Peering
Peering is the free sharing of material on the internet – is good news for businesses when it cuts distribution costs to almost zero, but bad news for people who want to protect their creative materials and ideas as intellectual property (IP). So the ‘roar of collaborative culture’ will change economics beyond recognition, and corporations are forced to respond or perish.
An example of peering would be the sharing of music online, through programs such as Limewire and Bearshare, where music can be downloaded for free from other people sharing their music online. This is illegally done, and the artist gains no money or royalties for the downloading of their music, so the artists are losing out as their music is being given away for free. However, the downloading of music could be advantageous because if the music is readily available, easily and freely, more people will have access to their music which would reduce distribution costs, as they would not have to produce CDs and then distribute the CDs around the world, saving on time and shelf space, as well as fuel and emissions, the downloading of music online proving a more environmentally friendly approach to music distribution. “Corporations are forced to respond or perish”, music shops such as Music Zone and Zavvi have suffered and went into administration as sales went down, but Zavvi now exists as an online retailer only.
Free Creativity
Free creativity is a natural and positive outcome of the free market, so attempting to regulate and control online ‘remix’ creativity is like trying to hold back the tide. The happy medium is achieved by a service such as Creative Commons, which provides licences, which protect IP while at the same time allowing others to remix material within limits.
AMVs, taking pieces of someone else’s work or anime and animation, or remixing an artist’s song. Making mash-ups of videos from a song, using the real music video or film clips together. How far do you go to moderate the use of other people’s IP? There are limits, such as only being able to use 30 seconds of a song before you have to pay.
Democratised Media
The media is democratised by peering, free creativity and the “we media” journalism produced by ordinary people.
We Media, 9/11, a TV show made up of films and photographs, reports from citizens; we can now contribute to the news, to the media, becoming reporters ourselves. People have more of a voice, and can get their opinion across more because of We Media, because people get a chance. Normal people can provide traffic reports and photographs of current events, sending them in to the news.
Thinking Globally
Web 2.0 makes thinking globally inevitable. The Internet is the ‘worlds biggest coffeehouse’, a virtual space in which a new blog is created every second. In this instantly global communication sphere, national and cultural boundaries are inevitably reduced.
Rather than visiting a place, you can just Google it. We can talk to people, play online, with people on the other side of the world, expanding our knowledge and culture, as well as the opportunities available. Metting people you would never know without the Internet, Internet dating, chat rooms, WOW.
The Perfect Storm
The combination of three things – technology (web 2.0), demographics (young people are described as ‘digital natives’ – they have grown up in a collaborative virtual world which to them is natural and instinctive) and economics (the development of a global economy where business can, and must, think of its market as international, given that traditional, national production structures have declined as we have entered the knowledge economy) – results in a perfect storm, which creates such a force that resistance is impossible, so any media company trying to operate without web 2.0 will be like a small fishing boat on the sea during this freak meteorological occurrence.
Younger people might have better prospects for jobs because they understand the technology, can imagine more ideas. Businesses must join the storm, they must adapt, develop, smaller businesses will be left behind, they will go down if they don’t set up websites, expand their market and advance their advertising. Resistance is impossible, people need to move with the times.
