f o t w

Found on the Web

Following is a mixture of stuff I’ve posted to You Tube and elsewhere, along with links and sites I’ve shared in Google Reader.

Here’s Where the E-Learning Community Provides Practical Value
Published: July 27, 2010
Source: The Rapid eLearning Blog
Many of you are either working alone or on very small teams with limited resources. With some creativity, you can do quite a bit. In fact, many of my tips and tricks came from working in a similar situation. It’s amazing what can be done do with a computer and a little duct tape.

With that said, working solo has some drawbacks. One of the biggest is not having peers (or a more experienced person) who can help you brainstorm and think through the process of building a course. You really are left to fend for yourself. Or so it seems.

In the past we looked at how to navigate social media and manage all of the streams of information. We also discussed ways that being part of the community can help make you an elearning superstar. With today’s Internet and social media, you can redefine who’s a peer. And that’s a good thing.

I get a lot of emails about how to get started with elearning or how to learn more. One of my first suggestions is to jump into the community forums and start asking for help. It’s good for help and for your career. In today’s post, I want to highlight a recent interaction in the community that shows how you can become better in your elearning design.

A Quick Note about Communities

Communities typically work like the image below. Most people aren’t active participants. They kind of lurk at the edges looking for a quick tip here or there and following the threads. Only a handful is active in real conversation.

Lurking isn’t bad. There’s nothing wrong with looking for the quick tips and tricks. Who really has the time to hang out in communities chatting about elearning?

If all you want is a quick tip or fast help, then it’s fine to be on the outside. Just jump in, get some help, and go back to work. However, there is a lot of practical value in becoming part of your user community. Let me share a few ways:
- Real people get real help. No one knows the lurkers who quietly observe and pull out the help they need. When you ask questions and engage in conversation, you become a real person. And people who are in the community want to help real people. Become part of the 5%.
- Become an expert. What’s common to the community is that everyone is developing expertise in some capacity. Sure we all come to it from different angles and levels of experience, but ultimately what binds us together is our pursuit to become better at what we do. Share what you know and try to help others, too. You’ll feel better and your goodwill pays dividends when you need help.
- Virtual brainstorming. If you’re working solo, odds are that you don’t have a place to think out loud or bounce around ideas. The community offers that. Are you working on a course and trying to figure out how to do something? Do you want some feedback from others? Jump into the community and ask.
A Practical, Real-World Example

It’s one thing to talk about learning communities. But it’s another to make it a practical reality. The truth is most of us don’t have time to hang out in online communities. We have work to do and can’t spend every waking hour checking links in Twitter, following threads in forums, and updating Facebook pages.

Because of this, most people don’t fully participate in community activities. That’s fine. However, here’s a recent community interaction that is both practical and a great example of how the community offers real valuable help and not just good discussion.

Joe Deegan is a recent Articulate customer. And he’s quickly learned to get his value out of the community. A while back he posted a question looking for ideas on building an interactive sales course. My guess is that he got at least ten good ideas to play around with.

Just the other day, he posted another question in the forums:

I am working on a project where I am creating a slide that looks like the inside of a store that my users work in. I am having a hard time adding perspective to the floor so that it looks 3D as if I am inside the room. I’ve seen many of you do a great job of this so I wanted to get your ideas on how I can make my scene look better.

He uploaded a quick screencast of what he wanted to do; and then asked for some help.

You can follow what happened in the community by clicking this link. But I’ll give you a quick rundown.

His question generated a good conversation and some advice which compounded as others jumped in. It produced a few screencasts, some quick prototypes, and a great discussion. By the end of it, Joe interacted with six others and came away with some good ideas. His one-person team sure did grow.

I especially like the way Bruno took the essence of the conversation and created a quick screencast that not only addressed the original question, but also shows some great PowerPoint tips. Check it out, below.

Click here to view Bruno’s tutorial.

Think about the value Joe brings to his workplace. When they hired him, in a sense they also hired a team because Joe comes bundled with his network of resources. So if you’re a Joe Deegan and want to learn more (or just need help with your courses) don’t be afraid to jump into the community. You’ll find it a great experience and get the tips and tricks to help you grow as an elearning developer.

