plain talk on YouTube v. Houses of Congress
Thomas Lord
this list. It seems to me a simple matter:
The Congressional leaders have broken the law. The technocrats on this
list have largely (there are some exceptions here and there) abandoned
sanity. Some quick arguments in support of this position:
Illegality: The "Hello YouTube!" video the leaders produced is an
advertisement for YouTube produced in governmental offices, by the
elected officials, their staffs, other government employees, and other
forms of taxpayer money. They produced it in exchange for personal
consideration. Criminal prosecution is in order.
It's not a video that accidentally "looks good" for YouTube. It's not a
mere "shout out" to YouTube for their kind help. It's an ad whose
primary purpose is to drive traffic to a for-profit whose valuation is
measured, in part, by traffic. In consideration for the taxpayer
funding of this ad, those particular members of congress received
promotion in kind as YouTube applied the video in a viral marketing
campaign aimed at driving traffic to their site.
End of story.
What's with you technocrats?: Really, what are you thinking, those of
you who apologize for this YouTube "deal"?
Some of you are old enough to remember, for example, Usenet news.
You've experienced, in real-life, very simple P2P technology (or, if you
want to quibble, a direct ancestor of P2P as it is conceived today).
You know, therefore, that it isn't hard technically to build a mass
distribution network for open content that has no need for - and has
economic resistance to - monopolization of aggregation and delivery of
that content to end-users.
Usenet even, you may remember, carry early forms of Internet video.
This is not to say that the usenet protocols are *per se* what is needed
here only that that is the kind of protocol and distribution mechanism
that is needed here - not only for the video works from Congress but for
free culture generally.
We have a bit of a crisis - one that Orwell would well appreciate - in
the commercial world. De facto conspiracy among the main funding
capitalists and their populist-appealing cheerleaders has made de facto
monopolies like Flikr and YouTube seem "natural" when from the
naturalist perspective - the perspective based on the economics of
computing - they are anything but natural. What we have here in those
(and other "social networking" hubs) is a conspiracy to centralize
collection of surveillance data in privately controlled hands. Pure and
simple. Many of the apologizers for the YouTube/Congress deal are
perfectly well qualified to help correct that - they know plenty enough
about the technology.
-t
Jones, Tom (Commerce)
Some folks are arguing for .gov hosting. That's a reasonable position, but I think its both wasteful and not the best way to serve the public. If we (Congress) built our own system it will cost tons of money to replicate what YouTube has already built. Further fewer people will see it. Like I said, this is a reasonable position to have but I think its the wrong approach to informing and activating the public.
Thomas Lord's post though is just stupid. I'm not a fan of nancy pelosi, but the idea that she somehow got some "personal consideration" out of a goofy video which features her staff's house cats and a nice rickrolling --- well it just reminds me of the folks that call congressional offices complaining about black helicopters.
Calling Congressmen criminals - when they aren't - only serves to make folks look foolish and hurts the cause. Stop it.
John Wonderlich
I'm disappointed by how the issues around YouTube have been treated on
this list. It seems to me a simple matter:
The Congressional leaders have broken the law. The technocrats on this
list have largely (there are some exceptions here and there) abandoned
sanity. Some quick arguments in support of this position:
Illegality: The "Hello YouTube!" video the leaders produced is an
advertisement for YouTube produced in governmental offices, by the
elected officials, their staffs, other government employees, and other
forms of taxpayer money. They produced it in exchange for personal
consideration. Criminal prosecution is in order.
Three huge assumptions here. 1. "produced in governmental offices"-- being interviewed is much different from producing a commercial. 2. "They produced it in exchange for personal consideration." How can you prove that? They were probably excited to be findable in the context where their constituents interacting online. 3. "They broke the law." What law?
It's not a video that accidentally "looks good" for YouTube. It's not a
mere "shout out" to YouTube for their kind help. It's an ad whose
primary purpose is to drive traffic to a for-profit whose valuation is
measured, in part, by traffic. In consideration for the taxpayer
funding of this ad, those particular members of congress received
promotion in kind as YouTube applied the video in a viral marketing
campaign aimed at driving traffic to their site.
End of story.
What's with you technocrats?: Really, what are you thinking, those of
you who apologize for this YouTube "deal"?
Perhaps you should address some of the arguments made in the rest of the thread. I'd suggest first distinguishing between "Congress" as a whole and party leaders operating on behalf of their members.
Some of you are old enough to remember, for example, Usenet news.
You've experienced, in real-life, very simple P2P technology (or, if you
want to quibble, a direct ancestor of P2P as it is conceived today).
You know, therefore, that it isn't hard technically to build a mass
distribution network for open content that has no need for - and has
economic resistance to - monopolization of aggregation and delivery of
that content to end-users.
