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Media Television The Internet

Mark Pesce: Open Source Television 107

Posted by timothy from the public-access-media dept.
alexburnsdisinfo writes "Mark Pesce has given a riveting talk to Australia's Smart Internet CRC on Open Source Television. Rights for reuse granted under the Creative Commons Attribution License." (The talk is here transcribed as text, and it's good reading.)
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Mark Pesce: Open Source Television More

Mark Pesce: Open Source Television

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  • They just want to let the cable TV wash over them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:09AM (#9696404)
    The worldwide consolidation of media industries has led to a consequent closure of the public airwaves with respect to matters of public interest. As control of this public resource becomes more centralized, the messages transmitted by global media purveyors become progressively less relevant, less diverse, and less reflective of ground truth.

    Greg Palast talks a lot about how misinformation (and lack of information in general) comes from media consolidation in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy [amazon.com]. While I don't latch on to everything the man says I do believe that we are living in a time of self-censorship. While the media says that they are fair and balanced we have fantastic shows like Bill O'Reilly [thenation.com] and Fox News! We have proof coming from Iraq war coverage that mentions that of course they back the war!

    Are we all going to back "Open Source" media? No. Slashdot might but the rest of the world could give a shit. We are talking about people that just don't give a fuck about thinking for themselves. They care only what they hear on TV and read in their local paper. Spin doesn't exist for them. To paraphrase from Runaway Jury: people just want to come home and sit in their lounge chair and let the cable TV wash over them... The rest of us are conspiracy freaks! Fox News didn't mention anything about this so it must not be true.

    Continue your attempts to educate and change the world but don't be surprised when it doesn't do a fucking thing other than label you as someone on the fringe.

    • Re:They just want to let the cable TV wash over th (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm beginning to believe that the only way to make people realise the influence television has over them is to by some means turn the crap off for a week or so (highly undemocratic).
      Imagine the babies produced

    • Re:They just want to let the cable TV wash over th (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Oxygen99 ( 634999 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:21AM (#9696523)
      That's pretty unfair. You want to try working a 40/50/60 hour week with wife and kids in a hard manual job and then see how much spare time you have to make yourself well informed. Some of us simply don't have time to do this. Somehow the /. mentality seems to be that we should all be experts, all the time on everything that affects us. Unfortunatly, the world doesn't allow that and once we've made time for work, food, sleep, family and friends, there ain't a lot left to determine whose turn it is to tell media porkies. Personally I just don't believe anything of it. I know that's a bad attitude to have, but it's all I have the time or energy to do.

      Just my 2 cents...

      • Re:They just want to let the cable TV wash over th (Score:5, Insightful)

        by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:24AM (#9696552)
        You want to try working a 40/50/60 hour week with wife and kids in a hard manual job and then see how much spare time you have to make yourself well informed. Some of us simply don't have time to do this. Somehow the /. mentality seems to be that we should all be experts, all the time on everything that affects us. Unfortunatly, the world doesn't allow that and once we've made time for work, food, sleep, family and friends, there ain't a lot left to determine whose turn it is to tell media porkies. Personally I just don't believe anything of it. I know that's a bad attitude to have, but it's all I have the time or energy to do.

        Then be happy when you are forced to welcome the WTO overlords and their "incentives" for lower wages and more corporate control.

        This is stuff that effects EVERYONE. You should be interested in setting aside time to learn. If you are really serious and not trolling I hope to god you heed my words.

        If you won't do it for yourself then do it for your family. You seem so interested in making sure you work hard for them you should also be interested in making sure that you won't have to work even harder for less.
      • I know where you're coming from. I find that RSS helps a lot - I have a bunch of news sources that I believe to be fairly unbiased (like Reuters) and others which I know to be biased (like Indymedia and the UK Liberal Democrats) stuck in my RSS reader, and scroll through the headlines when I take a break from coding. I probably only read a small number of the articles in detail, but I get enough of an impression of what's going on from the headlines to know when someone's bullshitting me. Give it a go, it s

      • Somehow the /. mentality seems to be that we should all be experts, all the time on everything that affects us.

        That's because we should.

        once we've made time for work, food, sleep, family and friends, there ain't a lot left

        Well, there's your problem right there.
        Cut out the family and friends part, and you'll have plenty of time to sit in front of your computer typing annoying replies to Slashdot posts in which you are only marginally interested.

        On a slightly more serious note, there is a middle ground b

    • Continue your attempts to educate and change the world but don't be surprised when it doesn't do a fucking thing other than label you as someone on the fringe.