Tidbits:
- If you want to stay on top of the Articulate community, be sure to subscribe to Jeanette’s weekly update. She posts every Monday and pulls in great discussions, tweets, and many of the practical tutorials shared by the elearning community.
- I’ll be in Madison, WI on August 4-6 at the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning. Since I’m in town, I’m free to do an informal Articulate jam session where I can answer questions and offer tips & tricks. Contact me if you’re interested and I’ll provide some details.
- Don’t forget the Baton Rouge conference on October 12. Sign up here & use RAPIDBLOG code to save $30. It’s a great value and you’ll get all of the files we create. I’ll be arranging an informal jam session for that one, too.
Download your free 46-page ebook: The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
Ruling Allows ‘Jailbreaking’ of iPhones
Published: July 26, 2010
Source: NYT > Home Page
Owners of the iPhone will be able to break electronic locks on their devices in order to download applications that have not been approved by Apple.
Federal judge says you can break DRM if you're not doing so to infringe copyright
Published: July 25, 2010
Source: Boing Boing
Here's some remarkable news: a judge in a New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Appeals Court has ruled that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's ban on breaking DRM only applies if you break DRM in order to violate copyright law. This is a complete reversal of earlier rulings across the country (and completely opposite to the approach that the US Trade Representative has demanded from America's trading partners). In the traditional view, DRM is absolutely protected, so that no one is allowed to break it except the DRM maker. In other words, a film-maker isn't allowed to take the BluRay DRM off her own movie, a video game programmer can't take the iPad DRM off her own game, and an audiobook author can't take the DRM off his own Audible book.
So this ruling is pretty interesting news, as it constitutes a circuit split with pretty much the rest of the nation's courts, which is often a precursor to a Supreme Court challenge. What's more, the defendants here are General Electric, not hackers in black t-shirts or sketchy offshore Xbox-modchip vendors (theoretically the law shouldn't care if the defendant is a hobo or a billionaire, but in practice, billionaires usually get better precedents, and not just because they can afford better lawyers).
It's up to the plaintiff, MGE, to appeal to the Supremes, but even if they don't, it's only a matter of time until there are new cases in the Fifth Circuit (or other circuits that follow its lead) that lead to highest court handing down some new law on this. Let's hope they see the sense of Judge Garza: "Merely bypassing a technological protection that restricts a user from viewing or using a work is insufficient to trigger the (Digital Millennium Copyright Act's) anti-circumvention provision."
Court Backs Dismissal of Digital Copyright Claim (via /.)

3.5 Temblor Shakes Pacifica

Published: July 23, 2010

Source: Pacifica Riptide

3.5 - OFFSHORE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

2010 July 23 21:29:10 UTC

Details
Maps

Earthquake Details

This is a computer-generated message -- this event has not yet been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude	3.5
Date-Time	Friday, July 23, 2010 at 21:29:10 UTC Friday, July 23, 2010 at 02:29:10 PM at epicenter
Location	37.665°N, 122.516°W
Depth	6.7 km (4.2 miles)
Region	OFFSHORE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Distances	5 km (3 miles) NNW (331°) from Pacifica, CA 5 km (3 miles) WSW (237°) from Daly City, CA 5 km (3 miles) WSW (254°) from Colma, CA 15 km (9 miles) SW (215°) from San Francisco City Hall, CA
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 0.2 km (0.1 miles); depth +/- 0.4 km (0.2 miles)
Parameters	Nph= 75, Dmin=5 km, Rmss=0.13 sec, Gp=104°, M-type=local magnitude (ML), Version=2
Source	California Integrated Seismic Net: USGS Caltech CGS UCB UCSD UNR
Event ID	nc71436076

Did you feel it? Report shaking and damage at your location. You can also view a map displaying accumulated data from your report and others.

Earthquake Maps

Earthquake Location
Google Map
Google Earth KML
(Requires Google Earth)
Did you feel it? Report shaking and damage at your location. You can also view a map displaying accumulated data from your report and others.

Preliminary Earthquake Report
California Integrated Seismic Net:
USGS Caltech CGS UCB UCSD UNR

Past
Present
Future
Location
- Info by State
- Info by Country/Region

U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
Page URL: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc71436076.php
Page Contact Information: EHP Web Team
Page Last Modified: July 23, 2010 21:35:46 UTC

MC Escher panorama
Published: July 21, 2010
Source: Boing Boing
Here's Nico Roig's interactive panorama, made by stitching together the edges of MC Escher's "Relativity" so that they flow psychedelically into one another in a kind of sphere.
Tribute to Escher (Thanks, Jeffrey!)
Nikon D3s vs Canon 1D Mk IV: Product Reviews: Adorama Photography TV
Published: July 20, 2010
Source: ChrisDD2009's YouTube Activity
I favorited a YouTube video: Adorama Photography TV presents Nikon D3s vs Canon 1D Mk IV! This week, Mark Wallace puts both the Nikon D3S and Canon 1D Mark IV to the test. Both cameras are tough, robust and built with a spec list sure to impress photographers who need accurat...
cows & cows & cows
Published: July 20, 2010
Source: ChrisDD2009's YouTube Activity
I favorited a YouTube video: surreal bovine choreography. No cows were harmed during the making of this video, though their future prospects probably aren't as optimistic. The music can be downloaded from my music shop here: http://www.beatsdigital.com/artist/91829
Web Performant WordPress
Published: July 19, 2010
Source: WPLover

