Panel: Adapt or die? News media, new media, transmedia
- Panelists: Megan Whelan (Radio New Zealand), Alex Lee (Documentary Edge Festival), Walid Al-Saqaf (Internet Society), Tim Watkin (Executive Producer of The Nation and blogger), Carrie Stoddart-Smith (blogger).
- Panel moderator: Paul Brislen.
- Intro Megan
- Been at Radio NZ for 10 years. Website back then just frequencies and fax number
- Good at Radio, not doing Internet very well
- New Job as community engagement editor
- Internet completely changed how the job is done.
- Sacrifice accuracy and context sometimes to get the story out fast
- Because people can now get their first and publish. They are no longer the gatekeepers of information. Getting used to others knowing more thna we do
- Alex
- Sees himself as creative entrepreneur
- Content a few years ago seeing documentaries play in the cinema
- Storytelling being distributed. Communities already telling their own stories.
- 2 types of people in Audience. Skimmers and people wanting to do a deep dive
- Story tellers only know who to tell the story, sometimes not so much on the technology
- Developing collaboration between technologists and creatives together
- Carrie
- Blogging and social media provided new spaces for stories
- Maori TV. Maori people in the “Ngati blogosphere”
- Telling our own stories not just having others telling them
- Media still highlights negative rather than positive stories about Maori
- “Social media & blogging and facilitate stories and getting to know each other online”
- But Internet allows Maori to bypass media to get positive stories out to to National/International audience
- Walid
- Internet should be empowering tool
- Problem with Internet are people on it not the Internet themselves
- Characteristics of traditionalist media is that there is a gatekeeper
- New media is that everybody is responsible for their own actions
- 60% of what is on social media is fake.
- Tim
- Every newsroom in NZ is running digital-first
- No sustainable profit model for media orgs online
- Digital tools give media a lot more tools and ability to create to stories
- Speed comes a loss of quality, loss of subeditors
- Internet has sucks a lot of money out of journalism (especially loss of classifieds)
- Nostalgia has forgotten how bad journalism has used to be.
- So much pressure on resources but less money
- Example of real-time fact checking during interviews
- Question for Alex.
- You want people to Interaction with docus, but past has shown people don’t really?
- Alex says that people have in the past
- Refers to national Film board of Canada websites and interaction with their documentaries
- These days all need docs are required by broadcasters and funders to have interaction and social media strategy
- Mixing of Advertising and journalism undermine content?
- A bit but it is a source of money that helps keep the rest afloat.
- Is mainstream media actually verified compared to Social media
- Yes it is
- Use varified accounts on twitter to at least ensure the person is real
- Opinion on tools such as “data miner” which takes news across internet and aggregates it?
- Newsrooms have a lot of expertise
- But less now as newsrooms get hallowed out
- 8 feature editors at NZ Herald 10 years ago. Just 1.5 now
- People can some fact-check journalism instantly
- Good in one way
- But diversity of knowledge means fact checking harder
- What the Economic side of this? Where do you see economic support for high-quality contact coming from?
- Sugar Daddy. Eg Washington Post supported by Jeff Bezos
- Some kind of paywall seems be an main option
- Responsibility to highlight stories and come back to old/ongoing stories
- Yes they are revisited by media
- How far though a digital day could somebody go and only experience Maori?
- Some people only tweet in Maori
- Work at places where people primary work in Maori
- If money is tight and media companies consolidate does media have the room to push against the “powers that be”
- Pretty much has always been the case
- Getting harder but not astronomically harder than it used to be.
NZ culture online
- Facilitators: Amber Craig, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Dan Shannan
- Amber
- How does NZ tell our story online with youtube etc
- How to compete with other countries
- Dan
- Documentary NZ Trust
- Looking into content and presentation of content
- Lots of new platforms. Hard to negotiate with each of them
- Have to reach people outside the main centres and people not able to attend festival events
- Funding bodies want to be about NZ only. Won’t fund NZers telling stories about other places on non-NZ stuff. Told for Nz point of view
- Brownwyn
- Artist
- People using various media
I switched to a different session after 10 minutes
Slowing the fast lane – Net Neutrality
- Theresa legacy pervades in NZ Internet “Marketing by Confusion”
- Incumbents offer inferior products to smaller ISP and exploit consumer ignorance
- Almost all NZ ISPs do “not net neutral” stuff to save costs and improve user experience. eg they cache Google.
- Netflix effect driving up demand across network ( 40% growth in 3 months) . Need to find a way of pricing that. Why shouldn’t we look at options to manage the network and push pricing signals back up the line
- Why does Spark not have Netflix caches? Why does Spark not peer? Spark guy refuses to answer.
