Journal articles on the topic 'Confirmation Voting'

Verifying a ballot for correctness in an election is a critical task for the voter. Previous work has shown that up to 30% of the ballot can be changed without being noticed by more than half of the voters. In response to this ballot weakness, this study evaluated the usability and viability of alternative ballot verification methods in an electronic voting medium. Three verification methods were tested: end-of-ballot, in-line confirmation, and dual confirmation. In-line and dual confirmation perform similarly to end-of-ballot confirmation in terms of effectiveness. The most efficient method is end-of-ballot review, and dual confirmation produced the longest time spent on the review screen. End-of-ballot confirmation produced the highest satisfaction ratings, though survey results indicated that dual confirmation may be the most appropriate method in terms of voting. Additional research in the field is the next step in exploring these confirmation methods.

The increasing public attention paid to Supreme Court nominations has elevated the salience of Senate confirmation battles, raising interesting questions about the impact of constituency preferences on senators' voting behavior. In this article, we explore this relationship using a logistical regression model to examine the impacts of African-American constituency size and the proximity of reelection on the roll call behavior of senators on the Clarence Thomas confirmation vote. Our analyses indicate that these factors were both statistically and substantively significant in the Thomas case. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of such findings.

We develop and test a neoinstitutional model of Senate roll call voting on nominees to the Supreme Court. The statistical model assumes that Senators examine the characteristics of nominees and use their roll call votes to establish an electorally attractive position on the nominees. The model is tested with probit estimates on the 2,054 confirmation votes from Earl Warren to Anthony Kennedy. The model performs remarkably well in predicting the individual votes of Senators to confirm or reject nominees. Senators routinely vote to confirm nominees who are perceived as well qualified and ideologically proximate to Senators' constituents. When nominees are less well qualified and are relatively distant, however, Senators' votes depend to a large degree on the political environment, especially the status of the president.

The paper discusses the contextual effects on voting behaviour. Part of the Czech professional literature concludes that spatial contextual effects on voting behaviour in Czechia are weak and that the spatial patterns of election results can be basically explained as a reflection of territorial differences in social structure, i.e. compositionally. This study examines the existence of contextual effects using spatially very detailed data. When the determinants of election results are studied at the municipal level by spatial statistical methods, areas of different size can be found in Czechia, in which election results can’t be explained by the composition of voters. Instead it becomes more appropriate to consider the contextual effects impacting on them. Some results of our analysis can be interpreted as a manifestation of neighbourhood effects, unambiguous confirmation of its existence, however, remains open.

Purpose This study aims to revisit and extends the work of Rosacker and Rosacker (2012) that called for increased interdisciplinary efforts to address and solve the critical issues (critical success factors) facing technologically-enabled remote-access voting platforms. It builds upon the background platform presented there, which included an historical timeline of information and communication technologies and an e-voting literature review, and extends that work by providing a state-of-the-art update and review of the rapidly changing voter environment from societal, technological and experiential studies over the past decade. Specific focus is directed at technology-enabled, remote-access voting, while also considering the important role technological advances can play in improving voter registration/confirmation procedures. Design/methodology/approach First, a brief review of significant societal and technological changes, including the rapid evolution of the internet of things, is undertaken to frame the discussion. Second, a sample of several technology-enabled, remote-access voting experiments are reviewed and critiqued. Third, currently available technical solutions targeting technology-enabled voter registration and vote casting are offered as the next step in the process that will ultimately lead to remote-access voting becoming widely deployed across smart devices. Finally, some contemporaneous conclusions are tendered. Findings Society and technology-enabled devices have each witnessed myriad changes and advancements in the second decade of the 21st century. These have led to numerous remote-access voting experiments across the globe that have overwhelmingly proven the concept of technology-enabled, remote-access voting to be viable while also identifying/reasserting issues (critical success factors) that continue to restrain its full implementation. Importantly, none of the problems identified is fatal to the concept. Originality/value This study considers the issue of technologically-enabled, remote-access voting focussing on the impacts associated with the portfolio of recent societal and technological advancements including the many vexing concerns and issues presented by the coronavirus pandemic. Social distancing is limiting access to the traditional methods of in-person voting for both election officials and voters bringing into question the November 2020 US national election. Calls for expanded mail voting options and the requisite federal funding required to support these efforts are increasing, widespread and broadly persuasive. Wholly missing in this debate is an exhaustive consideration and discussion of technologically enhanced, remote-access voting systems and their role in filling the void.

The digitisation of administrative tasks and processes is a reality nowadays, translating into added value such as agility in process management, or simplified access to stored data. The digitisation of processes of decision-making in collegiate bodies, such as Academic Councils, is not yet a common reality. Voting acts are still carried out in person, or at most in online meetings, without having a real confirmation of the vote of each element. This is particularly complex to achieve in remote meeting scenarios, where connection breaks or interruptions of audio or video streams may exist. A new digital platform was already previously proposed. It considered decision-making, by voting in Academic Councils, to be supported by a system that guarantees the integrity of the decisions taken, even when meeting online. Our previous work mainly considered the overall design. In this work, we bettered the design and specification of our previous proposal and describe the implemented prototype, and validate and discuss the obtained results.

When assessing the quality of the grain supply chain's quality, it is essential to identify and authenticate wheat types, as this is where the process begins with the examination of seeds. Manual inspection by eye is used for both grain identification and confirmation. High-speed, low-effort options became available thanks to automatic classification methods based on machine learning and computer vision. To this day, classifying at the varietal level is still challenging. Classification of wheat seeds was performed using machine learning techniques in this work. Wheat area, wheat perimeter, compactness, kernel length, kernel width, asymmetry coefficient, and kernel groove length are the 7 physical parameters used to categorize the seeds. The dataset includes 210 separate instances of wheat kernels, and was compiled from the UCI library. The 70 components of the dataset were selected randomly and included wheat kernels from three different varieties: Kama, Rosa, and Canadian. In the first stage, we use single machine learning models for classification, including multilayer neural networks, decision trees, and support vector machines. Each algorithm's output is measured against that of the machine learning ensemble method, which is optimized using the whale optimization and stochastic fractal search algorithms. In the end, the findings show that the proposed optimized ensemble is achieving promising results when compared to single machine learning models.

