The point about the heterogeneity of the university is really great. The needs and ways of operating among and between different areas, especially in large universities, are not always served by a one-size-fits-all digitisation strategy. Indeed, as he points out, there is an incredible amount of value in the ambiguities that are present in the classroom. Here, his point about “teachers are liars” is one that I have thought about quite a bit. Coming from a performance background, I have always endeavored to acknowledge the performative aspects of teaching. Teaching (and writing for that matter) can be about provocation; it can be about eliciting responses in dialogue; it doesn’t have to be about simply passing information gleaned from one source, through the larynx or the computer scree, to a willing (or not so willing) receptacle). The point made here about education not being simply a matter of information transfer speaks directly to the issue of the necessary presence of living, contradictory, ambiguous bodies in the process of educating.

A great watch!

What happens to subjectivity when every whim, thought, impulse, or embarrassing photo becomes permanently cataloged on Twitter, Facebook, or the Blog? How will this immutable digital trail impact our relationship to ourselves, to knowledge, to our understandings of past and the future?  One of the effects, as the article intimates may be a radicalization of image maintenance and protection that accelerates an already creeping cultural narcissism associated with immanent collective surveillance and identity/reputation construction.

Read more.

The entertainment industry’s willingness to use parliament to impose censorship and arbitrary punishment in the course of chasing a few extra quid is so depraved and terrible that it has me in fear for the very underpinnings of democracy and civil society.

Indeed, the swiftness with which the DEA went through the British parliament is something that does not bode well for democratic processes. A scant debate, a paltry showing of MPs, and blatant ignoring of public outcry marks the very opposite of engaged and responsible government. Add to the this that the substance of the law is largely the construct of profit-driven (i.e. not concerned with democracy) private industry, we have here authoritarian rule by the unelected and the unaccountable. A travesty.

So what, it’s just music and movies, right? Cutlral production plays a massive part in the circulation of ideas, social norms, possibilities and potentials, etc. This move represents the continued imposition of control in the name of profit on the very texts that might hold the key to new discoveries, that might open up posibilities for better worlds. In process and in content, this law is an attempt by a powerful elite to suppress the common, to lock down communication, and to punish those who dare to dissent. It is absurd.

Therefore, for me, my antagonist is the person who passively watches CNN all day long and says that’s the world. My ideal is the person who looks at CNN and says, no, that’s not the world, that’s a version of the world and my duty as a mind in society is to understand what alternative versions there are in order for me to make my choice and to go out and to change the world.

And this equally nice one from Giroux himself:

Unfortunately, the discourse of clarity appears to rest on a universal standard of literacy that presumably need not be questioned as well as a self-righteous and deeply anti-democratic suggestion that most people are just too dumb or indifferent to struggle with language and meaning. This approach to language suppresses questions of context – who reads what under what conditions? More importantly, it presumes that language is a transparent medium for the seamless transmission of existing facts that need only be laid out in an agreed-upon fashion. Such a position runs the risk of fleeing the politics of culture by situating language outside of history, power and struggle.

turned out en masse for a public town hall meeting in Toronto late last month, resulting in multiple interventions from record label executives (four from Warner Music alone).  Packing the room ensured that there was virtually nothing heard from education and consumer groups, many of whom could not even attend the town hall since all the tickets were scooped up in less than five days.

See the full post here.

The Seminar Notes include links to the Google and Wikipedia documentaries.

2009 Seminar Notes 1
2009 Seminar Notes 2
PowerPoint Slides
Murali, et al. on the impact of FUTON bias

My thanks to all who attended, I hope it was as  beneficial for you as it was for me!

The reviewer is referring to a BitTorrent where someone has altered the original songs. The reviewer explains exactly where one should go in order to download the file that totally infringes on a copyright. It’s not only an illegal file, but an altered file. The reviewer also writes that this is how the album should have sounded. File-sharing of music is illegal. Period. There’s nothing to discuss.

The best part here is that the label is clearly more upset about the “downloading” part than they are about the “music” part.  I think it clearly demonstrates where the priorities of major labels lie.  The lesser of the evils is clearly the fan’s alteration of the music.  I can see how this might annoy an artist, especially when the review is ostensibly of their work, and not the work of the person who remixed it.  However, it’s also cool that people are out there reconfiguring music, as they have always done.  The real offense is that the reviewer used a downloaded copy and not the “official” (read: paid for) release, and then pointed to a site where anyone else could download it.  There is, in fact, something to discuss: a really interesting debate could have been had if Universal’s beef was with the aesthetics of the remix. It would be interesting to know if the band has heard it too, especially given the grief that they’ve been getting over what appears to be a pretty poor mastering job. No, instead Universal kicks up a stink over how  the album was obtained rather than addressing what appears to be the more important issue, how the music sounds.  Because the fan’s motivation to remix was rotted in a dislike for certain parts of the recording, not only in a desire to reconfigure and make something new out of it.  The comment accompanying the torrent says it all: “an awesome re-cut of the new album – all of the dumb parts have been taken out. all of the thrash has been left in.”

I’ve heard the album, and I quite like it.  I agree it’s a “return to form” of sorts – at least there’s more guitar solos!