- Spark gets away since it is the legacy incumbent Telco, the default ISP to get away with a lot of stuff.
- Spark expect at manipulating the outcome
- UFB levels the playing field. Market Failure will come from small ISPs not getting the scale to compete.
- Datacaps now high enough that Zero-rating are now longer a thing. However packet prioritisation is still a thing that ISPs can hang over providers.
- Alternative IXs being created to dis-satisfaction regarding port costs at the current ISPs
- Prediction is that if NZ goes down net neutrality path it will fail, cause it won’t moderate unfair use of market power. Legislation will be narrow and based on the technology of the day, will be left behind too quickly.
- Vote with feet away from Spark and Vodafone. Why they have the share they will keep abusing it.
- Spark customer: Spark works okay, don’t care about the random polities, they work okay.
- Peering can go via the Telecom Commissioner, doesn’t need politician
- The Peering policy is damaging the NZ Internet.
- ISPs that do not peer are less robust than those who do (especially in emergencies)
Copyright on the Internet
- Facilitators: Hadyn Green, Matthew Jackson, Trish Hepworth
- Trish
- The Internet makes it easy to copy things and violate copyright
- From the Internet point of view copying is the core function, resptricting that directly impacts the internet
- Website blocking – Providers get sites blocked by copyright holders. Collatoral damage problem, other sites and other services
- Track people and sending warning notices. To what extent should monitoring be allowed “just” to prevent copyright infringment
- Should technologies like VPNs be allowed if they are copyright-circumvention applications
- Should TPM/DRM be put on everything?
- Can you copyright an API? Can you restrict people for using it everywhere. How important is interoperability without explicit permission
- Copyright/Patents over software
- How do you regulate a digital single market across multiple countries and multiple jurisdictions and cultures?
- Should data be predicted by copyright? text mining allowed?
- Paula Browning
- From the “We create” , creative sector
- Instead of thinking copyright is broekn cause you cannot want GoT at 1pm. The Internet is a massive opportunity for NZ. Copyright is needed for the industry to make money.
- Games industry will generate $500 million this year
- Paddy Buckley – Quickflicks
- Problem is the current licensing model of content. Licensed by territory
- Challenge people to name 5 TV series you cannot watch via NZ services
- Need to keep territory-specific licensing. Cause else services are not going to have any local focus
- Also content creators make the rules and they want territory licensing
- You gotta respect their rules cause it is their content.. Maybe not cause random rules sometimes don’t make sense anymore
- 28% of people use VPNs or some other place changing technology
- Should we take things to count to get judicial clarity
- Copyright had originally to do with regulation of printing press (eg “technology” ) not the regulation of content.
- Copyright originally and up to now always orientation towards large-many distribution. New systems are many-many that involves “copying” for all interactions.
- Why are VPNs a problem since money is still going to creators? – That is not how the model works, you have to pay for something first before creating it. The selling to different territories is how stuff is funded. Future business models are still not developed enough for everyone.
- Worry about the amount of effort that goes into enforcing the current business models rather than looking at new ones. Especially what is this happening in NZ which is not solved by the current model.
- TPP criminalise breaking DRM even when you legally have access to the resulting content
- Vertical integration like with Disney allows resell of content across songs, TV, parks, re-releases, e over a period of 50+ years
- Regional Licensing allows a single provider to pay for something and allow the content creator to get a lump-sum of money. They local provider can also prote the show locally.
- Content providers already do the sums of global vs regional deals
- Physical good already restricted to different places via exclusive import agreements.
- Same with software, Example of NZ version of software was 10x more expensive and 2 versions behind.
- “It seems clumsy attempts to secure copyright are still driving users to piracy. Cost and complexity are not being addressed”
- Copyright laws should not be written solely by the content industry since they will solely reflect the interest of that industry.
- Is there are shortage of Music, Movies, TV shows right now? Is copyright rally killing the industry.
- Bollywood movie industry often legitimately released on Youtube after a few years of standard release.
- Only reason that publishers have control of copyright (of books) is market failure. You have to go via intermediaries because you can’t do it yourself.
- VPNs have lots of other uses beyond copyright evasion. Shouldn’t be banned just to prevent that.
- Getting rid of “Work for hire” would seem to be a problem when something like a film has 5,000 people worked on a Movie.
- Suggestion that there are should be a license like APRA to allow people to download what they want for a fixed license each year.
- Need to sort out the problem with lengthening copyright period and orphan works.