The summer of 2016 showed that racial discrimination in voting is alive and well, as federal courts across the country struck down state statutes that disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters, including voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting, and racially gerrymandered legislative districts. However, at the local level, discriminatory practices in the nation’s approximately 89,000 political subdivisions have gone largely uninvestigated and challenged. Recent conflicts between communities of color and law enforcement have highlighted the failure of local governments in places like Ferguson, Missouri to adequately represent the interests of minority voters. These failures of representation, which occur in progressive states like California as well as in more conservative states, are due in part to local election laws and practices that dilute minority voting strength. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act provides a cause of action against vote dilution, but such cases are unusually complicated, expensive, and time-consuming with no promise of damages and highly uncertain recovery of attorneys’ fees to a prevailing plaintiff. As a result, few plaintiffs outside the federal Department of Justice and major civil rights groups have mustered the resources to prosecute cases under the federal Voting Rights Act. Although states could pass their own laws against vote dilution that would encourage more private plaintiffs to investigate and prosecute offending local governments, only California has passed such a law. The California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) addresses only a single discriminatory practice—the pervasive use of at-large methods of election in jurisdictions where racially polarized voting systematically defeats minority candidates. The CVRA has revealed that (1) vote dilution is widespread; (2) case-by-case litigation can have a deterrent effect under conditions that encourage private enforcement; and (3) more enforcement is needed to prevent local governments from evading scrutiny or backsliding. But, because the CVRA’s effectiveness is limited to only one class of practices in only one state, to increase the level of enforcement there is a need for new voting rights plaintiffs with the resources both to bring cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and to monitor compliance with judgments and settlements. State attorneys general can fill this need, and possess some advantages relative to both the United States Department of Justice (e.g., a narrower geographic focus and the ability to collect attorneys’ fees under the Voting Rights Act) and private plaintiffs (e.g., an imprimatur of law enforcement, in-house investigatory resources, and a “bully pulpit”). With the election of Donald Trump and the confirmation of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, the need to find more resources to combat discrimination in voting is imperative as the Department of Justice appears poised to abandon Obama Administration’s enforcement efforts in favor of investigating groundless allegations of voter fraud. To date, no state attorney general has ever brought a Section 2 claim against a political subdivision, but this Article makes the case that state attorneys general can, and should, enforce the federal Voting Rights Act against local governments to protect minority voters.

The article is devoted to theoretical and empirical political choice, socially determined behaviour of the electorate in Poland. The author considers the problem of the influence of the voter’s environment through the prism of taking into account variables relating to group identity and social status in society. The research is based on the method of diachronic analysis of the process of synchronization of beliefs of different party electorates during voting. With the help of representative data, the hypothesis that actors operating in multi-level networks cannot be considered outside their interdependence is approved and scientifically substantiated. The results obtained encourage the search for further confirmation of these conclusions, especially taking into account the following relevant variables.

An important problem on the way to the development of e-democracy is to ensure citizens' confidence in electronic voting systems. Although there are many cases of implementation of such systems, in all cases, voters must take it on faith that the personnel serving the system will honestly and accurately perform the work. In other words, none of these systems provide voters with sufficient and understandable evidence that the secret of their votes cannot be revealed and the results of the vote count cannot be falsified. It is known that the systems in which citizens perform audits of all those procedures where fraudulent manifestations are possible, enjoy the indisputable trust of voters. Now such systems exist, but they do not use electronic voting. The purpose of this work is to prove and practical confirmation of the possibility of building a system of secret electronic voting on the public Internet with means available to voters for auditing all those processes that may cause distrust during voting. The principles of constructing e-voting systems are analyzed from the point of view of the possibility of ensuring the trust of citizens through complete openness for auditing selected software and hardware solutions. It was with the use of such solutions that the system was built, which was implemented at the Kiev National University of Construction and Architecture for the election of student representatives to the Student Self-Government Council. Also, this system is used to conduct secret voting at meetings of the Academic Council of the University online. An important practical result of this implementation is the elimination of cumbersome manual counting procedures. In the case of the meeting that took place on October 16, 2020, where the number of ballots was 53, although 53 out of 85 members of the Academic Council took part in the vote (six voted with paper ballots), the relief was tangible, because there were 2,491 fewer ballots in the ballot box. In addition, computerized counting is instant and error-free, and the presence of automated auditing eliminates the possibility for any software tampering or unauthorized personnel interference with the server. The main advantage, of course, is that conditions are created to protect against the spread of a viral infection and there is no need to stop the activities of the Scientific Councils during quarantine.

BACKGROUND: Delays in access to health care in Canada have been reported, but standardized systems to manage and monitor wait lists and wait times, and benchmarks for appropriate wait times, are lacking. The objective of the present consensus was to develop evidence- and expertise-based recommendations for medically appropriate maximal wait times for consultation and procedures by a digestive disease specialist.METHODS: A steering committee drafted statements defining maximal wait times for specialist consultation and procedures based on the most common reasons for referral of adult patients to a digestive disease specialist. Statements were circulated in advance to a multidisciplinary group of 25 participants for comments and voting. At the consensus meeting, relevant data and the results of voting were presented and discussed; these formed the basis of the final wording and voting of statements.RESULTS: Twenty-four statements were produced regarding maximal medically appropriate wait times for specialist consultation and procedures based on presenting signs and symptoms of referred patients. Statements covered the areas of gastrointestinal bleeding; cancer confirmation and screening and surveillance of colon cancer and colonic polyps; liver, biliary and pancreatic disorders; dysphagia and dyspepsia; abdominal pain and bowel dysfunction; and suspected inflammatory bowel disease. Maximal wait times could be stratified into four possible acuity categories of 24 h, two weeks, two months and six months.FUTURE DIRECTIONS: Comparison of these benchmarks with actual wait times will identify limitations in access to digestive heath care in Canada. These recommendations should be considered targets for future health care improvements and are not clinical practice guidelines.

The subject of the opinion is the legal assessment of voting procedure, as well as confirmation of presence at such committee sittings, in which some Deputies partake in a traditional way (in person in the meeting room), while others take advantage of a remote participation on the basis of Part III of the Standing Orders of the Sejm titled “Sittings of the Sejm, committees and subcommittees with the use of electronic means enabling remote communication”. The author of the opinion claims that rules of the above part of the Standing Orders, despite their detailed scope, do not provide a complete answer to the question about the way of conducting “mixed” committee sittings, i.e., with a partial traditional participation of Deputies and a partial remote one. Thus it is necessary to apply, to some extent, a functional legal interpretation.