This is such a finely written (and designed) article.
Data Visualization Timeline
Published: July 15, 2010
Source: Chart Porn
An interactive timeline of innovations and milestones, from the 1600s-today. Note: click on any item for more details.
Béla Fleck's "Throw Down Your Heart - Part 2"
Published: July 16, 2010
Source: BeyondChron: San Francisco's Alternative Online Daily News
Béla Fleck is often considered the premier banjo player in the world. “Throw Down Your Heart - Africa Sessions Part 2” includes fourteen new songs recorded during his journey from Nashville to Mali, The Gambia, Tanzania and Uganda. Fleck's goal was to collaborate with incredible African musicians, and look into the origins of the banjo and banjo music. This is also Fleck's second installment of his African musical odyssey and his first experiment with the idea of going direct to the listener online; no record company middleman, a popular concept being used in today's digital music world. For now, his website is the only place you can find and download this fabulous album.
America's Cup Defender Of SF Testing Boat Classes
Published: July 15, 2010
Source: CBS 5 - San Francisco Bay Area's source for news, weather, traffic and sports
America's Cup defender BMW Oracle Racing of San Francisco plans to spend four days next week conducting trials off Valencia, Spain, that will help it determine whether the next regatta will be sailed in multihulls or traditional monohulls. The trials will be conducted with two pairs of X40 catamarans and RC44 sloops. The syndicate will test whether to have downwind or reaching starts rather than traditional windward starts, and will experiment with 3-D and high definition TV production. BMW Oracle Racing routed Alinghi of Switzerland in two races in February in giant multihulls off Valencia. If multihulls are chosen for the 34th America's Cup, they'll be smaller and less costly than the 90-by-90-foot monsters used in February.
Color Management 101 - How do I get prints to match what I see on my display? (Updated July 23, 2010)
Published: July 15, 2010
Source: Ron Martinsen's Photography Blog

WARNING: This is a high-level overview of a highly complex subject that ultimately advises several resources for the photographer to help minimize color management nightmares. There are ton of products, concepts, and techniques that are intentionally missing from this article. I’ve tried to break it down to the recommendations I’d give a friend who is struggling with color management nightmares without boring them with weeks of lectures and discussions on this sophisticated topic.

How well do you see color?

Click here to take a test that will test your color IQ. I highly recommend this for those who think they can visually calibrate their display. In case you are wondering, I got a 35 on a calibrated display (without my glasses or contacts on), so you can imagine how that score would probably be much worse if I was on a non-calibrated display.

Color Management

Tim Grey's Color Confidence: The Digital Photographer's Guide to Color Management and many similar books on the complex subject of Color Management have been written to guide photographers though the hassle of understanding all of the variables involved with how your capture device (your camera), display device (your monitor), your editing software (i.e., Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture, etc…) and your output device (a web browser or printer) all have different ways and limitations on how they display color, and what is required to get all of these devices in sync with each other.

If just one link in the chain is converted improperly, it’s easy to get inaccurate results in your final output, so understanding this topic is essential for photographers to express their artistic representation of color in a way that will allow other calibrated displays to show accurate results. The sad truth though is that many people don’t calibrate their displays so all bets are off and it’s Forrest Gump calibration – you’ll never know what your gonna get! This is why understanding color spaces and working with calibrated profiles is essential to getting accurate output!

Pantone Huey – Calibrate Your Display

For the past couple of years I’ve been very happy with my Pantone Huey as my monitor calibration device. Since most of my output was for the display, this solution was sufficient for my needs. If you fall into this camp, then I highly recommend this product as a cost effective starting point into monitor calibration. If you have more than one display attached to your computer, you must purchase the huey pro as the non-pro version only supports one display.

You can buy a huey at Amazon, B&H or other online and local dealers. If you have a multi-display configuration then be sure to pick up a huey pro from Amazon, Adorama, B&H and other online and local dealers.

If you are graduating to doing your own printing, regardless of how inexpensive your printer is, I highly recommend you move up to a device that can also profile your printer and papers.

ColorMunki Photo Color Management Solution – Calibrate Your Display to Your Printer for WYSIWIG results

ColorMunki Photo Color Management Solution by X-Rite is more than just a display calibration device, it also allows you to calibrate your printer to the paper you are using to provide an end to end color management solution. What does this really mean? It means you can have your display match your printed image as close as possible (up to the limits of your display and the natural differences between a backlit display and a printed image).

Seeing is believing

A picture really speaks a thousand words here though, so I’ll start with a few examples. First, let’s take a look at what my color management dialog looks like in Photoshop CS4 when I try to print one of my images on an inexpensive Canon PIXMA MP560 Wireless Inkjet All-In-One Photo Printer

Photoshop CS4 Print Settings on a system without a printer profile

I can’t demonstrate what a calibrated display looks like, but if your display isn’t horrifically off then the above photo should look very pleasing from a color perspective with warm (but not red or pale) skin tones and nice vibrant blue water (but not way over saturated).

I did my first print of the photograph above by telling Photoshop to just print this image using the printer driver’s settings as I did not have a custom profile for the Office Depot High Gloss Premium Photo Paper (the worst paper I’ve ever used). Here’s my printer driver settings:

This is what a typical consumer would do and expect to get good results. However, the results I got in this case, and every prior case when printing from this printer without a color profile were horrific. Compare the before (left) and after (right) below, where the accurate print was done AFTER I used the ColorMunki Photo to generate a paper profile for this paper:

Pardon the reflection on this photo of the before and after prints side by side – some fidelity is lost in this photo

This photo of the two prints don’t really do it justice as the before on the left looks worse than you see here and the after one on the right looks significantly better than what is shown. However, I think you can see the most important point – the before is horrific and the after closely represents what is shown on the screen (in fact, in real life it was identical on my machine). WOW, what a difference this made on a printer that cost less than $100!!!! Who says color management is only for expensive pro printers, right?

