Free the IPhone

Following up on my earlier post about the Ipod and its negative implications for creativity, here's a great new site on the IPhone. I'm pretty tech geek, but hate the iphone for two reasons - price and its being locked to AT&T, so I opted out on the long lines for those reasons. Looks like Free Press is even more serious than me in their boycott! From the site:

Apple touts the iPhone as the “Internet in your pocket” — but it’s not. You can’t use it without signing on with AT&T, and once you do they cripple services, limit what you can do and restrict where you can go on the wireless Web.

We need Wireless Freedom — and our elected officials are the only ones who can give it to us: the freedom to use all Internet devices on any wireless network in a market that offers true high-speed Internet and real consumer choice.

Take action today. Demand that the FCC and Congress free the iPhone and put the Internet in the hands of everyone.

New Resources Podcast

Agnes Varnum has launched a new podcast on Resources, the blog of Renew Media (where I work). Her first podcast is an interview with Philip Mallory Jones, one of our media arts fellows, and a great filmmaker, now digital artist, who has made a pretty successful move into Second Life. As Agnes describes:

His new work, IN THE SWEET BYE & BYE, is a three-pronged collaborative project with his mother Dorothy Mallory Jones, which includes a book, gallery installation and an installation in Second Life. From his text, “It is an evocation of African-American personal/familial/communal narratives and allegories, in words and distinctive interpretive visual compositions. It is a hymn of nuanced harmonies and discords; a blending of voices sweet and rough. It is a trans-generational memoir, illuminating paths we walk, stories we’ve been told, and the dream-places we haunt. It is a continuation of my four decades of art-making and research, and my creative collaborations with poet/novelist Dorothy Mallory Jones.”

Definitely something to check out. I like his mix of orality and new media literacy (electracy, per Ulmer). I haven't visited this yet, but plan to asap.

Agnes did an amazing job with this podcast- it's her first podcast for us (and I think her first podcast at all), and she did it quite professionally. Nice music intros and interludes, great interview questions, good editing. It's the first of several that she'll be launching with us, and I can't wait for the next one. We should have a subscription button up soon, and perhaps I'll learn how to embed the podcast directly into this blog soon! For now, it's here.

Online Video Usage Increasing

The NY Times ran a tiny piece in the Sunday paper and online about a new comScore report showing that 71% of all internet users watch online video. As Scott Kirsner has pointed out, many of these are watching news, or short clips, but its interesting that so many people are watching anything at all - this wasn't the case not too long ago, and is sure to keep growing.

The Film Essay and Visual Scholarship

Awhile back, I posted on a short film called the Fair(y) Use Tale by a professor named Eric Faden. A couple days ago, we met online when he emailed to tell me about some of his other projects. I took a look, expecting more of the same - something about copyright or policy. Surprise. Eric makes other great films that while definitely using fair use, aren't about it as a concept.

One of his new films, Tracking Theory, is pretty unique. To find it click here, and then follow through the prompts to the index where you'll find his film (there is no direct link). Tracking Theory is about the connections between trains, cinema and perception. It's also an attempt to make a film essay and to practice visual scholarship. What he calls a "media stylo." As Eric puts it:

I also liked the video essay's refiguring of artist and audience relationship. While the idea of "interactive" media has been much hyped in recent years, it seems to me the "essay" film has long existed as an interactive form. Unlike traditional Hollywood narrative and its more homogenous, disposable, and formulaic approach, the essay film intentionally invites the audience to probe, re-view, and question the film's content and style. For me, much of today's interactive media design requires interactivity of hands and mouse but not necessarily the brain. I wanted to use a familiar, perhaps even dated, media form (the movies) but in a different way (the essay). emphasis added (because its a great quote)

This is in-line with what Greg Ulmer calls electracy, which I have posted about here. Oddly enough, we talked, and we both studied with Ulmer - him more than I, which is probably why he made this film and I made this blog. Anyway, watch the film, its more interesting than it sounds here. It's also just interesting as a film - cool visuals and a somewhat hidden conceit that you can learn about if you click on the "background notes" section attached to the film.

What Eric is proposing with the film is that film studies, and actually any scholarship, can be integrated into a visual essay and be just as effective as the written word. It can be entertaining and theoretical, and it can push visual boundaries - all at the same time. He also succeeds at making an interactive essay film, one found online but not dependent on web 2.0 to get your brain working. He's doing more than just this, but that's a start.