The political system in which it is possible to observe the similarities and differences between groups for and against presidential candidates based on processes of negotiation, mediation, conciliation and arbitration around the management and administration of Information Technologies and Communication is known as governance. This is a growing phenomenon as local or federal elections approach and digital networks are exacerbated as instruments for the promotion or dissuasion of a candidate. In this sense, the objective of the study was to optimize the Governance instrument of the Cyber Political Culture of Carreón (2016) in order to pay the reliability and validity of it; explore the relationship between preferences and expectations regarding voting intentions in a non-probabilistic sample of students using digital networks. From a structural model it was found that the consensus expectation factor determined the intentions to vote. The scope and limits of the exploratory factor analysis of main axes with a simple and oblique promax rotation regarding the confirmation of an orthogonal structure are discussed

Mail voting became unusually controversial in the 2020 presidential election. Many observers, including former President Trump, believed that more accessible vote by mail would encourage higher turnout at the expense of Republicans. While the literature has tested some of these claims, it has not offered a more comprehensive causal assessment of vote-by-mail policy, nor has any study looked at these questions in the context of the extraordinary 2020 election. We examine the effect of mail ballot access policies both before and during the 2020 pandemic election with county-level data and a variety of methodological approaches. Our results suggest that making it easier to vote by mail—especially mailing every voter a ballot—generally does increase turnout, both before and during the 2020 election. By contrast, the same policies do not have robust partisan effects, and in many models, they tilt the results in a more Republican direction. While some of our findings are sensitive to model specification, the positive turnout effect of mailing every voter a ballot is robust to many alternative approaches. The confirmation of the existing understanding of universally mailed ballots suggests the basic dynamics of the reform are immune to a wide range of disruptive forces.

Contemporary democracies are increasingly shaped by a surge of populism, posing serious threats to the idea of liberal democracy. Particularly in the run-up to elections, knowledge of such threats is essential for citizens to cast an informed vote. Against this background, the present study examined the likelihood of media users to engage with political news providing critical perspectives on populist movements in a 24-hour social media field experiment during the 2017 federal election campaign in Germany (<em>N</em> = 210). Based on two selective exposure measures, findings suggest that exposure to critical news is contingent upon the conceptualization of populist partisanship as a political orientation of either high commitment (i.e., voting intention) or high affinity (i.e., sympathy for a party). While high commitment triggered a rather classic confirmation bias, especially regarding click decisions, high affinity caused selection patterns to be more strongly guided by informational utility, particularly during newsfeed browsing, with counter-attitudinal information receiving more attention. When public sentiment cues were present, however, attitudinal patterns disappeared. These findings imply that partisan news use in times of political upheaval is best gauged by taking a closer look at the particular type of partisanship that guides selective exposure, as both types of partisanship caused contrary exposure patterns, and that today’s news environments potentially override attitudinal influences by providing additional social monitoring cues.

The article deals with the problem of developing the European Union’s identity. The confirmation of the hypothesis can be considered as an argument for the necessity to interpret the European identity in the context of an imagined community. The ideas of developing the European Union’s identity as a joint national identity of the EU member-states which are differently engaged in the global post-industrial economy, interpreted the EU and their relations therewith in many ways, served as the theoretical background of the article. Therefore, these member-states possessed substantively divergent national identities. The expansion in the range of issues which did not require the unanimous approval of the EU member-states but solely by voting after the principle of qualified 50 majority was to promote the enforced cooperation between the EU member-states. These vectors were chosen due to the changes on the international arena which occurred during the researched period of time and echoed rather in the abovementioned areas than in the economic policy, since the state received the freedom of action in the search of a new balance of powers. Besides, the EU institutions governing the common foreign and security policy and the European defense remained weak even after the Maastricht treaty has been revised and the Amsterdam treaty has been signed. The monetary union serves in the capacity of an identity instrument of the EU. The multi-ethnic identity represents the feature of the migration processes in the European Union

Blockchain technology applied to cryptocurrencies is the dominant factor in maintaining the security of cryptocurrencies. This article reviews the technological implementation of cryptocurrency and the security and stability of cryptocurrency and analyzes the security support from blockchain technology and its platforms based on empirical case studies. Our results show that the security support from blockchain technology platforms is significantly insufficient and immature. In addition, we further Zyskind and Nathan (2015) and Choi (2019) and find that the top ten platforms play critical roles in security support and have significant advantages in terms of funds, duration, and human resources. Moreover, these platforms provide computational resources and benefits to the consensus algorithm selection for blockchain practitioners. Second, encryption ensures the security of cryptocurrencies. On the one hand, the digital signatures identify the identity of the signatory and the transaction. However, the principle of the hash algorithm (SHA256) confirms ownership. Meanwhile, SHA256 is infeasible to compute in the reverse direction and is difficult to attack. Furthermore, the records in the blockchain can be queried by every participant, making the system information transparent and open reliable. Third, compared to the study of Fu and Fang 2016, we find that the blockchain structure is composed of security components and basic components of six layers that are independent and cannot be extended completely and have a certain coupling among them. Fourth, the underlying ledger structures of Bitcoin and DAG are highly correlated to their security. Specifically, we follow Sompolinsky et al. (2016) and detect that the structure of SPECTRE ensures network security and robustness from its block production, conflict resolution, and generated trusted transaction sets. Meanwhile, the voting algorithm of SPECTRE makes resolving conflicting transactions by calculating votes and ensuring the transaction information that is virtually unable to be tampered with possible. In particular, the security calculation power of SPECTRE can reach 51% and resist “double-spend attacks” and “censorship attacks” effectively. In addition, the RDL framework of SPECTRE achieves security confirmation of transferring funds. Moreover, PHANTOM identifies evil blocks by employing block connectivity analysis and ensures its security. Eventually, we also expand the studies of (Sompolinsky et al., 2016 and Sompolinsky et al., 2017) and compare the basic characteristics of the protocols of Bitcoin, SPECTRE, and PHANTOM and find that protocols play imperative roles throughout the implementation process of cryptocurrency. In addition, the underlying ledger structure and consensus mechanism make up a blockchain while the confirmation time, throughput limit, and ordering are prerequisites for smart contracts.

For the fi rst time in the study of the Dacian age, the similarities between the golden bracelets on the Grădiștea and Căprăreaţa Hills and the other silver exemplars allow us to establish an esthetic and symbolic link between the vestiges in the Orăștie Mountains and the pompous manifestations in other parts of pre-Roman Dacia. These analogies indicate the adherence of local elites to a symbolic and heraldic code of identity that was probably elaborated exactly around the monumental center of Grădiștea de Munte. This is perhaps the most important implication of the golden bracelets. At the same time, the discovery of the golden bracelets may be perceived as the first confirmation of some burial practices with possible votive values in the immediate vicinity of the monumental edifices on Grădiștea Hill.

