Peter Black's Freedom to Differ

Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner

On the weekend Barack Obama tried his hand at comedy at the annual White House Correspondent' Dinner:

Conan O'Brien speaks

On Sunday night in the US, CBS broadcast Conan O’Brien’s interview with 60 Minutes, in which he spoke  about losing The Tonight Show:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Gold Logie campaigning

Adam Hills and Wil Anderson have launched a fun YouTube campaign for the Gold Logie:

And Dan Ilic has posted this video on behalf of Ray Meagher:

Read about it at TV Tonight here.

Mashable: "YouTube's First Video Uploaded Five Years Ago Today"

Although YouTube’s birthday is officially February 14, 2005, the first video was actually uploaded to the site exactly five years ago, on April 23, 2005.

The video is titled “Me at the zoo.” It was shot by Yakov Lapitsky and it’s only 19 seconds long, showing one of YouTube’s (YouTube) founders, Jawed Karim, at the San Diego Zoo.

The video doesn’t look like much, but it sparked a revolution; by July 2006, more than 65,000 videos were uploaded to the site every day. In October that same year Google (Google) acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion — a reminder of how fast things move in the age of the Internet.

See the first ever YouTube video below.

via mashable.com

Talk about an underwhelming beginning ...

Hitler, as Downfall producer, orders a DMCA takedown

If you have spent any time on YouTube, you have probably seen one of the hilarious Hitler Downfall parody videos.  These videos have even been described as "the meme that will never die".  However, it is now looking like these videos may be coming to an untimely end.  Last night I tweeted that the German film company that produced Downfall has been filing copyright infringement claims against the parody videos.  MG Siegler posted the story on TechCrunch:

Earlier today, someone attempted to upload a new version surrounding the massive iPhone 4G (or iPhone HD, whatever) news. Unfortunately, as you can see on YouTube, that video has already been removed with the message, “This video contains content from Constantin Film, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.“

Constantin Film is the German film production and distribution company behind the film Downfall (Der Untergang in German). The uploader of one of the Hilter parodies notes in the comments of his video that, “Constatin Films has filed a copyright infringement claim against this video, right before it was about to reach 500,000 views! Even though it falls under Fair Use, I suspect this video will be taken down soon. Sad face.“

Sure enough, many of the other Hitler meme parodies have started disappearing as well (Hitler on Xbox Live, for example). But as of right now, there are so many out there that are subtly different enough that plenty are still up. Still, you can probably expect YouTube’s smart content system to hunt down and find all of these clips sooner rather than later. Now may be the time to appeal to Constatin Film. Downfall is a great movie, but it’s also in German which sadly means that many people outside that country will never watch it. But I’d bet these clips have sparked an interest in the film beyond what any type of traditional marketing could have done.

Mostly, I just really want to see Hitler’s reaction to the stolen iPhone 4G. Also, someone really needs to make a video about Hilter being upset that Constantin Film is DCMAing Hitler parodies.

Read more here.  As you would expect, you can now watch on YouTube, Hitler, as the Downfall producer, ordering a DMCA takedown.  Unfortunately embedding has been disabled, but you can watch the video here.

Techdirt: "Copying Is Not Theft"

Big Media has been producing (mis)educational videos since it's early non-hit, "Don't Copy That Floppy." Most of us have seen those "Piracy: It's a Crime" clips that incorrectly equate downloading with stealing. The Copyright Alliance offers a whole series of propaganda videos for school children. It's no surprise that Big Media is ahead of ahead of copyright reform advocates in propaganda. Fortunately, one animator (me) and the nonprofit QuestionCopyright.org are addressing this imbalance with media of our own:

via techdirt.com

The Sarah Palin Network

Tina Fey reprised her role as Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live over the weekend with a funny sketch about the "Sarah Palin Network."

Political Avatars

Political campaigns are often competitive and can get unpleasant at times but, as Jeff Greenfield reports, a new level of election aggressiveness has emerged on the Internet.Political Smear Ads Go High-Tech (and Oddball)

Watch CBS News Videos Online

via www.cbsnews.com

Help: I need an idea that will trump "That's Entertainment Baby"!

You may have seen the YouTube video of the first lecture in KXB101 Introduction to Entertainment, where two QUT lecturers, Professor Alan McKee and Dr Christy Collis, launch into a performance of "That's Entertainment Baby":

Anyway, when I return to teaching at QUT in semester 2 this year, I would like to come up with something to beat it.  I'll be teaching Legal Foundations A (an introduction to law subject) and Intellectual Property.  Any ideas?

JibJab: Never a Year Like '09

2009 would not be complete with a JibJab video looking back at the year:

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Learn how they made the video here.

Is it twittering or tweeting?

Bit Rebels posted this video which may finally answer the age old question of whether it is twittering or tweeting:

Here is cool video of an interview with Biz Stone and EV on The View. I just needed to share this very funny and very informative interview with the co founders themselves. Analogies and stories about people who use Twitter was truly entertaining.  How they started and where they got the idea for the micro blogging platform.

