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TechFold is technology discussion, commentary, reviews, and opinions from well outside the valley. There's no koolaid to drink here, and TechFold is not in SL, or on Twitter.

How George Lucas Missed the Boat - Again

Lucas drives me nuts (for many obvious reasons). Both Lucas and the WSJ get a grouchy glare from me this AM for this article on Lucasfilm’s move to make Starwars clips legally available for re-mixing: Lucas for missing the point of social media entirely, Sarah McBride for writing like a press release.

High level summary: Lucasfilm is making a batch (250) of Starwars clips available on Starwars.com to be remixed & shared via technology from EyeSpot.

However: the Lucasfilm business team intends to keep a tight lid on these remixed videos. A team of censors in Costa Rica will screen videos produced (ostensibly for nudity), for example. More importantly, however, Lucasfilm wants to created a Walled Garden in Starwars.com:

“We see what’s going on out there on the Web generally. And we wanted fans to come to Starwars.com as the center of fan activity.”

The ‘Star Wars’ team ‘understands social media and is embracing it,’ he says. ‘This is a way for Lucasfilm to bring YouTube to their backyard.’

Ok - so you want to embrace social media by forcing fans to remix and distribute videos on your site, on your terms, fuelling your adverts, using your tools, and screened by your censors? Boy, sounds like they’re embracing social media alright.

From what I can tell, videos created will be embeddable and “shareable” (via emailed link?) - but I’m guessing not downloadable (no mention of that in WSJ; the Eyespot site mentions downloads in Windows or Mac format [?], but no info about what format that actually is). If so - that clobbers YouTube, and keeps control firmly in Lucasfilm’s hands - a typcially ham fisted big-media-business approach to social media.

How about just releasing a batch of clips in a multitude of formats license free for download so that fans can really put them to use?

NewTeeVee has a more positive outlook. Digital Alchemy tells us that pre-roll ad revenue will be split between Lucasfilm and Eyespot - thanks for sharing the wealth with the value adders dudes!