By the way, the journal this film is in is called Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology. Its pretty theory heavy, but a good read for anyone interested in this stuff.

Kirsner on Online Distribution

Scott Kirsner is a smart guy, and he's doing a great job of letting people know about online distribution. I look at his blog pretty often, and he just featured a slideshow presentation he gave in San Francisco. The slideshow is great, but I was just as impressed with the tool he used to post it, as I could have used this for years. Anyway, here's his presentation:

Reframe and digital delivery

Just yesterday, we launched a new website for a project we're launching at Renew Media. The project, Reframe, is going to be pretty cool - but I'm biased because I created it with the help of a lot of our staff. While the "real" Reframe website won't launch until this Fall, I think people who read this blog will find the interim site pretty interesting.

Reframe is bringing together content from multiple sources - filmmakers, distributors, archives and others - and digitizing these works for free, on a nonexclusive basis to help make them available to the public. Through a partnership with Amazon, we'll be digitizing and offering these films as DVD on Demand, Digital Download to Own and Digital Download to Rent. Full details are on the new website, and the site will soon have all terms, the technical requirements, and everything else people will need to get their content in the system.

Around September, the website will launch, and it will feature all of the films we've aggregated, easy tools to buy them and lots of social networking features to build communities around these films. The current site will feature lots of great things before September - guest bloggers writing about digital distribution trends and concerns, curators talking about things like transitioning avant-garde films to the web and more. Check it out.

IPod and the death of creativity

Ok, this title is purposefully over-the-top, but bear with me. I held out on buying an IPod for years. I was ridiculed by friends, perhaps more because of the fact that I still don’t have cable even though I write about Second Life. Part of the reason for my IPod less-ness was philosophical; part that I don’t like to listen to music while walking, still have vinyl records and was too cheap. I finally gave in and bought the IPod, but my conscience kept bothering me, and I continue to have major issues with the IPod, and also with TiVo and some other gadgets that most people think are the second coming.

Why? Because they defy the possibilities inherent in new technologies, and actually make computers more like toasters – something good at a certain function, but not good at experimental, user-generated upgrade. I think this also has serious implications for the net, for our society and most of all for creativity. I think filmmakers should care about it, but to most people it is counterintuitive to give these products any negativity, so I’m sure this view won’t be popular.

While in Sonoma for a conference, I read a great article called “Saving the Internet,” by Jonathan Zittrain in the Harvard Business Review on the subject, and it got me thinking about this some more. (Note - HBR isn't very generative, so you may have to sign in, but the article is free). Zittrain argues that what makes the internet interesting, innovative and creative is its generativity. As he describes it:

The expediently selected, almost accidentally generative properties of the Internet—its technical openness, ease of access and mastery, and adaptability—have combined, especially when coupled with those of the PC, to produce an unsurpassed environment for innovative experiment.

In other words, the ability for anyone to make new applications, to build new systems, to adapt old models into new models – to create, to innovate – is precisely what has been important about the PC and the web. These technologies are created to “generate” new ideas and new platforms. Yes, it may be easier for someone to develop a computer that only lets you do certain things – like find music, buy it and play it – but this is much less interesting than a computer that one could adapt to also do other things, or do these same things better.

Zittrain goes on to show that the same things that make generative computing work so well are precisely the same things that allow for mischief, such as hacking and piracy. As he describes it:

Those same properties, however, also make the Internet hospitable to various forms of wickedness: hacking, porn, spam, fraud, theft, predation, and attacks on the network itself. As these undesirable phenomena proliferate, business, government, and many users find common cause for locking down Internet and PC architecture in the interests of security and order.

So, because someone could create a malicious hack that would cripple the IPod, or because of piracy concerns, Apple says “we’re taking away these properties which could confuse you or be harmful.” I’m not exaggerating. Like everyone else, I can’t wait for the IPhone, but Steve Jobs has already been quoted saying that the IPhone will not be an open platform, similar to the IPod because people don’t need or want this. Who is he to day, and why does this matter? Think about how cellphones are today - As Zittrain puts it, “Most mobile phones are similarly constrained: They are smart, and many can access the Internet, but the access is channeled through browsers provided and controlled by the phone-service vendor.” Cellphones are usually locked so that you can’t use them on networks other than your provider (a big problem for travelers), not open to reprogramming – not generative. Imagine what great things could be made for the IPod or the IPhone if they were more open – like Firefox, for example, or like other open platforms.

