In the "told ya so" department, Pew Research reports that we Americans largely think media is full of crap.

http://people-press.org/report/543/

Another point on the curve,

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Last weekend, I uploaded a video to Youtube, as part of a discussion I had been having regarding cat attacks in popular culture.

This excerpt is the cat attack scene from 20th Century Fox's "The Legend of Hell House".  Youtube's systems identified this as 3rd-party content, and disabled the video.

I underwent the dispute process, identifying my use of this content as Fair Use under 17 USC.  The video became re-enabled, and I was able to continue with my discussion, referring to this scene in the collection of content I was referencing for my scholarly discussion.

Today, I just checked, and the video is again disabled, despite the lawful Fair Use of the content.  The copyright notice on the video can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/copynotice?video_id=I3o5_cDSKM4

But in a nutshell, they say:  "All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content".

Nobody ever disputed Fox's copyright on the content.  The issue is that Youtube (apparently) requires Fox's consent to use content -- even when the content is used under 17 USC's Fair Use provisions.

Please note that 17 USC does not require the copyright owner's consent for Fair Use.  I also haven't seen a DMCA complaint, so this isn't a DMCA matter, but a Youtube-doesn't-allow-Fair-Use matter.

In a nutshell:  Youtube (and Google) are Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

And as a Google shareholder, I have to wonder how many other people Google/Youtube has been wrong about in this manner.

Youtube:  You are Wrong.  Your Fair Use policy is seriously flawed.  Please fix it.

And if there is a DMCA complaint regarding this content, I need to see that, too, so that I can respond to it, potentially following up with California anti-SLAP action for any potential flawsuit served-up by Fox.

To save time in the event of an (unseen so far) DMCA complaint, I relate the following:

1) The URL for the content is at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3o5_cDSKM4

2) I consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which your address is located, and I will accept service of process from the person who provided any supposed notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

3) I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake, to wit:  The material was used under 17 USC Copyright Law's "Fair Use" provision, which DOES NOT REQUIRE THE CONSENT OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.

4) This notice -- which isn't even required at this stage -- is being sent to copyright@youtube.com


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If legacy media doesn't change, it is doomed.

No, I'm not talking about the constant media circus on 24-hour "news"
channels -- we already know that they aren't sustainable in the face of
actual many-to-many communications on the Net.  Nor is it about the
"troll-for-$$" business model of "talk" radio, as well as less savory web
sites.

No, I'm talking about the traditional outlet for "respectable news" -- newspapers.

I don't know if you've noticed, but newspapers aren't doing so well
nowadays.  From where I'm sitting, it looks to me that there are a couple of
reasons for this:

1) Newspapers in these United States have shackled themselves to a
for-profit motive.  Because indeed, the very bottom line with newspapers is
to maximize ROI.

2) Newspapers are run, and largely staffed, by people who grew up in a
United States where they were the arbiters of what constituted "news" -- a model that has been eroding for over 18 years.

Eighteen (18) years ago, I was lucky enough to end up working at a community
college, one of three in California to be connected to the Internet.  I
started with access to an HP Unix system, running a vital command-line tool
called "rn".  Short for "(r)ead (n)ews", this was my client to connect to the Usenet,
which remains the world's largest distributed "bulletin board
system".  Today, people have relatively easy access to much of the Usenet (but
not all of it) through "Google Groups".  And I daresay that many savvy
Internet old-timers still use the Usenet, albeit in a much more limited role.

You see, the Usenet's golden age was in pre-web days, as well as during the rise
of the world-wide web on the Internet.  Imminent Death of the Usenet was
predicted when AOL connected its customers to Usenet, lowering the barrier
to entry for participating in the discussions (and flamewars) therein.  But
other dens of literate ladies and gentlemen, such as The Well, already
offered access to the Usenet... including many forward-looking newspaper
reporters.

What were the nature of these discussions?  If we ignore the constant
flamewars, a lot of these discussions were "news" (in the old sense of the
word) in particular niches, divided by subject matter into "newsgroups".
But most importantly to this discussion:  newsgroup traffic included
discussion of mainstream media articles, _in forums not under control of the
original publisher_.  These were not only easier to participate in than
"Letters to the Editor", but it was a many-to-many discussion, where pretty
much anybody who wanted to could contribute their ideas.

This was the dawn of the loosely-organized group we now call "Netroots."

Today, such discussions have largely moved to web forums.  And there are a
lot of folks working for newspapers that still don't get this:  because, if
you observe what they are up to, a lot of it has to do with setting up their
own web pages, their own forums...and pretending that they still have a
monopoly on "news".

There's an old saw that goes, "the Net interprets censorship as damage, and
routes around it." This was handily illustrated recently, when #CNNFail and
#MSMFail were a trending topics on Twitter -- Iran had just had an
election with a controversial outcome, and the mainstream media ignored it,
at least until the outcry on Twitter made it impossible for U.S mainstream
media to ignore the event.

Meanwhile, there's a kind of mini-culture war going on in newsrooms (and
with them) of any newspapers that are still alive in the U.S.  market: for
more on this, I recommend reading Ms.  Chen's blog at
http://savethemedia.com .  But in quick summary, those newsrooms that clamor
loudest about "responsible journalism" are those that would prefer to keep
their own monopoly on news, acting as arbiters of what is vouchsafed worthy
of the American public.

I'll conclude with the same observation I made a couple of weeks ago, in my
FB article "R.I.P.  Legacy Media": the question today isn't whether or not
We the People will be welcomed into the "discussion" controlled by these
legacy newsapapers -- but whether or not these doomed entities will be
allowed into the conversation being had by We the People.

That's still my story, and I'm sticking with it.