The genius of this clip is that there is nothing added, it is all done through the editing. It’s a brilliant bit, absolutly brilliant.

Karl

Thanks Karl for inviting me to co-blog here on vcritic. I thought it would be good to start with expanding a debate we’ve had yesterday about the definition of UGC. As we’re heading in a speedy pace towards the age of mass creativity, YouTube grows by the hour with 65K new videos uploaded monthly and the tools for filming/editing/directing/acting/producing become cheap and mainstream, the boundaries of creativity and copyrights are getting somewhat blurred and we need a clear definition. Luckily, there can be no clear definition without a proper debate on who is User, what is Generated and even what is Content….

There are many practical, legal and creative issues to consider, however, looking for the most inclusive definition, my take on the issue is that rather than focusing exlusively on the making/creating angel, we should focus on the purpose of uploading and sharing.

Karl argues that uploading a clip from a TV show is not User Generated Content but a breach of a copyright laws. I beg to differ on this. The way i see it, we enter an era where consumption and production intertwine - think about your de.lic.ious tag-cloud or the blogroll on the side-bar of your blog - isn’t that content? Isn’t organising, recommending, rating or linking etc. is in essence creating content? So we have user generated content and user oerganised content and user distributed content….people are content!

So, surely there are different levels of UGC and there is a big difference between uploading a 30sec clip from your favourite show to producing/directing/acting/editing/mash-uping a 5min video, but the way i see it, they are just the different end of the same UGC line. If someone bothered to cut and upload a beautiful goal, 9/11 dreadful moments, spoiled Paris, a classic scene from a movie etc. with the inttention of sharing it with the world then this is user generated content for me - as long as there is an individual (or peers) user/s on the other side that has uploaded the content without any marketing/profit intentions.

Of course there are legal issues to be looked at here, but since i’m no lawyer and have no sympathy to blind greedy protection of copyrights, as i see it, everything that was ever aired on TV should be free to the world to take it and do with it whatever they fancy.

What do you think?

Lets just hope that as creating will become more mainstream and the 1% rule will change we’ll see much more of this.

This is a heart rendering phone call between Kevin Cosgrove and the 911 operators. It appears from the audio that he was on the phone as the tower collapsed. The video is also referenced by wikipedia which gives a little more background.

These girls always seem to involve farts in their bits, and I’m all for it

On YouTube

Apparently from a private preview at E3, that game looks like KOTOR on steroids

The old adage of there is no bad publicity is shown in the alexa rankings for Rocketboom, and for Amanda’s blog Unboomed, both of them in the top three “movers and shakers”

On top of that Rocketboom had a brilliant episode today that was original, creative, and fun, by featuring some YouTube stars really showed itself to a steward of the vlogosphere.

current.tv is is like youtube in the way that flickr is like photobucket. It may not ever compete on volume, but will surely compete on quality, revenue and recruiting Social Media Talent.

Current.tv is like “project greenlight”, it encourages video submissions that the community votes on. In fact the community can “greenlight” projects as part of the voting mechanism, and because current.tv is actually a TV channel, it has an avenue to broadcast the best and the brightest. Oh and guess what, people get paid.

What current.tv has done is probably the model that every channel, that creates original content could benefit from, in addition to it’s normal development process. I can’t imagine a more cost effective sandbox for television content. I wouldn’t be surprised if the concept of a broadcast TV pilot just moves to a social video platform. IMHO this would have been a much better model for Fox Atomic

Current.tv is not a free for all, and it provides guidelines around what it’s looking for from the community. It asks for short stories called “pods”, Mobile video, Viewer Created Ads, and Promo Spots.

As i’ve said before the content will follow the money, but how about the talent will follow the opportunity? Sure some folks will manage to make a career out of youtube, with it’s massive audience, but with 65,000 videos uploaded a day, how do you rise above the noise? If you are creating something artistic, thoughtful, thought provoking, where is the outlet for that? Maybe not YouTube?

Current.tv seems to be more of a patron of the arts, a steward if you like, sure they get great content for their TV channel, but they are also encouraging story telling.

Tip of the Hat: Myphonerocks.com

BTW Jaffe has an interesting conversation going on on JaffeJuice called Why YouTube Imitators will fail. My response is, youtube imitators will fail as long as the continue to “imitate” and not innovate. YouTube has pioneered a model of social media that no-one has figured out how to capitalize on, not even YouTube.

Great video from Japan of some real drifter cars, great stuff.

Tip of the Hat