

Direct from the streets of Gaza - Demotix is the UGC picture agency - azharcs
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/direct-from-the-streets-of-gazza-demotix-is-the-ugc-picture-agency/

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utsmokingaces
It's good to see a great idea with a solid business strategy.

~~~
netcan
novel?

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ComputerGuru
My respect for Mike Butcher has gone up considerably with this post.

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DanielBMarkham
The idea of a market for citizen journalism has been around since the early
80s.

Maybe this time it'll do better than some of the earlier attempts.

Looking at other examples of citizen writing/editing, I'd say it will be a
race to the bottom: staged and doctored videos and pictures, companies and
organizations staging stories instead of PR releases, etc.

But it's definitely a feel-good kinda biz and story.

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ars
What are the chances that HN will avoid creating many threads about this
conflict? It's really off-topic here (if it happens).

As for as this "new" tech goes. You are going to get a massive number of
doctored photos - so many that the value of the site is basically zero.

The "idea" of paying them for the photos is useless - they don't really care,
all they want is for the world to see, and for that there already is flicker.

So this site is nothing new, and with the problems they will have with
forgery, it's DOA.

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pg
Actually this is an area where technology could really change the world. In
fact, already has: I've heard it argued fairly convincingly that what turned
the tide in the civil rights movement in the US was the appearance in the
national media of photos and video of blacks being attacked by the police.

If everyone could see what occupying armies do, they probably wouldn't be able
to do as much of it.

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wheels
There's an Israeli human rights group that's given out video cameras for
specifically that purpose:

<http://www.btselem.org/English/Video/CDP_Background.asp>