      You're never going to get everyone to agree with you. If that was possible, democracy would be unnecessary, because we would all have the same viewpoint and elections would be pointless.

      You also state:
      We are talking about people that just don't give a fuck about thinking for themselves. They care only what they hear on TV and read in their lo

      • Re:They just want to let the cable TV wash over th (Score:5, Interesting)

        by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:49AM (#9696776)
        Although I'm very liberal, I am far happier to talk about world events to someone who is a fan of Bill O'Reilly's TV show as opposed to someone who gets their news from the radio on the way to work in the morning. Just because I disagree with their opinions doesn't mean those opinions aren't worthwhile. It is the lack of opinions that we need fear most.

        My point was that these people that listen to Bill O'Reilly don't generally have opinions. They are just parroting what Mr. O'Reilly tells them.

        Sadly for them, they are usually misinformed and parroting spun information that is whining about the spin from other sources.

        I'd rather educate someone and attempt to get them to learn from various sources rather than "debate" with someone who is just a parrot from a single source.
        • And how are Bill O'Reilly listeners different from the throngs of anti-Bush fanatics who merely parrot "he's evil--EVIL!" without any foundation in their own head for WHY? Do you enjoy their company merely because you consider them correct, and forgive their empty painted heads?

          I can't stand Limbaugh, Hannity, et al, but there are equally kooky airheads on the liberal side. I'd say the same about the other sides of the political polyhedron, but they're usually forced to justify themselves to the mainstre
          • And how are Bill O'Reilly listeners different from the throngs of anti-Bush fanatics who merely parrot "he's evil--EVIL!" without any foundation in their own head for WHY? Do you enjoy their company merely because you consider them correct, and forgive their empty painted heads?

            I wasn't aware that I was parroting that Bush was evil... Maybe you can go back through my Slashdot history and quote me... In fact I believe what I do say is that Bush is too stupid to be of any importance. He's just a puppet f
        • My point was that these people that listen to Bill O'Reilly don't generally have opinions. They are just parroting what Mr. O'Reilly tells them.

          Thank you Mr. Independant thinker, now I know I've been a parrot all my life and I can turn my attention now to forming my own opinion.

          Seriously though, "these people"? Just who are you talking about? I know plenty of well educated people who happen to be Bill O'Reilly fans, just like I know plenty of well educated people who listen to Shawn Hannity's radio show

    • Re:They just want to let the cable TV wash over th (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've given up getting involved in arguments about media bias, after realizing that every last person, right or left, thinks the media are biased against his particular point of view. Your reasoning (Fox News! Liars! Bias!!) is a perfect example of why I don't bother.

      But if I may offer a non-partisan suggestion: if you're trying to persuade someone of something, it's helpful not to begin by telling them how fucking stupid, lazy and uninformed they are. If for no other reason than that it's possible there are

    • Are we all going to back "Open Source" media? No. Slashdot might but the rest of the world could give a shit.

      You don't have to give a shit to increase something's market share.

      Replace 'media' with 'software' and it's the same. Most Free Software users don't 'back' the software -- in the sense that they don't contribute to it -- but they still use it. If collaboratively developed media doesn't suck, then some people will watch it, whether they're geeks or not. They don't have to think for themselves,


    • You're so brain washed it's amazing you didn't have to get Hillary's village to write your posting for you. You've got so much hate for Fox News, ever try watching Dan Rather (be in France). Good Lord, people finally get a chance to see a little bit of both sides and you're all for going back to getting your news from communists.

      If you want to read a REALITY book, forget freaking "Runaway Jury" (John Grisham thinks everyone's and idiot but himself, classic liberal view, "Your too stupid to take care of you

  • Glorified public access? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Turn-X Alphonse ( 789240 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:11AM (#9696435) Journal
    Last time I checked it was rather difficult to enhance something already recorded... This seems like a gimmick to get onto the open source band wagon, it's just something which won't work outside of software IMO.

    Open source is an ideal, it works with people who agree with it (us geeks), but when you try to apply an ideal to something else it won't work (hey lets never have sex so we can make a baby! for example).
    • Open source is an ideal, it works with people who agree with it (us geeks), but when you try to apply an ideal to something else it won't work (hey lets never have sex so we can make a baby! for example).

      I don't get the lets never have sex to make a baby as compared to open source remark

      I would say if you want to compare sex to open source it would be like hookers being free. Hey, maybe the open source model should be applied to other industries.
      • The idea was that some ideals don't work.. the baby wasn't relatedto open source at all. The baby was relating to an ideal(don't have sex you're a priest for example). Ideals work in 1 place and 1 place only, it's when people start to push them on to other areas (Open source on TV) that problems start
      • So from now on instead of calling certain girls and guys sluts, one should call them open source hookers?

