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All Media is Social

Art imitates life, but sometimes life imitates art.
In the example of this video, a man is dressed up as the main character Goku of popular japanese anime Dragoon Ball Z.
Goku is known to ride around on a magical yellow cloud called Nimbus that serves as a method of transportation.

In this video, a man dresses up at Goku recreating his flying Nimbus from a device concealed by the soft fabric immitating the clouds soft appearance. As he rides around the city, you see the reaction of people recognizing the character and infamous cloud he rides on. They proceed to point him out, smile, and take pictures with their phones. A young girl say “oh my god you’re my inspiration!” in excitement.
Even though not all passerby’s may recognize that a character from a popular anime is being reenacted, they stare with intrigue, while those of a younger age and generation immediately recognize what is going on. Further proving that media is social, even if just in a  demographic niche.

Although a cartoon, Dragon Ball Z inspires people dress up as its characters, go to Comic Con expo where others are imitating their favorite characters as if it was a game they were playing. This imitation and role play of sorts as well as its reaction by others who recognize the fictitious character being acted out shows us that media is indeed social, and in some cases movies and cartoons influence us to dress and imitate what we see and consume as entertainment.

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Tik Tok is a great example of the latest in social media.
It has surpassed google as the most visited site and the youth seem to be the experts on this platform. At first Tik Tok seems to be a skim over the top attitude toward information, but nevertheless an cognitive perspective of the media that youth seems to understand. One could say that the platform has a playful spirit and students are happy to spend time there processing information they find in the anecdotal short videos. Therefore playing into the emotional perspective of the social media app that shows us that the average time spent on the app is 52 minutes a day for the average user.  Students are so keen on this platform that even some professors have taken to the platform to get younger people interested in their course. But is Tik Tok truly an emergent opportunity for teaching and learning? It has been banned from use on state and government devices and one educational consultant Paul Bennett believes that its short videos can perpetuate mythology and incorrect information both of which are Moral dimensions of the medium that needs further examination.
Although still a new platform some professor have used Tik Tok clips in lectures using pop culture and youth culture to connect with the students.

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When COVID-19 forced college courses online, Stuart Middleton, a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland in Australia, was having trouble connecting with his remote students. So he decided to try to meet them where he heard they were happy to spend time - on TikTok.

He started creating videos on TikTok, and he worked to make his posts fit the playful spirit of the platform. In many of his videos, he acts out scenes from famous Hollywood films, except swapping in terms from the strategic management courses he teaches.

In one of them, for instance, he plays the part of Clint Eastwood's character in the film "Dirty Harry," in an iconic scene where he asks, "Do you feel lucky?" Except, instead of saying "Have I fired six shots or only five today?" the professor says, "Have I analyzed five forces or only four," referring to a management theory known as Porter's Five Forces.

Other clips he's created feature modified scenes from "Zoolander," "The Sixth Sense" and "Titanic."

The professor admits it's "corny stuff," but he says he was inspired by watching other top TikTok influencers, such as the performer Drake.

"He's doing heaps of corny stuff," Middleton tells EdSurge. "This is the way he's relating."

It turns out he's not the only professor experimenting with TikTok in their classes. It's hard to figure out how widespread the practice is, but some scholars, including Middleton, have recently published papers in academic journals about their experiences. And a few TikTok profs have even gone viral.

But the TikTok platform is also increasingly controversial. At least 20 state universities around the U.S. have blocked the use of TikTok on their campus networks, often to comply with new state laws and regulations barring the app on state-owned devices and networks. Officials in those states argue that the platform, owned by a company in Beijing, is a threat to cybersecurity, or they are concerned about spying by the Chinese government.

Even so, data shows that TikTok is where students congregate these days. Sixty-seven percent of U.S. teens say they use the service, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, and TikTok recently surpassed Google as the most-visited site on the internet.

Will it come to play a role in college classrooms?

Bringing Science to the Public

One of Caitlin Light's many duties as an assistant professor at Binghamton University is running the social media accounts for the first-year research immersion program, and students quickly had some advice for her: No one uses Instagram anymore. Students now are all on TikTok.

So she decided to experiment with making TikToks of her own - with the help of her students.

"I'm an expert with what students struggle with and what they need to know," she says. "And they're the experts on what's going on with TikTok right now." Plus, she added, figuring out TikTok can be like "going down a rabbit hole."

Many of the posts Light has made have focused more on motivating students rather than delivering instruction.

And she knew she had to make it interesting from the beginning to get anyone to watch.

"If it's a boring, lecturing thing - like you'd see with a YouTube video - you're going to get scrolled right by," she says.

One of her posts shows Light bursting into the laboratory in a white lab coat and dancing to a pop song that was popular on TikTok at the time, while a halo-like effect flashes around her. Text on the screen says: "Me entering the lab second semester of FRI excited to perfect my lab skills, be a good team member and make new discoveries!"

@fribing FRI Spring 2023 here we come! #binghamtonuniversity ♬ Im Good CLEAN David Guetta Bebe Rexha - dancetoktrends

Caitlin Light hopes to motivate students with her playful TikTok videos.

The goal, she said, was "to build some momentum and enthusiasm for the semester."

As she learned more about TikTok, she decided to make creating short posts an assignment for the class. She challenged students to put their TikTok skills to use explaining science concepts, and what research looks like, to the public with posts.

"The biggest piece for me using this in the classroom is helping my students explain their research to normal people," Light says. "Our research is for the people and it's for making change in the world. If we can't get people interested in it, we're not getting money, we're not creating impact. People aside from our little academic bubble have to be interested."

She and a colleague published a journal article about their experience last year, called " TikTok: An Emergent Opportunity for Teaching and Learning Science Communication Online. "

"It is the ethical responsibility of researchers to disseminate findings with the public in a timely way," the paper concludes. "As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, effective science communication is vital to fulfilling that obligation. Inspiring the next generation of science communicators will continue to improve science communication, making exciting discoveries accessible to everyone."

'It's a Language That the Kids Speak'

Shauna Pomerantz, a professor of child and youth studies at Brock University, in Canada, doesn't make TikToks of her for classes, but she finds ways to play clips from TikTok in her lectures.

"I bring TikToks in all the time," she says. Just this week, she says, she gave a lecture about racism. "I showed a compilation of TikToks of Black mothers showing their Black daughters the trailer for the new 'Little Mermaid' movie which has Halle Bailey in it," she says. "I used this TikTok video as a way to talk about how representation matters."

She sees TikTok as the latest in a long tradition of professors using popular culture and youth culture to connect with students.

"If you're not on it, you're missing out on a conversation," Pomerantz says. "This is why teachers are gravitating to it, because they know it's where the kids are and it's a language that the kids speak."

Pomerantz became interested in TikTok early in the pandemic, when her then-11-year-old daughter found comfort scrolling through videos there. She ended up inviting her daughter to collaborate on a research project with her about TikTok, to document the platform's role in young people's lives.

"There's so many wedges on TikTok that you can't really talk about it as one thing," Pomerantz says. "It's like being at a big high school where you will find your people and you will ignore the rest."

Not everyone thinks professors should be encouraging the use of TikTok, which many see as a distraction that can keep students from paying attention in class or their studies. And others complain that it perpetuates a skimming-over-the-top attitude toward information.

"These little videos can perpetuate mythology, incorrect information, slanted views and actually discourage critical thinking," educational consultant Paul Bennett told the CBC News, in an article they wrote about Pomerantz's experiment.

Middleton, the professor in Australia, says he was initially reluctant to embrace social media in teaching, and that he rarely uses Twitter himself and at one point canceled his Facebook account in protest.

But he decided to give TikTok a try, especially since so many of his students were international students from China, where the service originates. Still, he makes a point to post all of his videos to the learning management system so even those who don't use social media can see them. "I don't want my students who don't have a TikTok account to miss out on this content," he adds.

"Would I encourage my students to be on social media all the time? No," Middleton says. "But they're not going to get off of social media because I told them to."

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Professors Try Teaching With TikTok. But It's Not for 'Boring, Lecturing Things.' - EdSurge News

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When COVID-19 forced college courses online, Stuart Middleton, a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland in Australia, was having trouble connecting with his remote students. So he decided to try to meet them where he heard they were happy to spend time - on TikTok.

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Unit 1 # Everything from the margin moves to the center 2/4/23

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Unit 1 # Everything from the margin moves to the center 2/4/23

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Writer Ryan Murphy changes television history with his Drama series Pose. This show is unique in and of that it has the largest cast of transgender actors.
The show focuses on the 1980's New Yord Ballroom culture, a culture that has long influences pop culture from the fringes of society. Not only did ballroom culture influence musical artist such as Madonna, with the Voguing style of dance and movement. It has inspired film makers to tell the story surrounding black gay and transgender subculture.
Upon closer examination and research Pose is a fictionalized version of early 1990's iconic documentary, Paris is burning, covering the lives of New Yorkers in the ballroom and gay black scene.
In the very words of Pose co-creator Steven Canals "Pose pushes the narrative forward by the centering...of trans women and gay people of color."
Clearly we can see that this subculture has been slowly moving to the middle into mainstream popular culture through media.
Today Pose has had a licensing deal with Netflix and now Hulu, providing potential exposure to a new demographic that may not know much about this part of society and its influence it has had on our mainstream culture. In addition, the show may also provide representation through story and experience that many queer youth may find and see their own experience in, something that was not always around for prior generations growing up in the 80's and 90's.

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Ryan Murphy's new FX drama Pose will go down in television history for assembling the largest cast of transgender actors ever to appear as series regulars on a scripted show.

Set in New York City during the 1980s, Pose follows its characters as they navigate through the city's various different social scenes, but primarily focuses on the metropolis's ball culture and the relationship between ball houses Abundance and Evangelista. With trans activist and author Janet Mock working on the show as a writer-producer and Our Lady J (whose past credits include Transparent) also working behind the scenes, the show authentically portrays the story of its characters.

Following a six-month nationwide search for its main cast, Pose brought on actors Indya Moore as Angel, MJ Rodriguez as Blanca Rodriguez, Dominique Jackson as Elektra Abundance, Hailie Sahar as LuluAbundance, and Angelica Ross as Candy Abundance. Other cast members include Evan Peters, Kate Mara, Billy Porter, James Van Der Beek, Ryan Jamaal Swain, Charlayne Woodard, and Angel Bismark Curiel.

"We are thrilled that Pose pushes the narrative forward by centering on the unique and under-told experiences of trans women and gay people of color," show co-creator Steven Canals said back when the casting was announced. And with all that said, here's a bit more about the five trans actors making television history on Pose every Sunday.
Indya Moore
Indya, who stars as a sex worker and ballgoer Angel, is a 22-year-old model from New York. Prior to Pose, she appeared in music videos such as "Don't Pull Away" by J. Views and indie films including Saturday Church (2017), which was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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Get to Know the 5 Trans Actors on "Pose" Making Television History

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Ryan Murphy's new FX drama Pose will go down in television history for assembling the largest cast of transgender actors ever to appear as series regulars on a scripted show. Set in New York City during the 1980s, Pose follows its characters as they navigate through the city's various different social scenes, but primarily focuses on the metropolis's ball culture and the relationship between ball houses Abundance and Evangelista.

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This GIF explains the fact that there was a time people who identified with the transgender experience were kept out of American society's popular culture. And now it is clear to see that transwomen are "In stuff"

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Here is another person taking on the Goku character, this time is Taipei Taiwan, a truly internationally recognized character!

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Older Generations adapt to newer technology

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Older Generations adapt to newer technology

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Adaptation and media literacy continues throughout our lives as newer technology is introduced to the different demographics. In the example of tik tok it is the younger generation that mastered the platforms first, but that doesnt mean that older generations are not able to learn the Tik Tok 'language' to effectively communicate on the youthful platform.

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Chances are, most seniors know that TikTok has nothing to do with clocks. Originally popularized by teens, it has slowly traveled upwards to older age groups but seniors are still a rarity on the app both as viewers and participants. Why? Probably because most of us have no idea what it is.

So, what is TikTok anyway?

TikTok is a social media app that allows kids (and anyone else) to express themselves by creating, sharing and discovering short videos, most under a minute. Young people use it for singing, dancing, comedy and lip-syncing to music. The TikTok app gives them high tech tools like filters, control over video speed, access to professional audio and more. Watch this video to find out how it works.

The best way to try it is to download the TikTok app on your phone and click on it. You'll see a string of videos of what's trending that day and can follow them. For example, I love funny dogs so I now follow this TikTok with Moonpie, a 9 pound dachshund wearing frilly dresses who speaks like a toddler. If you don't understand why people watch TikTok, I challenge you to watch a few Moonpie videos and not laugh. As you start watching videos on TikTok, the app's algorithms learn what you like and show you more of it.

Why TikTok?

Why is TikTok so popular? It's a mood elevator. The minute or less format distills the best moments of any performance or experience into a visual haiku-providing a quick laugh, a quick awwwww, or even a quick quack (there are duck TikToks too).

It's easy to get addicted to TikTok and spend hours on it, even if you're not a Gen Z or Millenial. My Facebook friends agree. Sixty-five-year-old book publicist Cathy Lewis is a fan, "The videos are funny, creative," she says. "There are great recipes. It's much more entertaining than Facebook." Nancy Peske, in her late fifties, watches TikTok videos of psychologists offering insights with her college-age psychology student son. Leanne Phillips, 61, loves cute baby and toddler videos.

TikTok is not just for kids

The TikTok age demographic is slowly trending up. Older women started doing Tik Tok videos during the pandemic to keep occupied, plus, as this AARP article explains, it's more authentic than other social media outlets.

Seniors are featured mostly in videos made by their grandkids. Some of the biggest TikTok stars are in their 80s. According to this Buzzfeed article, "during the pandemic TikTok became a way of connecting people - strangers, really - across the globe. So, it should come as no surprise that older people have also developed fans of all ages on the platform - 82-year-old user @charlesmallet has over 4 million followers.

Grandparents star

Do those grandparents enjoy being on TikTok? By all reports, they love it. Ko Im, a 30 year old journalist, wrote about how her TikToks of her grandma making kimchee during her visit to South Korea went viral. "I don't think she quite understood the global reach of TikTok and how many people viewed her videos," Ko reports, "but she's a natural!

How to make your own Tik Tok:

If you want to make your own Tik Tok it helps to be familiar with digital video creation, including filters, effects, templates, audio and more. This YouTube video gives step by step instructions. Of course, it helps to have a grandchild or other digital native to collaborate with.

Despite the age gap, seniors are discovering the platform, especially if they have information to share or something to promote. Judy Cole, 63, who calls herself Funny Old Fart, put up this TikTok using cue cards.

Maybe you have a special talent and can demonstrate it on Tik Tok or just want to impart some pithy wisdom. There is an audience-mostly of young people-for what you have to offer.

Update: AARP has just launched its own TikTok account. Visit it here.

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Too Old for TikTok? Nope! - Senior Planet from AARP

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Chances are, most seniors know that TikTok has nothing to do with clocks. Originally popularized by teens, it has slowly traveled upwards to older age groups but seniors are still a rarity on the app both as viewers and participants. Why? Probably because most of us have no idea what it is.

