Perceptric Forum

Free Documentaries

Chris Gilbey — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:41:00 +1000

Here is an interesting and great resource for when there is nothing to watch on cable!

FreeDocumentaries.Org has an enormous library of material that is riveting viewing!

They say that they honour all copyright laws, although I think that they may be pushing the whole idea of "its better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" line.

Here is the trailer for one movie that they have in the library...

Copyright and Copywrong

Chris Gilbey — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 10:42:00 +1000

What a mess is being made of copyright in the online world.

People steal works from others. People borrow stuff. Some people rely on what they think is the "fair use" provisions of the copyright act. People in Australia think that because they have read an article online about how Google appears to be fighting the Viacom lawsuit that they can use similar arguments in Australia, where copyright law is different to the US.... and on it goes.

And then you see this kind of story appear and you realize that the whole thing is a rats nest of infinite proportions. (And thanks to Laurel Papworth and her blog for pointing to this story).

Seems like Viacom has muscled YouTube into pulling down a piece of content that was part of a program on VH1. Only problem is that the program on VH1 used the material that they have forced YT to pull without permission in the first place. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

We have to realize that copyright in the digital age doesn't work in the way that pre-digital legislators and rights owners contemplated (and the rights owners were the people who lobbied for the laws in the first place, and essentially wrote th first drafts of the statutes anyway).

It is a really interesting time for this discussion too because we are moving rapidly to a point where the amount of time spent consuming media online will be greater than the amount of time spent consuming traditional electronic media. I read the following in a report from Strategic News Service that came out last month:

Video will drive a 21% CAGR in IP traffic across WANs through 2011.

Consumer traffic will surpass business in 2008, causing overall IP traffic to nearly double yearly through 2011. Est. CAGRs: consumer is 58%, business is 23%.

Total IP traffic will nearly quintuple between 2006 and 2011.

Business IP traffic will grow most quickly in developing markets and Asia- Pacific.

Consumer IP traffic will exceed 17 exabytes per month by 2011; business, 10.

40% of consumer IP traffic will be Internet (non-video) traffic, 60% will be “traffic generated by the delivery of traditional commercial video services over IP within a single operator’s network.”

So you can see with this sort of growth infrastructure will grow apace. And content will then have the air to also grow at a phenomenal rate. And at the same time the dirty little secret of the long tail will be there biting us on the bum. That secret of course is the corollary of the millions of markets scenario. This is the fact that content in the digital realm never goes away and continues to propagate at an ever increasing rate.

Which means that copyright owners (copywrong, I prefer to call them now) are going to find that the instances of their works are going to keep on appearing somewhere...

And unless they start by measuring the number of uses or number of occurrences they will never know how much money is leaking out of the system, how much revenue they are foregoing.

And of course this applies perhaps more strongly to new and emerging copyright creators and authors than it does to the incumbents. The incumbents already tend to be paid more than their due, because of the existing policies of the various societies. The rules of the societies are to pay the black box monies on a follow the dollar basis (of course they always deny the existence of a 'black box' but it is there under a variety of names).

So where does all this lead?

You have to have measurement, metrics, analytics. Not just so that advertisers can figure where the best spot is to place an ad, but so that a proper system of reward can be instituted for the creatives in the community.

This is really an imperative for collections societies, I believe. Whether we move to a Larry Lessig vision for the adoption of Creative Commons licenses or some other model, you need to start first with measuring the market. (Full disclosure: This is the vision for Vquence now, which I am a director of, to measure every aspect of social media online).

Vquence Debuts

Richard McKinnon — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 09:23:00 +1100

It's no surprise we like video. It's the future. So good news. Today we announce a heavyweight contender launching into the video arena. We know it remakes content on the web. Why? Chris Gilbey founded it with a very fine technology thinker, Silvia Pfeiffer.

The company went public today in Sydney and Santa Monica. Read the release. Remember the name.

Vquence remakes Internet Video
Video Startup Launches.

Sydney, Australia/Santa Monica,Ca

Australian start up video search, socialization and advertising company, Vquence, commences business today at the heart of the Internet hotspot, video, promising to remake the web experience.

“The Internet is now driven by video. The video quotient of any business or consumer communication: the VQ:is becoming the key factor of success” said co-founder and CEO, Chris Gilbey,

“Vquence helps solve revenue problems for content owners. We make finding videos easy for consumers. We hasten content distribution.”

Vquence provides a one stop shop for content owners to monetize video to consumers under one seamless umbrella. Vquence has a patent pending for an instantaneous approach to clickable video.

“Vquence’s technology and business model turn today’s video assets and costs into online reach and revenue. Consumers, publishers and content owners are united by Vquence” Gilbey noted.