For those who are interested, here were my settings AFTER creating my paper profile using the ColorMunki (described later in this article):

Photoshop CS4 Soft Proofing and Print dialog settings for the AFTER photo using the ColorMunki generated printer profile

Those paying careful attention will notice that this version lets Photoshop manage the colors and I use the printer profile I created with my ColorMunki, which is why the results are so much better. Now, let’s show you how easy it is to use the ColorMunki Photo to calibrate my display and generate a paper profile.

Buy a ColorMunki Photo Color Management Solution now on Adorama and B&H.

ColorMunki Photo Calibration Demo

I’ll skip some steps here, but screen shots of nearly the entire process can be found here for those who are interested.

While you can perform your calibrations for your display and printer separately, here we’ll do them together since we are just getting started. The net result of this process is the creation of a profile which will be used by your Windows or Mac operating system to accurately display the colors on your display and to give your printer driver the info it needs to render those colors accurately to your printer for the paper used in this profiling. Here’s where we begin:

Step 1 - Choose what type of profile you need to create

Next, we’ll choose what type of display we’ll calibrate:

LCD’s, Laptops and Projectors are all supported display devices

You’ll also notice here that I chose the Advanced feature so I could have my display adjust based on ambient light conditions which is important as your results will vary based on the light in the room near your display.

After your ColorMunki calibrates itself and measures the ambient light in the room, you are ready to hang the ColorMunki from your display so it can read some test patterns and make the necessary corrections. Here’s a few pictures to demonstrate this process:

Place ColorMunki against your display

Here’s a photo that shows the ColorMunki in position after being placed its included case:

This design keeps the ColorMunki in place without any hassles

Color patterns are shown as you see here:

A series of colors and grayscale tones are shown and scanned by the ColorMunki for later calibration

and this data is collected and matched against the values they should be to create a difference that is used in your profile to begin displaying everything on your monitor the way it should be displayed without any modifications. After this process is complete a profile is generated and stored in the appropriate location on your computer so that your display will be immediately updated to show accurate color. if your only output target is the display, then you could stop here (and could probably get away with just a Pantone Huey as your only solution).

Printer Profiling

However, if your target is print, it’s now time to get your display and printer in sync with each other by creating a printer profile. It should be noted that printer profiles are only good for one type of paper and that 8x10 or larger paper is required (I use letter size), so I recommend you do this every time you change to a new paper (unless you have generated or acquired an accurate printer profile already).

Be sure to select the correct printer and give the profile a name you’ll remember (printer name not required as it will be pre-pended to the paper name string).

After clicking Next, you will now be prompted to print a test chart. This process is critical to your success so pay close attention the instructions on the screen, in the help file and the related videos included on your setup discs.

ColorMunki knows what these colors should look like when you scan them later on your paper, but the wizard displays them as they should appear. It’s common to have entirely different results on paper from the print, which is why profiling is so important.

When doing your profiling, it’s important to turn off all color management in your printer driver. Turn off ALL color management in the printer driver as shown here for the Canon MP560:

When you are done, be sure to save all of your printer driver settings to a preset (which most printer drivers support now) so that you can recall these values to reproduce the same print results. Here’s the name I chose for my preset (which will be shown in the Commonly used Settings list):

ALWAYS save your dialog settings when profiling

I now know that every time I print from ColorMunki when profiling or when I am using my custom profile that we will create here. For this example I chose the paper name, but if the values aren’t going to change whenever you are using the ColorMunki or its generated profiles you could just call it something like “ColorMunki Settings”. These are the printer driver settings required to get accurate results.

This will cause a sheet of paper to be printed with a test chart. You will use the ColorMunki to scan the test pattern printed on the paper you wish to profile as shown here:

Scan the test pattern which are in most cases not accurate based on what is shown on-screen

The profiling software will now generate a second pattern based on the results it got from the scan to make sure it understands how the colors on the paper appear differently from the way they should be. When this is done, you can scan the second page and the wizard will let you know which line to scan and if the measurement scan was successful:

This 2nd chart will differ from paper to paper based on the results of the first test chart

When this is completed, your profile is generated using the name of your choice:

Profile names can be as descriptive as you like so don’t make cryptic names

Now when you print or soft proof in Photoshop, you can use your newly created paper profile so that your monitor will display the colors similar to the way they will be printed:

It’s also critical for letting the print dialog (shown earlier for Photoshop) know what type of paper you are printing to so it knows how to put the right colors of ink down on that specific paper. Here’s an example of choosing a custom profile in Lightroom (all versions):

Click to view a larger version of Lightroom’s custom profile dialog

Here’s our settings in Lightroom to ensure that we get accurate results from our printer

Other applications such as Aperture, Acrobat, and more will all use these color profiles as well. Fortunately many paper and printer manufactures provide profiles for download on their web site so that you don’t have to do this, but many argue that for the best results it’s always a good idea to generate your own. The validity of that statement is a bit skewed though as generally profiles that are provided by manufactures are done using more expensive spectrophotometers, but ColorMunki does allow for an iterative process where you can get more test patterns using some of your photos as inputs to create highly tuned paper profiles for your workflow. One of my favorite Fashion Photographers and printing mentors, Douglas Dubler, highly recommends this process for generating the best possible print results.

