Most ads—obviously, perhaps—contain images and/or copy that appeal to a target demographic. Less obvious is which demographic this ad is aiming for. At first glance it seems that marketers at Harper’s may have thought the copy in this ad would attract 45-year-old-plus printophiles, and among them, those who would accept an antagonism to content (or, the incoherent, topical mess of the internet). Content, says the ad, is toxic.

But it seems likely that there’s an irony at play here that I—someone made uncomfortable by this ad’s face value—is supposed to enjoy. After all, Harper’s has a blog—and a twitter. If I am among the demographic who may visit their blog, among others, frequently, then perhaps I’m supposed to detect the tongue in the cheek. But the ad doesn’t make me want to renew my subscription. It presents me with the same kind of rhetoric many print media outlets are using on repeat to tell the story of their slow death.  Harper’s content speaks for itself, and I want it again and again, every month of the year, in addition to the internet.

I came across this ad after I’d gotten through my favorite part of the magazine: the Reading section. Harper’s reading section is a curated collection of excerpts from books, transcripts, other magazines, and, a more recent addition, something published online only even though their website claims they will accept no blog submissions to readings. On page 19 of the same issue containing the ad was an excerpt from the online diary of George Sodini, which documents the time leading up to his murder of three women at an L.A. Fitness club.

Until recently, I was under the impression that Harper’s in print refused to “reblog.” They should keep “reblogging.” It really works.

This ad doesn’t.

(clicks to renew)

—AH

An ‘additional tip’ in the guide reads:

Give the judge or PIO a good reason to approve your request. Successful requests for permission have generally focused on:

1. The nature and public benefit of blogging or tweeting;

2. The public interest in the case;

3. The reporter’s professional experience or credentials; and

4. An explanation of how the technology works.

-AH

The majority of the commentary on file-sharing and video downloading or piracy comes from very Western perspectives. The American government files suit against suburban youth, the French declare—against their own government—their support for an internet that is a laboratory of free culture. Pirate Bay, the focus of the most recent round of anti-anti-copyright litigation, is run out of Stockholm.

In these commentaries, the arguments in favor of file-sharing and the downloading of copyrighted media reflect, perhaps unsurprisingly, the economic and cultural position of their proponents. Media consumption, it is said, should be free, the internet is all about the sharing of ideas—file sharing is a victimless crime; TV is dying, and we should embrace the emerging mediums of distribution, rather than hold onto the relics of a past age.

This is to say: those who advocate file-sharing advocate the choice to share files. One could, of course, pay the standard fees to access the downloaded media legally. This is a choice that does not exist everywhere in the world. In many countries, movies, music and other cultural objects—some with well agreed upon value—simply aren’t available outside of “illegal” distribution networks. The simple value of having any access at all to media seems an overlooked wrinkle of the debate focused exclusively on so-called piracy.

Last month, the Russian news site Gazeta.ru ran an Op-Ed, or “Personal Experience” piece, in which file-sharing was imagined from the somewhat different perspective the Russian provinces. Techné provides the translation of the full text of the Op-Ed below; the original article is available here.

For Some, Piracy, and For Some—A Gulp of Culture
Nina Aleksandrovna

Doubtlessly, an author has the right to societal recognition, reward, and also—solidified and saved for him by the law—to dictate the use of the results of his work by society.

However, it’s necessary to remember that the unwieldy laws that touch upon authors’ rights and the possibility of fair use appeared in an antiquated era (in Russia, if I’m not mistaken, sometime during the 18th century).

Since then, it’s worth noting, our life has changed.

In exchange for carriages came automobiles, people of different continents became closer to one another with the appearance of “flying machines” and telephone lines. It’s impossible to imagine modernity without email, online search, databases or virtual libraries.

“To turn” the pages of newspapers in the morning on a monitor screen has become for many an accustomed act.
Many radio stations allow the downloading, from their own sites, of their programs for repeated listening or reading. And for what, we’ll notice—completely free!
And here the scythe is caught on a rock. With the creation of effective numerical ways of saving files, “the company went not to the foot”—millions of file-sharers of musical production and film turned out to be balanced on the edge of criminal prosecution.
The exchange of books and music didn’t show up today. Its existence is as old as the world. Then films got connected to it. With the era of VHS, the people started to trade bulky videocassettes—DVDs came to replace them. Then with the appearance of the comparably cheap and fast internet, music and film exchange acquired an especial scale.

The computer has become a part of the family—“the first after the television.”
The wonderful possibility of touching the world of music, movies or literature has appeared in small towns and villages by means of the internet…there is simply no other possibility there.

No, I’m making a mistake, there is the possibility—to order by that very same internet, pay 20 rubles a film by credit card, plus shipping at 20 rubles, and it will arrive in a month, if it isn’t torn from the packaging in the post. Although we’ll start from the fact that the a resident of a provincial town may turn out not to have a credit card, or these 40 rubles—and then, it’s not a fact that they won’t send him a pirated disk with 10 films on each side and the according quality.

So a file-sharing program for him—it’s simply a gulp of culture. Go to a file-sharing site—there is everything there, like “in Greece!”

But most surprisingly, the youth (and this is the principal user of the current production) massively downloads Soviet classics! In my opinion, it is rare for the idea to come into the head of this sort of young person today to go to a store and purchase, for $30, a disk with “The Lower Depths” or “Resurrection,” or more than that, the sort of masterpiece and world classic like “Battleship Potemkin”….But from file-sharing they get it! Some for free, and some acquire “premium” accounts…

They trade, communicate, digitize, install and either praise or criticize to one another…

Say for whom this is bad, if our young people are watching Russian classics and sound Soviet films.