The IPhone will not be a generative device. Why? One, so that they can control the experience – they don’t want you to download music from outside their system where someone else makes money, but they also don’t want you to download a program that could harm your phone. Most consumers don’t want this either, and we want a cool phone, so we accept this trade off pretty readily. In doing so, however, we perpetuate the move towards making our generative computers more like appliances - less innovative and less room for actual creativity.

Zittrain isn’t saying anything new – lots of tech people talk about this, and Larry Lessig has covered similar ground quite well in discussions about the difference between the Read/Write and Read Only paradigms. He too aligns the IPod with this problem. To Lessig, the Read/Write paradigm is quite similar to generative computing – technology that you can use to both read and write – to be a passive consumer or an active creator – whatever floats your boat. Read Only technology – the IPod – just lets you consume, not create. Read-Write encourages creativity, innovation and, he argues – actually encourages more economic growth, due to this constant innovation. In essence, by embracing read-only, less generative models, we are killing the goose that laid the golden egg – and early in this technology’s development.

Both authors are getting at this for different reasons, but both note the possible effects on creativity. This is what I’d like to explore further in my next post, as I think it merits more thought. Other technologies started as more “Read/Write” and became more “Read Only” over time – cinema, radio, television all moved from systems for which people could easily create content to ones in which most people just received content. The creative possibilities for filmmakers –and the distribution possibilities – will become less as we move away from generative computing to the internet and the computer as an appliance. I’m not saying to throw away your IPod, but I do think that as creative types, filmmakers should pay attention to this change and push for more open models.

Learning from business mags

While in Sonoma, I was working, but my trip did give me the opportunity to sit down and catch up on some reading. Again, this being Sonoma, the reading was on a patio overlooking a stream while drinking some Jade Mountain Mourvedre (excellent, buy some). I didn’t relax with a book, but rather the latest issue of Harvard Business Review.

Ok, if you didn’t just puke from the sad thought of me taking time to read work related stuff in the middle of one of the anti-work capitols of America, bear with me. I’ve always liked trade journals – give me “Beverage Industry Daily,” “Plastic Form Applicators Today” or “Ship-Hull Repairers Weekly” and I am happy as a dental patient with a rack o’ People or a pedophile with TeenBeat. I just love learning minutiae about obscure industries. My first intro to HBR was through my dad – a management type who reads magazines like “Janes” the industry bible for the defense industry (real headline – “Northrop Grumman makes laser that can melt closet liberals”) as well as management mags like HBR, and I read it like just another trade journal but for those in white collar. Swear to god, I picked this up thinking it was just more industry porn, but it actually had some articles relevant to my life. It was uncanny the way that I could read about something boring like supply chain management (I still don’t know what that is actually, but it’s a real thing that people apparently get paid for) and find something that applied to video distribution, film production or funding creativity. I stole my dad’s copies often enough that he made me get my own subscription. Note that the last sentence has never, ever been written when not referring to Playboy or Sports Illustrated. I may have just developed a new genre of bad nonfiction writing or at least sparked an infringement case.

Anyway, there are at least ten things I can say on a regular basis to crowds of people and get the Socrates look – you know, as if you just said something brilliant – when all I’ve done was change some nouns while quoting some business professor in the HBR talking about marketing soap to Indonesia. I could turn this into a bad consulting business if I had no morals, but I really do learn some things from it, and I want to share them with you. Why? Because I actually think that these concepts have relevance to what we care about – making films and getting them seen and appreciated – and doubt anyone else will take the time to translate these business professors into the English language they so abhor. So here we go, with my next post on (long anticipatory pause….) generative computing. Nope, I didn’t make that term up either.

More soon, but I guess my bottom line point is that filmmakers and other in this industry who want to truly be creative and innovate would do well to read a lot of things outside our particular industry and apply this knowledge to what we do day to day. You probably won’t learn much new from Filmmaker or Variety, but you might learn a lot about working with egos, read actors, from Warren E. Buffett or the writers in the HBR. Believe it or not.

New Day Films Convening

Just back from Sonoma, where I joined the New Day Films conference after a brief day at Silverdocs. This was a strange trip for me – I had to cut short my time at a great film festival, to visit a resort town, but only for two days, so just enough time to meet some people, have some good conversations and dinner – and this being Sonoma, try some great wine – but not enough time to really turn either trip into one of those almost-vacations that can be so great.