: Epigraphic inscriptions hundreds of which have been found in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, are an authentic testimony of the people of the time about the political, cultural and social life of provinces Dalmatia, and the two Pannonia provinces (Pannonia Superior and Pannonia Inferior). Although a systematic research is lacking, the number of newly-found epigraphic monuments has significantly increased in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to that number four more will be added. Two monuments were found in the wider Trebinje area, while the other two are from the Crkvine near Makljenovac (Doboj) locality. Votive altar for Jupiter, Best and Greatest, from the soldier of Cohors prima Delmatarum milliaria is the first material evidence for which it can be certainly asserted that it is linked to the presence of the cohort in the area of Doboj. The cohort whose name is mentioned on the epigraphic monument from Doboj was probably made in the 80s CE, after the Roman legions retreated from the area of the province Dalmatia. It is considered that the cohort was stationed throughout the whole principate in its “birth” province Dalmatia and that it is, conditionally speaking, one of the autochthonous cohorts. The confirmation that the Cohors prima Delmatarum milliaria equitata was stationed in the castrum in Makljenovac is a good indicator that Romans accounted for the inter-provincial borders, not only for he limes.

AbstractWith increasing volumes of customer reviews, ‘helpfulness’ features have been established by many online platforms as decision-aids for consumers to cope with potential information overload. In this study, we offer a differentiated perspective on the drivers of review helpfulness. Using a hurdle regression setup for both helpfulness and unhelpfulness voting behavior, we aim to disentangle the differential effects of what drives reviews to receive any votes, how many votes they receive and whether these effects differ for helpful against unhelpful review voting behavior. As potential driving factors we include reviews’ star rating deviations from the average rating (as a proxy for confirmation bias), the level of controversy among reviews and review sentiment (consistency of review content), as well as pricing information in our analysis. Albeit with opposite effect signs, we find that revealed review un-/helpfulness is consistently guided by the tonality (i.e., the sentiment of review texts) and that reviewers tend to be less critical for lower priced products. However, we find only partial support for a confirmation bias with differential effects for the level of controversy on helpfulness versus unhelpfulness review votings. We conclude that the effects of voting disagreement are more complex than previous literature suggests and discuss implications for research and management practice.

AbstractIn November of 2013, Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues employed a series of parliamentary steps to change the precedent for cloture with respect to presidential nominations. This so called “nuclear option” reduced the threshold for cloture on presidential nominations (except for those to the US Supreme Court) to a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes necessary in the past. The paper examines how this change affected senators’ voting behavior on both cloture and confirmation of presidential nominations, using the 113th Senate as a natural experimental setting. We find that Republican senators are significantly more likely to vote against cloture in the wake of this change, presumably as symbolic votes of protest against the Democrats’ reversal of longstanding precedent. On the whole, the Republican conference votes against cloture, even when they vote overwhelmingly in favor of the nominee on the final confirmation vote. This suggests that cloture may not represent a sincere objection to the nominee in the post-nuclear Senate.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection is prevalent and has a rapidly increasing antibiotic resistance rate in Vietnam. Reinfection is quite common, and gastric carcinoma remains one of the most common malignancies, which is not uncommon to develop after successful eradication. The purpose of this consensus is to provide updated recommendations on the management of H. pylori infection in the country. The consensus panel consisted of 32 experts from 14 major universities and institutions in Vietnam who were invited to review the evidence and develop the statements using the Delphi method. The process followed the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system. The consensus level was defined as ≥80% for agreement on the proposed statements. Due to the limited availability of high-quality local evidence, this consensus was also based on high-quality evidence from international studies, especially those conducted in other populations in the Asia–Pacific region. The panel finally reached a consensus on 27 statements after two voting rounds, which consisted of four sections (1) indications for testing and selection of diagnostic tests (2), treatment regimens, (3) post-treatment confirmation of H. pylori status, and (4) reinfection prevention methods and follow-up after eradication. Important issues that require further evidence include studies on third-line regimens, strategies to prevent H. pylori reinfection, and post-eradication follow-up for precancerous gastric lesions. We hope this consensus will help guide the current clinical practice in Vietnam and promote multicenter studies in the country and international collaborations.

Abstract English The Roman town of Mustis (municipium Iulium Aurelium Mustitanum) is near present-day Mest Henshir (Tunisia). Its epigraphic corpus has around 200 inscriptions mainly published at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when the French archaeological campaigns took place. However, a group of Latin inscriptions discovered during the 1960s remained unpublished. In the reorganisation of the archives of the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (Paris) the original photographs, negatives, slides and documents revealed new data. In this article I present five new inscriptions (three votive texts, a quadruple funerary epitaph and a new boundary stone) and new data and photographs of three already known inscriptions published by G. Wilmanns in the CIL. All these texts reveal new data about the territory of the res publica Mustitana, the sacred life of the city (including the confirmation of a Capitol) and new onomastic information about its inhabitants.