Ok so what is it? Twittering or Tweeting. According to Biz Twitter is a verb, the sound that a bird makes. Twittering is what the bird does. so the answer is Twittering. He says Tweeting is also fine. Tweeting stemmed from Tweet (meaning the update that one makes).

On second thoughts, I'm not so sure it answers anything - I still prefer tweeting. But for no other reason than it sounds better.

Avatar

I'm getting very excited about director James Cameron's upcoming sci-if action extravaganza, Avatar.  I love all of his previous movies (yes, including Titanic), so I can't wait to see what he has in store for us.

My excitement intensified today when I came across the official Avatar Adobe AIR app/interactive trailer.  Mashable describes it in this way:

Billed as the “Official Avatar Interactive Trailer,” the AIR program brings Avatar’s Pandora natives straight to your desktop. Not only does it house all of the already-released Avatar trailers, but it includes dozens of video shorts that go in-depth into the making of the movie and the background of the main characters.

Now for the interactive part: whenever you watch a trailer, special “hotspots” will come up where you can learn more about the characters. Even cooler though is the integration of Avatar’s Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube feeds. You can get all of the latest news right from the interactive trailer.

Honestly? We’re very impressed with Avatar’s app. It’s slick, easy to use, and chock-full of content. If this doesn’t fulfill your need for an Avatar fix, then nothing but the actual movie will.

Download it here.

If this isn't for you, here are a few more Avatar promotional videos.

The trailer:

James Cameron's Vision Featurette:

CNN interview with James Cameron:

Michael Geist on ACTA

Michael Geist has posted a talk he gave last week at a conference at American University, Washington College of Law called Beyond TRIPS: The Current Push for Greater International Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights.

He has posted to Blip.tv his 20 minute talk, The ACTA Threat: My Talk on Everything You Need To Know About ACTA, But Didn't Know To Ask:

Moving Numbers

Zolitics, which describes itself as "the world's first political entertainment network", is posting a funny, smart political web series called Moving Numbers.  Here is a trailer:

Moving Numbers "Truth" Trailer from Zolitics on Vimeo.

You can watch the series here.

Sesame Street turns 40: one, two, three ... forty

This week Sesame Street is turning 40.  To celebrate I thought I'd embed my favourite Sesame Street mash-up video, The Count Censored:

The noughties: "Decade in Review"

Newsweek 20/10 marks the first 10 years of the new century:

Did You Know?

There are many surprising statistics in The Economist’s Fall 2009 “Did You Know?” video on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology. For example, 95% of all downloaded songs last year weren’t paid for and that apparently 40 million people have been rick-rolled:

Dear Lily (an open letter to Lily Allen)

Here is an open letter to Lily Allen in song format, regarding her recent campaign against filesharing and her decision to quit music.  (If this makes no sense to you, you can read the background here.)

A social network road trip

Graham Smith took a Facebook road trip to actually see in person his Facebook friends.  He saw friends from childhood, college, previous jobs and ex girlfriends.  He saw people he hadn't spoken to in years.  And he documented it with his friend Josh Baron to produce an amazing documentary:

“Before Facebook they were friends that were starting to fall to acquaintances and acquaintances that were starting to fall to strangers. But when I reconnect with them they start to become a little bit more.

This trip has really led me to see that these people I’ve lost contact with aren’t a series of updates and bits of information on a computer. They’re actually people living their lives.

I recommend anyone take a social network road trip.”

Watch the video and then see the resulting art project on socialnetworkstories.com:

Facebook Roadtrip from grahamGrafx on Vimeo.

Social media revolution

This thought provoking video presents a series of interesting statistics about the growth of social media:

Law 2.0

At the State Legal Educators Conference this morning, I am presenting a paper titled Law 2.0: The Challenge of User-generated and Peer-produced Networks, Content & Culture.  You can watch a video of that presentation here:

Law 2.0: The Challenge of User-generated and Peer-produced Networks, Content & Culture from Peter Black on Vimeo.

You can download a copy of the PowerPoint slides here.  These are the videos I will be showing as part of my presentation:

• The Machine is Us/ing Us;
• The Grey Video;
• JibJab’s This Land;
• Barack Roll.

I am a Geek

A video from the Society for Geek Advancement:

#atNickHodge: "Australian Constitution. Yes, We have one"

Last night I was a guest on Nick Hodge's Ustream show, atNickHodge, where we discussed the Australian Constitution:

 

The Great Dissenter

On Monday Justice Kirby will retire from the High Court of Australia.  In today's The Australian there are two pieces on Justice Kirby's contribution, one by Michael Pelly and another by Professor Michael Lavarch.  Although only time will tell if the judicial philoposhy evident in Justice Kirby's judgments, many of which were in dissent, will be vindicated, what is not in doubt is his remarkable contribution as a public intellectual.  One feature of this role has been his willingness to be involved in legal education; he has no doubt spoken at almost every Australian law school at one time or another (many on several occasions) and has always given his time, energy and insight generously.  However, he is a hero to so many law students not just because of this generosity but also as a result of his progressive judicial philosophy, his clear and compelling writing style (which students particularly appreciate) and his good humour.  One example of this is in his contributions to the University of Queensland Law Revue over the last decade, as James Tinniswood recounts:

To many, his Honour will be remembered for his liberal views, high rate of dissenting judgments (and being damn proud of it) and advocacy of gay rights.