Usenet even, you may remember, carry early forms of Internet video.
This is not to say that the usenet protocols are *per se* what is needed
here only that that is the kind of protocol and distribution mechanism
that is needed here - not only for the video works from Congress but for
free culture generally.
We have a bit of a crisis - one that Orwell would well appreciate - in
the commercial world. De facto conspiracy among the main funding
capitalists and their populist-appealing cheerleaders has made de facto
monopolies like Flikr and YouTube seem "natural" when from the
naturalist perspective - the perspective based on the economics of
computing - they are anything but natural. What we have here in those
(and other "social networking" hubs) is a conspiracy to centralize
collection of surveillance data in privately controlled hands.
Do you really think youtube and facebook result from a "conspiracy to centralize collection of surveillance data in privacy controlled hands"?
Martin Bosworth
Every company that collects personal data is a potential source for information trawling by anyone with the time and means to do so. Outsourcing of intelligence gathering to the private sector has been going on for as long as the ability to wiretap a phone existed--it covers everything from CALEA to the warrantless wiretapping the NSA did with Verizon and AT&T's help. Google is no different in this respect, and (to tie it all the way back to Jeff Chester's complaint) they have the potential to be much more invasive if the government comes knocking on their door asking for information on a particular individual or group.
I certainly don't think anyone at Google OR the Speaker's office arranged this deal with any sort of quid pro quo in mind, but that's the nasty thing about unforeseen consequences--no one thinks about what could happen, merely what is happening.
Now, with that said, if you look at my signature, you can see I'm a member of a LOT of different social networks. I go where the conversation is, and if I don't like it, I go somewhere else and start my own conversation--and many people follow me. Right now, YouTube is where the conversation is for user-created video that's easy to upload, share, and distribute. There are tons of other competitors, but none of them have YouTube's clout, name recognition, or server farms the size of Alaska backing them--which is what you'd need for the kind of traffic these videos generate.
In time, YouTube will reach its apex, and people will start moving to another platform. (I can see this happening already, what with YouTube muting the sound on videos that use copyrighted music. That's some bullshit. ;)) But in the meantime, while that is happening, the door has been opened for two things to happen--for the government to take the initiative and develop its own platform for hosting, sharing, and distributing video content, and for nerds like us to make the case that the tools needed to make this platform be open-source, open-access, without any controls or proprietary distribution licenses attached.
Congress (and Obama) on YouTube is the beginning of the shift, not the end. We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this change and what it will entail.
Martin H. Bosworth
Managing Editor, ConsumerAffairs.Com
(http://www.consumeraffairs.com)
Blog: Boztopia.com (http://www.boztopia.com)
LinkedIn Profile:
http://www.linkedin.com/martinbosworth
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/martinonfacebook
Plaxo: http://martinbosworth.myplaxo.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/martinboz
Robert Millis
right/wrong issues here. The fact is that congress previously had
challenging restrictions in place which required that a public system
be built to satisfy your demands. I agreed with those requirements in
principal, but most on this list are surely familiar with the
challenges that posed, including the simple fact that House members
were forbidden to upload content to commercial sites.
Many of us (including the team at YouTube) talked with people from
Pelosi's office and reviewed the challenges of building an entirely in-
house system. They were eager to find solutions and you certainly
could have contacted them yourself with a proposal. The fact is that
while the core technology is indeed simple, an in-house system was
going to require many layers of custom technology, particularly where
security is concerned. Then you need to clear countless hurdles in the
approval process, and you have to hope there is some sort of realistic
budget in place.
I agree with many concerns raised regarding the YouTube arrangement,
but I feel strongly that it is far better than where we were a year
ago. This is one step in a long process toward opening Congress to the
public, and YouTube doesn't need to be the only source. Let's keep the
conversation going forward with less worry about accusations and
idealism, and more focus on improvements and alternate solutions.
- Rob
Hudson Street Media
http://www.CapitolHub.com
http://www.HudsonStreetMedia.com
Clay Shirky
> public, and YouTube doesn't need to be the only source.
Oh, I hope you're right, but reading this YouTube thread, two thoughts
are running through my head: EDI, from the 1970s, and TRUSTe, from the
1990s.
EDI, Electronic Data Interchage, was EDS's data exchange standard,
which worked over leased lines, and thus provided monopoly rent
extraction as a business model. Ross Perot got it in use in the USG
during the Nixon administration, and there it stayed, for decades. One
could have said "Oh, but EDI doesn't need to be the only source", but
the fact of the matter was different. EDI *was* the only source, and
it got that way because of a commercial arrangement between a
particular administration and a particular company, but the
ramifications outlasted both Nixon and Perot, to the detriment of the
country.