It is important to note that paper profiles must be generated for the exact paper AND printer you are using, so if either of those variables change a new paper profile must be created. It is therefore sometimes easier and faster to just generate your own profile than it is to hunt down the profile for your exact printer and the paper you are using (especially if you have an older, inexpensive and/or unpopular printer). While you may use a little ink and paper to do the profiling, you’ll waste far less than if you get horrible results as i did in my before photo (and many other prints using that printer).

This headache of printing is why I had frequently in the past advised people not to do their own printing, but rather leaving it in the hands of third parties who specialize in the process as the cost-effectiveness of doing so made a lot of sense to me. My position on that has changed a bit as I am doing this series, but if you aren’t willing to invest in a product like ColorMunki to calibrate your display and profile your printer, then I still stick to my advice of using third party services for all your printing needs.

Video Demonstration

Click here to see my friend and Canon Explorer of Light Rick Sammon discuss HDR and color calibration. Skip to 7:00 if you want to get to the color display and printer calibration part using the ColorMunki Photo.

NEW: There’s a great resource on the ColorMunki including videos located here.

Conclusion

If you are a photographer, after you purchase your camera and lens your next purchase should always be a display calibration device. A huey is sufficient if you are a beginner doing printing via third parties, but as soon as you switch to doing your own printing (regardless of the cost of the printer) then you really need a device like a ColorMunki Photo to get the best possible results. The other ColorMunki devices mentioned on X-Rite’s web site are not for photographers, so stick with the Photo version. There’s also more expensive i1 based solutions for those who will make a living from their prints, but for most of us the ColorMunki is going to meet our basic needs for accurate printer and display profiling.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: ColorMunki Photo

Disclaimer

While I purchased my own Pantone Huey, X-Rite did provide me with a ColorMunki for use in this article and in my printing series. I will get a commission if you purchase from the links for Amazon, Adorama, and B&H shown in this article, so show your appreciation of this article by using these links!
It’s Guest Blog Wednesday featuring Aaron Johnson!
Published: July 13, 2010
Source: Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider Blog » Photoshop & Digital Photography Techniques, Tutorials, Books, Reviews & More

Thank you, Scott for letting me interrupt your guest blog series with some unnecessary foolishness.
Photographers are a weird bunch, which is why a daily comic strip centered around the business writes itself (or so I wish). For this guest blog I’ve decided to highlight 10 themes (some controversial) that have made for good comic fodder over the years.

1. Man vs. Machine
One of the six elements of comic strip humor is writing something that is “recognizable”. It’s no wonder then that this strip has become an all-time favorite to many…

OK, who HASN’T heard that before? By the way, I’m still look looking for an upright bass that will make me sound like Brian Bromberg.

2. Pro or Pro bono

That strip has been turned into a verb. My dad emailed me to let me know he was “WTD43?d” one time. Writing for one of the most unregulated industries provides a fair amount of material. Who’s a professional, who’s not and who cares?
The following strip is inspired by the second most asked question of photographers. (the first most asked question being: “Can I have a copy of that?”)

3. Photoshop vs. Photosh*t
Photoshop – It’s just a tool. Really? Just?! This may be the understatement of the century when considering Photoshop’s impact on photography in the last twenty years. It may also be one of the most abused “tools” in recent history.

Endless debates exist as to how it should be used and how much it should be used. When something looks TOO GOOD, it MUST have been Photoshopped.

Unfortunately, powerful post production tools have created a lazy “fix it in post” attitude among many professionals. Personally, being on the back end of many shoots (both live and still) it’s a frustrating job security.

4. Size matters

It’s not the ax, it’s how much attention it can get you. And yes, I’ve pulled the big gear card before and it can get you free admission and better seats. I have no shame.

5. Gearheads

Photography is a very interesting hobby where half the population is obsessed with the technical aspects and the other half doesn’t know what an f-stop is. That’s probably what makes photography great. It’s so inclusive. People can find joy in complete different aspects of the medium. Some find joy in peeping, some find joy in seeking.

6. R-E-S-P-E-C-T

WTD is like the Rodney Dangerfield of photographers. It makes for better humor. A comic strip about Scott Kelby just won’t be as funny.

7. HDR
I looked through the 1000 plus WTD strips and just realized I didn’t have an HDR related strip. So here’s one I created exclusively for the Scott Kelby blog…

8. Film
The following strip is based on a very real experience I had…

You have to kind of feel for all the abandoned film cameras out there. Of course they’ll have plenty of company with all the outdated digitals.

9. Low-ball-ers

It’s really fun and cathartic writing for a character who has the absolutely worst clients in the world. The sad part is how many of these strips hit really close to home for so many.

