Episode 3, Doubting Castle. Part of the storyworld for Contemporary Media Work Practices, a course at RMIT University. geniwate.com/admin/mipandmop

1. geniwate.com/admin/mipandmop
Concept based on The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan,
and written for Contemporary Media Work Practices,
a course at RMIT University
(www.rmit.edu.au)
c. geniwate 2012-5
Doubting Castle 3

2. Mip and Mop passed several days with
Esther and the Giant, whose mood had
vastly improved. Now that they’d got
through the firewall, Esther and the Giant
pulled so many files from out of their
Cloud that Mip and Mop were quite
overwhelmed. Every day they’d wake up
to new movies, new music and new texts,
the bandwidth in the castle being very
good. Mip and Mop shared what they had
too, although it seemed pathetic
compared to what they’d been given.

3. ‘Don’t worry’, Esther reassured them heartily. ‘Someone will be interested in it sooner or later,
they always are.’ Mip thought about this for a while, and later when they were getting ready for
bed, she expressed her concern.
‘We’re giving the giants our stuff. Crikey, most of my stuff doesn’t even have my name on it. The
giants will forward it onwards, and nobody will know where it originally came from.’
‘Yeah’, said Mop. ‘It’s not that I’m not grateful —‘
‘The gift economy. Share and share alike. Still —‘

4. What can we do?
Well, I’m at least going to put my name, and my twitter handle, on
everything I make from now on.
That won’t stop people from ripping you off.
No. They went to bed, not having reached a clear conclusion about the
issue. They certainly didn’t want to upset their hosts. The next morning,
their bedroom was brim-full of the usual bit-torrented media. Some of it
had credits, some of it didn’t. Some of it was professional, and clearly
downloaded in breach of copyright, and some of it was amateur but still
good content addressing Mip and Mop’s interests. The Giant called it
‘niche media’.

5. What are we going to do? Mip moaned.
I don’t think we can fight the gift economy, but we do have to strategize.
Perhaps we can start using firewalls ourselves.
Oh yeah, Mop said. For example, we could make some things private. We
could even make some things available only for a price.
Mip and Mop were not sure that anyone would want to buy anything they
had made, but it seemed possible - for example they could sell their work
as an ebook, or use Paypal to elicit payments. Even set up a shop.

6. Peer to peer