Scrutiny

I’ve been an intermittent blogger so far, getting used to the rhythms of blogging, finding the ways in which it can fit into the patterns of my work life without swamping it. I’m getting there. But I did want to at least try out one popular convention among academic bloggers, that is, posting from a conference during a conference. I’m currently sitting in on a panel addressing critical responses to Web 2.0, part of the conference Media in Transition 5: Creativity, Ownership, and Collaboration in a Digital Age, fifth in a series of conferences set up by Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn in the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. The conference has been quite good, if not perfect; if nothing else, it has been one of those conferences where enarly everyone here is on the same page in terms of what phenomena we’re looking at and the general methodological approach as to how we might address them. It may suffer from some of the same drawbacks of that same quality. But except for a first few panels poorly chosen, the papers I’ve seen have been excellent, the plenaries even better. And, just to say it, my paper on industry anti-piracy campaigns was well received, and part of a panel that was both consistently good and refreshingly cohesive, a rare experience.

I don’t want to be too navel-gazing here, but one thing I’m struck by is the relative difficulty of incorporating my own online activities into the conference. MIT, natch, has a comprehensive and free wireless network, so many of us are on our computers during and between panels. There’s a gentle competition for plugs, especially in the larger auditorium where the plenary sessions are held. I’m finding both great value, in that much of what people are talking about are online, so I can do a quick look at materials, grab a video, etc. But that temptation drifts into the appeal of checking email, downloading videos, surfing the web, and — what do you know — writing blog posts. I am certain that I didn’t get much of the intellectual value of the last talk, which is certainly not to suggest that there was no such value. I suspect this will change over time, for me and for as a social convention, but I wonder whether the other people in the room with their laptops open are struggling with the same tension.

In an article today in Salon debating the merits of the Democrat pundits who appear on Fox News, Alex Koppelman pointed out not only that Fox is the most watched of the U.S. cable news networks, and that the median age of their viewers is 60, but also this amazing little tidbit:

“In the 2004 election, according to Mark Mellman, Fox viewers preferred President Bush over John Kerry by an astonishing 88 percent to 7 percent. Bush’s backing among Fox viewers was more solid than his support among white evangelicals, gun owners or supporters of the Iraq war.”

I just found that bizarre and amazing, and felt the need to say so.

This is potentially very big news for those who care about copyright and digital culture. EMI has announced that it will allow Apple to sell nearly all of its catalog, with the exception of the Beatles, without any DRM copy protection imposed. This is an obvious follow up to Steve Jobs’ manifesto against DRM (which I commented on last month). The one catch is that the DRM-free singles will cost more than the ones with copy protection ($1.29 instead of $0.99), at least when they are purchased as singles; if you buy an entire album, the price is the same if you want DRM or not, and is not being increased. (I’m not sure who would then purchase a DRM-ed album, but stranger things have been known to happen.) Interesting little pricing move, a subtle way to urge people back to buying albums just as digital music has made purchasing individual songs so appealing, and a way to bump a single price that Apple has been resistant to raise.

A few things to watch for. First, what will Jobs do? Some criticized Jobs for his critique of DRM, saying that even though some artists and labels had said to Apple that they could sell their music in unprotected formats, Apple had refused. This was seen as evidence that Apple actually prefers DRM, because it tends to lock iPod users to the iTunes store. With EMI, a major, giving Apple the OK, it will be publicly embarrassing if Job nevertheless wraps their tunes in enough DRM to lock it to the iPod, even if it has no copy restrictions. The EMI press release, which quotes Jobs, suggests that Apple will let these tunes out, which is a good sign. Second, will other labels follow suit? Will they adopt EMI’s pricing scheme, or will they come up with their own? And third, undoubtedly there will be much discussion and analysis to follow, focusing on what happened to EMI’s catalog. Did it sell more than it would have otherwise? Were more albums bought? Did their music show up on peer-to-peer file trading networks more rapidly, or more thoroughly? These are of course hard things to prove, because it’s hard to estimate what would have happened otherwise, but many people make their living trying nonetheless.