For me, I'll remember him for doing some ripper cameos in the Revue for us. He was a great sport about doing this one in 2006...

He also did a quick direct to camera spot to open the 2004 show (which I don't have access to unfortunately), where he said something like

"Hello, I'm Michael Kirby and welcome to the Law Revue. Sit up, pay attention and no messing about in the stalls. That's a unanimous decision of the High Court. No dissents.

And while that was cute, I felt it was a comedic opportunity wasted.

So luckily, he happened to be coming back to UQ in early 2006 to give a speech about his ten years on the High Court, and we snagged him for about ten minutes before he had to give the speech. He nailed it in one take, even ad libbed the banging of the table and "think original" (which happened to be the theme of his speech).

He talked to us about his fondness for the recently deceased Harry Gibbs (the former Chief Justice after whom the moot court at T.C. Beirne was named) and we had a photo snapped of us in front of Sir Harry's portrait. I never did see that photo, but it was very cool thing of Justice Kirby to do for us.

Read more here.  As of Monday Justice Kirby will no longer be a judge of the High Court of Australia, but I have a feeling he will continue to be a present and persuasive figure in matters of public importance for a consierable time to come.

A Thousand Words

Ted Chung's mesmerising short film, A Thousand Words, is deservedly beginning to go viral.  Jeffrey Wells describes it in this way:

... an elegant, concise and very affecting portrait of big-city loneliness and instant connections that flare up and are gone seconds later. The emotions are halting and delicate but true. Beautiful piano score.

And here it is:

A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.

White House exempts YouTube from privacy rules

CNET's Chris Soghoian has a fascinating post on an under-reported early decision of the Obama administration:

The new Web site for Obama's White House is already drawing attention from privacy activists and tech bloggers. While the initial focus has been on the site's policies relating to search engine robots, a far more interesting tidbit has so far escaped the public eye: the White House has quietly exempted YouTube from strict rules relating to the use of cookies on federal agency Web sites.

The new White House Web site privacy policy promises that the site will not use long-term tracking cookies, complying with a decade-old rule prohibiting such user tracking by federal agencies. However, the privacy policy then reveals that Obama's legal team has exempted YouTube from this rule (YouTube videos are embedded at various places around the White House Web site).

While the White House might not be tracking visitors, the Google-owned video sharing site is free to use persistent cookies to track the browsing behavior of millions of visitors to Obama's home in cyberspace.

No other company has been singled out and rewarded with such a waiver.

...

For the past 10 years, federal agencies have been prohibited from using tracking cookies on their Web sites, except in a few special cases. The Office of Management and Budget rule M-03-22 states that:

"Agencies are prohibited from using persistent cookies or any other means (e.g., web beacons) to track visitors' activity on the Internet except .... [when there is] a compelling need."

The question we must now focus on is this: Is the need for Obama to use embedded videos hosted by YouTube (and not, say, another company's video-streaming platform that does not force cookies upon its users) a use that can be reasonably described as compelling?

Presumably, this has been justified on the basis that YouTube forces cookies on the visitors of any Web site that embeds one of its videos. However, while Joe or Jane blogger has no bargaining power with YouTube/Google, the federal government certainly does.

In just the past couple weeks, YouTube has launched dedicated pages for both the House and Senate to show off their own videos, and the site also recently started allowing users to directly download copies of some videos. This latter feature has not yet been widely deployed across the site, and is seems to be limited to videos posted by Obama's team.

Given the famously close connections between Obama and Google, you'd think his tech team could negotiate for a cookie-less way to embed videos. At a technical level, this would be an easy enough change, even if it would deny Google the ability to collect even more information on millions of Americans.

Read more here.

Colbert's Remix Challenge

When Larry Lessig appeared on The Colbert Report two weeks ago to talk about this latest book, Remix, he basically invited people to remix the interview over the protests of host Stephen Colbert's (see here).  Now Colbert has responded to some of the remixes that have popped up online (for some examples see here):

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Stephen's Remix Challenge

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Freakdom of Speech

Patrick Bristow's Freakdom of Speech is a satire of the diversity of dumb to be found in America.  The first episode is America on Obama:

Read NewTeeVee's review here.

Charon QC promotes the upcoming Australia Day Blawg Review

After reading my post earlier tonight about an Australia Day Blawg Review (see here), UK blawger Charon QC was inspired to put together this little video using Xtranormal.  I don't think I've ever looked so good ...

If you want to listen to a real and somewhat serious conversation between Charon QC and myself, you can listen to a podcast we recorded a few weeks back here.

