I think that the biggest thing I noticed in the reading was the dynamic difference in tone the two articles had. The Wu article really felt like it was dealing with how youtube is redefining (or simply defining) the practice of fair use. The Seitz essay seemed to lament the loss of creative freedom through youtube. Wu’s outlook is very upbeat. Seitz’s, a little more bleak.
The thing that I noticed was that the Seitz article was written January, 2009, while Wu’s comes from 2006. Personally, I’ve definitely noticed a huge difference in the content of youtube and how the site functions. It’s not unusual for a blog I stumble upon to link to old videos that don’t work anymore. Things feel much less exciting and much more confined.
To bring it back to Seitz, his point about corporations dictating culture seems to tie back to the net neutrality concept we briefly talked about today. Both are about corporations limiting the culture of internet users for capitalistic reasons. I wonder how much one bleeds into the other. I know a lot of the arguments for non-net neutrality is that ISP providers could directly block sites that are sharing files or providing illegal services, so they’re obviously connected. And it seems that corporations dictating culture is a fairly easy extension from non-net neutrality.
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