        It's a working girl that doesn't get paid :-)
    • Not really what you were talking about, but difficult ot enhance something already recorded? Tell that to George Lucas. Actually, seriously, please tell him.
      • Actually, in terms of Open Source TV, I think the point of its good is most obviously shown by the The Phantom Edit. The people who have seen it all say it is a much better version of Ep. 1 than the actual movie. I just wish someone would do an Episode 2: Edit of the Clones.

    • Re:Glorified public access? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:21AM (#9696524)
      no no no, and finally, NO. I think you are just wrong, Open Source tv programming would be GREAT, maybe it has not occured to YOU that we would be able to improve upon a program by editing it but trust me it CAN be done. imagine taking several "seemingly unrelated" shows or documentaries, cutting them up into snipps then piecing parts of them back together to create something entirly NEW. much as the f9-11 documentary was created from pieces of OTHER programs which were prevously aired.

      i think there is ALOT of room for Open Source in TV i have not even mentioned the idea of Over Dubbing various languages to shows that otherwise would never be translated, thus opening doors to broad variety of new audiences. the possibilities are endless.
      • Oh yea.. I can edit that pro America speech Bush gave and edit it to say America sucks.

        With TV opinions pull in fanboys, fanboys make money. If you may your TV show open source some gimp will edit it so they get support and not you.
    • Last time I checked it was rather difficult to enhance something already recorded... This seems like a gimmick to get onto the open source band wagon, it's just something which won't work outside of software IMO.

      Yeah, this is getting a little old. Television has no source code to open. There have been several topics on slashdot like this as of late calling something open source that has no source code. The idea seemed to come from the topic description instead of the article for the previous ones. I

    • Last time I checked it was rather difficult to enhance something already recorded... This seems like a gimmick to get onto the open source band wagon, it's just something which won't work outside of software IMO.

      It could certainly work for TV. If the network would provide for me, on request, the principal photography of the broadcast (before it was edited, color-corrected, and otherwise altered), that might be somewhat analogous to open source. Then they could let me edit the footage however I see fit and

  • Here is the article. Its almost slashdotted.

    My First (and Last) Time With Bill O'Reilly
    by David Cole

    Print this article
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    I t started innocuously enough. On Monday, June 21, a producer from Fox News's The O'Reilly Factor called to ask me to appear as a guest that evening to comment on a front-page story in the New York Times claiming that the Bush Administration had overstated the value of intelligence gained at Guantánamo and the dangers posed by th

    • Re:My first and Last time with Bill O'reilly (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The site is, in fact, Slashdotted so this may really be the linked article, but it's an anti-Fox News rant that has absolutely zero to do with the presumed subject. Either the editors are complete morons who don't even look at the story they link or the moderators are complete morons who don't even look at what they're modding up.

      I report, you decide.

    • Partial Transcript: The O'Reilly Factor 2-4-03

      O'REILLY: In the "Personal Stories" segment tonight, we were surprised to find out than an American who lost his father in the World Trade Center attack had signed an anti-war advertisement that accused the USA itself of terrorism. The offending passage read, "We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11... we too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage -- even as we recalled similar scenes i

  • And this is the perfect way to implement it... (Score:5, Informative)

    by diagnosis ( 38691 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:19AM (#9696506) Homepage
    And what better way to share Free stuff than the Internet?

    Nullsoft (of WinAmp/trouble-making fame) released NSV/Winamp TV. A good description:

    NSV is a new multimedia container format designed for network video streaming. The format is known as NullSoft Video or simply NSV. NSV was developed by Nullsoft corporation, the same company that produced the popular Winamp and Shoutcast streaming audio software.

    NSV consists of free software to encode, stream and view video. There are additional third party NSV applications being developed and distributed by stations and users.

    Visit here for more info [nullsoft.com]

    ---------------------
    Freedom or Evil: Freevil.net [freevil.net]
    G. W. Bush says, "You decide!"

  • Crash (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Apocalypse111 ( 597674 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:22AM (#9696534) Journal
    Oh wonderful, so when I'm watching CSI and it crashes, I'll have to go to some obscure Outer Mongolian forum to look up a fix that works for my particular TV/Cable box/Cable provider/Channel combination, take 3 hours to recompile the kernel, and when I'm done I'll have missed my show!