Mobile In many countries, more people have mobile phones than they do fixed-line phones. Mobile phones are one of the fastest growing technologies ever, outstripping even the internet in many respects. With the advent and widespread deployment of digital systems, mobile phones were used by an estimated 1, 158, 254, 300 people worldwide in 2002 (up from approximately 91 million in 1995), 51. 4% of total telephone subscribers (ITU). One of the reasons for this is mobility itself: the ability for people to talk on the phone wherever they are. The communicative possibilities opened up by mobile phones have produced new uses and new discourses (see Katz and Aakhus; Brown, Green, and Harper; and Plant). Contemporary soundscapes now feature not only voice calls in previously quiet public spaces such as buses or restaurants but also the aural irruptions of customised polyphonic ringtones identifying whose phone is ringing by the tune downloaded. The mobile phone plays an important role in contemporary visual and material culture as fashion item and status symbol. Most tragically one might point to the tableau of people in the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, or aboard a plane about to crash, calling their loved ones to say good-bye (Galvin). By contrast, one can look on at the bathos of Australian cricketer Shane Warne’s predilection for pressing his mobile phone into service to arrange wanted and unwanted assignations while on tour. In this article, I wish to consider another important and so far also under-theorised aspect of mobile phones: text. Of contemporary textual and semiotic systems, mobile text is only a recent addition. Yet it is already produces millions of inscriptions each day, and promises to be of far-reaching significance. Txt Txt msg ws an acidnt. no 1 expcted it. Whn the 1st txt msg ws sent, in 1993 by Nokia eng stdnt Riku Pihkonen, the telcom cpnies thought it ws nt important. SMS – Short Message Service – ws nt considrd a majr pt of GSM. Like mny teks, the *pwr* of txt — indeed, the *pwr* of the fon — wz discvrd by users. In the case of txt mssng, the usrs were the yng or poor in the W and E. (Agar 105) As Jon Agar suggests in Constant Touch, textual communication through mobile phone was an after-thought. Mobile phones use radio waves, operating on a cellular system. The first such mobile service went live in Chicago in December 1978, in Sweden in 1981, in January 1985 in the United Kingdom (Agar), and in the mid-1980s in Australia. Mobile cellular systems allowed efficient sharing of scarce spectrum, improvements in handsets and quality, drawing on advances in science and engineering. In the first instance, technology designers, manufacturers, and mobile phone companies had been preoccupied with transferring telephone capabilities and culture to the mobile phone platform. With the growth in data communications from the 1960s onwards, consideration had been given to data capabilities of mobile phone. One difficulty, however, had been the poor quality and slow transfer rates of data communications over mobile networks, especially with first-generation analogue and early second-generation digital mobile phones. As the internet was widely and wildly adopted in the early to mid-1990s, mobile phone proponents looked at mimicking internet and online data services possibilities on their hand-held devices. What could work on a computer screen, it was thought, could be reinvented in miniature for the mobile phone — and hence much money was invested into the wireless access protocol (or WAP), which spectacularly flopped. The future of mobiles as a material support for text culture was not to lie, at first at least, in aping the world-wide web for the phone. It came from an unexpected direction: cheap, simple letters, spelling out short messages with strange new ellipses. SMS was built into the European Global System for Mobile (GSM) standard as an insignificant, additional capability. A number of telecommunications manufacturers thought so little of the SMS as not to not design or even offer the equipment needed (the servers, for instance) for the distribution of the messages. The character sets were limited, the keyboards small, the typeface displays rudimentary, and there was no acknowledgement that messages were actually received by the recipient. Yet SMS was cheap, and it offered one-to-one, or one-to-many, text communications that could be read at leisure, or more often, immediately. SMS was avidly taken up by young people, forming a new culture of media use. Sending a text message offered a relatively cheap and affordable alternative to the still expensive timed calls of voice mobile. In its early beginnings, mobile text can be seen as a subcultural activity. The text culture featured compressed, cryptic messages, with users devising their own abbreviations and grammar. One of the reasons young people took to texting was a tactic of consolidating and shaping their own shared culture, in distinction from the general culture dominated by their parents and other adults. Mobile texting become involved in a wider reworking of youth culture, involving other new media forms and technologies, and cultural developments (Butcher and Thomas). Another subculture that also was in the vanguard of SMS was the Deaf ‘community’. Though the Alexander Graham Bell, celebrated as the inventor of the telephone, very much had his hearing-impaired wife in mind in devising a new form of communication, Deaf people have been systematically left off the telecommunications network since this time. Deaf people pioneered an earlier form of text communications based on the Baudot standard, used for telex communications. Known as teletypewriter (TTY), or telecommunications device for the Deaf (TDD) in the US, this technology allowed Deaf people to communicate with each other by connecting such devices to the phone network. The addition of a relay service (established in Australia in the mid-1990s after much government resistance) allows Deaf people to communicate with hearing people without TTYs (Goggin & Newell). Connecting TTYs to mobile phones have been a vexed issue, however, because the digital phone network in Australia does not allow compatibility. For this reason, and because of other features, Deaf people have become avid users of SMS (Harper). An especially favoured device in Europe has been the Nokia Communicator, with its hinged keyboard. The move from a ‘restricted’, ‘subcultural’ economy to a ‘general’ economy sees mobile texting become incorporated in the semiotic texture and prosaic practices of everyday life. Many users were already familiar with the new conventions already developed around electronic mail, with shorter, crisper messages sent and received — more conversation-like than other correspondence. Unlike phone calls, email is asynchronous. The sender can respond immediately, and the reply will be received with seconds. However, they can also choose to reply at their leisure. Similarly, for the adept user, SMS offers considerable advantages over voice communications, because it makes textual production mobile. Writing and reading can take place wherever a mobile phone can be turned on: in the street, on the train, in the club, in the lecture theatre, in bed. The body writes differently too. Writing with a pen takes a finger and thumb. Typing on a keyboard requires between two and ten fingers. The mobile phone uses the ‘fifth finger’ — the thumb. Always too early, and too late, to speculate on contemporary culture (Morris), it is worth analyzing the textuality of mobile text. Theorists of media, especially television, have insisted on understanding the specific textual modes of different cultural forms. We are familiar with this imperative, and other methods of making visible and decentring structures of text, and the institutions which animate and frame them (whether author or producer; reader or audience; the cultural expectations encoded in genre; the inscriptions in technology). In formal terms, mobile text can be described as involving elision, great compression, and open-endedness. Its channels of communication physically constrain the composition