Ask the geek flist: Youtube, Metube, Wetube

After yesterday's musing over user-generated movie content, a thought has struck me.  It might be a turkey, it might not, but I can't help wondering if user movies would be more manageable, more accessible and more controllable if they were hosted in a streaming context - an intranet Youtube.  By having a place for legit movies we might even be able to social-engineer the idea that your wedding and that damn puppy aren't meant to be at work.

Has anyone implemented a streaming movie setup at work?  What did you use, how hard was it to do and how brutally did it hammer your resources (or budget!)

Wired on intellectual property and dojinshi

Interesting article in Wired today about the way that the Japanese manga market handles self-published fanfic, dojinshi.  Despite having the same sort of copyright law as the West, the manga publishing houses turn a bit of a blind eye to a huge dojinshi industry existing, as one publisher says, in the space between canon and public and connecting the two.  It keeps the paying public interested, and seeds new talent because self-published artists are, by definition, passionate about what they write. 

It doesn't seem to pollute the canon, either, which maybe shows "lie" to some of the twitchier Western franchises who seem to hate fan-work and menace efforts like the Phantom Edit with lawyers and take-down guff.  Gods know how they'd respond to a slashed-up Marvel fanwork or Jessica Rabbit getting futa on Betty Boop, let alone Jabba/Leia squelch.

Once a thing enters the public domain, you lose control over it.  If it's good, people will play with it - be it Lego bricks or the X-Men.  Hell, even in gaming, a good NPC can grow legs and walk out of your inventory into someone else's love triangle (or massive gambling debt, Oleg, that'll do).  So even though you can protect the piece, you cannot lock down the ideas and that's good.  Some of the most interesting, fun and thought-provoking comics are the one-shots (I'm so looking forward to Ash vs X-Men).  The can suck too (Transformers: Hearts of Steel, say) but hell, so can canon.

It's as if the media industry wants to create strong memes, but memes which only replicate once, in the sale from publisher to consumer.  Replication restriction makes weak memes.  What they're creating and trying to control is too damn slippery for that.  If it's good, it's got legs. 

Creative types: How do you feel when someone does something unexpected with your work?  Are you in the "heh, cool" camp or the "no, that's just wrong" camp?  Do you think your views would change if it were published in the traditional way?

The King Report on Badger Culling

The King report is here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/tb/pdf/badgersreport-king.pdf

Basically, it's an attempt at a stopgap. Kill enough badgers to decrease the "reservoir of infection" and maintain the cull until something better (like badger vaccination or -gasp- better farming practices) comes along. It won't be a one-off and to work it would need to be repeated year after year in cull areas.

The smart, long-term approach would be to tag badgers now, get a really good idea of their movements and meanwhile expedite vaccine development. Then routinely vaccinate until the "reservoir of infection" is emptied. This would be cheaper in the long term, it would be massively more acceptable to the public, and it would be more effective.

I hope we can keep the anger level high enough that the politicians see that this is a vote-loser. That might steer them in the right direction. Very unpopular cull programmes would probably result in direct-action badger defense protests and a whole wave of "swampy versus the farmers" protest, which would be less desirable but an understandable reaction.