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Unit #1 Digital Literacy doesn't stop misinformation 2/4/23

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Unit #1 Digital Literacy doesn't stop misinformation 2/4/23

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It is true that lack of digital literacy often means that you are less likely to distinguish the truths from the untruths of online news however being digitally literate doesn't mean that you are less likely to share false information.
Oddly enough the sharing of information is where accuracy really matters. Asking oneself to think more critically before posting information online and potentially sharing falsehoods as news or factual knowledge.
So if there is a difference between digital literacy and the ability to discern accurate  news then one could say that there are dimension to the nature of digital media literacy. For example media literacy is slightly different from digital literacy. Over all the accuracy of our ability to discern false information online also extends itself to the social responsibility of making sure we ourselves do not get trapped in the  net of sharing false information. to do so we may have to go deeper into our understanding of knowing how news is constructed and mainstream media operate.

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Understanding why people believe and share things that are false is an important part of addressing the spread of misinformation on social media.

A new study from MIT Sloan researchers takes a look at the role of digital literacy - familiarity with basic concepts related to the internet and social media - with mixed results. Digital literacy is associated with more discerning judgement about what's true and false, but it doesn't seem to predict whether the person is more or less likely to share false information on social media.
Read the digital literacy paper
"These results add to the mixed pattern regarding digital literacy and misinformation on social media," MIT Sloan professor David Rand and researchers Nathaniel Sirlin, Ziv Epstein, and Antonio Arechar write. "While digital literacy was associated with a better ability to identify true versus false information, this did not appear to translate into sharing better-quality information." Rand is also a professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.

In their experiment, the researchers conducted a survey of 1,341 Americans (representative of the national distribution of age, gender, ethnicity, and geographic region) who were shown true and false posts about politics and COVID-19. The subjects were also asked about political party affiliation.

Insights from the study include:

Digital literacy matters ...

The researchers used two measures to determine digital literacy: familiarity with internet-related terms and attitudes toward technology, and knowledge about how social media platforms decide which stories to show them. Respondents were also tested on their knowledge about how professional news operates and their critical thinking skills, and were randomly assigned to either assess the accuracy of a set of headlines or indicate their likelihood of sharing each headline on social media.

The researchers found "robust evidence" that lack of digital literacy is associated with less ability to tell truth from falsehood, and this doesn't vary based on a person's stated partisanship or whether the news was about politics or COVID-19.

The research showed that digital literacy was a strong predictor of accuracy discernment, and critical thinking skills. Procedural news knowledge was a somewhat stronger predictor of being able to discern accuracy.

... but it doesn't make people less likely to share false information

The results were "strikingly different" regarding sharing discernment, or the tendency to share true news more than false news. Digitally literate subjects were just as likely to show a tendency to share inaccurate information. This didn't vary based on partisanship, or if the news was about politics or COVID-19. Procedural news knowledge was the only factor that was positively associated with a higher fraction of shared content that was true.

Researchers said this is likely due, at least in part, to people's tendency to fail to consider accuracy when they think about what to share, researchers said. Other research has shown that an " accuracy nudge," or reminding people to think about accuracy before they post, improves the quality of information they share online.

"If they fail to even consider whether a piece of news is accurate before deciding to share it, their higher ability to identify which news is accurate will be of little assistance," the researchers wrote.

🚨New in HKS Misinfo Review🚨
"Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions"

- N=1341 Americans judging headlines about politics of COVID
- 2 digital literacy measures https://t.co/Het0XBRJP1

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- David G. Rand (@drand@techhub.social) (@DG_Rand) December 6, 2021

Key takeaways: the limits of digital literacy and importance of focusing on accuracy

The implication is that measuring digital literacy might be useful for identifying social media users who are vulnerable to believing misinformation, but not useful for identifying those who are likely to spread that information.

Other takeaways include the potential impact of shifting users' attention to accuracy to reduce misinformation, and the suggestion that education aimed at reducing misinformation should focus more generally on procedural news knowledge.

"This emphasizes the multifaceted nature of digital literacy and the importance of future scholarship further elucidating the many dimensions of digital literacy, as well as the relationship between digital literacy, media literacy, and digital media literacy," the researchers write.
Read next: 25 ways to fix social media

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Study: Digital literacy doesn't stop the spread of misinformation | MIT Sloan

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According to new research, digital literacy is an important factor in identifying misinformation - but it doesn't stop people from spreading it.

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Fake news, a term that has emerged in the last decade to become a coined term in social and political spaces. Some even weaponize the term to discredit opposing views of their opponent.

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It is a known fact that American values are historically founded on Judeo Christian values. And if there is any industry that knows how to push moral limits it is the entertainment industry. In this specific example the music industry. In this video, the singer Sam Smith pushes moral limits that some conservative Americans may be uncomfortable with. Especially with the sexual content and partial nudity in the video. Not to mention the obvious, Sam Smith's wardrobe consist of a woman's dress and a corset, attire not usually attributed to males.  Although it is perhaps morally provocative, the  ultimate decision for this content to be released by the artist and record label would be an ethical choice.

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Sam Smith - I’m Not Here To Make Friends

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Here we can see the content creators who have their own media channels comment on the content of the new Sam Smith video. The headline reads "Sam Smith's new revolting music video" alluding to the morally risqué video and the emotion it may arise in such conservative Americans such as Matt Walsh.

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Sometimes journalists serve not only commercial masters but journalist coverage can be more political than informational. If you report for a dedicated left wing outlet, you may be prone to use the news to support a political agenda. For example if the president is a republican as George Bush was, and you are a left wing media outlet, you may want to report the news in a way that makes the president look bad, which could ultimately affect his overall view among society. Depicting the Iraq war either as a complete disaster or using euphemisms like the "many Iraqis would rather kill each other than fight for their freedom" to take the responsibility away from the U.S military according to the political affiliation of the media outlet.

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A group called the Project for Excellence in Journalism says that during the first three months of this year, FOX News had less coverage of Iraq than CNN and MSNBC.

That led CNN Chief Jonathan Klein to say, quote, "FOX News were obviously cheerleaders for the war. When the war went badly, they had to dial back coverage because it didn't fit their preconceived story lines."

Wow, that sounds bad, doesn't it? Now I can't speak for FOX News, only "The Factor." And here's the deal. In the beginning, I supported the war based upon the best available intelligence. I was on the same page as Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and just about everybody else.

When it became clear that many Iraqis would rather kill each other than fight for their freedom, I told you that. All the while rooting for the U.S. military to win the conflict, despite the Iraqi madness.

That's right, as a commentator, I am rooting for the Americans and British to win, because a victory is better for the USA and the world.

Now we've done hundreds of Iraq reports on this program, as you know. But we don't do the carnage du jour. We don't highlight every terrorist attack because we learn nothing from that. And that's exactly what the terrorists want us to do. I mean, come on, does another bombing in Tikrit mean anything other than war is hell? No, it does not.

In my opinion, CNN, and especially MSNBC, delight in showing Iraqi violence because they want Americans to think badly of President Bush. And that strategy has succeeded.

So their Iraqi coverage is more political than informational, again in my opinion. Could be wrong about CNN. I'm not wrong about the committed left wing crew over at NBC.

Finally, just who are these Project for Excellence in Journalism people? Well, their spokesman is a guy named Mark Jerkowitz, a former TV writer for the far left Boston Globe and the off the chart left Boston Phoenix.

Now I've known Mr. Jerkowitz for many years. He hates FOX News and is a committed leftist. So much for journalistic excellence.

Now when the Associated Press picked up the study, it didn't identify Jerkowitz as a FOX hater. And it should have.

The bottom line is this. We've reported time and again that the war in Iraq is indeed a mess. There's little news value in broadcasting daily bombings. By the way, FOX News continues to crush CNN and MSNBC in the ratings, as the folks know news when they see it. And that's the "Memo."
Most Ridiculous Item
Time now for "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day."

I have to apologize to Steve Doocy. The pain of it all. Last night I said Martha MacCallum beat him in the "Culture Quiz." As many viewers pointed out, she did not. It was a tie.

So Doocy was wronged, and I am responsible. Not good.

On another subject of interest, this appeared on CBSNews.com, quote, "Reasons to Be Depressed: More people agree that Bill O'Reilly is a better source of political information than ABC News, according to a JWT survey conducted on behalf of Adweek magazine."

One hint over there at you CBS guys. You people have a lot more reason to be depressed than worrying about us, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. It might be ridiculous.

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FOX News Criticized for its Iraq War Coverage

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A group called the Project for Excellence in Journalism says that during the first three months of this year, FOX News had less coverage of Iraq than CNN and MSNBC. That led CNN Chief Jonathan Klein to say, quote, "FOX News were obviously cheerleaders for the war.

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Even though youtube has a subscription service not all YT users are subscribers of their streaming service. Nevertheless, they surpass other subscription based services such as Netflix, HBO, and Hulu in streams.
Is it because a lot of the programming come from ordinary people in society. What advantage does YouTube have? Is it in the amount of channels and endless entertainment and information one can find on the platform? Is their advertising based revenue model superior to a subscription based model or does it just work out better for them. One thing is for sure their long tail approach to content creation has served them well.

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Google's parent company Alphabet delivered another monster earnings report Tuesday. One of the brightest bits came from YouTube, which booked a whopping $7 billion in advertising revenue last quarter.

When we talk about the winners and losers in the streaming wars, the focus is primarily on the subscription services like Disney+, Netflix and HBO Max. But ever since Alphabet started breaking out YouTube's performance early last year, it's become clear it should be right there in the mix with the rest.

YouTube is not only a streaming video juggernaut that continues to report mind-bending growth, it is also turning into a key rival to the paid services that dominate the conversation around the future of television. And it has plenty of room to grow.

Take a look at some of the key points we've learned about YouTube's growth recently:

Quarterly revenue is on a par with Netflix, and it's growing at a faster rate. Alphabet said YouTube booked $7 billion in ad revenue last quarter. That's up 83% from the year-ago quarter. Compare that to the $7.34 billion in revenue Netflix booked during the same period. Netflix's revenue grew 19.4% from a year ago.

Also, practically all of Netflix's revenue comes from subscriptions. Alphabet only reports YouTube's advertising revenue, not revenue from subscription products like YouTube TV and YouTube Premium.

YouTube's television viewing is growing faster than ever. While the vast majority of YouTube consumption happens on phones, computers and tablets, Alphabet reported huge growth over the past year in people watching on television sets.

The company said 120 million people watched YouTube on a TV last month, up from 100 million per month last year. Philipp Schindler, Google's chief business officer, said on the company's earnings call Tuesday YouTube on TV is "the fastest growing consumer surface that we have."

It's the strongest signal yet that YouTube is encroaching on Netflix (209 million subscribers as of the end of June) and Disney+'s (103.6 million subscribers as of April 3) territory in the living room.

Nielsen says more people are watching YouTube and Netflix than any other streaming service. Research firm Nielsen released a fascinating study last month showing far more people still watch traditional television than streaming video.

But Nielsen's data also had an interesting ranking of time spent streaming on various services. YouTube and Netflix were the top two streamers, with each service accounting for 6% of time spent watching television.

YouTube's TikTok rival is also growing. Short-form video is the dominant trend on social media today, with TikTok leading the charge. YouTube has its own short-form video service, YouTube Shorts, designed to compete with TikTok. Alphabet didn't disclose how many people are using YouTube shorts but said viewing metrics jumped from 6.5 billion views per day in March to 15 billion views per day by the end of last quarter.

More room to grow. Nielsen's report last month showed there's still plenty of room for all streamers to grow as more people migrate away from traditional linear TV. Streaming is still just about a quarter of all television viewing. A rising tide lifts all boats. YouTube is poised to be one of the streaming wars winners thanks to its early lead.

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YouTube is a proven juggernaut that rivals Netflix in the streaming wars

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Google's parent company Alphabet delivered another monster earnings report Tuesday. One of the brightest bits came from YouTube, which booked a whopping $7 billion in advertising revenue last quarter. When we talk about the winners and losers in the streaming wars, the focus is primarily on the subscription services like Disney+, Netflix and HBO Max.

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Considered one of the best tech acquisitions ever. It allowed google to improve it ad sells against search result as YouTube worked very much like a search engine. It also incentivizes content creators to continue creating for the platform as they too can benefit from the profit sharing of ad sells against clips.  It could be safe to say that although many creators were worried about the the merge with Google, Youtube continues to inspires creators to contribute to the platform and therefore the value and utility of Youtube. For example the ease of finding a "how to " tutorial video on you tube has made it a very useful resource for many who seek to learn common things that we otherwise would have to pay to learn. How awesome is that?

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A Decade Ago, Google Bought YouTube — and It Was the Best Tech Deal Ever

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Snowden delivered the thousands of pages of documents to journalist Glenn Greenwald in electronic form on a flash drive that fit in his pocket. All he had to do was a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.
This story illustrates our shift from a society that was reliant on print and physical paper for the exchange of information to a society that is slowly phasing out paper, or at least   counterbalancing its use with other forms of media. It is my belief however that we will eventually do away with paper.
Now wleaked valuable information that had it been on paper, he could have never easily leaked such large amounts of information by carrying out of a classified space, tons and tons of reports and intelligence out of the NSA.
However, it is my opinion that the reporter to whom Snowden leaked the information did well with disseminating the information for the truth to be told to the public.

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In 2013, Edward Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance of American citizens.

To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government considered him a traitor in violation of the Espionage Act.

After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and travel - via Russia - to Ecuador, where he would seek asylum. But when his plane landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, things didn't go according to plan.

"What I wasn't expecting was that the United States government itself ... would cancel my passport," he says.

Snowden was directed to a room where Russian intelligence agents offered to assist him - in return for access to any secrets he harbored. Snowden says he refused.

"I didn't cooperate with the Russian intelligence services - I haven't and I won't," he says. "I destroyed my access to the archive. ... I had no material with me before I left Hong Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional route."

Snowden spent 40 days in the Moscow airport, trying to negotiate asylum in various countries. After being denied asylum by 27 nations,he settled in Russia, where he remains today.

"People look at me now and they think I'm this crazy guy, I'm this extremist or whatever. Some people have a misconception that [I] set out to burn down the NSA," he says. "But that's not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn't about surveillance at all. What it was about was a violation of the Constitution."

Snowden's 2013 revelations led to changes in the laws and standards governing American intelligence agencies and the practices of U.S. technology companies, which now encrypt much of their Web traffic for security. He reflects on his life and his experience in the intelligence community in the memoir Permanent Record.

On Sept. 17, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to recover all proceeds from the book, alleging that Snowden violated nondisclosure agreements by not letting the government review the manuscript before publication; Snowden's attorney, Ben Wizner, said in a statement that the book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations, and that the government's prepublication review system is under court challenge.

Interview Highlights

On how researching China's surveillance capabilities for a CIA presentation got him thinking about the potential for domestic surveillance within the U.S.
I'm invited to give a presentation about how China is hacking the United States intelligence services, defense contractors, anything that we have available in the network, which I know a little bit about but not that much about, because they have the person who is supposed to be giving the presentation drop out. So I go looking ... seeing what exactly is it that China is doing? What are their capabilities? Are they hacking? Are they doing domestic surveillance? Are they doing international surveillance? What is occurring?

And I'm just shocked by the extent of their capabilities. I'm appalled by the aggression with which they use them. But also, in a strange way, surprised by the openness with which they use them. They're not hiding it. They're just open and out there, saying, "Yeah, we're doing this. Yeah, we're hacking you. What are you going to do about it?"

