Surveillance, copyright, freedom and privacy: opportunity and risk of video sharing.. YouTube’n’sons Daniele Montemale 25 jan 2007 University of Copenhagen

In recent years, internet sites of video sharing like YouTube and its many sons are becoming more important and influential.

Only on YouTube, (recently Google bought it for US$ 1,6 billion) 65 thousand videos are uploaded and 100 million are viewed each day.

Which kind of videos are uploaded and watched on these file sharing sites?

All of them have some limitations: no porn and no pedophilia..

On these sites you can watch :

A video of my party, a party of my friend but also a party of someone that I have never met..

Steve Jobs and the presentation of the new Iphone from Mac

The last video of Justin Timberlake

So, why is it possible?

Because it is the start of the era of..

What is this?

" Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. ” Tim O’Really 2004

Ok, but what does it mean?

In only one word:

SHARING

Ok it is good.. Everyone can gain knowledge from watching the videos of others..

It has good potential... But people can use the filesharing in other ways

For example

Berlusconi that plays behind his driver..

Ok, but it is funny!

Yes it is..but it is not your video.. On these file sharing sites you can find also

A girl that strips on the web cam

With the tags “webcam” and “girl” only on YouTube there are 2926 results..

Try to add tags as “sexy”, “dance” “strip” or “hard” and watch the results.. Thousands and thousands of videos.. Yours? No!

And with the tags “Saddam” and “die”?

The video filmed with a camera phone of Saddam’s death..

So, What’s happens?

The domino effect.. or better The YouTube effect

With file sharing, videos are watched as a virus that spreads on the internet creating knowledge. This thanks also to YouTube’n’sons!

Where you can earn money uploading your videos..

A file sharing search engine

But there are also sites with only one topic.. For example

Only videos about girls

Only videos of fights..

But also..

LiveLeak where “ you get all the uncensored media you are used to along with so much more” (from Liveleak.com)

Where with the tags “Iraq” and “bombs” there are more than 25 pages of videos that USarmy or Iraq militiants filmed

So, isn’t there anyone that control this?

Yes, sure!

As Tim May says: “we live in a a surveillance society…where the most important means of surveillance reside today in computer power, which allows collected data to be stored, matched, retrieved, processed, marketed and circulated..

..surveillance always has two faces. On the one hand, it seen as a means of minimizing and of averting to risk. But on the other hand, it is seen by many as a cause of risk, of potential goverment intrusion into private life or of commercial control of personal consumption ..”

It means that while on the one hand from Denmark I can contact my friends with a email or collegues everywhere there is, on the other hand, someone who can control that email..

To understand this surveillance, it is simply saying that it is possible to control..

Your credit card when you buy a fly ticket

In a supermarket! Recently the captain of London’s police said that in a normal day a person can be filmed around 300 times by cameras around the capital of England

In other words..

The World!

But, if people know that are being surveilled, do they have to fear being intercepted when doing something illegal or wrong?

In 1977 Michel Foucault compares modern society with Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon” design for prisons. The system is simple: from the central tower the guardian can see all of the prisioners at any time. The prisioners however cannot see the guardian from their cells. Thus, they never know if they are being whatched or not. It is through this visibility, Foucault writes, that modern society exercises its controlling systems of power and knowledge. Increasing visibility leads to power located on an increasingly individualized level, shown by the possibility for institutions to track individuals throughout their lives.

After Foucault, many experts had rivisitated this theory to comapare it to the society of today thanks specially at the new technologies that can control everything and everyone.

But, if today it is possible to create a panopticon thanks to new technology, are people really afraid about this? Can goverments really control the people and introduce fear in them?

NO!

2 big reasons for it.

1) People always know that they can be controlled, but they also know that the quantity of imformation (offline and online) is numerous and it is difficult to intercept .

2) while on the one hand people want to safeguard their privacy (and at the sametime be controlled), but on the other hand they want share their lives with their friends and also strangers.

Some examples

People knew that the files on Napster were illegal but they downloaded them. Goverments and companies are closed Napster..Was the period of P2P downloads finished? No..it has only multiplicated.

In October, in Italy four teenagers were harassing an autistic classmate. This video created many problems for Google video, the site that hosted it..Are the fight’s videos finished? No, only multiplicated.

Recently, YouTube added an option where people can upload their videos directly from their webcam. To do it, the users accept that YouTube has access to their cam.

The same with camera phones. Users can upload videos from their camera phones accepting that YouTube can control their mobile

From last summer there is a video on YouTube where Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, and her boyfriend apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach. As result, 20 days ago, a brazilian court ordered to YouTube to be shut down Youtube Brazil until it removes the celebrity sex video from its site forever. The couple has asked for and obtained $116,000 in damages for each day the video remains up. YouTube deleted this video but, the users upload again it.

This morning at 8 o’clock – 25 jan 2007

The big majors are creating some problems for the filesharing sites because on them it is possible watch parts of a film..going against the copyright.

But then, the same majors added some videos of a film or the trailer of it doing free advertising for their products. The Spiderman 3 trailer is the most watched video last month on file sharing sites

In the file sharing companies, there is someone that each day watch and remove videos apparently dangerous or that have violated the rules

To help them to control the videos, first the content moniters look for the tags which seem potentially more dangerous, such as “sex”, “murder” and so on.. But it is impossible watch more than 150 thousand videos each day..

The only solution for it is an A.I. that can watch videos and understand whether or not they have to be removed!

Today this is not yet possible but, soon it will be! Probably when it happens, people will start to understand the panopticon and be afraid of it.

It will be in the web 3.0

“ Web 1.0 started as a streaming publish-to-read medium; web 2.0 has established itself as a publishing platform for everyone. Now web 3.0 is said to be a technologically advanced Internet, where the user executes and the machines do the thinking” from informationarchitects . jp

Info: blog_ www.viralavatar.com email_ daniele.montemale@gmail.com