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This week, sharing's caring. If you've ever had any contact with the media or entertainment industries – indeed, if you've ever been caught manufacturing counterfeit goods to sell down the market – you'll know that copyright is a serious business. Especially in this era of purely digital products, where intellectual property can be duplicated and distributed in seconds, it's enough to send traditional rights holders into quite a flap. And understandably so.But not everything online is copyrighted in the traditional sense: in fact, a new generation of computer types and lawyers got together to form Creative Commons to create licences that modernise the practice of copyright for the internet age. Their motto is 'some rights reserved', and the licenses they've drawn up are designed to encourage creativity and cooperation, while ensuring that ownership is appropriately acknowledged. The upshot is that CC provides a great legal framework for the creatively inclined to reuse other artists' material without upsetting anyone. This means that the delightful and endearing video of a Keepon robot dancing to Spoon's Don't You Evah published by WIRED has been released under a CC license and can be remixed for fun; as have a lot of The Lonely Island's songs and videos, including the classic Just 2 Guys (contains strong language, cuss-fans!). However, in this instance it's hard to imagine any way to improve on the original. But isn't the 'original' just one interpretation of a film's potential? Or what if the 'original' hasn't even been made yet? With their short film Sanctuary, Modfilms have been exploring the idea of allowing collaborators to remix not just the final, edited product, but also their creation's component parts – including the rushes, audio, and concept art. All of these digital assets were licensed through Creative Commons to prevent commercial exploitation by other parties, then released to the online filmmaking community. Though not without its problems, it's a totally new way of approaching film production. To get an idea of the extent of content out there for you to play around with, try out the Creative Commons Search tool (which can already be found as one of the search choices in the Firefox browser). This displays text, video, audio and images which are available for remixing. The rest is up to you...
David Thair
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related info
 useful linksthelonelyisland: just2guyz modfilms: sanctuary modfilms.com creative commons: search
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see also
 webslinky #146web tv  webslinky #145where you live  webslinky #144stock photography  webslinky #143robot friends  webslinky #142hair  webslinkyarchive books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
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