12 January 2009: a decisive day in the history of intellectual property?

Three days ago, YouTube permanently disabled the account of critic and commentator Kevin B. Lee, suggesting that YouTube is cracking down on critical video essays posted to the site:

Kevin’s video essays wed critical commentary or conversation to clips from copyright films in a “teaching” context, and most of them were created as part of his project to “view every film on the list of 1000 greatest films of all time, as compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don�t They?.” Kevin says he received a copyright warning earlier today in regards to his video essay on …And God Created Woman. It was the first time YouTube had ever slapped his wrist over one of the video essays, although they had contacted him about two unaltered clips in the past, one from The Sorrow and Pity and one from Dames. Three strikes, and Kevin’s out — YouTube has removed all 70 of his videos, including 40 original video essays. If you’ve embedded one of these in your own blog, that embed will now be unplayable.

Kevin has his own personal archive and can potentially re-upload the clips; he says he’ll investigate other online video sharing options. But YouTube is still the biggest game in town, and Kevin says he’ll miss it. “I’ll miss not only the unparalleled audience reach, but the cool stats that YouTube had to offer (like learning that viewers would rewind repeatedly to watch Bardot’s bare ass in my video essay for …And God Created Woman),” he noted in an email. “But that’s nothing compared to having the right to share my work in the first place.”

Kevin is one of a number of people producing film criticism via online video who have had trouble with YouTube of late. These videos represent the first real advance in film criticism as an art form in, at least, decades; other video sharing platforms may remain more friendly to copyright borrowers for awhile, but ultimately this practice may have to either move underground or disappear.

Read more here (from SpoutBlog).  In a passionate (and lengthy) post on The House Next Door, Matt Zoller Seitz thinks 12 January 2009 might be a decisive day in the history of intellectual property:

Kevin has copies of all his work, and I'm sure it will show up again somewhere, sometime. But the obliteration of YouTube as a global platform for his voice is a crime of greater magnitude than anything he did to create the video essays in the first place. YouTube is the town square of the 21st century—rather like a gigantic virtual mall that is, technically speaking, a private space, but which operates as a public sphere: a gathering spot, a cultural and political crossroads. By scourging Kevin's work from this crossroads and banning his video essays—and, potentially, all similar work—from YouTube, the company is allowing the powerful to muzzle the near-powerless. And it is endorsing the idea that in cases involving intellectual property law and the Internet, filmmakers can be deemed guilty, silenced, then made to plead for their right to speak.

There's also an unspoken class bias at work here, a bully mentality that chooses its targets based on who's likely to fight back and win. Consider commercial TV, which is filled with programs that routinely air copyrighted material without permission for purposes of journalism, satire or simple entertainment. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report don't ask permission to air any of the news clips they slice and dice each night for yuks; they consider a network's onscreen logo to be acknowledgment enough, and their assumption is almost never challenged. Talk shows don't think twice about airing a rival network's news footage or clips from a popular or notorious TV program in order to spark a discussion or anchor a satirical montage. Infotainment shows compile film clips for use in movie star obituaries—not just electronic presskit snippets meant for PR purposes, but clips from older movies that predate EPKs and that might have originally aired on some corporate competitor's channel—and the movie's copyright holders don't object. The shows that feature such clips are routinely repurposed on the parent company's websites, often with ads and sometimes with embedding functions that allow the clip to be reproduced by bloggers, and there are not currently, to the best of my knowledge, any lawsuits seeking to stop the practice. Kings wink at each other. Peasants get the axe.

Kevin B. Lee is not Napster; he's not some guy uploading every frame of every Bette Davis movie for kicks; he's not even Goldentusk. He's a critic and scholar doing work that could be considered, at worst, compelling free ads for essential pop art. YouTube, by reflexively siding with whichever party has more money and power, has renounced its founding spirit.

There should be a way to distinguish between piracy-for-profit (or unauthorized, free redistribution) and creative, interpretive, critical or political work that happens to use copyrighted material. And there must be an alternative to unilateral takedowns. The issues aren't just legal, they're practical. History has demonstrated that there's no copyright protection that can't be defeated, no corporate edict that can't be subverted. And given the technological sophistication that permits digital watermarking, there ought to be a way to make sampling of any sort, authorized or not, scaled to suit the filmmakers' means, profitable for the rights holders, and as fully automated as the copyright-infringement-scouring that's currently happening all over the Internet.

Whatever the solutions, they should be something other than one-size-fits-all. Digital watermarking abusers are engaged in an unwinnable war—one that, in its present state, will only produce collateral damage and make them increasingly unsympathetic, and therefore more likely to be demonized and resisted. The entertainment industry's unwillingness to recognize the plain fact that people have complex, idiosyncratic and yes, possessive relationships to songs, films and TV shows—relationships that are qualitatively different from their relationships to cars, hats, shoes and beer—contributes to a culture of calcified mutual resentment, and a public mindset (manifested most vividly in generations that cannot remember life before the Internet) that sees big entertainment companies as lead-footed dopes—Elmer Fudd blasting every rabbit hole in sight hoping to hit Bugs Bunny.

The situation as it stands is immoral, untenable and, I believe, a violation of fundamental rights. Almost nobody taking part in the early phases of digital media has the money to fight the Googles and Viacoms of the world, and of course that's what the takedown gremlins are counting on; injustice not resisted eventually becomes tradition. I fervently hope some brave, knowledgeable lawyer will see that there's more at stake here than the ethics of ripping and posting scenes from movies, and make a test case of Kevin's unconscionable treatment. The circumstances may seem mundane, but the implications are grim as can be. When individuals and governments permit corporations to dictate the terms by which their culture may be examined, the First Amendment becomes just another pile of words.

