Creative Commons: A Field Study In OpenSource

clipped from www.txdb.net I’ve been trying to explain the ideas of OpenSource recently in terms not specific to programming code or some other technological jargon. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time trying to create an image of OpenSource as a model, but I think I’ve come up with a few examples that will help outline the basic principles. I’ll do this by using CreativeCommons.Org as an Operating Platform. From this platform I’ll demonstrate how OpenSource principles begin to take affect, and how real world examples are utilizing these. Keep in mind that OpenSource is not dependent on CreativeCommons, nor visa versa, they are a way to practice OpenSource, not The Way. CreativeCommons: “…Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain – or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions.”

Copyriot Pt.2

clipped from copyriot.se MRM/metaphoric mode: Defining the network. Here is one very short history of copyright, roughly periodized as three layers of design: Between 1800 and 1950, roughly speaking, copying and use was two physically separated functions. Printing presses were relatively few, and was not needed in order to read the books or perform the scores which were printed. After the world wars, enforcement became more complicated as the means of reproduction entered the private homes. New machines, like the tape recorder, integrated both copying and use in one device. But still, these were two separate functions: You could listen to a tape without producing a new copy of it. Not so with the digital. To use digital information always means to copy it.

Copyriot Pt.1

clipped from copyriot.se Copyriot Multiplication can produce powerful numbers clipped from copyriot.se DRM was a failed attempt to implement social relations technologically, in a very inflexible, black-and-white way: Either you can make a copy, or you can’t. What’s left when the copyright industries one after one are giving up that approach, are a whole set of more subtle ways of enforcing copyright on a technological level: as standards and protocols, as traffic shaping and graphical user interfaces, as the bundling of bugs with features. Rather than saying a straight yes or no, these methods operate as an universal modulation (to use a term employed by Deleuze in his discussion of the “societies of control”).

The Net Generation is redefining intellectual property

clipped from www.wikinomics.com If Hollywood had its way, it would be all too easy to extinguish potentially lucrative sources of user-driven innovation and creativity on the flawed assumption that any form of creative “remixing” of intellectual property is tantamount to piracy. Instead Hollywood should look at the N-Gen’s proclivity to hack and remix digital products as a business opportunity. For example, why not create or encourage the growth of online communities where participants pay a fee to get access to powerful new editing tools along with the raw materials (including the latest music and movies) to fashion their own media creations? Issues surrounding intellectual property will be pivotal in the coming years as N-Geners move into positions of authority in government, business, and the community. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, and you can be sure that folks at New Paradigm will be watching closely.

Copyright Doesn’t Cover This Site

clipped from www.wired.com To prove that open sourcing any and all information can help students swim instead of sink, the University of Maine’s Still Water new media lab has produced the Pool, a collaborative online environment for creating and sharing images, music, videos, programming code and texts. “We are training revolutionaries — not by indoctrinating them with dogma but by exposing them to a process in which sharing culture rather than hoarding it is the norm,” said Joline Blais, a professor of new media at the University of Maine and Still Water co-director. “It’s all about imagining a society where sharing is productive rather than destructive, where cooperation becomes more powerful than competition,” Blais said.

Remix Lessig (english version)

clipped from netzpolitik.org Beginning of last week we had the opportunity to interview Lawrence Lessig in Berlin. Lawrence Lessig is author of several books, US-American law professor at the Stanford Law School and joint founder of Creative Commons. At present for the timespan of a year he resides as Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He withdrew himself to write two further books. Despite a cold and some coughs he reserved nearly one hour to explain different topics in detail.

Towards an Open-Source, Collaborative Media

clipped from www.masternewmedia.org As Web 2.0 opens up the possibilities for online collaboration and open source culture, the media are being seized by the ”people formerly known as the audience“. With collaborative efforts transforming the face of news media, music and video production, and even film-making the possibilities for everyday people to create independent media are growing exponentially. In the wake of this surge of user generated content, the mainstream media are struggling. Newspaper sales are dwindling, DVDs and CDs are becoming relics that no one is interested in, and TV viewing figures are feeling the impact of YouTube’s success.

Remix Culture and Collaboration

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com That being said, one of the key ideas from the Creative Commons that I really embrace is the idea that all creativity is rooted in re-use. The network is opening up some amazing possibilities for us to reinvent content, reinvent collaboration. The smartest thing that any publisher can do is to make sure that we allow our customers to surprise us with ways that they have remixed our ideas and our material with their own.

remixes + bonus beats

clipped from transition.turbulence.org Generally speaking, remix culture can be defined as the global activity consisting of the creative and efficient exchange of information made possible by digital technologies that is supported by the practice of cut/copy and paste. (1) The concept of Remix often referenced in popular culture derives from the model of music remixes which were produced around the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York City with roots in Jamaican music. (2) Today, Remix (the activity of taking samples from pre-existing materials to combine them into new forms according to personal taste) has been extended to other areas of culture, including the visual arts; it plays a vital role in mass communication, especially on the Internet

Remix Defined Pt.7

clipped from remixtheory.net Allegory is often deconstructed in more advanced remixes following this third form, and quickly moves to be a reflexive exercise that at times leads to a “remix” in which the only thing that is recognizable from the original is the title. But, to be clear—no matter what—the remix will always rely on the authority of the original song. When this activity is extended to culture at large, the remix is in the end a re-mix—that is a rearrangement of something already recognizable; it functions at a second level: a meta-level. This implies that the originality of the remix is non-existent, therefore it must acknowledge its source of validation self-reflexively. In brief, the remix when extended as a cultural practice is a second mix of something pre-existent; the material that is mixed at least for a second time must be recognized otherwise it could be misunderstood as something new, and it would become plagiarism. Without a history, the remix cannot be Remix.[5]