The quotes are intentional. I was asked to give the opening talk at the CREATe ‘All Hands’ conference in Glasgow last week, which took place in the House for An Art Lover.

CREATe is the RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy, based at the University of Glasgow. It is funded jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). CREATe investigates the future of creative production in the digital age, and in particular the role of copyright.

This is the paper I wrote and formed the basis for what I said, mostly. I’ll post audio and the slides soon – I’ve left the placeholders in to show me where they go.

 

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One morning in August 1994 I woke up in a large, airy flat somewhere in Edinburgh. Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc were making breakfast, Stewart Lee and Richard Herring were getting ready for another day of performing, and Danny O’Brien was almost certainly wrestling with his dialup connection so he could read email. At least, I’m pretty certain the others were there. You’ll have to check with Mr O’Brien. It was, as they say, a long time ago, as this contemporaneous article from the Independent makes abundantly clear..

I’d been crashed on the sofa after a night that had started with a performance of Danny’s genre-busting show ‘Caught in the Net’ in the upstairs room at the Pleasance and had ended with drinks. I was there because I had bankrolled the show, and wanted to see what I’d spent good money on.

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According to the recent report on Operation Alice, the Met’s investigation into ‘plebgate’, the rather unfortunate ‘incident in Downing Street involving the Rt. Hon Andrew Mitchell MP and police officers from the Metropolitan Police Service Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG)’, a significant element of the evidence against some of the officers involved came from Sun journalist Tom Newton Dunn.

Tom didn’t betray his sources – his phone did.

As part of the investigation ‘the telecommunications data in respect of Tom Newton Dunn was applied for and evidenced’ (para 5.120 of the Operation Alice report, PDF here thanks to Jack of Kent).

And that is why journalism isn’t really possible any more.

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There’s a well known verb declension in the online world

we edit
you censor
they oppress

I was reminded of it by Emily Bell’s excellent piece in Sunday’s Guardserver (what else can we call it on Sundays when the masthead says ‘Observer’ and the URL says ‘guardian’?).

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2014/aug/31/tech-giants-facebook-twitter-algorithm-editorial-values

It’s well worth reading in full, especially when she points out that:

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp and what’s next are and will continue to be making editorial decisions on our behalf.

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