The basis of Vquence is a technology leading video search engine. Users easily discover relevant video content. An authoring toolset then permits easy creation of a playlist of thin sliced videos (or ‘vquence’). The vquence is presented through a specialised video player. This playlist will play in any Web page. Users can cut and paste the code for their vquence into a blog or web page. Dynamic insertion by Vquence places ads into the vquence, based on relevance.

“Vquence boosts social networks.” Gilbey said, adding “Consumers find and aggregate video, then share it widely. They get paid. Content creators and publishers are rewarded from embedded ads in the vquences their communities share.

Initial seed funding to establish Vquence came from Information City Australia Limited, a Melbourne innovation incubator.

“This changes the market dynamic. Consumers become legitimate distributors of the video asset rather than pirates. In contrast, old school DRM brakes distribution” Gilbey said, continuing:

“Vquence gives consumers the ability to opt in or out of ads. Advertisers are getting smarter and making their messages more personal. Passive consumers no longer exist. It’s a community driven outlook now – with the emergence of almost a hive mind. The wisdom of crowds is a powerful market force.”

Vquence was formed in July 2006 by Gilbey and Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, a former CSIRO research scientist. Gilbey is a long time entrepreneur in the content and technology arenas, a former CEO of Lake Technology who consulted to Dolby Laboratories for two years on a global basis.

Dr Pfeiffer is a leading authority on Digital Media Analysis. During a seven year stint at CSIRO she led the team that developed Annodex, an open source platform for video distribution, and her continuing research over the last decade has deepened industry’s understanding of how to apply algorithms to analyse and mediate video content.

“Vquence takes the World Wide Web immeasurably closer towards a Web of Videos, where people build communities around video content published anywhere on the Web. But, uniquely, Vquence guarantees the original content owner will not lose an audience or their content.” Dr Pfeiffer noted.

“Video is the centre of the internet’s next big leap forward. Vquence will be one of the key accelerators.” Pfeiffer said.

The Vquence R&D team is internationally spread and headquartered in Sydney. The company expects to announce a slate of initial customers that includes media and content companies in both the US and Australia.

“Vquence lets consumers click through video and go beyond. Previously, all you could do was click to a video. Vquence is transformational. Vquence gives media publishers the powerful tools of comprehensive, easy search of all their video assets, and then super-distribution.” Dr Pfeiffer concluded.

About Vquence. Vquence is a video search, socialization, and advertising company that has a comprehensive model of monetizing video for content owners to consumers. Demonstrations of the technology are being conducted under NDA. The Vquence website has more information on the company. www.vquence.com. The company has offices in Sydney Australia and Santa Monica Ca.

A cure for cancer?

paul bambury — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 13:47:00 +1100

A drug that's been around for a while, seems to work as a class attack on a number of cancers.

See this New Scientist article.

Interestingly, the author comments

"...The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can't make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap."

Once again, intellectual property laws appear to be working against the interests of humanity.

The development and introduction of DCA will be an interesting case study.

End of DRM, triumph of mp3

paul bambury — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:31:00 +1100

This strangely titled Wired article and this Businessweek article predict the forthcoming demise of attempts to protect online music with DRM. Inevitable really! Still it is remarkable how long it has taken the traditional music industry to accept reality.

YouTube - The Copyright Sharks Circle

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 11:02:00 +1000

I see that now Dick Parsons - CEO at Warners - is planning to sue YouTube (Thanks John Batelle for referencing the great headline "Time to SueTube"! originally from the boing boing blog)

And as John says:

Be careful, Dick, for a shot across the bow may bring a broadside from the other side. And the gorgeous fact of it is this: The other side isn't Google. It's everyone who uses Google (and now, YouTube.) Huh. Worth a pause, a drink, and a think.

More YouTube

Chris Gilbey — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 19:10:00 +1000

I was sent this article today that is an interesting adjunct to the previous YouTube post.

Seems like YouTube really do have a problem - and are working to fix it!

Interesting......

Pirate Party - Getting Stronger

Chris Gilbey — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 16:51:00 +1000

Some time ago I blogged about the coming of the Pirate Party in Sweden.

Well they have been making headlines again, or at least bloglines! Seems that the Swedish government has had a fair bit of pressure put on them to shut down the Pirate guys.

Meanwhile the Pirates are flexing their muscles and....

The general elections are being held in the end of September, and the election campaigns are becoming hotter and hotter. The Pirate Party has decided that what they have now, ideas and ideology, strategy and policies, is what they’re going to run, no need to do any additions or changes now - all energy is put on the election campaign, and the work will be focused very strongly on this until after the election.