And I think this is a distinction: I think, yes, theNSA is spying -of course they're spying - but we're only spying overseas, we're not spying on our guys at home. We wouldn't do that. We have firewalls, we have trip wires for people to hit. But surely these are only affecting terrorists, because we're not like China. But this plants the first seeds of doubt where I see if the capability is there.
On what he discovered about U.S. domestic surveillance
Over the final years of my career ... I see that we have the same capabilities as the Chinese government, and we are applying them domestically - just as they are. We have an internal strategy at the NSA, which was never publicly avowed, but it was all over their top-secret internal slides, that said the aspiration was to "collect it all." What this means was they were not just collecting and intercepting communications from criminals, spies, terrorists, people of intelligence value - they were collecting on everyone, everywhere, all of the time, just in case, because you never know what's going to be interesting. And if you miss it when it's passing by, you might not get another chance.

And so what happened was every time we wrote an email, every time you typed something into that Google search box, every time your phone moved, you sent a text message, you made a phone call ... the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment were being changed. This was without even the vast majority ofmembers of Congress knowing about it. And this is when I start to think about maybe we need to know about this, maybe if Congress knew about this, maybe if the courts knew about this, we would not have the same policies as the Chinese government.
On feeling like he was breaking an oath by keeping quiet about the extent of government surveillance

... when I realize we have been violating, in secret, the Fourth Amendment of that Constitution for the better part of a decade ... that we are committing felonies in the United States under a direct mandate from the White House billions of times a day - honestly, I fell into depression.

My very first day entering into duty for the CIA, I was required to pledge an oath of service. Now, a lot of people are confused, they think there's an oath of secrecy, but this is important to understand. There's a secrecy agreement. This is a civil agreement with the government, a nondisclosure agreement called Standard Form 312. ... It says you won't talk to journalists, you won't write books as I have now done, but when you give this oath of service it's something very different. It's a pledge of allegiance, not to the agency, not to a government, not to a president, but to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.

And so when I realize we have been violating, in secret, the Fourth Amendment of that Constitution for the better part of a decade, the rate of violation is increasing, the scope of the violation is increasing with every day, that we are committing felonies in the United States under a direct mandate from the White House billions of times a day - honestly, I fell into depression. And I tried to think, how can I just get by? And this leads to a period where I resign from what would be considered direct mission-related work out in Japan, in the foreign field, as we call it, and I returned to ... a purely corporate position for Dell as a sales official at CIA headquarters.
On deciding to share classified material with journalists and setting conditions for the publication of the material
I tried to reconstruct the system of checks and balances by using myself to provide documents to the journalists, but never to publish them myself. People don't realize this, but I never made public a single document. I trusted that role to the journalists to decide whatthe public did and did not need to know. Before the journalists published these stories, they had to go to the government, and this was a condition that I required them to do, and tell the government, warn them they're about to run this story about this program and the government could argue against publication and say, "You've got it wrong," or "You've got it right." But if you publish this is going to hurt somebody. In every case I'm aware of, that process was followed, and that's why in 2019 we've never seen any evidence at all presented by the government that someone's been harmed as a result of these stories. (Editor's note: A 2016 report by the House intelligence committee cited more than 20 examples of which, it said, Snowden damaged national security. The details of those instances were redacted.)
On being detained in the Moscow airport for 40 days before being granted temporary asylum in Russia
Had I cooperated with the Russian government right - if you think I'm a Russian spy - I would have been in that airport for five minutes before they drove me out in a limo to the palace where I'd be living for the rest of my days, before they throw the parade where they call me a hero of Russia. Instead I was trapped in this airport for 40 days. ...

The U.S. government worked quite hard to make sure I didn't leave Russia. ... Why did the U.S. government work so hard to keep me in Russia? We don't have a clear answer, and we may never have that until more people in the Obama administration start writing memoirs, but it's either they panicked or they realized this would be an evergreen political attack where they could just use guilt by association, people's suspicion of the Russian government to try to taint me by proxy.
On his life in Russia and whether he receives any kind of financial support from the Russian government
I have my own apartment. I have my own income. I live a fully independent life. I have never and will never accept money or housing or any other assistance from the Russian government. ...

People ask how I make my living, and I give lectures. I speak publicly for the American Program Bureau and places book me to speak about the future of cybersecurity, what's happening with surveillance, and about conscience and whistleblowing. I've never been the nightclub type. I'm a little bit of an indoor cat. Whether I lived in Maryland or New York or Geneva or Tokyo or Moscow, I always spend the majority of my time looking into a screen, because I think the thing that's on the other side of it is beautiful. It has the promise of human connection. And although the Internet is very much a troubled place ... I think it is something worth fighting for, and something that they can improve.
On how he secures his personal cellphone
I try not to use one as much as possible, and when I do use one, I use a cellphone that I have myself modified. [I've] performed a kind of surgery on it. I open it up with special tools and I use a soldering iron to remove the microphone and I disconnect the camera so that the phone can't simply listen to me when it's sitting there. It physically has no microphone in it. And when I need to make a call I just connect an external microphone through the headphone jack. And this way the phone works for you rather than you working for the phone.

We need to be regulating the collection of data, because our phones, our devices, our laptops - even just driving down the street with all of these systems that surround us today - is producing records about our lives. It's the modern pollution.

You need to be careful about the software you put on your phone, you need to be careful about the connections it's making, because today most people have got a thousand apps on their phones; it's sitting there on your desk right now or in your hand and the screen can be off but it's connecting hundreds or thousands of times a second. ... And this is this core problem of the data issue that we're dealing with today. We're passing laws that are trying to regulate the use of data. We're trying to regulate the protection of data, but all of these things presume that the data has already been collected. ... We need to be regulating the collection of data, because our phones, our devices, our laptops - even just driving down the street with all of these systems that surround us today - is producing records about our lives. It's the modern pollution.
On coming back to the U.S. to face trial
My ultimate goal will always be to return to the United States. And I've actually had conversations with thegovernment, last in the Obama administration, about what that would look like, and they said, "You should come and face trial." I said, "Sure. Sign me up. Under one condition: I have to be able to tell the jury why I did what I did, and the jury has to decide: Was this justified or unjustified." This is called a public interest defense and is allowed under pretty much every crime someone can be charged for. Even murder, for example, has defenses. It can be self-defense and so on so forth, it could be manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. But in the case of telling a journalist the truth about how the government was breaking the law, the government says there can be no defense. There can be no justification for why you did it. The only thing the jury gets to consider is did you tell the journalists something you were not allowed to tell them. If yes, it doesn't matter why you did it. You go to jail. And I have said, as soon as you guys say for whistleblowers it is the jury who decides if it was right or wrong to expose the government's own lawbreaking, I'll be in court the next day.
Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

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Edward Snowden Speaks Out: 'I Haven't And I Won't' Cooperate With Russia

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In 2013, Snowden showed journalists thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance efforts. He's been living in Russia ever since. His new book is Permanent Record.

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Book fairs continue to take place all across the world in the digital age. It seems like world events such as wars and COVID are more of a hinderance to fairs taking place then the lack of book lovers available. As a matter of fact, it was digital media that allowed for bookfairs to take place in 2020 and 2021. But as publishers become accustomed to doing business digitally will they be less and less inclined to hold physical book fairs as the importance to be physically present comes into questions. After all, if many of us can work and go to school from home, perhaps some future events like bookfairs will choose to do the same. But in my humble opinion nothing beats the real thing and the feeling of breathing, feeling, and seeing an experience in person. Sometimes media can simply become a hinderance, sometimes a tool to be used in the right circumstances.

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The international circuit begins each year with two spring fairs: the Bologna Children's Book Fair and the London Book Fair, typically held in March and April, respectively. The several book fairs of the summer and fall follow: Beijing International Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair held, respectively, in August or September and October. The fairs rounding out the year include those in Guadalajara, Mexico, and Sharjah, UAE. A slew of other fairs are also of some international, but primarily regional, importance, including those in Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Cairo, Gothenburg, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Kyiv, Leipzig, Montreal, Moscow, New Delhi, Paris, Prague, São Paulo, Seoul, Taipei, and Thessaloniki. One could spend the entire calendar year just traveling to book fairs.

Sometimes world affairs intervene to create challenges for the fairs, such as in the fall of 2008, which saw, first, the Russo-Georgian war in August and the global economic collapse in September. The impact of both events was apparent at the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair, where the stands of Greece, Iceland, and Ireland stood nearly empty as a result of the economic crisis, and the Georgian stand, in close proximity to Russia's stand, staged a days-long protest in which Georgians bombarded the Russian stand with paper airplanes made from pages torn out of Russian books.

Fast forward to 2022. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is likely to cause ripples on the international book fair scene as well, though the full impact is uncertain at press time. For starters, nearly all the major international book fairs announced they have banned Russia's state-sponsored publishers and booksellers from exhibiting at their fairs, though independent publishers will be allowed. The primary concern is that the war will spill over into other countries in Europe and create hesitation among fairgoers about traveling to the fairs or exhibiting; this would have significant consequences for both Bologna and London. Both fairs have been idle for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and each had offered virtual alternatives in both 2020 and 2021. Most people found these virtual events less than satisfying, however, and it is urgent that the fairs return to in-person events as soon as possible, lest fairgoers lose their sense of loyalty.

Frankfurt, Beijing, and Guadalajara also went digital in 2020, and then each returned with scaled-down in-person events in 2021. Having benefited from its late date in the year, Sharjah was able to hold a modest book fair at the end of 2020, then returned in 2021 with its full show. Thus, Sharjah could take bragging rights to being the biggest book fair in the world last year, attracting 1.3 million people, compared with just 75,000 in 2021 for Frankfurt, which would typically bring in some 300,000, and Guadalajara, which allowed in just 200,000 people, when it would usually host more than 700,000. The Beijing fair was said to be half its usual size in 2021, which generally brings in 300,000 people. All these fairs are not exclusive to publishing professionals and cater to some extent to consumers and members of the public, who account for most of the attendees. In contrast, both Bologna and London only allow professionals to attend and typically draw 30,000 and 25,000 attendees, respectively.

These large numbers of people spend a lot of money and, accordingly, represent a huge, predictable influx of cash into the community hosting a book fair. Some people take advantage of this, such as the hoteliers in Frankfurt who triple their rates during the fair. When Covid-19 shut down the fairs, national governments were compelled to step in and shore up the finances of the organizers to ensure the fair would keep going. Still, Covid did have some consequences: Jacks Thomas, director of the London Book Fair for seven years, retired, then started working with Bologna, while Frankfurt closed several overseas offices and significantly reduced its overall staff numbers.

Despite returning to live events this year, the fear remains among the fair organizers that as publishers become accustomed to doing business digitally, they will feel less and less compelled to travel to meet with colleagues in real life. Going into 2022, for the first time in many people's careers, the relevance and importance of attending in-person events is being questioned. Going back, say, to the early 1990s, it wasn't always so. Social media didn't yet exist, nor did Zoom. Face-to-face meetings and negotiations at book fairs were a high priority. Publishers would fly to a fair and take their most important meetings first, hoping to get their hands on the hottest manuscripts. A savvy publisher would make time between other meetings and socializing to speed read the book and, ideally, offer a preempt large enough to entice a publisher to commit. If enough parties were interested, the seller might then hold an auction. All this would happen over three or four days, and the concentrated time frame of the fair amplified the excitement, which, anecdotally at least, helped drive up the purchase price of rights.

Most fairs have some form of a dedicated rights center, an area where agents, foreign rights directors, and publishers can meet to negotiate deals. The template for this kind of activity was established by the Frankfurt Book Fair, which created the LitAg, or Literary Agent's Center, in 1978. The LitAg features dozens of rows of small tables, none bigger than a middle schooler's desk, dedicated to an agency or publishing house. There will be found one or two people on each side of the table, often in heated conversation, flipping through portfolios of titles and discussing deals. It feels a little like a stock market trading floor. Entry is restricted to those who have an appointment, and security is tight to prevent agents from being distracted by aspiring authors. At the busiest fairs, meetings are booked in half-hour clusters, back-to-back, for six to eight hours a day for the length of the fair. Frankfurt has retained the crown as the busiest agents center and has doubled in size in the past 30 years, now hosting some 500 tables representing 350 different literary agencies. In 2000, Reuters estimated that fully 80% of the rights deals for all books were done in Frankfurt. That number is now likely smaller, for in the past decade the London Book Fair, which has a smaller agents center, has surpassed Frankfurt's importance for English-language rights trading. The biggest, most important rights deals, when they are done, are celebrated after-hours with Champagne in Frankfurt, pints in London, or a glass of good Barolo in Bologna.

For several decades, due to a coincidence of timing, both the U.K.'s Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize were announced at some point during the week of Frankfurt, prompting a rush on rights for the winning author's books. The Booker announcement always happened at night, with a watch party at the bar of the Frankfurter Hof Hotel (the primary after-hours party venue for fairgoers), and it seemed for long stretches of the 2000s that the U.S. publisher of the winning book was inevitably Grove Atlantic. It became a foregone conclusion that publisher Morgan Entrekin would buy a round of drinks for anyone in the vicinity. The Nobel Prize news would come in the morning, prompting a large cheer and a rush of people to the booth of whoever was the primary rights holder for the author's books. This has produced some memorable scenes and airing of grievances, such as in 2008, when after it was announced that J.M.G. Le Clézio had won the Nobel, the stand of his French publisher, Gallimard, was mobbed by potential rights buyers. Anne-Solange Nobel, Gallimard's foreign rights director at the time, announced, "If you have not bought rights from me for him before, then I will not sell you rights to him today, so go away!"

Over the past decade, one book fair that has come out of nowhere is the Sharjah International Book Fair, in the United Arab Emirates, which has made a strong push into rights trading, particularly among smaller, overlooked markets. It has been generous in sponsoring publishers and agents to participate and offers financial incentives for striking deals at the fair and payment for covering translation costs. The fair is one part of an overall project by the Sharjah Book Authority to help the emirate become a publishing hub for the Middle East and Africa.

This year the United Arab Emirate of Sharjah will be the guest of honor country at Bologna, Frankfurt, and Guadalajara-an unusual confluence, signaling the emirate's ambitions. Most international book fairs will feature a guest of honor, typically a country or a region, and will highlight that country's authors and literary culture through talks, performances, and other cultural programming. The most prestigious of these programs is Frankfurt's, which often entails translating several hundred of a guest of honor country's titles into German. Some small nations, including Iceland and Finland, as well as larger ones that are less familiar to global readers, such as Indonesia and Turkey, have used a showcase in Frankfurt as a means of generating broader international interest. China, too, has used this platform and was the guest of honor at Frankfurt in 2009 and then London in 2012, but encountered aggressive protests, particularly from groups supporting Uyghurs; it has largely abandoned large-scale participation in global fairs since.

The popularity and importance of any given book fair ebbs and flows over time and is often subject to the politics and economics of a given country. The Buenos Aires Book Fair, for example, is the second largest in the Spanish-language world, but a crash in the value of the peso has meant Argentine publishers have been less able to buy rights or export books. Consequently, the Bogotá Book Fair has risen to more prominence in recent years as a result of a more stable Colombian government. In another example, the São Paolo book fair was actively wooing international business in the decade preceding the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil, but that largely stopped after the conservative politician took power. The book fair in Moscow began wooing foreign journalists again in 2016, though that is unlikely to resume anytime soon. Taipei has been a popular book fair with international visitors, many seeing it as a literary gateway to mainland China, but the threat of invasion from China may prompt many of them to stay away for some time.