10. Edumacation

Photography/education is always an interesting topic-combo to tackle. I’d like to know the ratio of DIY’s versus formally educated photographers. If the DIY’s aren’t in the lead, they certainly will be after enrolling in the duck’s class…

Thanks again Scott, for letting me lampoon your awesome blog. And thank you, to everyone who has supported WTD over the last four years. May we never forget to stop and laugh at ourselves every now and again

For more What The Duck, check out WhatTheDuck.net, follow @WTDComics on Twitter, or check out the Facebook page.
On File-Sharing: Are You Smarter Than A 12th Grader?
Published: July 13, 2010
Source: Music Think Tank (primary) RSS
I. Students Chime In

Back in February, I stumbled across an essay written by a twelfth grader named Kamal Dhillon. In it, he argues that file sharing may be illegal, but it is not ethically wrong. The essay had been entered into the Glassen Ethics Competition and Dhillon won. Out of eighty entrants in the contest, the essay that won the one thousand dollar prize and got republished in The Winnipeg Free Press, argued that yes, copyright infringement can be morally justified. Though the views that Dhillon expresses in the essay and the sheer intellectual resilience that he displays in it are not characteristic of his entire age group’s attitude towards file sharing, nor does his understanding of the issues seem to reflect that of most twelfth graders, it got me thinking. What happens when fans are not stupid anymore? What happens when there are high school students who happen to have a firmer grasp on the file sharing debate than some of the executives and artists who get quoted in the headlines?

I mean, they are smarter than a twelfth grader—right? Most likely not, I am afraid. Readers of blogs like Music Think Tank and TechDirt, who live to learn about and make sense of the impact of technology on the recording industry and have observed how file sharing has reshaped our cultural lives—i.e. you—are in fact, smarter than a twelfth grader. But, what about these out-of-touch executives, commonly relegated to “struggling dinosaurs,” whose only exit from this industry entails mass extinction of their kind and the destruction of the music empires they created? What about all those artists in recent years who have made off-the-cuff comments about file sharing, only to be criticized for their complete disconnect from the arguments? Better, how do Dhillon’s arguments stack up against some of the viewpoints that have been gaining traction in recent weeks?

The other day, audio engineer Jon Sheldrick sent in his thoughtful post “Why You Should Pay for Music;” it has been republished on The Huffington Post and Music Think Tank. In it, he argues that rather than “scaring people into buying music,” he advocates “a culture in which people actually want to spend money on music, because they understand the positive repercussions it has on the medium of recorded music, and the lives of the artists that produce it.” In contrast, Dhillon believes that society “has benefited overall from file sharing.” He, in a sense, argues that it is not that we do not need people to become active participants in their cultural lives, but that they should also be able to deconstruct the obfuscation of reality and the arguments that surround file sharing. He is realistic in his observation that millions of people engage in the act of downloading music and find the arguments against it to be “unfair, inconstant, and irrational.” How does Sheldrick fair?

II. The Value of Music

“The problem,” he argues, “is that many people just don’t value music in a meaningful way.” This is the first of many instances where I happen to disagree with Sheldrick. See, he makes the point that people value music “in the sense that they enjoy it, and love rocking out on their iPod.” However, “they don’t value it in the sense that they will willingly fork over $1 for a song,” enabling the artist to keep producing music. This argument is misguided; it fails to ask the more meaningful question. Is it that people do not value music? Or, is it that music has become in some way disconnected from its value?

Though it would take a whole other essay to establish the basis for that argument, it goes something like this: With the rise of corporatism in the record industry throughout the 1980s and 90s, executives disconnected themselves from what used to matter the most: the music. As the business evolved from the long-term career-building view that artist development allowed to the short-term hit-making machine that mass-media provided, they grew dependent on a business scheme that was never intended to serve fans as actual people who had a personal connection to their culture. Rather, the workings of the CD-Release Complex reduced fans to a mere collective of consumers. They were free to make meaning together—through top-down artist brands and their music—as long as they did so as identity seeking individuals. The artist “brand” replaced peer-to-peer human relationships with an abstract, corporate-created one, and functioned as the fan’s belief system; it employed mythologies, sacred rituals, and iconography that served as a substitute for the features of a real artist. This corporatization continued on to local radio stations and record stores and reduced the natural progression of music culture; it oversimplified the process by which real culture develops and evolves.

In a few decades, the music culture in which people participated became tilted toward the priorities and behaviors of the multi-national corporations and media conglomerates that were responsible for its planning. In the process, our culture became dismantled and replaced with simulations of culture—big-box retail outlets, commercial radio stations, and MTV—and as the record industry skewed itself towards their needs, the harder it became for real culture to thrive. The further people got from the process through which music is created and culture formed, the more disconnected they became from the value of it.   And the more music culture became detached from its origins and exchanged for a corporate simulation of one—an existence meant solely to promote behavior that improves the profits of the corporations manufacturing it—the more that music became disconnected from its value and the material processes of its creation. By 1999, the height of the record industry, it was a nearly $15 billion a year business. At this point, most people’s relationships to the artists that they loved were mediated merely through corporations. Fans grew dependant on artist brands for self-presentation; consumption became participation in their cultural lives, their path to individualism. These paths, however, only separated and disconnected them further.

