Phew!!!
I’ve just finished the last of the Wedding invites (for the day people, everyones who is invited to the reception are going out this weekend).
I’ve also set up a site for wedding updates.
I’ve just read this article and can’t help but feeling a sense of dispair at the complete lack of reality in these executives heads.
The media industries (the film industry, the broadcast industry and the recording industry) have for years produced content for the consumption of the masses purely for the purpose of driving advertising revenue. It is this fact that makes me feel slightly queasy.
Am I the only one who finds the term “content producer” a bit insulting?
To reduce the last 100,000 years of human artistic endeavour to the generic term “content production” is a pathetic indication of the disposable nature of our modern existance. Everything we are, our culture, our songs, art, poems and stories reduced to items of “content” for “consumption”. Business views these items as commodities to be traded, and talks in terms of “intellectual property”, completely denying the rights and desires of the creators.
To be perfectly honest, I find the term “consumer” pretty degrading too.
Should the value of an individual in a society be measured by the amount of “stuff” he or she consumes? What of community, self sacrifice or personal achievement? Should the goal of humanity be to consume until there is no more left to consume - that certainly seems to be the message fed to us by our media, and their corporate masters. The only irony in that statement is that there appear to be so many weak people in the world fitting within their model of the universe that this worldview appears to be the only one that makes sense by virtue of sheer numbers.
That makes me feel ill because there is only one logical conclusion to that scenario.
From the article: “The other advantage of a clips service is that it would allow for full exploitation of content sharing; users would be able to forward clips of their favourite shows to their friends or blog readers, without fear of breaking copyright laws.”
Clips? How can that possibly be a good or useful thing? When was the last time you thought, “I know, I’ll video the trailers for programmes that are going to be on next week and lend them to my mate at work?”. More likely, you tape something and if they haven’t seen it, you lend them the tape.
Until the idiots who pull the strings understand that no-one is going to want to do less with the things they already have, then they will not understand the Internet.
The Internet is not a channel to be “monetised”, it is an extension of human connectivity and therefore an extension of community. It is our responsibility to inform the industry players that their understanding is flawed. This should not happen by widescale infringement of their rights, it needs to happen by embracing change.
Do not “consume” content produced by these people. Use the tools that the Internet provides and seek out music, films and art that are produced with this new community in mind.
I’ve been writing some getting started documentation for Python and Libxml2 after spending a ridiculous amount of time trawling around the Net only to discover there isn’t really any out there.
I found a reasonable primer at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/05/14/py-xml.html but like most sites, it doesn’t really cover the subject in any depth.
This is a shame, as I have found the library to be one of the most complete XML toolkits around, not to mention its speed. It comes complete with a set of Python bindings, so I would imagine it to be used more but if this is the case, it’s users are keeping their code secret!
So if you are looking to use Libxml2 and Python, you need look no further.
If you already use this combination, why not help out - I’ve put it on my Wiki so jump on in and add some content!
©2006/7 Mike Kneller