Still, attending an international book fair is a rite of passage for a young person in publishing and a step to career advancement. A trip to Beijing or Bologna, Frankfurt or Guadalajara, London or Sharjah says, "Hey, look, I am someone"-someone of status, ambition, vision, or someone with some really good books to sell.

So what does the international book fair of the future look like? It may, indeed, be a mixture of physical, in-person events and the continuation of virtual experiences we have seen burgeoning over the past two years. The 2010s saw the launch of at least two new platforms meant to facilitate digital rights trading activity, including PubMatch (partially owned by PW), which works with Bologna, among other fairs, and Frankfurt Rights, which is administered by the Frankfurt Book Fair. Neither platform has supplanted face-to-face meetings, nor were they meant to. Relationship building, however enacted, remains the bedrock of the international publishing industry.

It is true, however, that fairs offer something unique: serendipity. Ask almost any publisher who regularly attends fairs, and they are likely to have a story about how a chance meeting on a bus, in a bar, or in a bathroom led to their discovering a great book. This gamble that serendipity will pay off is perhaps what drives people to return to fairs time and time again: the chance of stumbling on the next global megaselling book and making it your own.

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International Book Fairs Still Thrive in the Digital Age

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The international circuit begins each year with two spring fairs: the Bologna Children's Book Fair and the London Book Fair, typically held in March and April, respectively. The several book fairs of the summer and fall follow: Beijing International Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair held, respectively, in August or September and October.

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Ebook readers are becoming more and more a common means of distribution in the book industry. It has also proven to be a cheaper option for students who can rent ebooks at a better price then a paper one.
eBook publishers are also competing with traditional publishers for print publishers. eBooks have now hit the mainstream and digital media and the internet are bringing a shift to the media business, providing consumers with other options. The almighty Amazon has the most powerful eBook reader, is it only a matter of time until we are all reading from a screen?
Will books become a nostalgic media medium like vinyl was to digital streams? we shall find out.

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JK Rowling notoriously received numerous rejections before meeting her literary agent, and later, publisher. Having stacked up at least 60 rejections in my writing career, I know exactly how that feels.

And while being a novelist recently came out on top in a survey as one of the most desirable jobs to have, it is definitely not for the faint hearted.

I now have an agent and an award, but it wasn't always that way.

As a writer, the first step to securing a publishing deal is to acquire an agent, a middle-man, basically your number one fan who will shout about how good you are to publishers and hopefully persuade them to read your carefully-crafted novel.

They are the gatekeepers to the publishing industry.

Digital publishers, however, are changing the game because they talk directly to authors.

This doesn't mean that manuscripts are of a lesser quality. It just means there are new ways of doing things.

We live in a truly digital era, yet the digital publishing industry is still largely misunderstood.

Digital publishers are often young, dynamic companies striving to find creative ways to win influence in the online retail market of fiction and non-fiction.

They also compete with traditional print publishers to discover the next big idea.

Being an avid Kindle reader, I was excited when I received the email from my agent explaining that a leading digital publisher wanted to take on my debut psychological thriller, I Never Lie.

The editor and sales director fell in love with my protagonist instantly and hoped I would sign with them, this after the book didn't manage to find a home with traditional print houses. I had a mixed reaction to the offer.

First, there was a huge relief, finally someone believed in my writing enough to invest and publish it. But then came the questions from friends and colleagues: "Who's the publisher?"

The next question was: "What's the advance?" When I responded with, "There isn't an advance," they reacted to my news with a muted excitability.

I explained it was an ebook deal, and they looked at me with some perplexity. They also asked if it was self-publishing, and I explained that it was far from self-publishing, having gone down that route in the past.

But it was as if I hadn't arrived in the world of publishing by securing a digital deal, which is ironic given how digital our lives have become.

Digital publishers don't deal in advances. They deal in metadata and higher royalties. My publisher Canelo saw a gap in the market for high-quality ebooks where no digital edition was available and did quite well out of it, they are now investing in original high-quality commercial fiction.

And, while this business model might not be good for bookshops, for authors it's pretty sweet - if the book sells. They offer up to 40% more royalties than traditional print houses.

Okay, so your book won't be on the bookshelf in WHSmith, but as a first-time author, who cares?

I wondered how on earth they would go about marketing the book given the snobbery I'd experienced in announcing I was going digital, but to my surprise my book logged position 140th in the overall Kindle charts two weeks after release date. It now has close to 100 reviews on Amazon.

Working with a digital publisher I received the same support that any unpublished writer working with a print house would, especially in the area of marketing, which is the key difference between self-publishing and working with a team of dedicated professionals.

I also get to set some of the rules. They sent me a questionnaire asking me what I expected. This can range from being in the top 10 to being recognised by other authors, and whether I wanted to make money or just sell it.

The two are not the same thing apparently. If I'd said "make money" they would have set the price higher. As it was, my agent advised me to just get it out there so they priced it down because statistically most readers pick up a book by an unknown author if the book is priced low. It's the take-a-punt market.

There are ways of measuring whether readers finish books too, interestingly. The PigeonHole for one, is an app that serialises books in staves. They release staves over a period of 10 days.

Each stave is timed in terms of reading time. My book was released in staves that timed at 24 minutes.

It means readers can plan to read a book on their commute or factor it into their day. The Pigeonhole said that at least 74% of those who signed up to read my book finished it.

That's an incredibly powerful thing to know in the take-a-punt market. If readers are finishing the book, hopefully it generates reviews, which generates more interest and more sales.

In my case, it was a unique experience being on an app with readers. I would wake up to text alerts every day with all kinds of theories spinning around because readers can highlight text and comment live.

Libraries have also cottoned on to the digital readership and have developed apps where you can take out digital books. Readers say it can save on late fees because there's no book to return.

As there was no physical book, I got creative for the book launch by recreating the crime scene from the opening chapters on London Fields. There was a forensics team. I baked a cake with my book cover on it.

Passers-by wondered what on earth was going on so we handed out postcards of the cover including promo codes where they could go online and download the book for free, again to generate more interest. It made it into the local Hackney press. It was a book launch with a difference. It included performance art.

I had little or no knowledge of the digital publishing industry before my book deal and it is still an uphill struggle for traditional print media to take ebooks seriously, but I have since come across many online platforms that have a dedicated online reading community.

It's a curious new world and one that is presenting authors with new ways of working in the publishing industry.

Of course, I still dream of one day seeing my book in WHSmith, but for now I'm a happy writer. My book is now an object out there in the world and once that happens, the possibilities are endless.

Digital publishing: Five key tips

1. Do your research on the digital publisher. What are they looking for? Non-fiction? Fiction? Genre-fiction? Then read their submission guidelines and follow them closely.

2. Follow digital publishers who may be interested in your work on social media. They often put a call out for certain genres and hold open submissions. Plus you can always ask them for advice in this way. They do respond.

3. If you're dealing directly with a publisher make sure you employ a freelance editor to go over your manuscript. An agent will typically do this, so you need that second opinion on whether the manuscript is ready or not.

4. Work with them on the marketing. Maybe you you can get your book mentioned in your local newspaper? It's a start.

5. Get excited about the fact that you can now talk to publishers, but be realistic and don't give up your day job just yet.

Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.

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Ebooks: How digital publishers are 'shaking up' the industry

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JK Rowling notoriously received numerous rejections before meeting her literary agent, and later, publisher. Having stacked up at least 60 rejections in my writing career, I know exactly how that feels. And while being a novelist recently came out on top in a survey as one of the most desirable jobs to have, it is definitely not for the faint hearted.

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As mentioned in the chapter Fox news has a very opiniated and biased news style delivery that suits them well on which they build their reputation. The interesting thing is that more conservative stations poll as less biased among republican but more biased for democrats. While the opposite is also true for democratic leaning channels pooling as more biased among republican groups and less biased among democratic groups. Such examples are The New York Times and CNN scoring poorly as biased with Republicans.
This reinforces that we live in ideological bubbles consuming the news that is most aligned with our beliefs.

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A Gallup/Knight Foundation survey found that Americans think most of the news they consume is inaccurate and biased.

Republicans said they thought only Fox News and The Wall Street Journal were unbiased, while Democrats felt that way about most mainstream outlets.

Overall, survey respondents said PBS News and The Associated Press were the least biased outlets.

Americans believe that 62% of the news they consume on TV, in newspapers, and on the radio is biased, according to a survey from the Knight Foundation and Gallup.

Those surveyed said they believe that 44% of news reporting and 64% of news on social media is inaccurate. And they're upset about it - more than 80% said they were angered or bothered by seeing biased information, and slightly more felt similarly about seeing inaccurate information.

In evaluating news outlets, respondents closely associated bias with inaccuracy. In their view, outlets they feel are biased are also inaccurate.

But perceptions of bias and inaccuracy differed based on the respondents' political persuasions, particularly with regard to Fox News, Breitbart News, CNN, and MSNBC. Overall, the only two media organizations Republicans surveyed said weren't biased were Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

President Donald Trump often takes issue with outlets like CNN and The New York Times for publishing critical stories about his administration. In a tweetstorm on Thursday morning he described the media the "Enemy of the People!"

Survey respondents with different political views had different perceptions of the pervasiveness of bias in the news. For example, Democrats said they believe that just 44% of news on TV, in newspapers, and on the radio is biased, while Republicans said they believe 77% of it is biased.

Presented with a host of major news outlets, respondents ranked PBS News and The Associated Press as the least biased outlets, while Fox News and Breitbart News tied for being perceived as most biased. The survey was conducted from February 5 to March 11.

Here are the survey's results for how biased respondents thought each news outlet was overall, ranked from most to least biased (a negative score indicates more people said the outlet was more biased than unbiased, while a positive score indicates more people thought the outlet was more unbiased than biased):

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These are the most and least biased news outlets in the US, according to Americans

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Americans believe the vast majority of news on TV, in newspapers, on the radio, and on social media is biased, according to a survey from Gallup and the Knight Foundation. Here are the most and least biased news outlets in the US, according to Americans.

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Rock & Roll a music born out of segregation

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Rock & Roll a music born out of segregation

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Many black performers of the 50 and 60's performers who had hits on the radio that transcended racial lines often played to segregated crowds. Stories of the treatment they endured in some corners of the country are still told as we look back on how this music rose to be so popular in the country and around the world. But the music had it root in white country music and black R&B. The marriage of the two by men like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino , Long Live Rock& Roll.

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One night in the late 1950s, the Flamingos ' bus pulled up to a concert hall in Birmingham, Alabama, and a row of 30 to 50 police officers holding rifles and billy clubs was waiting for them. The cops escorted the six-member doo-wop group, famous for "I Only Have Eyes for You" and "The Ladder of Love," to its dressing room and gave strict instructions: As black performers, they were to make eye contact with only the black fans, who were confined to the balcony, and not with whites on the floor.

"It was ridiculous," recalls Terry Johnson, now 78, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted group. "The cops were up there making sure we did not look at any white person. It was a rule when we came in: 'I don't want to see any of you darkies looking at the white women out there. If you do, your ass is mine.' Cruel things like that."

The Flamingos, like all African-American performers from that era, had to contend with Jim Crow absurdities. Often they couldn't stay at hotels, were served rotten food at white restaurants and wereoutright banned from others; they would instead drive out of the wayto eat at black friends' homes. But that Birmingham performance stayed with Johnson.

"We were personalities. To say you can't look at someone who's smiling and applauding for you?" he tells Rolling Stone. "It was hard. I'll never forget that."

In the Fifties and Sixties, black performers found themselves on the front lines of the battle over segregation. The clashes at lunch counters, schools and on buses have been well documented, but reporters weren't exactly covering James Brown club shows back then, so we're reliant on survivors' biographies and oral recollections for the details. As the original rock & roll pioneers are fading out - Fats Domino died in October, Chuck Berry died at 90 last March, 84-year-old Little Richard has been intermittently sick, and most of the members of groups like the Flamingos are gone - it's more important than ever to share their stories.

Rock & roll, with its mixture of white country music and black R&B, arrived just as segregationists were tighteningJim Crow laws in response to the civil rights movement. Entertainers throughout the South were forced to participate in a crowd-separation ritual. Venues could be unofficially classified black or white - New Orleans' famous Dew Drop Inn catered to an exclusively African-American crowd, for example. But in other cases, police and promoters physically separated the audiences. Sometimes, as in the Flamingos' show, blacks were in the balcony and whites on the floor; other times, a painted line ran down the center of the theater or a rope bifurcated the audience.

In 1955, Berry performed at the Duval Armory, in Jacksonville, Florida, and recalled in his autobiography, "Just before they were to open the doors for the spectators, four of the maintenance guys came out and roped off the armory with white window cord. They looped and tied it to each seat down the center aisle, making it an off-limits zone that neither colored nor whites could tread." Berry alsowrote that he once showed up for a Knoxville, Tennessee, concert only to find a group of white men had replaced him with a local cover band: "It's a country dance and we had no idea that 'Maybellene' was recorded by a niggra man," one said.

Historically, some concert-segregation laws had been haphazardly enforced, depending on the state and the racial attitudes of local officials and police officers. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an interracial, all-woman jazz group, managed to get away with integrated concerts when they toured the South in the 1940s, although they were occasionally turned away from entire towns and members were hauled to prison.

"There may have been more potential leeway and latitude, and a little bit of a blind eye being turned, prior to 1954-55," says Brian Ward, a Northumbria University professor in England and author of 1998's Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations. "The South begins to mobilize, in a much more concerted way, these forces of massive resistance - the laws get tightened up, coinciding with federal law decisions." In 1957,cops interrupted a biracial jam session at New Orleans' Preservation Hall and arrested all the musicians. The judge told an assembled courthouse crowd, according to several who were in the audience, "We don't want Yankees coming down to New Orleans mixing cream with our coffee."

In the early Fifties, Lloyd "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" Price performed in Raleigh, North Carolina, and was delighted to see blacks and whites dancing to his songs - until a white policeman stopped the music and stretched a rope down the middle of the dance floor. "It started happening a lot," Price, 84, says. "The rope was up in a lot of places. Whichever was the largest crowd, that was their dance. If it was more blacks, it'd be a black dance, and if it was more whites, it'd be a white dance."

"We experienced it in Atlanta, Georgia," says Sonny Turner, 78, the only surviving member of the Platters, another Hall of Fame doo-wop group, famous for "The Great Pretender" and "Only You." "We would go out and just walk around the street and wanted to see the marquee - and we were not allowed to come into the front entrance."

It wasn't just the South. Leon Hughes Sr., a member of the Coasters, remembers pulling into a scheduled show in Lincoln, Utah, anticipating a pleasant night of singing smash hits "Young Blood" and "Yakety Yak." He was climbing down from the bus when the promoter told them, "Uh, we're looking for the Coasters band." The group replied, "We're the Coasters band." The man said, "I think they're white." Hughes told him, "No, we're black." One of the men standing around panicked. "They ain't white!" he said. "Let's get them out of here!" The Coasters returned to their bus in a hurry and left town.

Some artists who appeared to challengethe color line met with violence or even death. In his autobiography, bandleader and "Willie and the Hand Jive" hitmaker Johnny Otis, who was white, recalls watching helplessly as a musician in his group was brutally beaten for neglecting to say "sir" in response to a white man's question at an Augusta, Georgia, concert in 1951. The late Jackie Wilson played a 1960 package show with several top singers in Little Rock, Arkansas, and when he realized they were scheduled to play two shows, first for blacks then for whites, he pulled out of the second one. White residents brandished guns and chased Wilson's entourage out of town. One of the performers, Jesse Belvin, who had a big radio hit with "Goodnight My Love" and co-wrote "Earth Angel," accelerated his '59 Cadillac so suddenly that his tires blew, the car swerved, and he and his wife died in the wreck.