More than a decade later, we still identify with and are even more fascinated by the plight of these abstract corporations in the digital age than we are with the flesh-and-blood artists that they represent, now why do you think that is? Do you really think it is because “people don’t value music in a meaningful way” or are things a little more complicated? I would argue that they are more convoluted than Sheldrick leads us to believe. Has music become devalued to some degree, due to the social epidemic of file sharing and those born-digital who have embraced it? Sure. But, they have become disconnected too.

III.    Misunderstanding Complex Events

Next, Sheldrick shares his experience of what is was like to download music illegally in high school, and then as a recording engineer a few years later, witness first hand the effects that the social epidemic of file sharing had on the very industry that he was attempting to enter. There were artists with sizeable fan bases questioning whether or not they could afford to record another album—even though there was obvious demand; musicians no longer able to afford paying recording engineers; and studios, big and small, all over New York City were shutting their doors. All of this, Sheldrick writes, “was a direct result of people not paying for music.” Okay, stop. First off, the problem with Sheldrick’s perspective here is that sometimes recording engineers like him forget just how vast the chasm is between them and real people.

Yes, it would be beneficial if more people had experiences like Sheldrick—such experiences are illuminating—but it is important to remember that it is real people, not recording engineers, who determine the fate of our culture. They may have the same experiences, but see them very differently. The reason for this, as I argued above, is that, sure, such experiences would help remind listeners of the significance and value of music. However, in reminding them, we are admitting something important to our understanding of this debate and the shortcomings of Sheldrick’s argument—not only is there an apparent disconnect between listeners and the value of music, but that the inherent value of music has, in some way, become disconnected from the music itself. Undoubtedly, over the course of the era of recorded music—approximately the last hundred years—people, in becoming more passive participants in their cultural lives, lost their connection to artists and to the labor that creates music. For some people, if not most, their participation begins and ends at consumption; they are not as sensitive to the material process of art’s creation as Sheldrick, nor do they have a vested interest in maintaining the barriers of music consumption and keeping them as high as possible. This is, perhaps, why the rift between real people and music industry professionals in general is so prevalent, because they are not committed to solving a particular problem, like financing and distributing recorded music. Therefore, when something like file sharing comes along and disrupts the process through which those operations occur, as well as, the business model of the record industry, it is important to remember that people are not committed to preserving the music consumption hurdles in order to keep the record industry’s solution viable. And, since it is people, not professionals, who determine the fate of our culture, we must foresee the web as an opportunity to reconnect them to the process through which music is made. That way, they have their direct experience of the labor that goes into creating music, and not just someone telling them about it.

In addition to this, Sheldrick falls into the cognition trap called “causefusion.” In Blunder, historian Zachary Shore argues that this trap pertains to “any misunderstanding about the causes of complex events;” it “leads us to oversimplify, often at our own peril.” Tell me Sheldrick, were these things that you witnessed a direct result of file sharing or were there other things happening? In my humble opinion—beyond the social epidemic of file sharing—it is more useful to consider the rise of the networked audience and the personalized music experience; the death of the CD-Release Complex and the fall of mass marketing; the fracturing of the media landscape into niches; the end of the format replacement cycle; the explosion of alternate and immersive entertainment options; the converging of top-down corporate media with the bottom-up participatory culture of the Internet; the evolution of social music; and the “broken” condition of the traditional music consumption system. Likely, these technological and societal shifts had much more to do with the tragedies that Sheldrick witnessed and file sharing played minor—if any—role.

After this, Sheldrick changes the topic of his argument and expresses his view on how recorded music “provides a listening experience that is unique and rewarding in its own right, and listeners should strive to preserve that.” Is this possible? I mean, can listeners strive to preserve the loss of the concerted sonic experience? Romantic notions such as this tend to forget that listeners do not program the mediums through which they play music. Therefore, the biases of the medium that they are susceptible to also are not under their control. Though many audiophiles likely thought about boycotting the wide-scale adoption of the iPod, the average person’s listening habits do change and they are not precisely “in control” of that. Mediums are biased; they promote different ranges of social behavior. If you want to live in the woods with your 45’s and listen to them on your record player, do it, but it is hard to say it is up to listeners to preserve the experience. In an ironic twist, Sheldrick follows this logic by making an assertion that aligns directly with thoughts that I have been exploring in recent months. He argues that fans need to buy their music, learn how to listen more closely and savor it, that by purchasing music and going through the process to obtain it—the waiting, the anticipation, and getting to finally own it—they will inherently enjoy the music more. Exactly. But, there is a problem with getting to a place where you can actually savor your music—you have to buy it first. If the arguments that I have made about the paradoxes of choice overload in culture are correct, then it is getting harder and harder for fans to decide what music to buy every day, their ability to savor their music is overtaken by the effect of overwhelming choice.

