Hello all, here follows a summary on our upcoming contributions for August:

Digital TV is about to be implemented in Brazil December this year. Discussions on the use of DRM in set-top boxes have been taking place within governmental instances. The Ministry of Communications supports the insertion of DRM (plus, historically, many other initiatives suported by broadcasters). However, all of the others Ministries on the "Digital TV Comitee" oppose that: Culture, External Relations, Development & Industry, and even the Ministry directly linked to the President, among others. Brazilian Institute for Consumer Defense has already pronounced publicly against DRM. We aim at taking a look on this issue, highlighting the consequences of this discussion on media convergence.

From 'priority watch list' to 'watch list': Other theme that can also be taken as an everyday issue for Brazilians, mixing access to knowledge, technology, social constructions, consumption, etc, is the piracy on cultural goods. We aim at selecting some phenomena on this theme and contextualise them. To be detailed soon.

Any suggestions? :)
All the best,
Paula.

Sorry it has taken me so long to post a topic suggestion. I have been thinking about writing about more open access to content posted to social media sites under the banner of socially responsible media and the benefits for a shared cultural heritage. People are publishing quite a lot of their own content to sites like Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and many more and my question is what happens to that content in 2 years, 5 years or even 20 years time? Will that content still be available in some meaningful form that later generations can access?

The one challenge with this topic will be to locate it in a local context so I will appreciate some suggestions there. Does this grab anyone?

The article I am thinking to write will focus on the genealogy of the term piracy and its relationship to the multiple interpretations of the commons. In discussing the emergence of these intertwined concepts and their interpretation/implementation in the Indian context the article will focus on the social construction of three types of piracy; (1) the piracy of film and music, (2) bio-piracy, and (3) the piracy of cultural heritage. In doing this the article will attempt to demonstrate that piracy and the commons are co-constituted and that both are conceptual entities demonstrating multiple facets at any single point in time.

Hi,
To complement Alli's piece, I will be focusing this month on issues surrounding book-piracy in India. Ever since I began reading, the book-piracy industry has enormously subsidised my education - delivering expensive (and so inaccessible) reading material to me at 75-90% discounted prices. Despite my definite "interest" in the subject, I will attempt to conjure an objective piece on the role that piracy plays as a facilitator of the commons.
Suggestions/brickbats welcome.:)

This grabs me, Paul. I think this is a really good idea. And to go with this story could be a random movie pulled off youtube or some funky flickr pics licensed under cc

Paula, both story suggestions sound good to me. Any ideas yet on multimedia?

Alli and Prashant. I like both your story ideas very much and the way that they will complement one another. ... Prashant, this brings back memories of my time at university where you just couldn't get your hands on the necessary reading material and there was no choice but to pirate - probably one of the most 'legitimate' piracy activities :)

Alli, Prashant, Danni and Kerryn discussed possible multimedia for August stories on piracy genealogy and academic text piracy.
Suggestions for piracy genealogy is of an existing cartoon that Alli has seen. Remember to check the legal copyright issue here.
Suggestion for academic text piracy might be to take a group of contextual photos of the place where they are purchased, showing Prashant going into the shop, finding the text, pointing to the price, reading the text etc. This could be a fun 'telling of the story'. Ideas will be finalised once work on the stories has begun.

I read about TheLoop.In today from this blog post: http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/08/social-networki.html

This site is said to be the equivalent of Facebook in India - I was wondering if Prashant, Lawrence and Alli knew anything about this and could tell us more? If there is anything interesting about the workings of this site, maybe this could be worked into a topic for next month (maybe a comparative study of social networking sites in different cultures/countries? or a critical look at the workings of these sites and how they have become such a success...), or it could be included in Paul's story for this month?

Any ideas?

Never heard about "TheLoop.in". Orkut is hugely popular in India (as is Facebook, I think) and it would take something very special to displace these. By special I don't mean jingoistically "Indian" which seems to be the only USP of this site. Now "True Indians" have a huge appetite for the sort of multicultural encounters that Orkut offers. ;)

Never heard about "TheLoop.in". Orkut is hugely popular in India (as is Facebook, I think) and it would take something very special to displace these. By special I don't mean jingoistically "Indian" which seems to be the only USP of this site. Now "True Indians" have a huge appetite for the sort of multicultural encounters that Orkut offers. ;)

Hi All

Sorry I'm a bit late on this. I've been thinking, considering the response to Prashant's last story, and the beginnings of the discussion about the Draft IP Bill that's floating around here at the moment, that it would make sense to do a story on that this time round. Especially since the deadline for submissions on the Draft was yesterday. I'd like to take a quick look at the Draft Bill, compare it with the policy in India (thanks for the link, Prashant!) and, as a multimedia component, speak to Eve Gray, who really is the best lady to comment on this.

That's the plan. Let me know what y'all think...

Hi,
Sounds interesting Rebecca. Let me know if you need any help. Perhaps you could induce Eve to post about this herself. About the Indian policy, note that it is still only a draft and nothing concrete has been done in furtherance of it. It does illuminate the Government's general attitude towards University research though.

Thanks Prashant
I may well yell if I need a helping hand/critical eye. I've spoken to Eve and she's sent me some content, which she's happy for me to include in the piece, I think I'll also link to her blog, so people can see what she's been writing about.