Charles Neville of the Neville Brothers recalls this harrowing story: In 1959, three young white women regularly tried to outsmart Jim Crow at the Dew Drop Inn in New Orleans. Blending into the all-black audience, they wore dark makeup and glasses, and one covered her blond hair with a bandanna. One night, when Neville and house musician Guitar Red stepped outside for a break, New Orleans police handcuffed them to a telephone pole, hauled out the women and asked, "What the hell you doing with these niggers?" Neville watched as the cops beat the women so badly they had to go to the hospital. "Oh, Lord," he says, "we thought they were gonna kill us."

But in the era of Elvis, Chuck and Little Richard, a curious thing started to happen: Rock & roll shows became so boisterously biracial that it was sometimes impossible for officials to fully segregate them. Some recall the cops simply throwing up their hands. "A lot of places had the line when we first walked in, and after we started playing, they let them cross the line," the Coasters' Hughes says. "It was beautiful."

At the height of Jim Crow, young whites and blacks found ways to breach the separation. "After the first intermission, the kids were all dancing together," Price says. "I just kept playing my music and the kids kept coming....They were rebelling through dance, through a beat I'd created....They start realizing we're all human." In his authorized 1985 biography, Little Richard gives himself credit for single-handedly bringing segregated audiences together. "We were breaking through the racial barrier," he wrote. Richard's producer, H.B. Barnum, recalled, "When I first went on the road there were many segregated audiences....And most times, before the end of the night, they would all be mixed together."

Courageous musicians, white and black, contributed to concert desegregation, which continued in some places even after it was outlawed by 1964's Civil Rights Act. In 1961, Ray Charles canceled a scheduled show in Augusta because it was at the segregated Bell Auditorium; the Beatles refused to play segregated venues on their 1965 U.S. tour. The Playboy Club in New Orleans had an integrated jazz band in the Sixties, and owner Hugh Hefner had enough money and clout to threaten legal fights against anybody who tried to stop it.

These types of acts helped sway the public against Jim Crow, but "it's perilous to think the power of Chuck Berry was somehow going to bring down segregation," says Ward, the Northumbria professor. It was the Civil Rights Act - which, among other things, specifically prohibited discrimination in "any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment" - that deserves most of the credit. "There are so many examples of the Klan loving black music, and as soon as the show was over, putting their hoods back on," Ward says. "If a shared passion for certain kinds of music was the key to racial harmony, then the world would be a lot different."

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The Rope: The Forgotten History of Segregated Rock & Roll Concerts

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One night in the late 1950s, the Flamingos ' bus pulled up to a concert hall in Birmingham, Alabama, and a row of 30 to 50 police officers holding rifles and billy clubs was waiting for them.

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Who at that time would have thought that waves could be transmitted through the air? And how much it would revolutionize communication. Wireless communication allowed come a long way since the discovery of Frequency Modulation (FM) as a replacement for Amplitude Modulation (AM). However one can truly ponder on the magnitude of the technology that helped spread culture and information throughout the 20th century. In turn influencing journalism as well as creating new roles like broadcasting.
Today we have the internet, however it all started here!

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Table Of Contents
We explain what radio is, how it works and the types that exist. Also, what are its characteristics and why is it important.
What is radio?

Radio is a concrete application of a larger technology , known as radio communication . This technology is used, for example, by merchant ships or warplanes to send and receive signals on an open frequency. But specifically, radio is the civil, informative and entertainment use of radio communication.

We should not confuse what refers to radio with the chemical element radio (Ra) , nor with the geometric concept radio (of a circumference). However, its name comes directly from the first case, since a small stone of said element was used in the manufacture of the first devices.

Discovery of electromagnetic waves

Hertz showed that waves could be reflected, deflected, and polarized.

James C. Maxwell discovered electromagnetic waves and how they were generated in the 19th century, observing that changing electric fields created changing magnetic fields and vice versa. Maxwell exposed in 1873 the result of his experiences on the matter in the previous decade before the Royal Society of London and this was the first antecedent of the radio.

Heinrich R. Hertz confirmed Maxwell's theories in 1888 . He discovered how to artificially create these electromagnetic waves and how to detect them, using an apparatus of his manufacture that used two metal bars of the same size, aligned and culminating in metal balls, in each of which electrons were injected at very high voltage extracted from the other.

Using this apparatus, Hertz showed that waves could be reflected, deflected, polarized, etc. This was because they were moving close to the speed of light , and had characteristics similar to it (wave characteristics). This was the foundation for sending radio signals.

In tribute to their discoverer, these waves are called "Hertzian waves ". The name "radio" only came into use 20 years later. Many scientists and inventors, such as Nikola Tesla or William Crookes studied this new phenomenon and proposed applications and uses. Some already perceived the potential it would have in telecommunications.

The first hertzian wave transmission took place on Christmas Eve 1906 , with a high frequency electromagnetic alternator generating amplitude modulated (AM) waves and transmitting the voice of Reginald Aubrey Fessenden singing a Christmas carol from Brant Rock Station, Massachusetts.

Invention of Radio

Radio itself is believed to have been Tesla's invention.

The first radio in history was invented at the beginning of the 20th century , but its authorship is in dispute between the Serbian Nicola Tesla and the Italian Guglielmo Marconi. The latter is known to have built the first commercially successful complete wireless telegraphy system, transmitting hertzian waves through the air.

However, it is believed that the radio itself was an invention of Tesla that, through legal litigation, was taken from him by Marconi, who demanded compensation from the US government for having used his technology during the First World War without paying patent rights. .

However, subsequent inventions during the first half of the century such as the triode (electric amplification valve) , wave modulation valves or the superheterodyne allowed the use of radio as we know it.

Among the first entertainment broadcasts is the one made in Argentina in 1920, with the opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner, transmitted from the roof of the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires .

Radio History

The history of modern radio is the product of numerous technological convergences , such as the discovery of Frequency Modulation (FM) as a replacement for Amplitude Modulation (AM) in 1933, the use of transistors in radios in 1950, and a number of other considerable improvements.

Radio revolutionized the world of communications and entertainment and paved the way for the 1948 arrival of television , employing similar transmission mechanisms.

From then on, radio slowly lost ground to television , being used in the military through special channels, or through LORAN, the first radio navigation system. The next step, the digitization of radio, took advantage of new technologies made possible by the Internet in the latter part of the 20th century.

On the other hand, the influence of satellites added quality, speed and power to the radio, among other new possibilities. Today Internet radio is very common, as well as radio broadcasting among radio amateurs or local use for walkie-talkies .

How does the radio work?

Many cell phones are radio receivers and use the earphones as an antenna.

The radio works like any communication mechanism , mediating between a transmitter and one or more receivers, which do not share a location, and communicate without seeing each other, thanks to the transmission of electromagnetic waves in the air . Said communication can be reciprocal only in certain cases in which the sender and receiver exchange their roles in turns.

A radio receiver is a device that uses an antenna to capture electromagnetic waves in a certain amplitude and frequency. From them it obtains a minimum electrical charge that is filtered and separated by the electrical circuit inside the device, managing to distinguish between different wave frequencies (each one assigned to a radio station, normally).

Finally, the electrical charge is transmitted to a speaker or loudspeaker that converts it into sound waves perceptible by the ear.

On the other hand, an emitter operates in a similar but reverse way . A radio transmitter captures sound waves through a microphone, converting them into a series of electrical impulses that are emitted as a series of electromagnetic waves at a given frequency and amplitude.

These waves start from the transmitting antenna and travel through the air or space in all directions and at a speed very close to that of light.

Radio Types

Three types of radio receivers are known:

AM receiver:

Amplitude Modulation receivers are the simplest and cheapest, and are used for radio, airport communications or for commercial entertainment purposes, although their frequency ranges from 500 to 1700 kHz. It is easy to decode and consists of a stable variation of the amplitude of wave currents, as its name indicates.

FM receiver:

Frequency Modulation receivers work with the frequency of the waves, instead of their amplitude, which provides numerous advantages, such as greater fidelity or the possibility of eliminating unwanted signals, since the amplitude is constant in the waves. Most commercial open use signs are of this nature.

AUB receiver:

Incorporated when digital audio transmission became possible, it is the most innovative type of receiver, employing a single frequency network, with high quality sound signals and compensation for environmental distortions.

Radio Broadcasts

Each communicative segment is called broadcast and is usually live.

The radios of the different cities and countries are constantly broadcasting messages , along a programming grid that varies according to the interests and profiles of the broadcasters, like any other means of communication.

Each communicative segment is called broadcast and is usually live, that is, happening instantly. However, at the same time they are usually recorded and played later to give the public another opportunity to listen to them.

Each broadcast has a responsible team , within which are radio technicians, musicians and announcers. In many cases there are guests, phone calls that are linked to the content of the broadcast, and other radio resources.

Radio Genres

Journalistic radio seeks to transmit important messages.

There are several types of radio broadcasts according to their content:

journalistic or informative Those that seek to inform, transmit messages of importance to listeners or content that may be of interest, such as reports , chronicles , latest news , debates , interviews , etc.

Of entertainment. Those that offer various branches of non-journalistic programming, such as music , radio soap operas, etc.

Importance of Radio

The radio forever revolutionized the world of communications with a new "wireless" technology, that is, without cables of any kind, transmitted through the air and even in the vacuum of space. Thus it supplanted the telegraph and its derivatives. The commercial, military and practical applications of it were and are very numerous.

In addition, the invention of the radio paved the way for other equally revolutionary inventions , such as television or Wi-Fi transmission of the Internet, or radio location and radar.

Internet Radio

Internet radio is a recent phenomenon, but highly in demand . There are numerous digital stations that transmit to any device connected to the computer network ( cell phones , computers, etc.).

In some cases, they allow the download of their broadcasts to listen later . Podcasts stand out among this type of broadcast , radio programs recorded in the traditional way, but designed to be heard on a delayed basis.

Main international radios

The BBC, like all major broadcasters, has its online version.

Some of the main international radio stations in the world are:

BBC London ( England )

Radio France International ( France )

Spain Radio International ( Spain )

Radio China International ( China )

Radio ABC-Dig (Australia)

The above content published at Collaborative Research Group is for informational and educational purposes only and has been developed by referring to reliable sources and recommendations from technology experts. We do not have any contact with official entities nor do we intend to replace the information that they emit.

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10 Facts About Radio, Its Discovery, Invention, Types, Operation and Characteristics

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Table Of Contents We explain what radio is, how it works and the types that exist. Also, what are its characteristics and why is it important. Radio is a concrete application of a larger technology , known as radio communication .

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How Naptster nearly "killed" the music industry

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How Naptster nearly "killed" the music industry

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The music industry went from something played over radio waves and in the homes once record players were produced for consumers to purchase. However it seems that the medium was destined to continuously change. Fast forward to CD's, the music record labels are raking in large sales and revenue from pumping out artists via radio and television.
In come the internet and the ability to share audio files in the form of mp3. All it took was for a platform to facilitate this sharing for the record labels to lose millions of dollars due to illegal sharing, Something that would prove unstoppable.

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June 1999, and the music industry is rolling in cash. Bloated by the vast profits of the CD business, which reached a high of £30.6bn that year, the future looks bright for the suits at the top. Sadly for them, in a dorm at Boston's Northeastern university, a precocious coder is about to blow it all apart.

Napster, the brainchild of Shawn Fanning, linked computers and allowed users to access each other's mp3 audio files. Fanning met an ambitious teen, Sean Parker, on the webchat channel w00w00, and together they triggered a series of events that brought the record business to its knees by making music discovery instant - but payment optional. It was not the first service of its kind, but it was the one that went viral. Four months after its June 1999 launch, 150,000 people had signed up. By February 2001, it peaked at a verified 26.4m users, with some estimates topping 80 million.

It wasn't just some student project gone rogue. From the earliest days, it was built as a business. Shawn watched his uncle John Fanning try to get rich in 1997 when he was hawking chess.net, an online chess service; John convinced his nephew to hand him 70% of Napster in order to help him make it a success.

The company quickly created a buzz among San Francisco tech investors during the dotcom boom. Venture capitalist Eileen Richardson says downloading the software was a Damascene moment: "What's better than learning about new musical artists without having that big holy hell of a bunch of crooks called 'the record industry' in the middle?"

She and her friend Yosi Amram, who knew John Fanning from his chess.net days, put in money and met Fanning and Parker. "We definitely talked about [whether] this was legal or not," she recalls, but Amram referenced the landmark Sony Betamax ruling from 1984 on home copying to try to allay fears. Richardson became the company's first CEO.

There is an ossified narrative that record labels were too arrogant and lazy to see the digital revolution coming, and deserved their downfall. But the story is also about the slowness of a generational handover of power. EMI's Capitol imprint was the first major to sell a download version of a single, Electric Barbarella by Duran Duran, in 1997. But it was a Sisyphean struggle to get the boards to really listen. Jeremy Silver, VP for new media worldwide at EMI at the end of the 1990s, recounts chasing one of EMI's most senior executives into the toilets to speak to him about digital plans: "The only time I could get him to stay still and listen to me was when he was having a piss!"

Alison Wenham was heading AIM, a newly formed trade body for independent labels, when Napster appeared. Her account of a meeting between industry heads at Midem, the industry's annual trade conference, in January 2000, sums up this divide. "A man from one of the majors banged the table and said the answer was to ban the internet."

As the new millennium began, in San Francisco, a power struggle within Napster was threatening to pull the company under. Richardson knew John Fanning's 70% stake would cause problems. "I tried to keep him out of operations day-to-day as much as I could," she says. She claims he wanted to work with one firm valuing the company at $115m, but which Richardson felt would damage Napster's long-term future. (John Fanning did not respond to multiple requests from the Guardian to speak about his time at Napster.

Richardson was planning a per-track download model - "a dollar a song" - echoing the $0.99 track price that iTunes would offer in 2003. "Why would you spend $17 on a Britney Spears CD and get only two songs that you like?" she asks. "Wouldn't you prefer to spend $17 and get 17 songs that you like?"

But at the time, breaking apart the CD was never going to land well with labels, and Richardson stepped back in May 2000. Music copyright lawyer-turned-VC Hank Barry became the company's second CEO in a year. His company invested $15m and got two of the three seats on Napster's board. "I just wanted it to survive," says Barry. "I figured if the company could survive for a year or so and make some arrangements with the record companies, that it could be a very good investment."

Napster had swiftly become a cultural talking point. By October 2000, its creator was on the cover of Time magazine. Moby said he was "veryflattered" that his music was being shared on Napster and Courtney Love claimed that "major label recording contracts" were the real pirates. Napster had also spawned copycat services such as LimeWire that were built with one eye on avoiding the same legal mistakes Napster had made.

But Napster was by now seriously under threat. The RIAA, the trade body representing US record companies, had begun suing the firm in 1999, and acts including Dr Dre and Metallica tried to close it down. In May 2000, the latter delivered 13 boxes of documents to Napster's offices, listing hundreds of thousands of users suspected of unlawfully sharing their music.

