Paul Jacobson

I have been meaning to publish a post about Mail & Guardian’s relaunched blogging platform, Amagama, for a couple weeks now and just haven’t gotten past staring at my open browser tabs before tumbling back into some other task. So what is Amagama? Well, put simply is is a public blogging service based on the WordPress Multi-User edition where anyone can create a blog and be up and running in just a few minutes.

I asked Vincent Maher, one of the brains behind Amagama, about their plans for the service and whether they involve world domination. He hesitated, briefly, before changing the topic. Amagama is the successor to the first hosted blogging solution in South Africa called Blogmark. Interestingly, Blogmark ran on version 3 of Drupal, the ancestor of the content management system which powers this site. Blogmark had about 5 000 blogs and of those about 3 500 were identified as inactive or identified as spam. 1 500 blogs were migrated across and the response has been interesting. Some bloggers objected to the default comment moderation. Some people have raised concerns that bloggers can edit comments left on blogs and yet more who first threatened an armed revolt armed with nail files and who subsequently capitulated and made offerings of Jagermeister.

For the most part Amagama is part of the Mail & Guardian’s social media strategy that fits with other social media developments like the popular Amatomu. Vincent told me that there are more developments coming that will expand the social media offering and judging from Amatomu (which I am a big fan of, personally) and Amagama, I think the social media space in South Africa is going to be a more vibrant space very soon. One of the other big players in this space is Johncom which operates the Sunday Times and its spin off, The Times (disclosure: I write for The Times and am being paid for it) and it interesting to see how each media company is developing its own social media platform.

When I asked Vincent about Mail & Guardian’s social media strategy, he said the following:

The ultimate goal is to offer a comprehensive collection of social media services that all fit into each other and make logical sense to the user when used in conjunction.

Matthew Buckland mentioned to me that in a month or so Amagama is generating around 120 000 page impressions. That is pretty impressive. I thought I would run a comparison for the last month between Amagama and two other similar services in South Africa (MWeb blogs and My Digital Life) and the result was pretty interesting:

Of course the big appeal of sites like Amagama to me is that they help introduce the mainstream to blogging through easy to use blogging tools and that is pretty important. Perhaps more important than which service is the most popular, at least from a new media evangelist’s perspective. That being said, great job to Matt, Vincent and the Mail & Guardian team!

Technorati Tags:
amagama, amatomu, mail & guardian, blogs, blogging, vincent maher, matthew buckland

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  An article about the amendment to the Film and Publications Act which will create huge challenges for the local new media industry and have negative implications for the Web as a whole as it is accessed in South Africa.
  (tags: filmandpublicationsact amendment censorship bill legislation)

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Not a happy thought …

The background here is a trademark dispute between The Gap and a local business called Salt of the Earth. After an 8 year battle, the judge presiding over the matter has allegedly copied most of his judgment from one party’s court papers without any reference to the arguments presented by the other. There doesn’t appear to be an indication that the judge has considered all the issues carefully and the judge is now refusing to recuse himself from an application for leave to appeal the decision.

Technorati Tags:
trademark dispute, plagiarism, judge, judgment, decision, the gap, stuttafords, salt of the earth

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I am watching this video at the moment and had to take a break to publish it for you to watch too. It is a 25 minute video and worth every second:

The more I watch the more I feel my resolve weakening. The interface is going to be the big driving force here. It beats any other UI on a mobile device I have seen. It really is a magnificent way to use the device.

I was determined not to jump at the iPhone after I took a look at its specifications but the when I watch these videos, I start salivating. At the moment there are two things that would keep me from saving up for an iPhone for when they eventually arrive here. The first is the absence of HSDPA support and the second is a low resolution camera. For the price I would expect to see the fastest mobile data connection available (at least HSDPA) and a 5 megapixel camera (at least).

That being said, Apple has recently announced improved battery life and a glass front instead of a plastic case so it is possible newer generations of the iPhone will feature the faster data connection and a better camera. That would just about do it for me …

Anyway, I am going to continue watching the video. Let me know what you think?