    Seriously, it seems like lately you can tack on the phrase "Open source" to anything and it will get /.'ed (see previous months articles about open source life, medicine, etc)

    "Hey, I got a brilliant idea! Open source bridges! People drive across these things all the time, and pay tolls! That's just giving money to the MAN, lets give them a free alternative! Upkeep be damned!"
    • Open Source works better for some things than others. Generally speaking, it works well if the project is popular enough to elicit community support.

  • Network Bandwith (Score:4, Insightful)

    by foregather ( 578505 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:26AM (#9696578)
    I agree that the centralized control of airwave spectrum is greatly limiting people's ability to communicate with one another as well as gather information about the world at large.

    I wonder if the issue is currently one of human nature of broadcast technology. If we were all running on Ethernet networks we could, as currently happens daily on college campuses across the country, distribute TV shows through very fast file transfers. If the audience for such transfers were large enough, people would produce and distribute original content over it rather than just copying material produced for tv. If you look at a college campus you can see the early form of this already replacing normal tv watching for large numbers of students, and they are some of the high consumption media viewers.

    If the network spreads, does this model spread with it, and if it does do we still face the same limitations of centralized self-censorship found in the spectrum clutches at the moment?

  • yesterday's tomorrow (Score:4, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:31AM (#9696613) Homepage Journal
    I'm glad to see that for Mark "VRML" Pesce, the future is always just around the corner.

  • Open Source Television? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:34AM (#9696648) Homepage Journal
    So that's liek...what? Everyone has a hand in the writing of the plot lines for a certain show?

    I could see that show going straight to hell very quickly, given the comments and mindset here on /.
    • I could see that show going straight to hell very quickly, given the comments and mindset here on /.

      Oh great, we have a show where everyone is pouring hot grits down natlie portmans pants, running around saying stupid catchphrases from 10 years ago while in the background a large number of the cast are busy simply flaming each other as a horribly disfigured an dnaked man drags his ass randomly across the screen?

      The funny part is that with the current mentaliaty of the general public, it would become a to

  • Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mwheeler01 ( 625017 ) <matthew@l@wheeler.gmail@com> on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @09:46AM (#9696753)
    I hate to be picky but "Open Source"? Wouldn't a better analogy be GPL? I mean what source is there in Television?

    • Re:Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 )
      I hate to be picky but "Open Source"? Wouldn't a better analogy be GPL? I mean what source is there in Television?

      Think 'expanded universe'.

      Suppose MediaCo come up with CoolSFShow. They make a couple of seasons, it's moderately popular. They place CoolSFShow's copyright under some Open Source-style licence.

      Now fans are free to write and publish their own derivative works - CoolSFShow spinoffs. But MediaCo are also free - because they chose a GPLish licence - to take those derivatives and use them them

      • Re:Open Source (Score:3, Informative)

        by demaria ( 122790 )
        I don't think MediaCo could use those fan scripts for free. Wouldn't that be against the Writers Union rules?

        Of course, fans could write and submit scripts for consideration, but they can do that today.
        • But if you do production in an open shop state, or set up your production company from the beginning to be union-free, why worry about union rules?

          IMHO this is one thing that is killing Hollywood as a cinema production center. Labor unions and guilds do have their place, and companies that abuse their workers do deserve the unions they get. Still, if you are offering professional wages for professional work, union rules really don't matter and you can produce whatever you wanted to make.

          What caused the

  • Finally (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Morky ( 577776 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @10:47AM (#9697363)
    Now when a show has delivered a particularly banal line, I can get in there and fix it.

  • Mark Pesce (Score:4, Informative)

    by Frogg ( 27033 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @10:58AM (#9697480)

    I can't read the article at the moment (their MySQL has overloaded)...

    ...but Mark Pesce was the original inventor of VRML -- which, although it seems to've pretty much died-a-death in the dot-com bust, I think we'll eventually go full circle and re-discover/re-invent it once we've all got SVG viewers built-in to our browsers.

  • Geez... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Richthofen80 ( 412488 ) on Wednesday July 14, 2004 @12:13PM (#9698285) Homepage
    these days you can append 'open source' to pretty much anything and it works.

    I'm still waiting for open source sex and an open source girlfriend.
  • Cringely's NerdTV [pbs.org] a weekly, GPL'd show on tech issues. AFAIK, it was the first open-source TV program ever and was supposed to start "airing" a couple of years ago. They seemed to have all the technical details ironed out and be about to start when NerdTV completely dissapeared from the face of the Earth.

    Anyone with inside information out there?

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