They watch, of course, in trespass of the holiest of holy rights of the possessor, according to the existent norms. But most importantly—they watch, take it in and educate themselves! As it is known, “of all the arts the most important for us is the movie.”

It is possible that a moratorium is needed on the distribution of new films, for example, for a year or two, in order to allow movie theaters and DVD “producers” to make money. This time is fully satisfactory for active interest in a film or musical hit.

After this, interest in them, unchangeably, weakens:

Have you seen even one of last year’s masterpieces in a rental place?

And DVD piracy with its innumerable kiosks selling “cleanly licensed” production will noticeably decrease.

No, it is necessary to forbid! Do not allow it! Punish! For whom will this make things better? (We’ll leave aside for now the question about pornographic films; it’s possible, as they do produce such films, that somebody needs them, but here, doubtlessly, there should be age limits and an avoidance of open advertisements).

It’s possible that no one will ever see the enormous layer of video materials in the Government Fund of Movies of the Russian Federation, unless the laws about the protection of intellectual property, smelling of moth-balls and all the same visited by moths, are changed.

The wonderful television programs of the past will leave for non-existence, the popular-science films, Soviet classics, television spectacles, surprising children’s programs—that very same “Good night, kiddies” with kind aunt Valya, which was known to more than one generation of Russian children!

And already irreclaimably lost are the shows with shining actors, played on the stages of famous theaters….More than that, authors’ rights long ago stopped belonging only to “authors,” in that authors themselves have long already stopped paying attention to their rights to their own children, and in that they usually do not have control over the scaled distribution of their work—middlemen are occupied with this (for example, publishing house, movie studios, companies, employers and so forth).

Of course, “these sorts of questions aren’t solved without preparation,” but […]

Why shouldn’t Mosfilm or Government Fund of Movies of the Russian Federation (I don’t guarantee the name), for example, set up a virtual store, where anyone could download an old film, paying a symbolic amount?

By they way, the payment shouldn’t be high—in the range of a few rubles.

For those who cannot pay, the possibility need be left to download for free. All things happen. Naturally, this will require defined expenditures, and not a little: to hire specialists, acquire servers and to upload and digitize analog materials.

Japan has passed a new law on the criminal prosecution of downloading music and films (it seems that it will go into effect in a year)—and Europe is conducting a battle for the liquidation of file-sharing sites.…And right-possessors, with their own rights, will soon become like the a miserly knight on his own trunks of gold….And who, gentlemen, will this make happy?

Translation and introduction by Techné contributor and editor Isaac Scarborough.

Actually, so far, it’s Entertainment Weekly that’s been getting attention for being the first magazine to have video ads in its printed pages, in its upcoming September 15 issue. We don’t read  EW, but maybe we will now. The video will be stored on a paper-thin screen, inserted into a page with a little cut-out window, which hold up to 40 minutes of video. These screens are designed by the firm Americhip, which is also working on digital sound and smell, and are much cooler than what you’ll find here.

Printing is expensive—relatively, anyhow, to maintaining a website. Video insertions, even if sponsored by the advertiser, make the process even more costly. Though Americhip claims this new LCD microtechnology will allow a print reader to download video from the internet and enjoy it in the frame of a page of glossy 40 lb paper, it’s hard to know what the chances are that any magazine will ever invest in these devices for editorial content alone.

In February 2009, Wired, winner of a number of design awards, and which uses elements of the internet for its aesthetic, published “Design Under Constraint,” in which it mused

At Wired, our design team sees this constraint as our daily bread. On every editorial page, we use words and pictures to overcome the particular restrictions of paper and ink: We can’t animate the infographics (yet). We can’t embed video or voice-over (yet). We can’t add sound effects or music (yet). But for all that we can’t do in this static medium, we find enlightenment and wonder in its possibilities.

Not even six months later, Americhip’s entrance into cutting edge print advertising technology  might make these concerns seem superfluous. But before we anticipate a renaissance in magazine design, in which print mags will incorporate more and more elements of their online counterparts, one obstacle remains: costs, which, right now, only an advertiser is able to cover.

The same questions everyone is asking in the media, which we have grown wary of: What will save the newspaper? The magazine? Our question: are they asking to be saved, and will the savior be sound and video, at home on a tactile page, and more innovation that will allow for generations to appreciate what is already known as the “luxury” of print? Is incorporating new technologies in print kitsch, or is it reinvention of the medium itself?

We have no answers for you. We keep hitting play.

]]> http://www.technemag.com/?feed=rss2&p=1106 http://www.technemag.com/?p=1102 http://www.technemag.com/?p=1102#comments Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:06:32 +0000 admin http://www.technemag.com/?p=1102

At a press conference held at a film festival in Lima, Peru, the French actress Isabelle Huppert likened certain movie pirating to renegade heroism. The conference was held in response to the question of pirating European and Asian films to make them accessible in Latin America and challenge the quasi-Monopoly of Hollywood.

“It’s like Robin Hood who steels for the poor,” said Huppert. And yet, she was not explicit about whether or not she was in favor of such pirating. In China, she added, where her movie The Pianist (2001) would have never been released in most theaters, plenty of people got to see it on pirated DVDs.

Peru, reports Le Figaro, is a country where 90% of DVDs in circulation are pirated. 

youmakemesohappy

Mark Polansky