Emerging Massive Media Paula Le Dieu http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2005/view/e_sess/6028 At the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference San Diego, California, 17 March 2005 Impressionistic transcript by Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- Whirlwind tour of large broadcasters - particularly large the BBC. The BBC is becoming simply the "massive" media, in a world where everyone is potentially a broadcaster, where mass media is truly a mass media, by and for the masses. Audiences are acquiring media under their own terms, or more frighteningly for the incumbents, acquiring it from their own suppliers on the networks. Broadcasters broadcast to active, self-commissioning audiences, who decided on their own the what where when and how. Prosumers are becoming the mass media -- but what about the massive media? How do they compete with their audiences for attention? For many massive media orgs, the competition is viewed as heavily weighed in their favor. Every time Wikipedia trounces yet another massive media org (e.g. the NYT yesterday) it creates ripples of doubt in the massive orgs. Last year Joi Ito gave a keynote at a TV con, to international TV execs: he said: "Re DRM: you will win. You will convince your audiences not to use your content." When Patrick Kennedy VP of Sony Digital Networks said, "Get your stuff out there any way you can, youngsters don't even know who you are anymore. Worry about the business model later." Massive media orgs aren't comfortable anymore. The BBC is facing problems: it moved the 9PM news to 10PM because audiences were getting home later. The mid-teens/early-twenties have always been a concern for the Beeb, but it was understood that by their mid-thirties they'd come home to Auntie. But now they are play games, chatting with one another, they're not coming to Auntie, they're joining communities. How can Massive Media respond? Even the most enlightened orgs still have their bad days. On their bad days, they do stuff like this: the pre transmission cut of Dr Who leaked onto the net and engendered much conversation.. They were offended, delighted, saddened, etc. This great, free audience feedback and insight and creativity is locked up in registered online communities. The BBC said, "We would urge viewers not to spoil their enjoyment and wait for the final version which airs at the end of the month" Contrast with Battlestar Galactica -- pre-release the first episode without commercials, with a director's commentary podcast. On their good days, massive media orgs do things like release PCs, see the BBC Micro. 1MM sold -- top spec machines. Why did it do this? In retrospect, we see that the Micro was part of the toolkit with which audiences took their first steps into the creative age. it was open: hack the hardware and software, make your own games -- that's why there's a British games industry that only takes a back seat to Japan and the US. Now there's something that's far closer to audiences. The BBC has 600,000 hours of archival video -- 68 years of continuous viewing. 0.5MM audio recordings. An opportunity to apply learning from the BBC Micro. The BBC has committed to the Creative Archive. BBC led public service initiative to digitize and distribute the BBC audio and video archive in such a way that it allows the UK public to download, listen, watch and R USE, REMIX the materials in their own creative endeavors: rip, mix and share the BBC. Bring the history of ideas and expression that the BBC constitutes into the discussion and build a truly creative nation. The BBC's director general called digital exclusion a form of social waste and committed to no encryption. There will be no DRM in the BBC Archive. The license will be inspired by CC, and we'll call on our audiences to use P2P to spread the archive. This will be slow, a beta, then a beta+ then a beta++, etc. We're hoping audiences will become metadata partners and do their own annotation of the archive: folksonomy. What about the UK-only license and the idea of openness? It's hard -- the BBC doesn't think of itself as global, but we're working on this. Rights ownership in the BBC archive is rich and complex. In order for the archive to succeed, we need to honor and inspire existing rights-holders to transform the dusty warehouse into something that inspires the next generation of creators. We'll get to see individuals' creativity made public. Imagine if we could coax massive media down from their broadcast towers!