We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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Hugo Awards Stream Shut Down / Worldcon Banned (or, Dear #Ustream: Fuck you, Signed Fandom)
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If you haven’t heard already, Ustream, the serviced used by Worldcon to live stream the Hugo Awards ceremony, pulled the stream and banned Worldcon from its site for terms of service violation. What violation would that be? Apparently an awards ceremony is not allowed to play short clips (a la fair use policy) from nominees in film categories. Doing so in the middle of your ceremony will result in a mid-sentence suspension of the feed and an apparent permanent ban (as of writing this, the folks at Chicon have indicated the Ustream will not bring back the feed, despite mounting public pressure).
One would think pissing off a sea of geeks would be pretty low on one’s list. Not for Ustream. Apparently it’s right at the top of their list of “Things To Do When We’re Bored,” which is to say they secretly desire what all slightly deranged institutions desire: a slow, painful death (by crap PR). And they’ve got it. Twitter users have been Tweeting on and off since the take-down of the Worldcon Hugo Awards live stream about the service’s pathetic performance (using the #ustream
hashtag). Others have indicated that Cory Doctorow will likely blog about this very moment at Boing Boing, reminding us all that this is what copyright has done to the world: you can’t even host a teeny little awards ceremony without some disembodied suit cracking the whip (well, the Hugos aren’t actually teeny or little, but you get my meaning).
And that, for me, is the crux of the issue. If an awards ceremony is not an appropriate place to show short clips from films, then what is? If this is what copyright has come to, then isn’t it about time we all stopped and said, “You know what, this is dumb”? Can you imagine this happening at the Oscars? Probably not, but imagine if it did. Imagine the furor. Imagine all those industry CEOs and suits getting lambasted by celebrities.
Okay, I’m dreaming here. Point is: this is a complete failure on the part of copyright and on the part of service providers to do the right thing in the right moment. There’s no logical reason to take down the Worldcon feed. None. The refusal to put the feed back up just makes matters worse. It’s pure dickery to the highest order, and a perfect example of the utter idiocy behind our copyright laws and the people trying to push for further control of the online environment.
I’m not happy. A lot of Hugo Awards watchers aren’t happy. And I’m sure the folks behind Worldcon aren’t happy either.
Meh.
Edit: io9’s take can be found here.
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