the participation of equipotent members? One of the key factors is: how inclusionary is the social practice, or technology, or theory ,or any other manifestation of the P2P ethos.

These developments almost certainly mean that a new format of distribution and consumption is arising. At stake is the eventual unsustainability of the current TV broadcast model, in which the TV stations sell their audiences to advertisers, because they control the audience and the distribution of the programs. In the new form of distribution, in which users themselves take control of the choice and timing of the programs, because of the easy replication throughout the internet, both disintermediation and re-intermediation occur. The "hyperdistribution" of audiovisual material, think about the millions already downloading movies and TV programs, creates a direct link between producers and consumers. However, the economy of attention suggests process of re-intermediation. But as we have seen in the blogosphere for printed content, this process can be undertaken by clever algorhythms and protocols and reputation-based systems, coupled with processes of viral diffusion of recommendations in affinity groups, and do not necessarily mean commercial portals or intermediaries. In a upcoming book, Mark Pesce has coined the concept of 'hyperpeople' to describe the new generation of techno-savvy youngsters who are already living this new reality, and as the technology becomes increasingly easier to use, it will be spreading throughout the population. And of course, it is not just a new form of consumption, there are also changes at the producer side, with audiences becoming themselves the producers of audiovisual material, as we can see in the growth of podcasting programs. Two consequences flow from this. First, the generalization of the phenomemom of the "Long Tail",whereby minority audiences are no longer constrained by the 'lowest common-denominator' mass media and mass marketing logic; and we can expect a flowering of creativity and self-expression. Second, the possibility of new majorities of taste and opinion forming, outside of the constraints of the mass production of unified corporate taste. As we expect from the playing out of P2P processes, we see both a strengthening of personal autonomy and a new type of collectivity. For some time now, we have seen democracies bypass majority opinions and the development of hypermanipulation. The hope is that techno-social developments are creating the possibility of a new balance of power, a 'second superpower' of global public opinion that is more democratic in character.

To judge the progress or regress of these efforts, we should look at developments in the physical layer of the internet: who owns and controls it, at present a wide variety of players, with a key role for the public and civil society who own the computers which are in fact the intelligent core of the internet; the logical layer or protocols, which pits closed systems against open systems in a continious conflict; and the content layer, which pits the free creation of an Information Commons against permanent attempts to strengthen restrictive intellectual property rights. According to Yochai Benkler, what we need is a Core Commons Infrastructure, which would consist of an

- an open physical layer in the form of open wireless networks, a 'spectrum commons'
- an open logical layer, i.e. systematic preference for open protocols and open platforms
- an open content layer, which means the roll back of too restrictive IP laws geared to defend business monopolies and stifle the development of a free culture

Let's conclude by assessing the current 'techno-social' state of progress of such an alternative infrastructure:

- Bittorrent , Exeem, and other software programs enable broadband peercasting
- Viral diffusion exists to circulate information about programming

What needs to be built is:

- a meshwork of netcasting transmitters, as proposed by Mark Pesce
- user-friendly desktop software, to manage content (Pesce's Open Tuner proposal)
- better social mechanisms to select quality into such an alternative framework

[Brian Boyko]

Agreed - public television is worth fighting for if only for the simple fact that the television is in 100% of homes and a good portion of public places, where the Internet hasn't reached that - yet. Broadband, which you need for video, has an even lower penetration.

Plus, there's something to be said that large, well-funded professional journalism organizations and journalists have the expertise to get stories the smart-mobs can't. I'm not talking access, but professionalism. (I would not count anyone NOT on a public broadcaster in this situation - I'm just talking BBC and PBS.)

[David Brake]

> fighting for CPB further portrays progressives as intellectuals out of touch with mainstream Americans

Don't let your disdain for MSM spill over onto public TV and radio. Why perpetuate the caricature the Republicans are spreading that it's only 'pointy headed intellectuals' who need non-commercial media? Public webcasters and public broadcasting advocates should be on the same side...

P.S. don't forget to mention http://video.google.com/ and http://www.omn.org/ which should make it easier for ordinary people and small publishers to get their video found and http://www.vimeo.com/ which is an easy way for people to share small clips.