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Lars Ulrich of Metallica arrives at the California offices of Napster in May 2000 to protest against its users sharing his music for free. Photograph: Ben Margot/AP

But Barry was meeting with major labels, desperately hoping to hammer out some kind of deal. He got into advanced talks with Edgar Bronfman Jr, of Vivendi Universal, that June. "We had spreadsheets that covered a conference room table, trying to work out what the business model could be," Barry says. He claims they were "48 hours away from a deal" - but then Bronfman stopped taking his calls. "To this day, I don't know what happened."

Silver suggests the real reason the majors did not want to do a deal with Napster was because doing so would blow a hole in their obscurantist accounting policies.

"Suddenly, the data associated with digital transactions was unambiguous [compared with traditional sales] and very powerful," he claims. "For years, record companies had traded on dodgy numbers. What [the lawyers] were afraid of was wholesale renegotiation of artists' contracts triggered by data transparency."

While majors Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner viewed Napster as a threat, the independents and BMG were more accommodating. "Our perspective was pragmatic," says Wenham. "We didn't condone ruthless piracy, but this seemed to be much more of a fan-based phenomenon that had grown to tens of millions of users."

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Screenshot of the Napster interface. Photograph: pixel.pix/Alamy Stock Photo

Helen Smith was director of business affairs at AIM and, alongside Wenham, negotiated the deal on behalf of the indies. She wanted "the usual," she says. "A good royalty rate, in advance, equity. Napster definitely wanted to do a deal. There were some who felt you shouldn't do a deal with the devil, but they were the exception."

Wenham says the business model - based on converting a percentage of Napster's 80 million users into paying subscribers, similar to the freemium model Spotify established - was viable.

Napster had carried out audience research to determine how many users would pay for music and what they would pay: "If only 2% of the Napster user base converted to paying, it would be incredibly valuable to the sector."

None of this could save Napster. Rolling legal action against it since December 1999 hobbled its growth and the resulting legal bills drained its resources. In September 2001, Napster agreed to pay copyright owners £20m in a settlement, and by May 2002 it couldn't pay its staff, who were offered the choice of being laid off or taking a week's unpaid holiday. Mass resignations ensued. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2002 and the assets were eventually sold to Roxio. It relaunched as a legal service in November 2002, but by then, it was yesterday's brand.

It took until 2015 for the record industry to finally move into recovery - watching aghast as its value dropped every year from 2000 to a low of $15bn in 2014.

The services slipstreaming in Napster's wake benefited from the risks it took. Swedish technologist Daniel Ek was hugely inspired by Napster when developing Spotify, so much so that he brought Sean Parker on to his team. Spotify has just passed 100 million paying users (of 217 million users in total); the record business is now back to a £15.15bn ($19.1bn) value last year, though still only half of its 1999 peak.

Arguably, Napster's true benefit was clearing out industry dead wood . "Some people just can't get used to change, and that means we have to wait for those people to go away," says Paul Hitchman, who set up digital music service PlayLouder as Napster was emerging. He is now president at label services company AWAL. "In a way, Napster won. From a consumer point of view, it opened up music to the whole world in a completely liberated way."

The battle with Napster also instilled an image of the music business as grasping and arrogant. "Even today, the music sector are perceived as control freaks, living in the old world and trying to hold back innovation," says Smith. "Obviously, that is not the case, but that image still haunts us today. That is one of the biggest downsides of what happened with Napster."

Those who tried to make Napster a success still feel the music industry missed a great opportunity. "Shawn Fanning and I had a debrief a couple of years later, and we both decided that we were the first and that we were going to be made an example of - no matter what," says Richardson.

Barry remains sanguine. "Shawn Fanning did an amazing thing, and was quite far ahead of his time," he says. "But timing is everything, right?"
Topics

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Oversharing: how Napster nearly killed the music industry

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June 1999, and the music industry is rolling in cash. Bloated by the vast profits of the CD business, which reached a high of £30.6bn that year, the future looks bright for the suits at the top. Sadly for them, in a dorm at Boston's Northeastern university, a precocious coder is about to blow it all apart.

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Hip Hop Icon and MC KRS One had been very dedicated to preserving hip hop culture in its purest form. He even wrote a book entitled "The Gospel of Hip Hop" which aims to preserve the original art forms of breakin, graffiti, MC'ing and Deejaying.

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THE SEVENTEENTH OVERSTANDING THE TEMPLE OF HIP HOP Pages 647-649, Paragraphs 16-24 from the Gospel of Hip Hop First Instrument Presented by KRS ONE For the Temple of Hip Hop

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Technology has come a long way in the last century and along with it media and entertainment. CGI finds itself in so many different aspect of of entertainment from video games to movies and more. As a child growing up most of the cartoons that I grew up watching were hand illustrated cartoons. However, thanks to CGI technology even the way of creating cartoons has changed (See Pixar).
This also applies to movies, which use to have VFX artists use props, lighting, models, and other real-life practical effects to create visual and special effects for films. Now alot of this can be create through a computer! I wonder how this has changed the field and scope of work for a VFX artist? I would imagine a loss is job opportunities, unless of course they evolve with the times.

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Computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses a significant part of what we see as 3D graphics in video games, films, and television. It's used to create characters, environments, backgrounds, special effects, and even entire animated films. In the world of filmmaking, these computer-generated visuals fall under the domain of the visual effects (VFX) team. 3D computer graphics are a critical component of CGI, enabling the creation of lifelike and fantastical elements in digital media. The process of creating these computer-generated images involves sophisticated software and skilled artists to bring virtual worlds to life.

We'll explore the components of CGI in the context of cinema and animation, delve into the functioning of this technology, trace its development over time, and highlight some well-known examples of CGI.
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What is CGI and CGI animation: Understanding computer-generated imagery in film and media

CGI, short for computer-generated imagery, extends beyond just animation and visual effects in movies. It's a versatile technology that finds application in various fields such as art, print media, video games, simulations, architectural and anatomical modeling, advertising, news, television, and animated visual content. Innovations like AI image generators, including DALL-E, MidJourney, and Deep Dream, harness deep learning to create artificial images in a multitude of styles from text prompts.

CGI leverages computer graphics to produce both 2D and 3D content for print, screen, film, television, video games, simulations, and virtual reality. In animation and film, CGI may be the sole technique used, or it might be combined with live-action footage in blockbuster movies to generate composite scenes. CGI is capable of producing everything from simple flat shapes to intricate 3D models, complete with diverse lighting, reflective surfaces, particle effects, and physics that mimic reality. This process involves sophisticated software, potentially supplemented by 3D capturing techniques, and significant computing power for a process known as rendering, which finalizes the sequence of frames.

In the context of filmmaking, CGI is crucial for producing both two-dimensional elements like text, objects, backgrounds, or environments, and three-dimensional elements such as characters, landscapes, and complete scenes. High-quality, detailed CGI is used to create visual effects and composite images that are either highly realistic or convincing enough to engage viewers' suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, poor quality rendering can lead to visual inconsistencies and unconvincing effects. Animated films, while often adopting a stylized, cartoon-like appearance, can also utilize advanced and detailed computer generated imagery to achieve realistic effects.

Computer animation and CGI: Understanding the scope and limitations of CGI effects

Computer-generated images can be static, yet they transform into computer animation when they form a sequence of frames, thereby creating motion. Such animations result in dynamic images or movies without viewer interaction. Unlike these, virtual reality and video games also employ CGI but uniquely allow user interaction with their virtual environments.

In filmmaking and animation, CGI has evolved distinctly from traditional frame-by-frame animation, which involved hand-drawn illustrations, stop-motion, or claymation techniques. It's important to note that CGI effects do not encompass these older methods. However, contemporary animated films often creatively combine CGI with these traditional animation techniques.

It's also essential to distinguish the term CGI in other contexts. In the world of web development and computer science, CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, a standard for data exchange between web servers and applications. This distinction is crucial to avoid confusion, especially in professional settings where specifying the need for a CGI specialist in computer graphics, as opposed to CGI programming, is vital for a film project.
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Exploring CGI animation: How filmmakers use CGI for visual effects

CGI has revolutionized the field of visual effects (VFX) in filmmaking. Before CGI, VFX artists relied heavily on practical effects using props, lighting, and models. Today, CGI has expanded the horizons of what's possible in film production:

CGI techniques and departments in film production

In modern film production, the application of CGI moves beyond the boundaries of just the visual effects (VFX) department. CGI's diverse techniques and uses permeate various roles and stages of the production process:

Brief history of technology and CGI in movies and animation

The journey of computer-generated imagery in film and animation began in the 1960s. The early instance of CGI in cinema was Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo in 1958, which utilized 2D animated patterns. A significant milestone was the 1972 short film A Computer Animated Hand by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke, which showcased 3D graphics by digitizing a hand with 350 triangles and polygons. The first feature film to incorporate CGI was Westworld in 1973, featuring a Gunslinger robot vision in 2D.

Advancements continued with the introduction of wire-frame models in films like Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), and The Black Hole (1979). The 1980s, marked by the influence of visual effects pioneers like Industrial Light & Magic, founded by George Lucas in 1975, witnessed a surge in CGI's use in movies. This period saw films like Tron (1982), The Last Starfighter (1984), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), and The Abyss (1989) integrating CGI technology.

The 1990s represented a golden era for CGI, with CGI masters maximizing the potential of the technology. Groundbreaking films from this era include Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993), Toy Story (1995), and The Matrix (1999), each setting new benchmarks for CGI.

In the new millennium, advancements in software and hardware accelerated CGI development. A notable example is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which featured Gollum, a groundbreaking CGI character interacting with live actors. In contemporary cinema, movies like The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy have heavily relied on CGI, with some using the technology in up to 90 percent of their shots.
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Examples of CGI in movies

This collection of films, exemplifying the evolution of CGI movies, highlights the progress and creative potential of computer-generated imagery, illustrating the various techniques employed by filmmakers and marking significant advancements in the journey of CGI in cinema.

Interstellar (2014)

Christopher Nolan's venture into space travel showcases a supermassive black hole and a tesseract. The film creatively uses slit-scan photography, a technique reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to digitally create a room representing interlinked timelines, allowing the protagonist to communicate across time.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Steven Spielberg's groundbreaking Jurassic Park not only spawned a successful franchise but also introduced audiences to lifelike, large-scale computer-generated dinosaurs. The film's VFX team achieved highly realistic movements and textures for the dinosaurs solely through CGI.

Avatar (2009)

James Cameron's Avatar stands as a powerhouse in the world of CGI movies, featuring an intricately designed world complete with fantasy creatures, all crafted from scratch and brought to life with detailed models and composites.

The Matrix (1999)

Known for the iconic "bullet time" effect, where time seems to slow down while the camera moves normally, The Matrix set new standards for action movies and their use of CGI.

The Irishman (2019)

Martin Scorsese's epic, spanning over three and a half hours, might not immediately seem CGI-heavy. However, it's renowned for its use of de-aging technology, naturally rejuvenating actors like Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci.

Titanic (1997)

Another James Cameron classic, Titanic exemplifies effective use of CGI. The film cleverly blends live-action footage with digital backgrounds and models to recreate the ill-fated ship and its journey.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is notable for its extensive use of CGI, particularly in bringing the character of Gollum to life. This was one of the earliest uses of 3D motion capture, involving a complex process to align actor Andy Serkis's performance with the CGI character.

Toy Story (1995)

Pixar's debut feature pioneered 3D computer animation in full-length films. Its success established 3D animation as a new standard for animated movies, a trend consistently upheld by Pixar.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

James Cameron's vision of the T-1000, a more formidable adversary than the original Terminator, was realized through extensive use of CGI, creating a villain with unique, liquid metal properties.

Transformers (2007)

Michael Bay's Transformers showcases the intricate detail achievable with CGI. Rendering individual frames sometimes took up to 38 hours due to the complexity of the models, which comprised thousands of parts. This film marked a significant step in CGI evolution, setting the stage for even more complex creations.

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Filmmaking 101: What is CGI in Movies and Animation? | Boords

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Computer-generated imagery (or CGI for short) uses computer graphics to create art or media in 2d or 3D for print or screen products, film, television, computer games, simulations, or virtual reality experiences.

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How are VFX companies doing in the age of CGI?

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How are VFX companies doing in the age of CGI?

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VFX companies are having to work faster and harder to keep up with the deadlines and expectations of movies. Some companies are saying it cost too much for them.When productions studios expect the delivery of work to be fast, cheap and good, it becomes unrealistic. Or worst VFX artist do a ton of work only to have production change their mind about a scene or even delete entirely. There goes months of work! Surprisingly some companies open shop over seas to get cheaper labor and be more profitable.

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Wining the 2013 Oscar for best visual effects should have been a highlight of Bill Westenhofer's career. Instead, the special effects supervisor for Life of Pi was infamously played off stage.

His crime? Using the platform to bring up the dire state of the VFX industry.

"Visual effects is not just a commodity that's being done by people pushing buttons," Westenhofer said backstage later that night. "We're artists, and if we don't find a way to fix the business model, we start to lose the artistry."

Life of Pi director Ang Lee later said he wished VFX was "cheaper."

Just days before winning cinema's most prestigious award, the studio where Westenhofer worked, Rhythm & Hues, filed for bankruptcy. The short documentary Life After Pi, which details the demise, claims over 20 VFX vendors closed or filed for bankruptcy in the decade prior to Life of Pi's release.

They're still closing today.

After working on the almost-billion-dollar hit Bohemian Rhapsody, London VFX vendor Halo went under in 2019, leaving four freelancers owed $70,500. The same year, Moving Picture Company's Vancouver office was shuttered not long after pulling out all the stops to redesign the animated hero of Sonic the Hedgehog in response to the widespread derision that met the original trailer. And Technicolor, the century-old motion picture processing company, filed for bankruptcy in 2020.

How could so many high-profile companies regularly working on movies that bring in billions of dollars fail? It's simple: the VFX industry, engaged in a lose-lose race to the bottom, is fundamentally broken.

Even as a series of recent mergers and acquisitions inject a glimmer of hope into the VFX business, its workers are still struggling to get by - let alone produce great work. Speaking to Inverse, four visual effects veterans describe an industry marred by brutal deadlines, slashed budgets, mass layoffs, and industry-wide burnout.

"Maybe they just don't get it"

Todd Sheridan Perry has seen this all before.

A freelance VFX supervisor with the looks of Patton Oswalt and the voice of a mild-mannered science teacher, Perry got his start in 1997 on a film you've probably never heard of called The Midas Touch. Since then, he's worked on everything from Michael Mann's Public Enemies and the Wachowskis' Speed Racer to Marvel juggernauts like Doctor Strange and Black Panther.

He's seen the industry go through ups and downs. Now, after surviving one of the worst eras in VFX history, Perry remains cautiously optimistic as struggling special effects studios get bought up by deep-pocketed internet companies like Netflix.

'They're a new player," Perry says about Netflix. "They weren't around for the last time the industry went through this. Maybe they just don't get it."

The VFX industry has been in trouble for a very long time.

In November 2021, Netflix bought Scanline, the German VFX outfit behind Stranger Things, Cowboy Bebop, and various superhero movies from Marvel and DC. That same month, Unity Technologies (maker of the ubiquitous Unity game engine) announced plans to acquire Weta Digital, the iconic VFX company co-founded by Peter Jackson.

The industry has gone through multiple phases where big studios buy up smaller VFX companies, and the only reason Perry thinks Netflix would want to own a VFX studio is bragging rights.