of a very long single text message. Imagine sending James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake in one text message. How long would it take to key in this exemplar of the disintegration of the cultural form of the novel? How long would it take to read? How would one navigate the text? Imagine sending the Courier-Mail or Financial Review newspaper over a series of text messages? The concept of the ‘news’, with all its cultural baggage, is being reconfigured by mobile text — more along the lines of the older technology of the telegraph, perhaps: a few words suffices to signify what is important. Mobile textuality, then, involves a radical fragmentation and unpredictable seriality of text lexia (Barthes). Sometimes a mobile text looks singular: saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or sending your name and ID number to obtain your high school or university results. Yet, like a telephone conversation, or any text perhaps, its structure is always predicated upon, and haunted by, the other. Its imagined reader always has a mobile phone too, little time, no fixed address (except that hailed by the network’s radio transmitter), and a finger poised to respond. Mobile text has structure and channels. Yet, like all text, our reading and writing of it reworks those fixities and makes destabilizes our ‘clear’ communication. After all, mobile textuality has a set of new pre-conditions and fragilities. It introduces new sorts of ‘noise’ to signal problems to annoy those theorists cleaving to the Shannon and Weaver linear model of communication; signals often drop out; there is a network confirmation (and message displayed) that text messages have been sent, but no system guarantee that they have been received. Our friend or service provider might text us back, but how do we know that they got our text message? Commodity We are familiar now with the pleasures of mobile text, the smile of alerting a friend to our arrival, celebrating good news, jilting a lover, making a threat, firing a worker, flirting and picking-up. Text culture has a new vector of mobility, invented by its users, but now coveted and commodified by businesses who did not see it coming in the first place. Nimble in its keystrokes, rich in expressivity and cultural invention, but relatively rudimentary in its technical characteristics, mobile text culture has finally registered in the boardrooms of communications companies. Not only is SMS the preferred medium of mobile phone users to keep in touch with each other, SMS has insinuated itself into previously separate communication industries arenas. In 2002-2003 SMS became firmly established in television broadcasting. Finally, interactive television had arrived after many years of prototyping and being heralded. The keenly awaited back-channel for television arrives courtesy not of cable or satellite television, nor an extra fixed-phone line. It’s the mobile phone, stupid! Big Brother was not only a watershed in reality television, but also in convergent media. Less obvious perhaps than supplementary viewing, or biographies, or chat on Big Brother websites around the world was the use of SMS for voting. SMS is now routinely used by mainstream television channels for viewer feedback, contest entry, and program information. As well as its widespread deployment in broadcasting, mobile text culture has been the language of prosaic, everyday transactions. Slipping into a café at Bronte Beach in Sydney, why not pay your parking meter via SMS? You’ll even receive a warning when your time is up. The mobile is becoming the ‘electronic purse’, with SMS providing its syntax and sentences. The belated ingenuity of those fascinated by the economics of mobile text has also coincided with a technological reworking of its possibilities, with new implications for its semiotic possibilities. Multimedia messaging (MMS) has now been deployed, on capable digital phones (an instance of what has been called 2.5 generation [G] digital phones) and third-generation networks. MMS allows images, video, and audio to be communicated. At one level, this sort of capability can be user-generated, as in the popularity of mobiles that take pictures and send these to other users. Television broadcasters are also interested in the capability to send video clips of favourite programs to viewers. Not content with the revenues raised from millions of standard-priced SMS, and now MMS transactions, commercial participants along the value chain are keenly awaiting the deployment of what is called ‘premium rate’ SMS and MMS services. These services will involve the delivery of desirable content via SMS and MMS, and be priced at a premium. Products and services are likely to include: one-to-one textchat; subscription services (content delivered on handset); multi-party text chat (such as chat rooms); adult entertainment services; multi-part messages (such as text communications plus downloads); download of video or ringtones. In August 2003, one text-chat service charged $4.40 for a pair of SMS. Pwr At the end of 2003, we have scarcely registered the textual practices and systems in mobile text, a culture that sprang up in the interstices of telecommunications. It may be urgent that we do think about the stakes here, as SMS is being extended and commodified. There are obvious and serious policy issues in premium rate SMS and MMS services, and questions concerning the political economy in which these are embedded. Yet there are cultural questions too, with intricate ramifications. How do we understand the effects of mobile textuality, rewriting the telephone book for this new cultural form (Ronell). What are the new genres emerging? And what are the implications for cultural practice and policy? Does it matter, for instance, that new MMS and 3rd generation mobile platforms are not being designed or offered with any-to-any capabilities in mind: allowing any user to upload and send multimedia communications to other any. True, as the example of SMS shows, the inventiveness of users is difficult to foresee and predict, and so new forms of mobile text may have all sorts of relationships with content and communication. However, there are worrying signs of these developing mobile circuits being programmed for narrow channels of retail purchase of cultural products rather than open-source, open-architecture, publicly usable nodes of connection. Works Cited Agar, Jon. Constant Touch: A Global History of the Mobile Phone. Cambridge: Icon, 2003. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill & Wang, 1974. Brown, Barry, Green, Nicola, and Harper, Richard, eds. Wireless World: Social, Cultural, and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age. London: Springer Verlag, 2001. Butcher, Melissa, and Thomas, Mandy, eds. Ingenious: Emerging youth cultures in urban Australia. Melbourne: Pluto, 2003. Galvin, Michael. ‘September 11 and the Logistics of Communication.’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17.3 (2003): 303-13. Goggin, Gerard, and Newell, Christopher. Digital Disability: The Social Construction of Digital in New Media. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Harper, Phil. ‘Networking the Deaf Nation.’ Australian Journal of Communication 30. 3 (2003), in press. International Telecommunications Union (ITU). ‘Mobile Cellular, subscribers per 100 people.’ World Telecommunication Indicators <http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/> accessed 13 October 2003. Katz, James E., and Aakhus, Mark, eds. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 2002. Morris, Meaghan. Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: U of Indiana P, 1998. Plant, Sadie. On the Mobile: The Effects of Mobile Telephones on Social and Individual Life. < http://www.motorola.com/mot/documents/0,1028,296,00.pdf> accessed 5 October 2003. Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: Technology—schizophrenia—electric speech. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "‘mobile text’" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2004, Jan 12). ‘mobile text’. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/03-goggin.php>