Read more here.

A-PAC: Australia's Public Affairs Channel

Australia's answer to C-SPAN, now called A-PAC, will launch on 20 January.  The website is online here, where you can watch a promotional (propaganda?) video that gives the impression that this channel was the most important outcome of Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit and that it has come "more than a decade ahead of that vision".

The Gob Act: A Tribute to Arrested Development

Although I'd normally post this video to my tumblelog Freedom to Dither, I am such a fan of Arrested Development that I thought i'd post it here instead.  So here The Gob Act: A Tribute to Arrested Development:

Heart by The Richter Scales

At The Crunchies, The Richter Scales debuted a brand new song, Heart. In a post at TechCrunch, Jason Klncaid says the song "depicts a hilariously overoptimistic startup and pokes fun at just about everything in the tech industry, from overhyped launches to ridiculous product ideas."  Here is a video of the performance:

Other songs from The Richter Scales include Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Here Comes Another Bubble.

Remixing Lessig and Colbert

When Larry Lessig appeared on The Colbert Report during the week to talk about this latest book, Remix, he basically invited people to remix the interview (see here).  Here are two audio remixes: one from Sam and another from Jim Vanaria.  Here are two video remixes:

And the audio to the show is available to be remixed on ccMixter here.

Lessig on Colbert

Stephen Colbert talks to Larry Lessig about this latest book, Remix:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

MacHEADS

ZDNet has a review of MacHEADS:

Prominent sex blogger and renowned Apple fangirl Violet Blue declares passionately that she'd never sleep with a Windows user. Dozens of Mac fanboys and girls drink and dance together at an Apple-centric party, jubilant that, for another year, Apple still exists. Girls hug their iMacs before tentatively handing them over to be repaired, while another caresses her Cinema Display, gently offering up a kiss to her Mac Pro's tower.

Apple fans are passionate people, both with each other and with the company's products. MacHeads, a new Chimp 65 Productions documentary from writer/director Kobi Shely and producer Ron Shely, documents the history of these Apple-lovers, looking at what underpins their fanatical obsessions. At just under an hour in length, this unbiased, unnarrated documentary takes a balanced approach to peeling the onion of Apple fanboyism. With insightful commentary from the likes of Apple Inc employee number one Daniel Kottke and ex-Apple employee and Mac evangelist Guy Kawasaki, some of the compulsive fanboyism on display is mellowed by observations of what made an Apple fan an Apple fan in the first place.

Read more here.  And watch the trailer:

History of the Internet

History of the Internet is an animated documentary from PICOL that explains the major inventions of the internet:

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Important DMCA copyright decision

Wired's Threat Level Blog reports on an important copyright decision out of the US:

Online video-sharing sites are scoring another major legal victory, as a federal judge is ruling that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects such sites from copyright violations if they abide by takedown notices as the DMCA prescribes.

The case was brought by Universal Music Group, which claimed that San Diego-based Veoh -- financially backed by Time Warner and Michael Eisner – engaged in wanton copyright infringement because it allowed users to upload and store the music concern's copyrighted videos. U.S. District Judge Howard Matz agreed with Veoh that its business model complied with the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act's so-called safe harbor provisions.

The case is similar to other suits targeting YouTube, MySpace, MP3Tunes and others. And it marks just the second time that a federal judge has ruled the DMCA protects video-sharing sites – even user-generated sites like Veoh that transform user-uploaded content into flash-formatted videos that can later be accessed by users.

...

Both rulings are not binding on other judges, however. And neither the U.S. appellate courts nor the U.S. Supreme Court has directly addressed the issue.

Check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation's take by Fred von Lohmann on the topic.

Read more here.

Slate V: the best viral political videos of 2008

In a Power Recap, Slate V presents 20 of the best viral political videos of 2008.  Congratulations to Australian Hugh Atkin whose video, John McCain Gets BarackRoll'd, was the number one viral video.  Slate V says it was "a perfect metaphor for McCain's defeat and maybe the best mashup of the entire camapign on the internet".  Here is Slate V's list:

Best videos of 2008

Continuing my end-of-year wrap ...

What follows are the top ten videos I've embedded either here on Freedom to Differ or on Freedom to Dither this year.  This list is very subjective - these videos are not necessarily the most viewed or most commented on, nor are they necessarily the funniest or the most original, but they are my ten favourite videos from 2008.  However, before I list the the top ten, here are posts that contained the runners-up ...

Serious videos and videos that make a point - An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube (another fascinating video from Michael Wesch); From Little Things, Big Things Grow (GetUp's song for reconciliation); Music 2.0 (a video from music futurist Gerd Leonhard explaining what music 2.0 is and how the music industry should change to adapt to 'web 2.0' principles); Some EU politicians support file sharing (the Greens EFA party of the European Parliament publicly expressed their support for file sharing on the internet).