My colleagues laughed at me when I checked in and gave them my type-A Sonoma update – driving like a madman to the Russian River Valley to taste and buy a bottle of wine from Rochioli Vineyards (go there – it rocks) on my way to the conference I was in town for, like some obsessed madman instead of the leisurely wine-taster you typically find in this part of the country. I nearly killed myself trying to email from my phone while driving the winding roads (there’s a reason I live near subways instead of owning a car), and the winery must have loved my ability to select, taste and buy two types of wine whilst texting and emailing my office. They would’ve killed me if they had time between the bridal showers. Whatever – I did my work, my speech and tasted some superb wine all within a matter of hours. It was a great mix of my favorite things – technology, wine, food, discovering new places and talking.

I was speaking at the annual meeting of New Day Films. They are a great collaborative/collective model for the educational distribution of independent films. One which I think is even more relevant today. Being smart folks, they all meet in this great little camp resort with great food, a pool, hot-tub and beautiful surroundings. I presented a long presentation on the future of online video delivery and how it relates to a project we are launching to help digitize and deliver important content. I’ll post more about that soon. The conference was great – I think I can un-facetiously say that people liked the presentation, and I know I learned a lot from their questions. It was clear that everyone is thinking about what’s next, and many people – even those who don’t use new technologies daily, are ready to address change. It was a refreshing meeting with a great group of folks.

Galapagos to DUMBO

Awhile back I reported on efforts at Galapagos to keep NY a creative capital. Now, they've announced that they will be leaving Williamsburg for DUMBO because their rent was increasing by 30%, and this was after it had increased by $10,000 a month back in 2005. Galapagos was one of the pioneers of Williamsburg, so its sad to see them go. It's also odd that they are hitting Dumbo, because if I lived there (which I did a year ago), then its definitely not pioneering anything. That said, they could make Dumbo a bit more hip, and I'm glad to see them working with a developer that cares about keeping good art in NYC.

Robert Elmes, the director of Galapagos, is doing his best to keep artists and some edge in NYC. The city needs more people like him.

More on the Galapagos site.

FCC B.tch Slapped

The FCC got its a.. kicked yesterday by the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. The Court said that the FCC's indecency stance - what it calls the "fleeting expletives" rules - were arbitrary and capricious. That's court speak for saying the rules were just plain dumb. The Court even went so far as to say that they doubt the FCC can come up with any regulation that wouldn't violate the Constitution.

Marjorie Heins, formerly of the Free Expression Policy Project, sums up the importance of the case:

The most important part of today's decision in Fox Television Stations v. FCC, however, was lengthy "dicta" (that is, statements not necessary to the result in the case). Warning the FCC not to simply invent additional rationales for its rules against "indecency" and "profanity" in broadcasting, Judges Rosemary Pooler and Peter Hall opined that the agency's entire censorship scheme is likely unconstitutional: its standards are too discretionary; and, given the pervasiveness of the words "fuck" and "shit," and their many variants, in contemporary society, it would not likely be able to show a "compelling state interest" in censoring them.

This is great news for creative types, as the FCC's rules and the recent increase of FCC fines to over $300,000 had serious self-censorship reprecussions. While it affected Fox, NBC and the majors the most, it was also stifling Ken Burns, PBS and others.

Heins' closing paragraphs in her summation are pretty funny:

In a perhaps unintentionally comic footnote, Judge Leval took issue with the FCC's determination that uses of the word "shit" are necessarily indecent. Since, "for children, excrement is a main preoccupation of their early years," he said, "there is surely no thought that children are harmed by hearing references to excrement." While Judge Leval evidently assumed that children would be harmed by hearing references to sex, with regard to excrement, he thought, "the Commission's prohibitions are not justified at all by the risk of harm to children but only by concern for good manners."

Despite these apparently trivial quibbles over whether children are harmed by hearing a word such as "shit," the decision in Fox v. FCC is monumentally important. It fully exposes the irrationality, and the excesses, of the FCC's censorship regime. But it will be a long while yet before we are fully rid of this constitutional anomaly.

The FCC is run by a right-wing zealot from North Carolina named Kenneth Martin, and he said he plans to appeal, but its doubtful he'll get far. Hot damn.

