Gasser and Ernst’s essay is organized into three parts: the first focuses on digital technologies and the internet, the following is a basic description of contemporary copyright laws, and the final section focuses on the need for reformed copyright laws more amenable to the digital age.  More specifically, the first section focuses on what the authors refer to as “participatory culture,” and how such a thing is facilitated by digital technologies and the internet.  It examines this concept of participatory culture from both a theoretical and practical point of view.  The following section discusses copyright law in its present form, focusing on key aspects of it like the right to make derivative works, fair use, and unilaterally inhibiting technologies such as DRM.  Finally, the essay concludes with reform suggestions for how to enhance creativity by enabling greater participation.  It discusses both why a participatory culture is desirable, and possible strategies for copyright reform that would facilitate participatory culture.
    This essay is a very concise, accessible introduction to copyright law and the concept of participatory culture.  One major flaw that I found with the essay, however, was its demand that new copyright law take “information quality” into account.  Who, for example, will become judge of the quality of information, and upon what standards will they make their judgments?  This would obviously be a contentious issue, and one that the essay only barely addresses.  Also, this essay adopts a fairly utopian conception of digital technologies and the internet, a view that seems to be shared by many contemporary cultural critics.  The authors see digitization and the internet as great tools of democracy that will allow for a “participatory culture” unlike any previously known.  While these are nice, comfortable theoretical positions to take, that does not necessarily make things so.  As regards my own project, I am more interested in how these utopian visions of the “democratization” effect of digital technologies and the internet are coerced and manipulated by larger corporate or commercial interests.  For example, this essay discusses how new copyright law needs to provide for “informational autonomy,” but I am interested in how this so called autonomy is ideologically coded and oftentimes highly coercive.  In addition, this article relishes in the means of production being made available to all through digitization and the internet, but I want to know how this changes and is exploited by companies like Dorito’s that broadcast user generated content.  Will these democratized means of production simply be co-opted by corporate interests, or is there something truly liberating and democratic about these tools?  Anyway, overall this is a great essay to read as an introduction to participatory culture and copyright law.

    This essay examines how digital technologies, paired with the internet, will cause “significant restructuring of the motion picture industry.”  Initially it examines certain digital technologies – such as video-on-demand, broadband, digital file compression, streaming media, etc. – and then speculates on the capabilities these technologies will have in the near future.  Then it turns to the “motion picture value chain,” and examines each aspect of the chain (e.g. production, duplication, distribution, etc.).  Following this look at the motion picture value chain the essay turns to the potential impact of digitization.  The major effects this essay imagines digitization will have are cost reduction (e.g. cheaper to shoot a film in digital than film, etc.), disintermediation (e.g. video-on-demand eliminates the need for video rental stores, etc.), and a shift in bargaining power (e.g. since the means of production are lowered content producers no longer have to remain subservient to Hollywood or studio demands, etc.).  Finally, the article examines the implications of digitization for “Stakeholders.”  It looks at how digitization will impact movie studios (e.g. shift to blockbuster-only model, etc.), distributors (e.g. digital distribution requires no physical transfer of objects, etc.), movie theatres (e.g. emphasis on the “experience” of the movie, not the movie, etc.), and video rental stores (e.g. what will they provide?, etc.).  The essay concludes with business models designed to take into account the impact of digitization on film.
    This is an amazingly concise, prescient, and illuminating essay.  It details in a very systematic manner the impact that digitization is likely to have (and, considering this was written in 2004, there predictions all seem to be coming true), and the implications of this impact.  One thing it neglects to address, however, is the distribution of DVDs to buy and own.  Will this form of distribution fall by the wayside as well, or will things like director commentaries and other bonus features make it a desired commodity?  Also, what if you can stream the bonus features – will people still want to own something tangible?  Overall, though, this essay is extremely helpful for anyone interested in studying the impact of digitization on the movie studio system both from a consumer and content producer point of view.   
    As far as my own project is concerned this essay is a useful account of the relationship between commercial studios and individual consumers.  Also, its discussion of the impact of digitization on content producers, and the shift of power likely to ensue there, is extremely relevant to my own interest in user generated content.  Further, this essay describes the “bargaining power” content producers are likely to gain as access to the means of production increases, and while this is most likely the case, for my purposes it is also necessary to examine how commercial studios will work to limit the bargaining power of producers or co-opt the work of content creators for their own commercial ends (e.g. Dorito’s Super Bowl ads, etc.).