Political - Candidates on Colbert (Clinton, Obama and Edwards all on the same show); Some election themed videos (one funny, one a bit more serious); US election videos (my five favourite viral videos from the US election); A post on the US election (Slate V makes fun of CNN's election night holograms); Keith Olbermann's "homoerotic" obsession with Bill O'Reilly (Red Eye's Greg Gutfeld gets angry); Palin on Saturday Night Live (at least Sarah Palin was a good enough sport to appear on Saturday Night Live); It's just a flesh wound! (inspired use of Monty Python's Holy Grail to highlight Hillary Clinton's struggling campaign); A duet (a Juno-style duet between Clinton and Obama); Changes (Hugh Atkin's first big US political video).

Advertisements - Lenovo parodies MacBook Air ad (a send-up of the MacBook Air in favor of Lenovo's own X300); Levi's viral hit (an effective viral marketing strategy from Levi Strauss); My favourite Super Bowl ad (a great ad from Coca Cola); I don't get it (I was very confused by the advertising strategy of the Commonwealth Bank).

Funny - I want more porn (a ballad about porn, spam and pop-up windows); Four videos (a random collection of videos I found funny); JibJab 2008 Year in Review (no list is complete without one or two JibJab videos); Twitter's downfall (another very funny adaptation of the Hitler video); But That's Not My Point... (a funnt rant written, directed and starring Auggie Smith and Patrick Sauer); TubeDeeDo (a funny music video from the The Kings of Myspace); My Name is URL (a cute video parodying My Name is Earl); Happy Easter (this is one violent Easter Bunny); Corey Delaney's other party (another Hugh Atkin video); The Internet Party (what happens when Google leaves town for the weekend).

Web series - If you don't include Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog, the best web series of the year was The Guild. 

And here is the top ten ...

10. The World Isn't Clear Cut - Perhaps it was because I was a high school and university debater, but I was very taken when this promotional video for the Griffith Organised Debating Society (GODS) aired on Q&A during the year.  (See my original post here.)

9. John McCain gets Barack Roll'd - My favourite US political video from Australian Hugh Atkin.  (See my original post here.)

8. Prop 8 The Musical - An all star video making fun of California's Proposition 8 that banned gay marriage. (See my original post here).

"Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more... by Jack Black

7. Goldfish funeral - a great ad for Channel Bee with a very funny twist you don't see coming.  (See my original post here.)

6. Facebook in reality - Imagining what the world be like if Facebook played out in real life.  (See my original post here.)

5. It's Just Gone - In South Park the internet disappears.  (See my original post here.)

4. JibJab's Time for Some Campaignin' - Although not as good as JibJab's brilliant This Land from four years ago, it was still  the best political video of 2008.  (See my original post here.)

Funny Cartoons at JibJab | Funny Animations at JibJab | Animation Videos at JibJab

3. Yes We Can - The viral sensation of 2008 that captured the mood of America - and indeed the world.  (See my original post here.)

2. The Censored Count - Everytime I see this video I can't help but laugh out loud.  (See my original post here.)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

1. Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon - Without a doubt the funniest viral video of the year.  (See my original post here.)

You should also check out Jimmy Kimmel's response here.

JibJab 2008 Year in Review

JibJab's annual year in review:

KickYouTube

Mashable covers an easy way to download YouTube videos:

Downloading YouTube videos isn’t a feature supported natively by the site: copyright issues are the likely reason. And yet, often we find ourselves wanting to download a great video to our desktops for remixing or offline viewing.

KickYouTube serves up an elegantly simple solution: simply go to the YouTube video you’d liek to download and insert the word “kick” at the start of the URL. The final url would look something like http://kickyoutube.com/watch?v=39pZ1r3MG2Q, and options to download the clip are provided at the top of the page.

You don’t need me to tell you that having YouTube in your URL is blatant trademark infringement, however, so don’t expect this method to work for long. For more solutions, try our list of 20 ways to download YouTube videos…most of which have avoided the wrath Google’s lawyers.

[via Lifehacker]

Read it here.

Some interesting top ten lists

Over the past few days I've come across a few different top ten lists.  The first was Oddee's list of ten of the geekiest graffiti.  This was my favourite:

Next was Politico's list of the top ten political films of 2008, culminating with these two:

2 “Recount.” Helmed by Jay Roach (“Meet the Fockers” and the Austin Powers trilogy) and written by Danny Strong, this made-for-HBO film about the hotly contested 2000 presidential election hardly shows candidates George W. Bush or Al Gore, instead focusing on the backstage drama that took place in Florida between their surrogates. In this fictionalized replay of actual events, Laura Dern and Denis Leary steal the show, adding some zany comic levity with their portrayals of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and Democratic strategist Michael Whouley, while Kevin Spacey, as Ron Klain — then Gore’s attorney and now Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s chief of staff appointee — and Tom Wilkinson, as Bush’s proxy James Baker, give the story more gravitas.