Copyright, Fair Use, Disney and the NYTimes

Boy, what a weekend for copyright news...how often do you get to say that with a straight face? On vacation, I read this editorial in the NYTimes on extending copyright forever, and I couldn't believe they would publish something so ridiculous. The argument, essentially that creators should get a perpetual copyright (that's right, forever) was so beyond ridiculous that I didn't know where to begin. Luckily, before my flight landed Sunday night, Larry Lessig had already started a wiki-based response to the article, so I can let the experts hash this out.

Bottom line - it's worth reading the original article, because he makes some points that to the uninitiated in these areas (um, most of us), could seem reasonable. I mean, at first glance, it could seem reasonable to consider intellectual property to be the same as physical property - but there's a reason this isn't the case, and it's worth checking out the wiki-response for the reasons - if you have the slightest interest in copyright issues.

But, the real reason for this post is to push you to watch this great new video from Stanford on copyright, fair use and Disney...using clips from Disney films to illustrate the point. Beautiful work, since Disney has essentially been the main push behind our copyright laws being so erroneous. Great video.

DJ Spooky Remix this Weekend

The Tribeca Film Festival has a great program tonight and this weekend. From their site:

Rebirth of a Nation galvanizes the audience with a challenging interactive experience. Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid) re-works, re-makes, and re-interprets one of America's most controversial films, Birth of a Nation, and calls it Rebirth of a Nation.

Mixed live and projected on a triptych, this is the first time Miller will be using new visual material that he has produced with Starz and a re-worked score as performed by the Kronos Quartet, to create uniquely visceral production. The point, in fact, is to create a new narrative in response to fallacies that were propagated by the original film. In Miller's own words: "Birth of a Nation focuses on how America needed to create a fiction of African-American culture in tune with the fabrication of 'whiteness' that under-girded American thought throughout most of the last several centuries: it floats out in the world of cinema as an enduring, albeit totally racist, epic tale of an America that, in essence, never existed. The Ku Klux Klan still uses this film as a recruiting device and it's considered to be an American 'cinema classic' despite the racist content."

The result is a new experience in the evolution of art, cinema and activism.

Also, don’t miss the opening act, "Latitude", a performance piece by D-Fuse inspired by the notion of drifting through the urban land and soundscapes of China. In their New York premier, this London-based video art collective challenges the way you see and hear by following the emotive qualities of spaces that surround us. Fragments of conversations, crowds, journeys, lights, deserted space, and architectural forms are mixed in a unique live performance tracing a multitude of paths, identities, and influences, representing the everyday life of cosmopolitan China.


» Get Tickets for Rebirth of a Nation

Renew Remix Films

Over at Renew Media, where I work, we've just posted some cool films that you can remix and share. From our site:

Five Media Arts Fellows have made short films to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Media Arts Fellowships. The filmmakers are Jem Cohen, Luciano Larobina, Valerie Soe, James Spooner and Casper Stracke. Watch the other shorts, or make your own remix on Eyespot.

Renew Media has partnered with Eyespot for this project. Eyespot allows users to post video online, find footage from other artists and individuals, edit the footage into new creative works and share these works with the public. Renew Media has posted the 5 short films to Eyespot, where other artists can take samples, combine new video footage and music and create new works. All works created will acknowledge the original artists work, and will also be available for further mash-up and viral sharing.

Become part of the anniversary celebrations by creating an account with www.eyespot.com, so you can log in and make a remix/mashup of the films online. You can also download the films to your computer. Remember to let us know when you’ve created your remix, so we can link to it!

A panel of Fellows will select the top 5 remixes as winners, which will be showcased during other Renew Media Anniversary activities throughout the year, as well as on Eyespot.

MPAA getting smarter about DRM?

Great news, relatively speaking, out today that Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA is committed to fair use, interoperability and DRM. From a report on Arstechnica (by way of Public Knowledge):
"Glickman said the movie studios were now fully committed to interoperable DRM, and they recognize that consumers should be able to use legitimate video material on any item in the house, including home networks. In a major shift for the industry, Glickman also announced a plan to let consumers rip DVDs for use on home media servers and iPods."
This is a major step forward, publicly, for the MPAA. While the studios are still committed to digital rights management (DRM), they are at least realizing that consumers want to be able to play movies that they purchase on multiple devices and that current DRM schemes aren't up to snuff. Most people who study DRM think it will never work, but Hollywood is scared to death of piracy, so getting Glickman this far in his thinking should be considered a good first step.
The MPAA is eventually going to have to face the facts that soon consumers will want to mix/mash and sample video as well, and will do it whether or not the MPAA likes it. You should also be able to buy a film and give it to a friend - whether on DVD, tape or new formats. Under current DRM you can't, which studios love because they make more sales. But there's a legal precedent called "right of first sale" which says you are allowed to do this. Currently, DRM stops this, and the MPAA will have to address this or consumers will eventually revolt as well. But, a positive sign.

