Produsers: Productive users? Or simply producers lacking originality?

According to Bruns (2008) “There is an absence of producers, distributors, or consumers, and the presence of a seemingly endless string of users acting incrementally as content producers by gradually extending and improving the information present in the information commons, the value chain begins and ends (but only temporarily, ready for further development) with content.”

This statement made by Axel Bruns relates to the idea that users of media content are no longer just static end users and are now taking an active role in manipulating and re-distributing already existing media content. This trend has been now given the name ‘Produsage’, and the name of people partaking in Produsage is Produsers. This growing trend of Produsage has been identified in recent years and has become much more prominent on the web with the development of websites such as Youtube, Myspace and Facebook.

So it is evident that Produsage does very much exist on the web today. One only needs to look on Youtube to see the abundance of music remixes, song covers, track mash-ups, video compilations and re-acted scenes from movies. (Click on the links for examples!!!) All of these examples show that either the already existing concept, video or audio material and manipulated it in some way.

This now raises the question of whether Produsage is a good thing or a bad thing, and whether Producers are values adding productive users of the content, or simply producers who are unable to create their own creative concepts or ideas........ WELL, firstly, I thing that Produsage is a bad thing and is just a newer example of how people are benefiting from ripping off original copyright owners, (think pirated videos and music). Instead of people simply copying original work in its entirety and re-selling it (piracy), with the help of newer technology people are now altering original content and being credited as having produced it.

Since the introduction of websites like Youtube, it has become very easy for people to post re-developed or ‘prodused’ content and then re-distribute it to a global audience. This has caused many issues surrounding copyright laws and anti-piracy laws. Youtube itself has acknowledged this fact and have taken measures to reduce ‘prodused’ work that hasn’t been properly credited to the copyright owners. A recent copyright case that reflects directly to ‘produsage’ and people using other peoples work, is the case of Youtube v. Viacom.

Now I guess I should relate this rant back to the subject in question, which was “whether the value chain of the product begin and end with content”. Well to put it simply, I disagree. The value of the content alone cannot really be valued the same as the original concept or the piece of work in its entirety. Without the original concept, there would be no content. I don’t think anyone values a ‘prodused’ piece of work anywhere near as much as an original work, although they are both in fact using the same content. Produsers are simply people that wish to benefit from other peoples creativity and originality.