1 “Milk.” Anchored by a near-perfect performance from Sean Penn, this biopic of the first openly gay American elected official focuses heavily on the political process that Harvey Milk saw as the gateway for social change. Director Gus Van Sant recently told Interview magazine about his first reaction to the script: “The personal parts of the story were always kind of filtered through the politics, which I’d never seen done before, really.” Van Sant needn’t have worried that the characters talk only about politics — Milk’s life was politics, and the film’s depiction of the struggle against 1978’s Proposition 6, regarding gay public school teachers, bears striking similarities to the ongoing battle over 2008’s anti-same-sex-marriage initiative, Proposition 8.

Read more here.

And the last list is Campaign's list of the top internet viral campaigns of 2008.  These are my favourites:

2 SFW XXX Party Invitation

To celebrate Diesel's 30th anniversary, The Viral Factory decided porn was the only way to party with a bang. After collating clips of 80s porn, it animated the rude bits and added toned down sound effects to avoid any potentially inappropriate scenes and make it SFW XXX (an acronym for "safe for work"). So far, 6,497,507 have clicked, with an average of 116,387 hits per day.

6 Budweiser's ‘Swear Jar'

It was banned on TV because of the implied bad language, but Budweiser's ‘Swear Jar' has been a hit online with over 3.3 million views on YouTube. Part of Budweiser's online viral effort at Bud.TV, it shows characters in an office, swearing their way to make enough money for a case of Bud in boardroom meetings, announcements, and by the photocopier.

Read more here (from Brand Republic).

Keith Olbermann's "homoerotic" obsession with Bill O'Reilly

During the week Keith Olbermann attacked the late night FoxNews Channel show Red Eye, sparking this priceless response from Red Eye host Greg Gutfeld:

Inspirational movie speeches

Forty inspirational movie speeches in two minutes:

Prop 8 - The Musical

Although I'd normally post a video like this on my tumblelog Freedom to Dither, I thought it deserved a more prominent post:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

iiNet sued for copyright infringement

This news report was drawn to my attention during a break today at the Media, Communications and Public Speech Conference:

The Australian film and television industry has launched a major legal action against one of Australia's largest internet service providers for allegedly allowing its users to download pirated movies and TV shows.

The action against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court today by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network.

Mark White, iiNet's chief operating officer, said the company did not support piracy in any form but it could not disconnect customers just because the movie industry claimed they engaged in illegal downloading.

Adrianne Pecotic, executive director of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), said the action followed a five-month investigation by the industry.

...

The action follows months of wrangling between the movie and music industries and ISPs over the lengths to which internet providers need to go to prevent illegal file sharing on their networks. The industry wants ISPs to agree to cut off services for those who repeatedly infringe copyright.

However, internet providers have argued that the courts already provide adequate remedies for copyright holders and they should not be forced to police their users.

"This is a very important test case for the internet industry in Australia," said Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association.

"It will test the effect of the safe harbour provisions that were introduced with the US free trade agreement, which provides immunity for ISPs in certain circumstances such as transmission, hosting, caching and referencing activities."

Coroneos said the IIA board will shortly convene to develop a response on the legal action against iiNet.

But while the movie industry has now stepped up its aggression, the music industry has yet to take legal action against any internet providers over the issue.

Read more here (from the Sydney Morning Herald).

A post on the US election

So much has been already written about the extraordinary US election on Tuesday and President-elect Barack Obama's historic and meteoric rise, that I know there is nothing further I could add.  But before I move on and blog about other topics and issues, I thought I'd link to a couple of different things related to the election that have grabbed my attention over the past few days, ranging from the serious to the not so serious.

First up is Judith Warner's poignant piece for the New York Times, "Tears to Remember":

I will admit that back in January, when Barack Obama, in his post-Iowa victory speech, spoke about the “cynics,” the “they” who said “this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose,” he was talking about me.

I will admit that the call of “change” did not speak to me as an achievable goal.

Until it actually came.

On Wednesday, there was a run on newspapers, as voters rushed to grab a tangible piece of the history they’d made. My husband Max and I, unable to find extra copies, brought our own worn papers home to 8- and 11-year-old Emilie and Julia.

Sept. 11, the seismic event that we’d feared would forever form their political consciousness, shaping their world and constricting the boundaries of the possible, had actually been eclipsed, light blotting out darkness, the best of America at long last driving away the demons of fear. We wanted them to see that it was the end of an era.

...

Two images will forever stay in my mind to mark this epoch-breaking Election Day. One is that of Jesse Jackson’s face, drenched in tears, in Chicago’s Grant Park on Tuesday evening.

And the other is a photo that ran in The Times on Wednesday. In it, a black mother and daughter sit on the floor of a church in Harlem. The mother, Latrice Barnes, having heard of Obama’s victory, is doubled up in tears; her daughter, Jasmine, is reaching a tentative hand up to soothe her. To me, she looks like the future, reaching out to heal the past.

At the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, Latrice Barnes, right, is comforted by her daughter Jasmine Redd, 5. (David Goldman for The New York Times)

It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.

This moment of triumph marks the end of such a long period of pain, of indignity and injustice for African-Americans. And for so many others of us, of the trampling and debasing of our most basic ideals, beliefs that we cherished every bit as deeply and passionately as those of the “values voters” around whose sensibilities we’ve had to tiptoe for the past 28 years.