Introduction 2021 was the year that NFTs got big—not just in value but also in terms of the cultural consciousness. When digital artist Beeple sold the portfolio of his 5,000 daily images at Christie’s for US$69 million, the art world was left intrigued, confused, and outraged in equal measure. Depending on who you asked, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) seemed to be either a quick cash-grab or the future of the art market (Bowden and Jones; Smee). Following the Beeple sale, articles started to appear indicating that the film industry was abuzz for NFTs. Independent filmmaker Kevin Smith was quick to announce that he planned to release his horror film Killroy Was Here as an NFT (Alexander); in September 2021 the James Bond film No Time to Die also unveiled a series of collectibles to coincide with the film’s much-delayed theatrical release (Natalee); the distribution and collectible platforms Vuele, NFT Studios, and Mogul Productions all emerged, and the industry rumour mill suggests more start-ups are en route (CurrencyWorks; NFT Studios; NewsBTC). Blockchain disciples say that the technology will solve all the problems of the Internet (Tewari; Norton; European Business Review); critics say it will only perpetuate existing accessibility and equality issues (Davis and Flatow; Klein). Those more circumspect will doubtless sit back until the dust settles, waiting to see what parts of so-called web3 will be genuinely integrated into the architecture of the Internet. Pamela Hutchinson puts it neatly in terms of the arts sector: “the NFT may revolutionise the art market, film funding and distribution. Or it might be an ecological disaster and a financial bubble, in which few actual movies change hands, and fraudsters get rich from other people’s intellectual property” (Hutchinson). There is an uptick in the literature around NFTs and blockchain (see Quiniou; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel); however, the technology remains unregulated and unstandardised (Yeung 212-14; Dimitropoulos 112-13). Similarly, the sheer amount of funding being put into fundamental technical, data, and security-related issues speaks volumes to the nascency of the space (Ossinger; Livni; Gayvoronskaya & Meinel 52-6). Put very briefly, NFTs are part of a given blockchain system; think of them, like cryptocurrency coins, as “units of value” within that system (Roose). NFTs were initially rolled out on Ethereum, though several other blockchains have now implemented their own NFT frameworks. NFTs are usually not the artwork itself, but rather a unique, un-copyable (hence, non-fungible) piece of code that is attached, linked, or connected to another digital file, be that an image, video, text, or something else entirely. NFTs are often referred to as a digital artwork’s “certificate of authenticity” (Roose). At the time of writing, it remains to be seen how widely blockchain and NFT technology will be implemented across the entertainment industries. However, this article aims to outline the current state of implementation in the film trade specifically, and to attempt to sort true potential from the hype. Beginning with an overview of the core issues around blockchain and NFTs as they apply to film properties and adjacent products, current implementations of the technology are outlined, before finishing with a hesitant glimpse into the potential future applications. The Issues and Conversation At the core of current conversations around blockchain are three topics: intellectual property and ownership, concentrations of power and control, and environmental impact. To this I would like to add a consideration of social capital, which I begin with briefly here. Both the film industry and “crypto” — if we take the latter to encompass the various facets of so-called ‘web3’ — are engines of social capital. In the case of cinema, its products are commodified and passed through a model that begins with exclusivity (theatrical release) before progressing to mass availability (home media, streaming). The cinematic object, i.e., an individual copy of a film, is, by virtue of its origins as a mass product of the twentieth century, fungible. The film is captured, copied, stored, distributed, and shared. The film-industrial model has always relied on social phenomena, word of mouth, critical discourse, and latterly on buzz across digital social media platforms. This is perhaps as distinct from fine art, where — at least for dealers — the content of the piece does not necessarily matter so much as verification of ownership and provenance. Similarly, web3, with its decentralised and often-anonymised processes, relies on a kind of social activity, or at least a recorded interaction wherein the chain is stamped and each iteration is updated across the system. Even without the current hype, web3 still relies a great deal on discourse, sharing, and community, particularly as it flattens the existing hierarchies of the Internet that linger from Web 2.0. In terms of NFTs, blockchain systems attach scarcity and uniqueness to digital objects. For now, that scarcity and uniqueness is resulting in financial value, though as Jonathan Beller argues the notion of value could — or perhaps should — be reconsidered as blockchain technology, and especially cryptocurrencies, evolve (Beller 217). Regardless, NFT advocates maintain that this is the future of all online activity. To questions of copyright, the structures of blockchain do permit some level of certainty around where a given piece of intellectual property emerged. This is particularly useful where there are transnational differences in recognition of copyright law, such as in France, for instance (Quiniou 112-13). The Berne Convention stipulates that “the subsistence of copyright does not rest on the compliance with formal requirements: rights will exist if the work meets the requirements for protection set out by national law and treaties” (Guadamuz 1373). However, there are still no legal structures underpinning even the most transparent of transactions, when an originator goes out of their way to transfer rights to the buyer of the accompanying NFT. The minimum requirement — even courtesy — for the assignment of rights is the identification of the work itself; as Guadamuz notes, this is tricky for NFTs as they are written in code (1374). The blockchain’s openness and transparency are its key benefits, but until the code can explicitly include (or concretely and permanently reference) the ‘content’ of an NFT, its utility as a system of ownership is questionable. Decentralisation, too, is raised consistently as a key positive characteristic of blockchain technology. Despite the energy required for this decentralisation (addressed shortly), it is true that, at least in its base code, blockchain is a technology with no centralised source of truth or verification. Instead, such verification is performed by every node on the chain. On the surface, for the film industry, this might mean modes of financing, rights management, and distribution chains that are not beholden to multinational media conglomerates, streamers like Netflix, niche intermediaries, or legacy studios. The result here would be a flattening of the terrain: breaking down studio and corporate gatekeeping in favour of a more democratised creative landscape. Creators and creative teams would work peer-to-peer, paying, contracting, servicing, and distribution via the blockchain, with iron-clad, publicly accessible tracking of transactions and ownership. The alternative, though, is that the same imbalances persist, just in a different form: this is outlined in the next section. As Hunter Vaughan writes, the film industry’s environmental impact has long been under-examined. Its practices are diverse, distributed, and hard to quantify. Cinematic images, Vaughan writes, “do not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air: they have always been generated by the earth and sun, by fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them has material consequences” (3). We believe that by watching a “green” film like Avatar we are doing good, but it implicates us in the dirty secret, an issue of “ignorance and of voluntary psychosis” where “we do not see who we are harming or how these practices are affecting the environment, and we routinely agree to accept the virtual as real” (5). Beyond questions of implication and eco-material conceptualisation, however, there are stark facts. In the 1920s, the Kodak Park Plant in New York drew 12 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day to produce film stock. As the twentieth century came to a close, this amount — for a single film plant — had grown to 35-53 million gallons per day. The waste water was perfunctorily “cleaned” and then dumped into surrounding rivers (72-3). This was just one plant, and one part of the filmmaking process. With the shift to digital, this cost might now be calculated in the extraction of precious metals used to make contemporary cameras, computers, or storage devices. Regardless, extrapolate outwards to a global film industry and one quickly realises the impact is almost beyond comprehension. Considering — let alone calculating — the carbon footprint of blockchain requires outlining some fundamentals of the technology. The two primary architectures of blockchain are Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS), both of which denote methods of adding and verifying new blocks to a chain. PoW was the first model, employed by Bitcoin and the first iteration of Ethereum. In a PoW model, each new block has a specific cryptographic hash. To confirm the new block, crypto miners use their systems to generate a target hash that is less than or equal to that of the block. The systems process these calculations quickly, as the goal is to be “the first miner with the target hash because that miner is the one who can update the blockchain and receive crypto rewards” (Daly). The race for block confirmation necessitates huge amounts of processing power to make these quick calculations. The PoS model differs in that miners are replaced by validators (or staking services where participants pool validation power). Rather than investing in computer power, validators invest in the blockchain’s coins, staking those coins (tokens) in a smart contract (think of this contract like