What happens after that will depend completely on how the election turns out, and here are many alternatives:

On one scenario, the Pirate Party gets their 4%, which few within the party doubt they will. In that case they will move to become influential in the forming of the government. In Sweden, the prime minister is elected by the parliament, which means that he or she must have a majority of the MPs behind him/her. No party ever gets that many seats, and so, a party that will form a government must seek support from another party, who then gets a situation where they can influence the government. This is a position that the Pirate Party seeks. Their parliamentary work will depend heavily on whether they succeed or not.

This is really interesting stuff. If this can work in Sweden - and bear in mind that at least part of the genesis of this is file sharing capability and practice - and in Sweden there is a totally difference copyright law in place than in the US and UK - much more in keeping with the sort of philosophies of Lessig, I would say.

If they can actually get enough seats to hold the balance of power, and create a stronger aspirational vector than the greens, what an example for the rest of the world. If we can't get charged up about saving the world from greenhouse gasses maybe we can all get motivated to share music and movies on line for free!

Pirate Party

Chris Gilbey — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 06:08:00 +1000

I was fascinated to read in Mark Pincus' blog about the Swedish Pirate Party. Here is an interview with the founder of the party.

I wrote my views on copyright some years ago in a book called "The Infinite Digital Jukebox". My belief is that in a digital world there are two principal sets of laws that you can't mess with - The laws of physics that determine that bits and bytes move at the speed of light and the laws of human nature which determine that people will want to get things at the minimum possible price.

The problem now is that almost everyone is guilty of copyright theft. And when all of society is criminal, clearly the man made laws that determine this are at fault.

DRM doesn't work in a bit torrent world. The extended length of the period of copyright to 70 years after the death of the creator doesn't do anything to contribute to that author's well being, nor of his or her immediate family. These laws entrench the financial power of the corporations who are the publishers.

And yet, what they also do ironically, is to weaken those same corporations. They do this because they create a fallacious illusion that the business models of the past will still work in the future.

We live in a world where anything that can be digitized will be commodotized. And in that world commercial opportunity lives in the 'instant' - the instant delivery of a solution, a piece of music or vision.

The world as we knew it is coming apart - and being reshaped by the googles, the skypes and the my space's of the Internet. Where will it go next?

China, Globalization, and US

Chris Gilbey — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 07:22:00 +1100

One of the fascinating things about macro economics is that they enable you to see such an interesting view of the near future. Economic policy is both a rear view mirror and a lens with which you can see possible future scenarios, and of course plan accordingly.

That is why I read Stephen Roach's essays and report on them here pretty regularly.

I am also really fascinated by what is happening in the US, since the US economy affects the rest of the world... just as the political structure in Washington does, whether the rest of the world likes it or not.

So this week Roach reports from Beijing where he has been privy to meetings withe the Chinese central banker, Chairman Ma. Here is one of the quotes from his essay that I find pretty fascinating, and also enormously relevant to the whole issue of convergence that we discuss at Perceptric every day:

He implied that efforts will be made to further expand Chinese imports from the

as well as deal with the all-important concerns over intellectual property rights. He was emphatic in re-emphasizing the limited role that foreign exchange policy could play in tempering the US saving shortfall and related trade imbalance -- in effect, implying no major change in the RMB exchange rate. At the end of his discourse, he leaned forward, looked me straight in the eye, and stated with great emphasis, “You can take this message back to the American people: It is unfair to make China a scapegoat for structural problems facing the

economy.”

And here is another snip from his essay, this time about a conversation with the Premier:

He implied that efforts will be made to further expand Chinese imports from the US as well as deal with the all-important concerns over intellectual property rights. He was emphatic in re-emphasizing the limited role that foreign exchange policy could play in tempering the US saving shortfall and related trade imbalance -- in effect, implying no major change in the RMB exchange rate. At the end of his discourse, he leaned forward, looked me straight in the eye, and stated with great emphasis, “You can take this message back to the American people: It is unfair to make China a scapegoat for structural problems facing the US economy.”

Taken together what do you get? A very calm and clearly focused China, and a very parochial America (not unsurprising, really - as oneVC I knew in Australia used to say, "You can never go wrong, investing in someone else's self interest" )

So the net net of this story seems to be: China wants to become a beacon of social strength, raising local wages, and increasing buying power, along with improving quality and consuming locally. At the same time it is going to adopt greater transparency with regard to IP laws. The big question is whether it will be able to do all this and keep America happy too.... because China is the source of America's day to day cash. If America introduces tariffs on Chinese goods (whatever they may be dressed up as rhetorically) what will that do to global politics, economics and society generally? Watch this space.