Technorati Tags:
iphone, video, apple, guided tour, mobile data, camera

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This post first appeared on the Jacobson Attorneys blog.

The amendment to the Film and Publications Act may have been written with good intentions but the amendment was drafted in ignorance of the current state of new media on the Web and this could stifle the nascent new media industry in this country and frustrate access to international services on the Web.

The object of the amendment is the following:

The Amendment Bill seeks to ensure that all publications, films and interactive computer games distributed in the Republic, regardless of the medium or format of such distribution, would be subject to the same principles and guidelines to serve the core objective of protecting children from potentially disturbing, harmful and age-inappropriate materials in publications, films, interactive computer games, mobile cellular telephones and on the Internet since child pornography exists wherever there is a computer, a modem for access to the Internet and a mobile cellular telephone. The Amendment Bill further seeks to bring broadcasters of films within the scope of the Act.

The Amendment Bill also seeks to provide for the appointment of compliance officers to monitor compliance with the provisions of the Act. The Bill authorises compliance officers to enter any premises for purposes of requesting the production of a certificate of registration as a distributor or exhibitor of films or interactive computer games,
examining or inspecting any premises used for conducting a business of adult premises for compliance with the conditions laid down in the Act or examining or inspecting any films or interactive computer games offered for sale or hire for compliance with the requirements of the Act. Compliance officers are further empowered to order the removal of films, interactive computer games and publications that do not comply with the requirements of the Act or a decision of the Board until such time that such product complies with the requirements of the Act or decision of the Board with regard to distribution.

Protecting children from inappropriate content is important and the government should take steps to protect them. The problem is more the unintended consequences of poorly researched and drafted legislation. The amendment applies to content that is distributed or exhibited in South Africa. This means the amended Act will apply to content not just distributed in South Africa by local companies but will extend to content that is made available to South Africans on the Web. This would include video sharing sites like YouTube and Revver, blogs and more. When you look at the definitions of “publication” and “film” in the original Act you can start to see that the Act seeks to regulate content available on the Web itself.

The Act will probably affect online video sharing sites more as the amendment imposes an obligation on anyone who distributes or exhibits “films” in South Africa to register as a distributor and to submit all films for examination and classification after payment of a prescribed fee which is around R1 500, according to ICT lawyer Mike Silber in an ITWeb article about the amendment. This means that local video sharing sites like Zoopy, TWAC and MyVideo must now submit the videos they make available on their sites for examination and must pay a fee that could put them out of business. It goes beyond the obvious video sharing sites and also extends to other services that exhibit videos like The Times which recently launched its multimedia portal and even bloggers who post videos on their sites. The amendment also extends to games and provides for the following:

if it is a film or interactive computer game approved for sale or hire, display the following certificate conspicuously and clearly visible on or through the cover or packaging of the cassette or holder of the film or interactive computer game (my emphasis)

The language of the legislation clearly indicates that it was not thought through or drafted by anyone who is conscious of the existence of the Web today. I also wonder about the implications for our freedom of expression protected by the Bill of Rights. While the rights we enjoy are not absolute and may be limited by laws of general application like the Film and Publications Act, such a limitation must be reasonable and justifiable in an “open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom”.

The scope of the amended Act goes too far and could have the chilling effect of crushing the nascent new media industry in South Africa and severely limiting access to similar services on the Web (if the Act is going to be vigorously enforced, that is). What is needed is a challenge to the legislation in court, especially considering that Parliament apparently ignored representations made to it about the inappropriate provisions in the amendment.

We are in for a pretty interesting ride as this amendment is promulgated and enforced by the Film and Publications Board which may become a more restrictive censorship body than the Apartheid government managed to create, despite the Minister’s assertion that it will never happen again.

Technorati Tags:
film and publications, act, amendment, legislation, content sharing, video sharing, draconian, misguided, scope, censorship, freedom of expresion

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