a bank account or vault). When a new block is proposed, an algorithm chooses a validator based on the size of their stake; if the block is verified, the validator receives further cryptocurrency as a reward (Castor). Given the ubiquity and exponential growth of blockchain technology and its users, an accurate quantification of its carbon footprint is difficult. For some precedent, though, one might consider the impact of the Bitcoin blockchain, which runs on a PoW model. As the New York Times so succinctly puts it: “the process of creating Bitcoin to spend or trade consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, more than is used by Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million” (Huang, O’Neill and Tabuchi). The current Ethereum system (at time of writing), where the majority of NFT transactions take place, also runs on PoW, and it is estimated that a single Ethereum transaction is equivalent to nearly nine days of power consumption by an average US household (Digiconomist). Ethereum always intended to operate on a PoS system, and the transition to this new model is currently underway (Castor). Proof of Stake transactions use significantly less energy — the new Ethereum will supposedly be approximately 2,000 times more energy efficient (Beekhuizen). However, newer systems such as Solana have been explicit about their efficiency goals, stating that a single Solana transaction uses less energy (1,837 Joules, to be precise) than keeping an LED light on for one hour (36,000 J); one Ethereum transaction, for comparison, uses over 692 million J (Solana). In addition to energy usage, however, there is also the question of e-waste as a result of mining and general blockchain operations which, at the time of writing, for Bitcoin sits at around 32 kilotons per year, around the same as the consumer IT wastage of the Netherlands (de Vries and Stoll). How the growth in NFT awareness and adoption amplifies this impact remains to be seen, but depending on which blockchain they use, they may be wasting energy and resources by design. If using a PoW model, the more valuable the cryptocurrency used to make the purchase, the more energy (“gas”) required to authenticate the purchase across the chain. Images abound online of jerry-rigged crypto data centres of varying quality (see also efficiency and safety). With each NFT minted, sold, or traded, these centres draw — and thus waste, for gas — more and more energy. With increased public attention and scrutiny, cryptocurrencies are slowly realising that things could be better. As sustainable alternatives become more desirable and mainstream, it is safe to predict that many NFT marketplaces may migrate to Cardano, Solana, or other more efficient blockchain bases. For now, though, this article considers the existing implementations of NFTs and blockchain technology within the film industry. Current Implementations The current applications of NFTs in film centre around financing and distribution. In terms of the former, NFTs are saleable items that can raise capital for production, distribution, or marketing. As previously mentioned, director Kevin Smith launched Jay & Silent Bob’s Crypto Studio in order to finish and release Killroy Was Here. Smith released over 600 limited edition tokens, including one of the film itself (Moore). In October 2021, renowned Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai sold an NFT with unreleased footage from his film In the Mood for Love at Sotheby’s for US$550,000 (Raybaud). Quentin Tarantino entered the arena in January 2022, auctioning uncut scenes from his 1994 film Pulp Fiction, despite the threat of legal action from the film’s original distributor Miramax (Dailey). In Australia, an early adopter of the technology is director Michael Beets, who works in virtual production and immersive experiences. His immersive 14-minute VR film Nezunoban (2020) was split into seven different chapters, and each chapter was sold as an NFT. Beets also works with artists to develop entry tickets that are their own piece of generative art; with these tickets and the chapters selling for hundreds of dollars at a time, Beets seems to have achieved the impossible: turning a profit on a short film (Fletcher). Another Australian writer-producer, Samuel Wilson, now based in Canada, suggests that the technology does encourage filmmakers to think differently about what they create: At the moment, I’m making NFTs from extra footage of my feature film Miles Away, which will be released early next year. In one way, it’s like a new age of behind-the-scenes/bonus features. I have 14 hours of DV tapes that I’m cutting into a short film which I will then sell in chapters over the coming months. One chapter will feature the dashing KJ Apa (Songbird, Riverdale) without his shirt on. So, hopefully that can turn some heads. (Wilson, in Fletcher) In addition to individual directors, a number of startup companies are also seeking to get in on the action. One of these is Vuele, which is best understood as a blockchain-based streaming service: an NFT Netflix, if you like. In addition to films themselves, the service will offer extra content as NFTs, including “behind the scenes content, bonus features, exclusive Q&As, and memorabilia” (CurrencyWorks). Vuele’s launch title is Zero Contact, directed by Rick Dugdale and starring Anthony Hopkins. The film is marketed as “the World’s First NFT Feature Film” (as at the time of writing, though, both Vuele and its flagship film have yet to launch). Also launching is NFT Studios, a blockchain-based production company that distributes the executive producer role to those buying into the project. NFT Studios is a decentralised administrative organisation (DAO), guided by tech experts, producers, and film industry intermediaries. NFT Studios is launching with A Wing and a Prayer, a biopic of aeronaut Brian Milton (NFT Studios), and will announce their full slate across festivals in 2022. In Australia, Culture Vault states that its aim is to demystify crypto and champion Australian artists’ rights and access to the space. Co-founder and CEO Michelle Grey is well aware of the aforementioned current social capital of NFTs, but is also acutely aware of the space’s opacity and the ubiquity of often machine-generated tat. “The early NFT space was in its infancy, there was a lot of crap around, but don’t forget there’s a lot of garbage in the traditional art world too,” she says (cited in Miller). Grey and her company effectively act like art dealers; intermediaries between the tech and art worlds. These new companies claim to be adhering to the principles of web3, often selling themselves as collectives, DAOs, or distributed administrative systems. But the entrenched tendencies of the film industry — particularly the persistent Hollywood system — are not so easily broken down. Vuele is a joint venture between CurrencyWorks and Enderby Entertainment. The former is a financial technology company setting up blockchain systems for businesses, including the establishment of branded digital currencies such as the controversial FreedomCoin (Memoria); the latter, Enderby, is a production company founded by Canadian film producer (and former investor relations expert in the oil and uranium sectors) Rick Dugdale (Wiesner). Similarly, NFT Studios is partnered with consulting and marketing agencies and blockchain venture capitalists (NFT Investments PLC). Depending on how charitable or cynical one is feeling, these start-ups are either helpful intermediaries to facilitate legacy media moving into NFT technology, or the first bricks in the capitalist wall to bar access for entry to other players. The Future Is… Buffering Marketplaces like Mintable, OpenSea, and Rarible do indeed make the minting and selling of NFTs fairly straightforward — if you’ve ever listed an item for sale on eBay or Facebook, you can probably mint an NFT. Despite this, the current major barrier for average punters to the NFT space remains technical knowledge. The principles of blockchain remain fairly opaque — even this author, who has been on a deep dive for this article, remains sceptical that widespread adoption across multiple applications and industries is feasible. Even so, as Rennie notes, “the unknown is not what blockchain technology is, or even what it is for (there are countless ‘use cases’), but how it structures the actions of those who use it” (235). At the time of writing, a great many commentators and a small handful of scholars are speculating about the role of the metaverse in the creative space. If the endgame of the metaverse is realised, i.e., a virtual, interactive space where users can interact, trade, and consume entertainment, the role of creators, dealers, distributors, and other brokers and players will be up-ended, and have to re-settle once again. Film industry practitioners might look to the games space to see what the road might look like, but then again, in an industry that is — at its best — somewhat resistant to change, this may simply be a fad that blows over. Blockchain’s current employment as a get-rich-quick mechanism for the algorithmic literati and as a computational extension of existing power structures suggests nothing more than another techno-bubble primed to burst (Patrickson 591-2; Klein). Despite the aspirational commentary surrounding distributed administrative systems and organisations, the current implementations are restricted, for now, to startups like NFT Studios. In terms of cinema, it does remain to be seen whether the deployment of NFTs will move beyond a kind of “Netflix with tchotchkes” model, or a variant of crowdfunding with perks. Once Vuele and NFT Studios launch properly, we may have a sense of how this all will play out, particularly alongside less corporate-driven, more artistically-minded initiatives like that of Michael Beets and Culture Vault. It is possible, too, that blockchain technology may streamline the mechanics of the industry in terms of automating or simplifying parts of the production process, particularly around contracts, financing, licensing. This would obviously remove some of the associated labour and fees, but would also de-couple long-established parts and personnel of the industry — would Hollywood and similar industrial-entertainment complexes let this happen? 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