Which is where I realised we were in a slightly blurred area with this line of debate. The issue of our 'open source' production seems to be being held to account on the strength (or weakness, depending on your point of view) of the permissive licence the BBC have created specifically for Digital Revolution to allow us to share the series rushes with users for download and re-use (see above blog). I think we've been open from the beginning of the production in July with the blog, Delicious, Flickr, Twitter - the rushes downloads (and licence) are just another aspect of the whole package.
The debate continued, mainly with comments from @nevali and @moltke around the licence, so I posted a link to this blog to hopefully clarify why we didn't use a Creative Commons licence and created a BBC version for our purposes. The key lines to note above (in this context of 'why not Creative Commons?') are:
The rushes are released under an international permissive licence, inspired by but not identical to the Creative Commons Licence. It covers some elements not covered by that licence - for example, you're not allowed to use the footage to suggest the BBC's endorsement or on websites aimed at young children.
It began to feel like the questions raised on Twitter were not going to be best answered on Twitter. So I've started this comment thread on the blog about the rushes, the licence, and our open source-ness in the hope that any thoughts and debate may be given a better chance to express themselves.
I'll work on getting some more info, but ideas for this particular graphics sequence were raised and discussed on the blog Please check our tech! - So you can reference there for some further info.
As Lee Siegel states: 'technology is an amplification of human nature, every aspect of human nature' - it's merely that this new technology means there is a greater, freer outlet for that human nature.
I think it is the nature of the web's amplification that is most amazing - that we no longer wait for a researcher / editor team to release (amplify) these clips to us in limited TV dispatches. Rather they are constantly arriving and available; the amplification is entirely democratic / meritocratic in the spread of the clips or memes throughout the collective consciousness.
Like genes, memes are at the mercy of natural selection; which is why 'viral' is a slightly disingenuous term for these things. A virus is spread through a community, friend to friend, without consent (unless you've taken your child to a chicken pox party - but that's something else!); a meme is spread by consent. Or at least one-way. You may not choose to receive a meme - a video, a blog, a retweeted joke - but the choice to then spread the meme remains with you. If you don't like it, you won't email / tweet the link on.
If you lose that element of control in the spread of that information then it is genuinely viral. And, well, we all know there's a million dollar business based on the prevention of that kind of behaviour!