Has there been a clearer articulation of the work of repressive and ideological state apparatuses in relation to contemporary concerns over media piracy than what recently happened in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest, IL?  On August 30 “Police arrested another alleged CD/DVD pirate last week during a traffic stop.”  In the inventory search of the car, officers found CDs and DVDs with handwritten labels, which prompted them to contact the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).  The RIAA is among the many media industry lobby groups responsible for spreading the notion that sharing media is not only illegal, but downright immoral.  The charges against the driver, who was pulled over for speeding, now include two that are related to copyright infringement thanks to a further search of his house.

So, the ideological work of the RIAA in creating a public “awareness” of piracy as evil has certainly done its work on the cops in Park Forest who, upon seeing the handwritten labels “naturally” noted this as a criminal activity and sought counsel from the very group who in part help construct their understanding of the phenomenon in the first place.  Torrentfreak notes that “They might be searching iPods next.”  The success of the RIAA’s propaganda also seemed to work on the man who was arrested in as much as his first reaction was to deny that the infringing materials were his, offering instead that they belonged to “a friend.” (Who, upon questioning, also denied knowledge of the materials – some friend.)

It makes us question who is really calling the shots here. The police are clearly, in this case, representing the interests of a coprorate music industry, and are not working in the interests of the citizenry, who have demonstrated time and again the desire to share and copy music.  Especially given the recent criminal charges brought agains Alan Ellis, the former OiNK admin, and the four OiNK uploaders in the UK, perhaps we also need to ask: Do we need another force to keep the public safe from the long arm of the corporate media industry?

Perhaps this could have the unintended effect of making all “pirates” drive slower, while allowing those dutiful citizens who have purchased their music legitmately to drive as fast as they want!

Full stories at Torrentfreak and at the Park Forest “enews” site.  It also appears that the Park Forest police do this thing fairly often.

Read Louis Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”

The CBC appropriated a disappointing Associated Press article on the matter and ends with the following:

“It’s not the first time YouTube has been banned. The Australian state of Victoria recently banned it from government schools in a crackdown on cyber-bullying after a gang of male students videotaped their assault on a 17-year-old girl on the outskirts of Melbourne.”

It is already troublesome to see that schools are banning YouTube access, danah boyd writes on similar problematic practices involving the Deleting Online Predators Act in the United States. It is always unfortunate that, as my grandmother would say “one bad apple has to spoil the lot”.

However, I think the linking the particular instance of assault to the large-scale restriction of communication technologies because a video was taken badly by a government that sends people to prison for “Insulting Turkishness”. I recoil at the notion of the assault on the 17 year old, and certainly would want the perpetrators to come to justice. But I certainly don’t equate posting a video of someone hurling an insult at a historical figure in the category of a crime, and certainly it doesn’t warrant restricting the freedoms of the Turkish citizenry to free access to the Internet – but unfortunately the Turkish government does.

This illustrates the very slippery slope that comes with considering too heavy-handed regulation of communications technologies.  At points it may be useful to monitor activity (such as porn in schools, or bullying) but not to the point of shutting down access to these sites.  In the case of the Turksih, it’s just another excercise in exerting control over the population, a common practice inTurkey, where the events of early 20th C Armenian Genocide are not even taught in Turkish schools (not even without the term genocide) thus prohibiting informed debate.  If governments shut down access to the opinions of those with whom they disagree, then effective debate is nullified – which, of course, would be a reasonable goal if you were into controlling your citezenry.  Of course internet restriction is nothing new at the level of the nation-state, remember Google China’s capitulation? See the difference?

Todayszaman, an English-language Turkish newspaper had the following headline in their online version: “YouTube broadcasts Greek marches full of hatred toward Turks”. This reads like it lays the blame for the videos at the feet of YouTube, as if they had a content meeting and decided “Yes, yes, we’ll lead with the Greek anti-Turk marches today.” The article goes on to translate the lyrics of a song reportedly videotaped as sung by a Greek military unit:

There was a ship, a tank-carrying ship. It left from Volos to plant fear. It goes to the shores of Little Asia (Turkey). To spread fire and ashes all over Turkey. It was full of sea marines. They blew the heads of any Turks they could find into the air. The heroes died opening the road to Hagia Sophia. I will march to Hagia Sophia, take off the Turkish caliphate sign and plant a cross there. Only then will God shed light on İstanbul and the Greek national march will ring from every corner.

I don’t really know what much of that actually means, but it certainly sounds like a little religious nationalism to me!

The Guardian indicates that there were other insults, including accusations that Ataturk was homosexual, and that so are the Turks themselves. So not only is the Turkish government against insults in general, they also have a deep-seeded homophobia, which of course doesn’t surprise me since they are willing to enact bans on communications technology, deny genocide, and imprison dissenters.

So after reading all of that, I found this blog, a pro-Turkish tourism site where the writer has used links to YouTube videos in order to promote tourism in Turkey.

I guess the YouTube execs should have led with those.

Or this. (and read the comments, they’re priceless)

I agree mostly with these statements, preferring Stefani’s music to Twain’s. But damn if this past Sunday’s performance by Prince wasn’t the most refreshing halftime show I’ve ever seen!

[EDIT] I had links to the videos on youtube here for a couple of weeks, with the warning to “get ‘em soon”, suspecting that they would be pulled for whatever idiotic copyright reason.  Well, it turns out they were!  I’m sure you can find them if you go here.  

It was almost disconcerting watch Prince rock out, doing something so loose, when in recent years Superbowl halftimes have been as boring as the games they were interrupting.  CCR, a Foo Fighters cover, All Along the Watchtower, and some killer guitar playing…Now that’s sexy!