The other example, TRUSTe, was the multi-stakeholder privacy-ensuring
agreement by the major ecommerce firms, designed to provide a sigil by
which the user could be assured of the bona fides of the site that
displayed the TRUSTe logo. Then, during the dot com bust, Terry Semel
decided he would unilaterally reset the privacy preferences of all
Yahoo users who had previously expressed such preferences, and the
reset would -- quelle surprise -- open up every user to the email ads
they'd previously opted out of.
This was the moment TRUSTe was founded to combat, and after
considering the change Yahoo was making they...did nothing. They were
powerless to complain because if they'd tried to discipline Yahoo, it
would have been the death knell for TRUSTe itself, which was after all
founded to pursue the interests of large ecommerce players. (The trade
association that risks its own existence to hold its largest members
accountable was last seen in the long grass, cavorting with unicorns.)
It's possible that Google will reap no advantage from the
Congressional disposition to use YouTube, but I can't see any
structural design defending us against that outcome, nor can I see any
force other than the franking rules themselves that would kick into
gear should the use of YouTube begin heading that way.
-c
Jones, Tom (Commerce)
Congressional disposition to use YouTube, but I can't see any
structural design defending us against that outcome, nor can I see any
force other than the franking rules themselves that would kick into
gear should the use of YouTube begin heading that way.
-c
"
Clay Shirky
<Tom_...@commerce.senate.gov> wrote:
> "It's possible that Google will reap no advantage from the
> Congressional disposition to use YouTube, but I can't see any
> structural design defending us against that outcome, nor can I see any
> force other than the franking rules themselves that would kick into
> gear should the use of YouTube begin heading that way.
>
> -c
>
> Constituents, consumers and freedom
But this assumes that markets mitigate *against* winner-take-all
outcomes in communications channels. There are many current cases,
such as IM protocols, YouTube, and Google itself, which provide fairly
strong counter-examples.
-c
Jones, Tom (Commerce)
If Google starts behaving badly and people start distrusting them or say the heebie-jeebies that Google's advertising programs gives some folks on this list spreads to a significant enough part of the populations a couple thing will happen
1) Friendlies will call members and say something like 'hey congressman jones, you're awesome and I find your videos helpful but those kooks at google are listening to my thoughts through a transmitter in my teeth - could you switch to vimeo
2) People will stop watching the videos and the viewer numbers will plummet.
Either of these will be sufficient for a member to figure out that they need to find another outlet.
Members are pretty savy about making sure people hear them -- most of the successful ones pay people a grossly insufficient amount of money to monitor this kind of stuff.
----- Original Message -----
From: openhous...@googlegroups.com <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
To: openhous...@googlegroups.com <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Mon Jan 19 23:12:52 2009
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: plain talk on YouTube v. Houses of Congress
Jon Henke
But I wonder if we're not missing another point here. Yes....
1. This de facto appointment of YouTube as Congressional video host benefits a single, large company. Imagine if Congressional leaders got together and decided that CNN would always control any media pool, or that all bylined op-eds would be syndicated by the AP, because they were big enough to do it. The fact that it's a de facto and not de jure designation is certainly a mitigating factor, but.....
2. ....this still gives YouTube the inertial potential to achieve a monopoly. Tradition can become a rule easily enough, especially in light of the "it's what we've always done" problem that I mentioned the other day.
But what about.....
3. The danger of turning Congressional video over to the Cloud. Do we want Google to become an outsourced national archive for Congressional video? Do we trust YouTube to maintain that archive? I doubt many of us doubt its security and sustainability right now, but what structural design not only maintains that archive, but prevents it from being used inappropriately (restricted, monetized, used as leverage, etc)?
And that's a larger issue: Google is trying to sell government agencies on using cloud computing. What are the implications of putting government email and documents and calendars and more into the cloud? Do we want one company having that kind of control?
Or do we want to give up access to that kind of information? Assume for a moment that it's not Google providing the cloud computing. Perhaps it's Acme Corp who handles the email and documents and calendars and more. And then assume that Acme Corp doesn't lose a lobbying fight for a few years. Maybe it's just a coincidence. Or maybe they're not being the caretakers of their cloud that Congress expects.
My point is this: there's a great deal of value in new innovations and specific businesses and I don't want to suggest that Congress can't engage with them. That would be wrong. But we ought to be careful that the control we're giving up isn't going to turn into the basis of their market power down the road.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
-----Original Message-----
From: "Clay Shirky" <cl...@shirky.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:00:50
To: <openhous...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [openhouseproject] Re: plain talk on YouTube v. Houses of Congress