IV.    The Morality Issue

“At the end of the day, it’s really a moral argument,” Sheldrick concludes. He concedes though, that in the music world, much like life in general, that “the moral road is not always the easiest route to take.” To understand the limitations of this argument, let us return again to the views Kamal Dhillon expressed in his winning essay, “Not Wrong, Just Illegal.” He writes that, “in many areas the world over, the action of uploading and downloading copyrighted material is illegal and people know this. Yet, they still download music without paying anyways.” Why then, are so many people choosing to simply ignore the copyright laws? “Part of the reason is that people question whether the law that forbids sharing of such material online is morally justified,” he answers. On the topic of the morality of file sharing, he rather convincingly argues that, “The fact that something is illegal doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily immoral.” He argues, that on a global scale “young people are questioning the merit of the laws that forbid them to share material.” They think that copyright laws are unjust and know they are easy to break without getting caught. Just as important, he asserts, is that most young people regard the act of sharing their music with others as morally acceptable. So, is it really a moral argument? “You’re talking about a non-violent activity largely in the privacy of your own home, or bedroom or dorm room, in search of great music that turns you on—that is inherently a joyful, if potentially addictive, activity,” music critic Greg Kot told me in an interview. “It’s also completely organic: The Internet, above all, is a tool for sending and receiving files. That music files would be part of that culture is only natural.” In the Copyright Wars, legal scholar William Patry has argued that the only reason the subject of morality comes up, in terms of the file sharing debates is that people use it “as as a way to cover up the inability to justify expansion of rights on economic grounds.”

“Indeed,” Mike Masnick of TechDirt adds to the discourse. “Since copyright is intended as an economic right, the argument over copyright needs to focus on the economic issues…a properly calibrated system is one where there’s the greatest overall economic good and everyone has the greatest opportunity to benefit…” At that point, he rightfully asks, “[Where’s] the morality question at all?” There is not one. Those who claim morality in an economics discussion on copyright use it as a crutch because they cannot support their position. Masnick, then, firmly states, “There is no moral issue at all.” In other words, it is not that the moral road is a difficult route to take, as Sheldrick wrote, it is that, in debating the issue of file sharing, it is a route that should not be taken at all. Under scrutiny the argument just does not hold up. Masnick believes that those who use the morality foundation to support their arguments are wrong on two major points. “First,” he says, “is the idea that it means creators of content can’t make any money.” When, in fact, he argues, “nothing can be further from the truth.” Then, he argues that the second point revolves around the idea “that there’s a right to make money.” He maintains his position that this line of logic is completely false because economics is not a moral issue; it does not care about anyone’s ‘right’ to make money from his or her creative output. Therefore, neither should you. Andrew Dubber of New Music Strategies has summed up this argument quite well. He writes, “Making music is not (usually) a job of work. It is a creative act. You don’t have the RIGHT to make money from your music. You only have the opportunity. If you make music speculatively—that is, you create it in the hopes of making money from it, then you are a music entrepreneur. As such, entrepreneurship rules apply.” Even though many artists invest a good deal of energy, effort and expense in their creative ideas, they will probably make no money. The thing that most people forget is that nobody owes them the money just because they put the work in. Being a successful entrepreneur means that artists have to meet people’s needs and wants in a way that allows them to make money. Not by, as Dubber puts it, “making things that people will not pay for, insisting that they should, and then complaining that their morals are to blame.” He then poses this question, “Even if it was true that all the people you wish to target with your art are immoral thieves…why would you insist on trying to change their behavior as part of your business strategy?” After all, Mark Earls wrote an entire book on this topic called Herd, its lesson: “Mass behavior is hard to change.”

To be clear, my intention here is not to suggest that Jon Sheldrick is not smarter than a twelfth grader—not at all. He has written a very well thought out essay and it deserves the attention that it has garnered. However, we need to take a moment and recognize the implications of a culture where a twelfth grader is capable of understanding and expressing the arguments that surround file sharing. Chances are—out of the eighty entries in the ethics competition—someone made arguments that were similar to the points that Sheldrick argued, but they did not win. When presented with an essay like Sheldrick’s, as good as it is, someone like Dhillon is capable of finding his way through the maze of the issues and asking the follow up question that makes Sheldrick’s argument drop like a house of cards. He likely does not know about Masnick, Patry, or Dubber, but the information is out there. Fans are not stupid. Yes, file sharing might be illegal, but to them, it is not wrong. Therefore, making these outdated pleas—that focus around arguments that have, by and large, been debunked by leading experts—about why fans should pay for music is not going to resonate with these kids. You tell the right crowd that file sharing is a moral argument and they are going to think you are an idiot. Not only that, but responses to file sharing like this, they do not seek any imaginative nor creative insights. They do not help people understand the issues better. All they do is make other artists and employees in the cultural industries feel better—about themselves. Instead, of taking what could be a great opportunity to clarify the issues that surround this social behavior and helping the general public comprehend reality, I would contend that all Sheldrick has done is confused them further, turning the discourse into that of post-lunch student chatter.

Kyle Bylin — Editor of Hypebot and Music Think Tank — (@kbylin) — Get In Touch
Edited by: Jamie Johnson
Modern Life?
Published: July 13, 2010
Source: Business Pundit

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