Feb 10
16
What next?
I read a report last night about a new Internet service called Chatroulette.
It is a video chat room, where you get hooked up randomly to people and get to do what you do with people who you meet randomly, I suppose…
According to the writer of the article there is a lot of full frontal in it… I must admit I am not quite ready for that… But for a new Internet value proposition, it is undoubtedly a doozy! And I imagine it consumes a considerable amount of bandwidth.
As far as content is concerned from a philosophical point of view it seems to me to pose a very interesting set of questions…
1) Is anyone recording the material? There is a message that you get before you initiate the feed that asks you if you will allow your camera and mic to be switched on. And it says that this feed may be recorded. If so who owns that content? And more importantly, if someone does, how do you stop it from being replicated and/or disseminated? Because no longer should be rely on copyright laws to prevent. In the digital realm they can't. All we can really do is to set some guidelines for revenue sharing…
2) As this sort of concept gains traction, as it almost certainly will, what will that do to traditional content? I suspect that this sort of concept will be so unbelievably viral that there will be huge audiences for all kinds of spectacles that enable people to do things virtually for each other from remote locations. Not sure what these will be, but no doubt people will figure out what they want to do…
According to the article this is being spread virally from campus to campus among students. That's where there is plenty of bandwidth so not surprising.
I would be interested to hear from anyone who is using this service regularly…