"It looks good on the surface," he says, "but Netflix creates so much content, Scanline isn't big enough to handle the workload. Netflix could keep Scanline busy for as long as they want to, but they're not saving money doing it."

But for Perry, even Netflix cash reserves may not be enough to fix his industry. Because there's no doubt the VFX industry has been in trouble for a very long time.

Making Black Panther

1993's Jurassic Park had 63 VFX shots. In 1997, Starship Troopers made headlines for having almost 500. Today's blockbusters routinely have over 2,000 VFX shots - and far less time to complete them.

" Jurassic Park was in postproduction for three years, with seven months for principal photography," Perry says. "Now we have shows with thousands of VFX shots and they need to be done in six months."

The pressure comes from the top. "It falls squarely on the shoulders of studios that set a release date and then work backward from there," Perry says. "The time isn't enough to live up to the ambition of the project."

Nowhere is this more obvious than the climactic set piece of Marvel's Black Panther. While the film was critically acclaimed, fans and critics found the final battle's VFX decidedly shoddy, particularly a fight scene between T'Challah (Chadwick Boseman) and Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) in the vibranium mines beneath Wakanda.

Despite having worked on those special effects, Perry agrees they were lacking.

"It does fail at some point," he says.

So what happened? The short answer is that a late studio decision created too much work for the predetermined deadline.

"There were multiple things going on in act three," Perry says. "There's Black Panther and Killmonger mano a mano. There's a vehicle chase through the canyons. There's a big battle on the fields above."

However, he also refutes claims that the sequence was completed in just six weeks. "The Black Panther/Killmonger fight was always planned and had been through previz, but the tribal battle up above didn't feel big enough. Marvel said they wanted it to be epic like there were hundreds of people fighting."

Method Studio, where Perry was working at the time, had been assigned both the vibranium mine fight and the Wakanda plains battle. More resources put towards the latter meant less for the former.

"Marvel and Method had a meeting and they said, 'We think you have too much work,'" Perry recalls. He and his team agreed, and the answer was to assign the remaining work for the mine battle to another studio, DNEG.

"The time isn't enough to live up to the ambition of the project."

The only problem? The different software each company uses meant sharing CGI environments or character rigs "isn't a trivial task."

Functions that are handled differently between computer and software systems had to be reprogrammed at DNEG, and Perry says the studio had to catch up from scratch in "weeks or day."

"We'd already done tons of development work on the vibranium mines and it all had to be packaged up and sent over to DNEG," he says. "Even if you're in the same company and sending it to a different department, packaging all that up and having it work requires a lot of elbow grease."

"DNEG didn't have the time to polish their shots as much as other companies who'd been working on the film for seven or eight months, and they were caught at a disadvantage. I'm not saying DNEG is a bad company - they have a closet full of Oscars. They thankfully took it on and it actually got done. We wouldn't have been able to accomplish it otherwise."

Avoiding the next Cats

If there's one person who saw this problem coming, it's probably Kerry Conran. Conran wrote and directed ​​2004's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the first Hollywood movie where almost everything besides the actors was animated using special effects. 18 years later, he has a pretty pessimistic view of the industry he helped build up.

"It's that cliche: Fast, cheap, and good. Pick two," Conran tells Inverse. "Productions expect you to deliver on all three, but that doesn't exist."

You can probably guess where Black Panther falls in that Venn diagram, but as rough as the Marvel movie's climactic scrap was, it wasn't enough to detract from the movie's success.

"Most people have no idea they're watching VFX."

However, we've already seen the results when the race to the bottom literally breaks a movie.

"The worst example is Cats," Conran says. " Cats didn't just suffer from bad CG, but missing CG. And it's for all the reasons we've talked about."

Such visible failures are rare. The VFX industry has a seemingly endless ability to absorb unplanned work.

"Vendors today definitely have their share of misfires, but 80 percent of the time they deliver miracles under very adverse conditions," Conran says. "Most people have no idea they're watching VFX."

"The type of stuff we do all the time is almost imperceptible," agrees Perry, noting that andLittle Women have "absolutely invisible" VFX work.

The industry's just-in-time culture has left Conran surprised the worst doesn't happen more often. "Even the Marvel films, which have all the resources in the world, play this dangerous game. Avengers: Endgame had 1,000 VFX shots delivered one week before the film was in theaters."

For Keith Goldfarb, founder and former creative director of Life of Pi VFX company Rhythm & Hues, the ultimate arbiter is what moviegoers will accept.

"As long as the finished results are good enough, there'll be no incentive to change," he says. "The income from these movies goes far beyond the box office. They're part of a huge ecosystem of merchandise, spinoff material, and theme park revenue. To what degree does the quality of the CG impact these markets? If the answer's not much, there's no reason for the studios to change anything."

"Or worse, a VFX artist will die driving home after working 48 hours straight to meet an unreasonable deadline."

Perry sees a couple of worst-case scenarios that might force a change. "If a Dune or a Star Wars doesn't come out on its release date and a studio loses a potential $500 million opening weekend because the film is pushed to compete with another $500 million movie, Hollywood will be blanketed with lawsuits."

"Or worse, a VFX artist will die driving home after working 48 hours straight to meet an unreasonable deadline."

Perry says he and his colleagues all know someone who's dozed off driving home after a long day. And he says he and his team have continued to work crushing deadlines even after a movie's premiere to finish shots for further rollout.

"We'll fix it in post"

Even though ideas change throughout production, the deadline rarely does. This leads to a major issue in the VFX industry known as scope creep.

"It's not uncommon for vendors to work on shots for weeks or months, only to have those thrown out when a production changes their mind," Rhythm & Hues founder Keith Goldfarb says. "When that happens, the production rarely accounts for money or time, they just expect the changes in half the time."

Perry says a good VFX vendor will try to get approvals at each stage. "Animation is time-consuming and subjective. The client must sign off before moving forward because so many things depend on it, like the way hair or cloth moves with the character once the shape and form is agreed upon. You want what you're doing to match what's in the director's head."

"If we make it green, we can replace it with anything, right?

But by the time a producer or test audience prompts a change that needs new animation, the VFX departments may have already moved forward and incurred costs on work that all gets thrown out. And because VFX jobs are paid for with flat rates, the extra work isn't covered. Perry says some clients either don't understand this workflow or intentionally take advantage of it.

Whether daylight's vanishing or a costume isn't photographing right, a director throwing their hands in the air and declaring "We'll fix it in post" has become a cliche. But the VFX vendor has already submitted a bid so all the little problems pushed down the line add to a workload that hasn't been budgeted.

The costliest mindset is indecision, Perry says. "What does this building look like? I dunno, we'll figure it out later, that's why we have greenscreens. Is the character's cape red or blue? We never got around to figuring that out - if we make it green, we can replace it with anything, right?"

VFX has both the means and curse of being able to fix everything.

International competition

If you've ever wondered why Marvel films everything in Atlanta or so many TV shows shoot in Toronto, the reason is simple: local governments pay a significant chunk of the production budget, creating tourist attractions and jobs that look good come election time. The same goes for VFX, but once again, this industry gets shafted.

Governments offer rebates on VFX providers to set up shop, and artists upend their lives and families by moving across the world for work. But it can all go wrong fast. Savings trump loyalty, and if a bureaucrat in another government offers a better rebate, your formerly thriving VFX hub can become a ghost town overnight.

That's what happened in Canada. Aggressive rebates from Quebec caused a shift from the traditional VFX market of Vancouver to Montreal. The Moving Picture Company laid off its employees, allegedly blaming "increasing external market pressures in Vancouver and more attractive opportunities in other locations" in an anonymously leaked letter.

A related issue is the international nature of VFX work. Facilities are found worldwide, including in cities where workers are much cheaper and have fewer rights. According to Perry, that's actually a feature of the industry, not a bug.

"We bid lower and lower to get the job, then find our burn rate is higher than the budget," he says. "This is exactly why companies open up facilities overseas - they have to in order to compete."

Is it time to reboot Hollywood?

So what's the solution? How do you balance financial realities with the vagaries of the creative process? As Rhythm & Hues showed, cash flow is the biggest problem. Any business with thin margins needs constant new work.

Clients paying on time would be a start. Vendors often don't see any money until months after a job is completed and have little leverage to encourage quicker payments. Walt Jones, formerly a VFX Supervisor at Rhythm & Hues, says he's spent over a year chasing money on some projects.

But unleashing lawyers only "burns bridges with the client and costs money most VFX vendors don't have," Jones says. "You may spend more in legal fees chasing the final payment than it's actually worth. Even then, most shops survive on a handful of clients, and losing one could mean the end of the company."

Can the fixed bid system be replaced with rates based on the amount of work completed?

"You can certainly try," says Rhythm & Hues founder Keith Goldfarb with a wry smile. "Good luck getting the studios to agree!" If VFX companies charged per megabyte or held back work in lieu of payment, most producers would find countless competitors who would adhere to the status quo, he says.

"VFX is still too mystical, too much of a black box."

The recent threat of a strike by stage employees raised questions of VFX unionization, but everyone Inverse spoke to agrees it wouldn't help this industry. The international nature of the business, which includes countries where unionization is difficult or even illegal, would make it impossible to establish and adhere to global standards. And the crippling and unrealistic pressure tends to come from the clients, not the companies themselves.

All of which means that while things are amicable inside VFX companies, it's the squeeze on cost, time, and quality imposed from upstream that's stretching the industry and its artists to a breaking point. There's no magic solution - not even Netflix's deep pockets - but a good first step would be for producers and directors to take the time to understand the art form.

"VFX is still too mystical, too much of a black box," Jones says. "A key component of my process has been getting directors and producers up to speed on the minutiae of everything we do. It's about getting everyone together as a creative team, having responsibility in the process, and knowing that we're all in this together. There has to be mutual trust for everyone to make the best film possible."

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The VFX industry is trapped in a downward spiral

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Wining the 2013 Oscar for best visual effects should have been a highlight of Bill Westenhofer's career. Instead, the special effects supervisor for Life of Pi was infamously played off stage. His crime? Using the platform to bring up the dire state of the VFX industry.

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Public broadcasting in the United States began in the 1920s with the establishment of educational radio stations to provide educational programming to the public.
In 1967, the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law, which established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as a private, nonprofit corporation to oversee and fund public broadcasting.
The most well-known public broadcasting networks in the United States are PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and NPR (National Public Radio).
Did you know National Educational Television (NET) was the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)? In 1967, NET was in financial trouble and needed funding to continue operations. net benefitted from The Public Broadcasting Act to become eventually become PBS.
PBS was intended to provide a network for public television programming, including educational content, cultural programs, and news and public affairs programming.

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Public broadcasting in the U.S. has grown from local and regional roots at schools and universities into a nationally known source of news and entertainment for millions of listeners and viewers. Our timeline of public broadcasting's history traces its growth from the earliest radio broadcasts to its days as the home of Big Bird, and Terry Gross. We hit the landmark events, like the signing of the Public Broadcasting Act, and include lesser-known milestones as well - like the airplane circling over Indiana that broadcast educational TV shows to six states. Dive in and discover how public media became what it is today.

This is a revised and updated version of the timeline that appeared in our book A History of Public Broadcasting , published in 2000. Look for a new version of the book coming in 2022 .
Entries by Karen Everhart, Mike Janssen and Steve Behrens

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Timeline: The History of Public Broadcasting in the U.S.

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Public broadcasting in the U.S. has grown from local and regional roots at schools and universities into a nationally known source of news and entertainment for millions of listeners and viewers. Our timeline of public broadcasting's history traces its growth from the earliest radio broadcasts to its days as the home of Big Bird, Frontline [...]

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While the Kinetoscope was a groundbreaking invention, it was limited in its ability to reach a large audience, since it was only capable of displaying films to one person at a time. Nonetheless, it still played a significant role in the development of cinema and remains an important part of film history. The technology was improved upon, leading to the development of the motion picture projector and the birth of the film industry.

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In the 1890s, Thomas Edison worked with his assistant and part-time photographer, William Dickson to create a motion picture camera. They created a series of short films that could be viewed on a coin-operated, peephole-viewed cabinet called a kinetoscope.

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The Kinetoscope | American Experience | PBS

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In the 1890s, Thomas Edison worked with his assistant and part-time photographer, William Dickson to create a motion picture camera. They created a series of short films that could be viewed on a coin-operated, peephole-viewed cabinet called a kinetoscope.

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With a higher resolution than traditional analog broadcast TV, viewers could see more of the image and feel more like they are part of the action. But even HDTV has been surpassed with the increasing amount of pixels providing a more crisp image than ever. In the early 2010's companies developed high-resolution televisions known as 4K that supply a better dynamic range and is known at  Ultra HD. The next stage of UHD is termed 8K creating an even more realistic  "experience for viewers. This resolution is four times higher than 4K UHD and sixteen times higher than Full HD 1080p..
Currently, there is limited content available in 8K UHD, and it is primarily used in high-end professional settings such as digital cinema, commercial installations, and high-end gaming monitors.

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Charting the Evolution of TV Displays from HD, 4K and Even Further

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Like many sectors of electronics, displays have made evolved tremendously. HD used to be a pipedream and is now standard. This article discusses this evolution and how these displays can be produced to the highest quality standards.

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Who would have thought that from the first telegraphs in the early 1840s to the first computers as we know them today, our ability for communication would take a quantum leap into the future? Many people and organizations now have a digital footprint and so does the government! This makes us all hackable and vulnerable to harm with ill-intending forces. Society would be wise to be led by ethical principles as we exist in cyberspace, and ethical hackers may be our protectors from harm, our cyber police you could say.

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As we become immersed in technology and media we see the impact it has on culture. Each generation growing up in a new form of the ever-evolving means of communication we share between us. Information is traveling the fastest we have ever been able to transmit it.
Our lives are completely adapted to coexisting with our phones and computers, our watches, and other smart devices. Inextricably linked to our habits and rituals around life. If we look at this stage as the infancy of something greater similar to how today's internet would look next to the once-upon-a-time telegraph. It leaves me wondering about where this all leads in the next century. We will never know!

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As we learned the video gaming industry has been highly profitable with youth. So much so, that they have even surpassed the profitability of movies as we have seen with the accessorizing of games. In the mid 90's The Sega Game Gear saw an opportunity on the market to come in with their color hand held videogame console that would rival the Nintendo Game Bay. The Gameboy quickly came out with their own handheld color version that eventually surpassed the Sega Game Gear in sales.

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Wow! COLOR (Sega Game Gear\Commercial) Full HD

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Nolan Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications in 1976 for 28 million dollars. Nolan Bushnell met Steve Jobs who was hired by ATARI in its early days before starting Apple.
Steve Jobs was a low-level technician working at Atari.
This is where ATARI lays the foundation for Apple from the work that Steve was putting in at Atari roping in his friend Steve Wosniak working at Hewlett Packard at the time. They would later establish Apple Computers, with its own game Break out based on conceptualization from Nolan Bushnell.

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From $2 Billion to Nothing - The Rise and Fall of Atari

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Branding is created in the heart and mind of a customer. Brand resonance is how people feel and perceive your brand. Hence brand image can vary depending on the customer. It is not homogenous however if a brand had a reputation of delivering high-quality goods or services and that is what customers are experiencing, it most likely would live up to its reputation. With that said that does not change the nuances from individual to individual as the brand lives in the heads of the customers that begets the reputation of the company.