The election brought the return of a country we’d lost for so long that it was almost forgotten under the accumulated scar tissue of accommodation and acceptance.

For me, this will be the enduring memory of election night 2008: One generation released its grief. The next looked up confusedly, eager to please and yet unable to comprehend just what the tears were about.

Read more here.  It really is a new day:

Although the world is very pleased that Barack Obama will be the next US President, it is also appropriate to reflect and pay tribute to John McCain, as John Macintyre did in his superb piece for The Times, "John McCain: a man who fought and lost with honour":

I am glad Mr McCain was defeated. By almost every measure, he was the lesser candidate. When the economy faltered, so did he. His claim to greater experience shrivelled in the light of his rival's blinding charisma. McCain was yesterday and Obama is tomorrow.

Yet as the new President heads to the White House in a blaze of adulation, it is worth recalling just how worthy an opponent he faced: history offers few more admirable presidential failures than Mr McCain.

...

A McCain presidency would probably have been divisive, aggressive and dangerously short-lived. He is a flawed figure, but he remains a civilised politician in an age of uncivilised politics. The world is a safer, more hopeful place without John McCain in the White House; but the world is a better place for having men such as him in it.

Read more here (from The Times).  The Weekly Standard also paid tribute to McCain:

In politics, as one suspects in life, no good deed goes unpunished. John McCain staked everything on success in Iraq. He advocated the surge publicly and made the case for it privately. He defended it passionately and intelligently, and was indispensable in beating back critics, shoring up nervous supporters, and keeping enough public support for the surge so the Democratic party's repeated efforts to abort it failed.

The surge worked. It worked better than even its proponents expected. The strategic and moral calamity of an American withdrawal in defeat from the central front in the war on Islamic jihadism was averted. The positive outcome of a reasonably stable, democratic, and friendly Iraq is now in sight. Thanks in large part to John McCain, we did not have a second Vietnam-like humiliation. Thanks in large part to John McCain, the United States is on the verge of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

And as a result of the remarkable progress in Iraq over the past two years--progress whose possibility was scoffed at and whose reality was then denied by all leading Democrats except Joe Lieberman--Iraq faded as an issue in the presidential race. And with it, the critical question of who should be commander in chief also receded. By the fall of 2008, McCain got no credit for one of the great acts of statesmanship by a senator--let alone a senator who was also a presidential candidate--in American history. President Obama will now be able to draw down in an orderly manner, following (we trust) the guidance of Generals Petraeus and Odierno--generals who consulted with McCain often and whose achievement McCain helped make possible.

John McCain said repeatedly that he'd rather lose an election than lose a war. We ended up winning a war, and he ended up losing the election. It's not quite the cosmic injustice of the British electorate rejecting Churchill in 1945--but it's no small injustice either.

Read more here.  Meanwhile Politco is already speculating on who the Republican candidate will be in 2012.  But before we get too obssessed about the next Presidential cycle, Mark Newman has some fascinating maps of the 2008 Presidential election.

There has also been quite a bit written about election night itself.  CNET put together a fun list of the top 10 election tweets worth remembering, including:

7. Los Angeles-based twitterer Bill Palmer noticed that literally everyone caught election fever: homeless guy on Hollywood Blvd with a sign that says "Obama aint the only one who wants change"--now that's clever.

Read the full list here.  And of course, much has been said about CNN's ridiculous holograms:

So, how are we going to kill time online now that the election is over?  Well, Slate has some ideas, including:

Watch CollegeHumor. When all else fails, turn to funny videos. The Web is full of them, and new ones come out every day—just head to Digg, FunnyOrDie, the Onion, or BuzzFeed for the latest and greatest.

One suggestion: If you missed "You Suck at Photoshop," the 20-episode Web series in which a disaffected loser dishes about his miserable life as he tries to teach you how to edit photos, stop reading this and watch it immediately. (Note the mysterious celebrity cameo in the final episode, which just hit the Web last week.) After that, head over to CollegeHumor.com, which for my money produces the funniest videos on the Web. As the name implies, CollegeHumor deftly traverses the line between the clever and the sophomoric—it knows every pot-smoking joke you can think of, but it's also got a mean way with Internet memes. (See Professor Wikipedia or this much-passed-around clip imagining a business meeting of the kind of people who write comments on blogs.) My favorite CollegeHumor series is this incredibly cruel prank-war between two of the site's regular performers. The whole thing's true—these guys really pulled these pranks. They start off innocently enough but over time escalate into a battle so big that it's kind of sad. But mostly it's hilarious.

You can read some Slate's other ideas here, but it seems as though laughter is the way to go:

US election videos

Here are my favourite five viral videos from the US election:

5. Chuck Norris Approved

4. I'm Fucking Obama (if you haven't seen the original on which this video is based, you should watch it first here)

3. Hey Sarah Palin

2. John McCain gets Barack Roll'd

1. JibJab's Time for Some Campaignin'

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Obama's tech policy

With only a few days before the US Presidential election Barack Obama has released a web ad that is being aimed directly at the science and technology sector: