Page 554 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

User-Created Content and Aud ence Part c pat on |

quickly becomes a key site for both identity expression and marketing. News Corpora-
tion acquired the service as part of a US$580 million deal in July 2005.
April 2003—The public beta of Second Life opened, opening the virtual world (version
1.0 officially launched in June 2003). Later in 2003, Second Life allowed users to retain
intellectual property rights over the content they create. Teen Second Life, a separate
“grid” of the virtual world restricted to users aged 13 through 17, opened on January 1,
2006.
October 2004—New York rap outfit Beastie Boys gives camcorders to audience members
attending their Madison Square Garden concert with the instructions to film the con-
cert. The footage was edited together into the film Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! and
premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
November 2004—“User driven social content” Web site Digg launches. Digg is one of
the most successful user-created news sites, with a feature set often copied.
February 2005—YouTube launches. The site enables users to post short video clips that
can be viewed and voted upon by other users. YouTube allows people to embed the
content on their blogs and Web sites.
July 2005—Photographs from cell phones make their way into the mass-media coverage
of the bombings in the London underground. These photos are some of the most
compelling images of the event.
August 2005—Al Gore’s Current TV commenced broadcasting in the United States in Au-
gust 2005, featuring 30 percent user-created content. Current TV launched a second
cable service in the United Kingdom and Ireland in March 2007.
June 2006—Lonelygirl15 first appears on YouTube. Mimicking the confessional style of
teen video blogs, the series sparks speculation over whether the video diaries hosted
by “Bree” are genuine or not. In September 2006, it was revealed to be a narrative
experiment by fledgling filmmakers Mesh Flinders and Miles Beckett.
October 2006—Google buys YouTube for US$1.65 million.
December 2006—Time magazine announces “You” as the “Person of the Year.”
February 2007—User-generated commercials for Doritos premiere at Super Bowl XLI.

rE-usE

User creativity raises further questions of ownership as productive audi-
ences adapt, interact with, and build upon commercially produced popular cul-
ture. Though the confessional video journal might be seen as the public face of
video-sharing sites, creative reworkings of popular culture such as mashups,
fan tribute videos, and re-edits of movie trailers are also predominant. Simi-
larly, many fan Web sites trade fan fiction—original stories featuring characters
from their favorite texts. These forms of collage, manipulation, and creation are
not intrinsically new, but the distribution options provided by the Internet have
raised the profile and exposure of this sort of activity.
Some copyright owners have responded by using legal tools such as those
provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to have these works taken