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What Is Branding? 4 Minute Crash Course.

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The digital age has allowed advertisers to understand their customers to an even greater degree then they did in the age of print and TV Ads. Why? Because of the access to data. Our browsing history, cookies we acquire while surfing the internet, user agreement we click on without fully understanding what we are consenting to and even our phones spying on us. All this creates an data rich environment that allows advertisers to know exactly it is we want, shopping for and even talking about purchasing. This is why we receive personalized ads within seconds of looking at something. Social media has been a big help in providing advertisers with a direct way to reach potential customers with their products. In my opinion all this is a but intrusive and also provides a very convenient personalized experience.

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The mastery of manipulating public opinion truly shows us that all media is social. The media landscape very much molds our minds and beliefs about the world around us. In a way in is scary how impressionable the general population is and reminds me of how important it is to think critically when being exposed to the influences of the media. Spin doctors can easily obscure the truth and promoting a biased view of events to a naive public. We see a great example of this when politicians inside governments decide they want to go war and have to convince the public that it is a good idea. The invasion of Iraq is a great example. Today I'm sure Putin has to spin the war on Ukraine to his public as a necessary operation that is in the interest of the Russian people.

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Spin Doctors: the Top PR Campaigns In Yankee History

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Pepsi released an ad featuring Kendall Jenner offering a can of Pepsi to a police officer during a protest. The ad was criticized for trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement and was widely viewed as insensitive and tone-deaf. Trivializing social justice movements like BLM that were born out of real-life injustices to sell a soft drink isn't exactly what you would call empathetic. The result was Pepsi apologizing and pulling the commercial.

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Top 10 Worst PR Mistakes Made By Companies

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China has a tightly controlled media with much censorship and propaganda in its inner workings. The Chinese Communist Party maintains tight control over news organizations, internet content, and social media platforms, limiting freedom of the press and expression. Independent journalism and critical reporting are heavily restricted, and media outlets are expected to obey to the government's guidelines and narrative.  This disregards any contradicting narrative even if it may be more truthful than that of the CCP and
differs largely from U.S media who's media operates independently from the government with no direct control imposed by the state.

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Chinese users work to save protest content against massive censorship

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Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country’s internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately.

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Known for his courageous reporting on organized crime, drug trafficking, and corruption in Mexico this courageous journalist was assassinated due to his investigative work on the corruption in Mexico. His passing reflects the risks faced by journalists working in dangerous environments and the importance of press freedom in uncovering truth and holding power to account. It also highlights the need for better protection for those reporting on organized crime and corruption in Mexico.

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Crusading Mexican journalist Javier Valdez shot dead in Sinaloa

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Valdez founded and edited the weekly newspaper Ríodoce in Culiacán, the capital of the western state of Sinaloa and long a den of drug-cartel activities

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Gawker, a once popular website known for its satirical and snarky content, has made a surprising comeback six years after its collapse. Under new ownership  Gawker has returned to attracting readers with its satirical approach and willingness to cover unconventional stories. The site's recent articles have touched on controversial topics like alleged anti-British sentiments at The New York Times and the appropriateness of Meghan and Harry holding hands at the Queen's funeral. Gawker's resurgence brings a much-needed blast of satire to the US media landscape.  Gawker's specific journalistic practices, played a significant role in the realm of free speech because Protecting and defending the right to express even unpopular or controversial opinions is a fundamental pillar of free speech.

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Gawker was once one of the most infamous websites in US media.

It began life as a scrappy outsider that turned blogging into a business as a purveyor of irreverent, anti-establishment snark against the rarefied world of elite US media in New York. As it grew it actually turned into a genuinely influential news organization before a spectacular 2016 collapse when it lost a privacy lawsuit for publishing a sex tape featuring the wrestler Hulk Hogan.

Now, six years after that ignominious death, a new version of Gawker has made an unexpected resurgence.

Since a quiet relaunch a year ago, under entirely new owners, Gawker is once again starting to attract interest and readers - still purveying snark, still relying on attitude against elites - but without the edge of nastiness that got its original iteration in such trouble.

Over the past week, the site has run stories that much of the media would sooner swerve: alleged anti-British, anti-Royal sentiments at the New York Times; whether it was wrong for Meghan and Harry to hold hands at the Queen's funeral ("Even for a family filled with perverts, this is beyond"); and if the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are "too mean, too callous, too focused on tedious drama" to merit a show.

The rotation of subjects, relatively ideologically unrestrained, marks a return for an organization that had been dead. Purchased by Bustle media and led by a new editor, Leah Finnegan, Gawker's reboot has added (or returned) a welcome blast of satire to a US media landscape that often lacks it.

According to James Brown, founder and editor of Loaded, a British magazine that started the lad-mag revolution of the 90s and whose account of that era "Animal House" has just been published, the mainstream US press has all-but abandoned satire.

"It seems now that social media is so flooded with humor and irreverence that people no longer see it as having a place in the mainstream media," he told the Guardian. "Editorials are uptight, and comedy is seen as in a field outlet of its own."

"People are too worried about how they will be perceived, and they've ceased to be playful, so anything that starts to be like that again is welcome," Brown adds.

Nick Denton, editor of Gawker in New York. Photograph: Tim Knox/Tim Knox (commissioned)

Founded by former Financial Times reporter Nick Denton in his living room in 2002, Gawker was initially just two blogs, a media gossip site (Gawker) and a technology blog (Gizmodo). The company had two freelance bloggers who were paid $12 per post.

Over time Gawker - and a host of other plucky blogs - helped revolutionize US publishing. It added to its stable with sports (Deadspin), tech (Gizmodo) and gaming (Kotaku) sites. Online outlets like Vice, Buzzfeed and Vox followed, giving reporters a way into a business that was dominated by staid organizations that had yet to adapt to the democratization of access proposed by the internet.

Denton told the New York Times in 2015 that what journalists put in their stories is inherently less interesting than what they say after work. The publisher, the Times said, "has probably done more than any individual to loosen up the mainstream media. His various websites have stood for nothing if not the proposition that decorum should never stand in the way of entertaining readers."

"By Gawker's definition, if it's interesting, it's news," the Times added.

But that definition came unstuck when Gawker's interests crossed over into sexual preference. Gawker outed a publishing executive at Condé Nast, triggering a wave of ire. Then, in 2007, Valleywag, a tech-focused subset of Gawker, outed the technology baron Peter Thiel without his permission.

Thiel then bankrolled a privacy lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan, a 6'7", 300-pound wrestler named Terry Bollea after Gawker published a 40-second video of Hogan having sex with the wife of a radio DJ named Bubba the Love Sponge.

Bollea's attorneys argued that the wrestler's sex life was not a newsworthy subject and publication of it constituted an invasion of his right to privacy. Jurors agreed, and Bollea was awarded $140m, later reduced to $31m in a settlement. Faced with the huge fine, the site shut down.

Hulk Hogan leaves the courtroom during a break in his trial against Gawker Media in 2016. Photograph: Steve Nesius/AP

Gawker's new editor, who was not made available to the Guardian last week, has said that new Gawker will be the same but different. How far Finnegan wants or is able to go in Gawker's revitalization is open to question.

"The current laws of civility mean that no, it can't be exactly what it once was," Finnegan wrote in a note to readers last year, "but we strive to honor the past and embrace the present."

But Finnegan conceded she had reservations: "The Gawker name was toxic, but also weirdly revered; an intractable combination. It could not be brought back because it could never be what it once was, and also because what it once was was sued out of existence by a professional wrestler five years ago."

According to Ryan Thomas, professor of journalism and media production at the Edward R Murrow college of communication at Washington State University, the alignment of economics, technology and dissatisfaction with mainstream media coverage enabled the success of the original Gawker.

"A lot of the Gawker-type sites that came about as a result of the blogging boom has old roots in the function that some radical or experimental magazines have served," Thomas says. "There's always been a need for journalism that challenges, pushes and to some extent holds the mainstream accountable."

But Gawker also re-enters the publishing sphere at a moment when outlets like Puck or Unherd, or organization-less platforms like Substack, are offering consumers direct access to opinions or voices that they chose to consume. Simultaneously, Gawker's one-time fellow travelers, Buzzfeed and Vice, have been cutting back on original reporting.

"I have questions about the sustainability of all this but we're seeing the individualization of journalism. It's become very personality-driven," said Thomas.

"People have created a lot of clickability of what people are mad at today. It's a feedback loop and there are limits to that because at some point there does have to be original content created," he said.

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Gawker makes a comeback six years after it was sued into closure

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Gawker was once one of the most infamous websites in US media. It began life as a scrappy outsider that turned blogging into a business as a purveyor of irreverent, anti-establishment snark against the rarefied world of elite US media in New York.

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Net Neutrality  and how its repeal affects us

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Net Neutrality  and how its repeal affects us

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The repeal of net neutrality rules remains a polarizing issue. Supporters of net neutrality argue that it is crucial for preserving a fair and open internet that promotes competition and protects consumer rights. They express concerns about potential discrimination, censorship, and restricted access to information. On the other hand, supporters of the repeal believe that deregulation allows for innovation, allows for flexible business models, and avoids unnecessary government intervention. They argue that market forces and competition will ensure fair practices. The continuing debate on net neutrality highlights the tension between the desire for an open internet and the interests of stakeholders. The impact of the repeal and the need for potential regulatory frameworks to protect consumers and allow a level playing field in the digital landscape remain subjects of ongoing debate.

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Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has long opposed net neutrality regulations, saying they impeded innovation. Credit Credit Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

It's official. The Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, which had required internet service providers to offer equal access to all web content, took effect on Monday.

The rules, enacted by the administration of President Barack Obama in 2015, prohibited internet providers from charging more for certain content or from giving preferential treatment to certain websites.

After the commission voted to repeal the rules in December, it faced a public outcry, legal challenges from state attorneys general and public interest groups, and a push by Democratic lawmakers to overturn the decision. The opponents argued that the repeal would open the door for service providers to censor content online or charge additional fees for better service - something that could hurt small companies - and several states have taken steps to impose the rules on a local level.

Still, the repeal was a big win for Ajit Pai, the F.C.C.'s chairman, who has long opposed the regulations, saying they impeded innovation. He once said they were based on "hypothetical harms and hysterical prophecies of doom."

In an op-ed column published on CNET Monday, Mr. Pai argued that the repeal was good for consumers because it restored the Federal Trade Commission's authority over internet service providers.

"In 2015, the F.C.C. stripped the F.T.C. - the nation's premier consumer protection agency - of its authority over internet service providers. This was a loss for consumers and a mistake we have reversed," Mr. Pai wrote.

The F.C.C. voted to dismantle rules that require internet providers to give consumers equal access to all content online. Here's how net neutrality works. Published On Credit Credit Image by Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images

["I'm no longer surprised that there was a fight over this," writes our columnist. "Net neutrality was too good for us."]
The original rules laid out a regulatory plan that addressed a rapidly changing internet. Under those regulations, broadband service was considered a utility under Title II of the Communications Act, giving the F.C.C. broad power over internet providers. The rules prohibited these practices:

BLOCKING Internet service providers could not discriminate against any lawful content by blocking websites or apps.

THROTTLING Service providers could not slow the transmission of data because of the nature of the content, as long as it was legal.

PAID PRIORITIZATION Service providers could not create an internet fast lane for companies and consumers who paid premiums, and a slow lane for those who didn't.

Many consumer advocates argued that once the rules were scrapped, broadband providers would begin selling the internet in bundles, not unlike cable television packages. Want access to Facebook and Twitter? Under a bundling system, getting on those sites could require paying for a premium social media package.

Another major concern is that consumers could suffer from pay-to-play deals. Without rules prohibiting paid prioritization, a fast lane could be occupied by big internet and media companies, as well as affluent households, while everyone else would be left in the slow lane.

Some small-business owners are worried, too, that industry giants could pay to get an edge and leave them on an unfair playing field.

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Senator Charles Schumer, the minority leader, has opposed the repeal of net neutrality rules. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images

E-commerce start-ups have feared that they could end up on the losing end of paid prioritization, with their websites and services loading more slowly than those run by internet behemoths. Remote workers of all kinds, including freelancers and franchisees in the so-called gig economy, could similarly face higher costs to do their jobs from home.

"Internet service providers now have the power to block websites, throttle services and censor online content," Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the commission who voted against the repeal, said in an emailed statement Monday. "They will have the right to discriminate and favor the internet traffic of those companies with whom they have pay-for-play arrangements and the right to consign all others to a slow and bumpy road."

Several states have taken measures to ensure the rules stay in effect. For example, in March, Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington, a Democrat, signed alaw that effectively replaced the federal rules. Others, including the governors of Montana and New York, used executive orders to force net neutrality.

As of late May, 29 state legislatures had introduced bills meant to ensure net neutrality, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Still, several of these measures have failed, some are still pending, and not every state has taken such actions.

The F.C.C. said it had repealed the rules because they restrained broadband providers like Verizon and Comcast from experimenting with new business models and investing in new technology. Its chairman has long argued against the rules, pointing out that before they were put into effect in 2015, service providers had not engaged in any of the practices the rules prohibited.

"America's internet economy became the envy of the world thanks to a market-based approach that began in the mid-1990s," Mr. Pai said in a speech at the Mobile World Congress in February.

"The United States is simply making a shift from pre-emptive regulation, which foolishly presumes that every last wireless company is an anti-competitive monopolist, to targeted enforcement based on actual market failure or anti-competitive conduct," he said.

In Monday's op-ed, he repeated his argument that the internet thrived without net neutrality rules in place for most of its existence. "President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed on a light-touch framework to regulating the internet. Under that approach, the internet was open and free. Network investment topped $1.5 trillion," he wrote.

Several internet providers made public pledges that they would not block or throttle sites once the rules were repealed. The companies argued that Title II gave the F.C.C. too much control over their business, and that the regulations made it hard to expand their networks.

Democratic lawmakers who are opposed to the repeal took to social media, promising to reinstate the regulations. Barbara Underwood, New York's attorney general, noted that lawsuits opposing the repeal were still pending.

"The people saying we can't pass the resolution to #SaveTheInternet in the House are the same people who were saying we couldn't do it in the Senate," Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts wrote on Twitter. "Ignore them. Just keep fighting."

Still, others cheered the rollback. Brendan Carr, a Republican member of the FCC, said on Twitter: "Americans are passionate about the free and open internet. We don't want to be blocked or throttled or have our online experience subject to the whims of an internet provider."

Perhaps the repeal won't change the direction of the internet. On Monday, Farhad Manjoo argued in his New York Times column that "by the time Tom Wheeler, an F.C.C. chief under President Barack Obama, handed down rules to protect neutrality in 2015, we had already strayed quite far from the internet of the early 2000s, where upstarts ruled our lives."

"Today, the internet is run by giants. A handful of American tech behemoths - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft - control the most important digital infrastructure, while a handful of broadband companies - AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon - control most of the internet connections in the United States," he wrote.

Follow Keith Collins on Twitter: @collinskeith.
Claire Ballentine contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: How the Repeal of Net Neutrality Could Affect You. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Net Neutrality Has Officially Been Repealed. Here's How That Could Affect You.

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It's official. The Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality rules, which had required internet service providers to offer equal access to all web content, took effect on Monday. The rules, enacted by the administration of President Barack Obama in 2015, prohibited internet providers from charging more for certain content or from giving preferential treatment to certain websites.