Here's a roundup of stories that might be of interest to fans: news, blog posts, book reviews, lectures, and even video art!
First up, here's a group of stories for vidders, about the direction YouTube is taking.
* In the New York Times, we have, At YouTube, Adolescence Begins at 5, an article about YouTube's 5 year anniversary. Unfortunately, in this article "growing up" seems to mean "selling out", or at the very least, making YouTube a lot more like television and less like a home for user-generated content. "Once known primarily for skateboard-riding cats, dancing geeks and a variety of cute-baby high jinks, YouTube now features a smorgasbord of more professional video that is drawing ever larger and more engaged audiences."
* Similarly, this article--YouTube's Top 100 By Type--defines YouTube's success by how many of its videos are professional and/or have ads on them, and also by the decline of user-generated content like vids. "Overall, YouTube is doing fairly well: although only 41.93% of the most popular videos have ads, that number is growing by 0.83% per month and both unofficial TV/movie clips and user-generated content are down." (emphasis mine)
Next up, a couple of links that talk about the development of tools for what some people are calling "affirmative" fandom (which is creator-centered; vs. "transformational" fandom, which is community and fanworks-oriented):
* The NYT did an article about Cambio, a new website/web video portal that bills itself as "your destination for original shows, specials and short videos featuring your favorite actors, musicians and athletes." It is also being billed as "a 'safe environment' [for artists and celebrities] to talk to fans"; what it purports to offer is direct access to artists and special content for fans. (The Jonas Brothers are partners in this enterprise and will be using Cambio to do direct outreach and marketing to their fans.)
* Similarly, publisher Richard Nash, gave a talk on what he thinks the future of publishing will look like--and it looks a lot like parts of fandom. For example, Nash himself is starting a publishing business/social network called Cursor, which is described as as "a social approach to publishing that focuses on the establishment of powerful, self-reinforcing online membership communities made up of professional authors, reader members, and emerging writers."
Other links include:
* On BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow cited a LiveJournal post by bookshop in Pulitzer-winning fanfic: a non-exhaustive list, which sparked some intense debates as to the definition of fanfic.
* The EFF's Fred von Lohmann reviews Adrian Johns' new book Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates. Quote: "Opposing the 'intellectual property defense industry' is not the same thing as opposing 'intellectual property.; Rather, it is about insisting on values like civil liberties, privacy, and autonomy, and not allowing antipiracy enforcement to trample them."
* Lastly, we have a different kind of transformative work than those that we normally talk about here. In Transformation through YouTube, video artist Patrick Liddell uploads a video to YouTube, rips it, uploads it and rips it, until the sounds and image degrades. From his description: "An homage to the great Alvin Lucier, this piece explores the 'photocopy effect', where upon repeated copies the object begin to accumulate the idiosyncrasies of the medium doing the copying."
We want your suggestions! If you know of an essay, video, article, event, or link you think we should know about you can submit it in three easy ways: comment on the most recent Link Roundup on LJ, IJ or DW, tag a link with "for:otw_news" on Delicious or give @OTW_News a shoutout on Twitter. Links are welcome in all languages!
Submitting a link doesn't guarantee that it will be included in a roundup post, and inclusion of a link doesn't mean that it is endorsed by the OTW.