First Academy Award Film under Creative Commons

Click To Play

From Interplast - "In 1997, a film crew accompanied an Interplast volunteer surgical team to An Giang province in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. The filmmakers donated their services to document the team's experiences and produce A Story of Healing, which earned the 1997 Academy Award for best documentary short subject. The 28-minute film is followed by a short epilogue after the credits which follows-up on two patients 16 months after their surgeries.

Ten years after its original release, A Story of Healing has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives license (by-nc-nd) and is available for free online."

Wow! This is great. And, they are also making the DVD available for sale, for those who don't want to watch it for free online. I bet their sales increase, and will try to find out. Great publicity (I saw this first on BoingBoing which means the entire world has now seen it), and a great way for a nonprofit to better accomplish their mission.

MPAA ban effect on theaters

Today's post is given over to the text of a recent email from Ray Privett of NYC's Pioneer Theater. He's calling a meeting to discuss the potential ramifications of a recent MPAA pushed law in NYC aimed to fight piracy, but which could have broader implications. The meeting is today, and I can't make it, but Ray has promised updates.
From the email:

Hello, as some of you know I have called an informal meeting about a recently passed New York City law, relating to the videotaping in movie theaters. The Hollywood Reporter published an article on the topic, which says the following:
"Secretly videotaping movies in a New York City theater for illegal sale on the street would be a misdemeanor, with penalties including possible jail time, under a bill the City Council approved Thursday."

The law is here, and it proves to be more restrictive than the HR article indicates. As a movie theater operator, who is very concerned about the ongoing strength of theaters as exhibition spaces, and also as someone who cares a lot about filmmakers being able to profit from their hard works, I am very sympathetic to and appreciative of the law.

However, I have some pretty sincere reservations. It is in that context that I have called the informal, open meeting for Thursday, April 19, 1pm, at the Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street Near Avenue A.

At this meeting I want to discuss the ramifications of this law as it relates to film showings of public domain or other free to copy / reuse movies, where videotaping is encouraged. What defines a movie theater? What defines a movie? Does this resolution overlook contexts where sharing is authorized and appropriate, in a rush to redefine movie theaters according to the MPAA's dictates? Should a protest exhibition / civil disobedience act be mounted?

Feel free to bring your friends who might also be interested. If you or your friends are lawyers, or city council people, you are all very welcome.

In the remainder of this letter, I sketch out my reservations in further detail.


Best wishes

Ray Privett
Pioneer Theater

Appendix: commentary.

Here is the law, which, from my reading, seems to have passed and will become active within the next few months.

Int. No. 383-A
Full text is here:


Let's look at a few scenarios that this law affects. I'll start with a few scenarios about which there should be little debate, but then I'll move onto a scenario that I think is more complicated.


Scenario A - Robert:
Robert buys a ticket to a screening of THE DEPARTED, which has reserved all copyrights. Robert gets a seat with a clear view, from which he videotapes and audiotapes the entire movie. He goes home, and dumps his taping of the movie onto his computer. From that, he prints DVDs, which he sells on the street.

Has Robert violated this law? Yes, he has. In the parlance of the law, Robert has used a Recording Device, within a Place of Public Performance, in an Unauthorized Operation.

By selling DVDs, he also is directly profiting from this action.

Should this be a criminal act? In my opinion, yes. As it is.


Scenario B - Alice:
Alice buys a ticket to another public screening of THE DEPARTED, which, still, has reserved all copyrights. Alice also gets a seat with a clear view, from which she videotapes and audiotapes the entire movie. She goes home, and dumps her taping of the movie onto her computer. She then places the file online for download.

Has Alice violated this law? Yes, she has. In the parlance of the law, Alice has used a Recording Device, within a Place of Public Performance, in an Unauthorized Operation.

She has not, however, profited from this action, because she has not sold anything.

Should this be a criminal act? In my opinion, yes. As it is.


So, those are two scenarios that are relatively clear. They are also, probably, the scenarios the law intends to address. They are the scenarios addressed by the spirit of the law and also the letter of the law.

But let's look at Scenario C.


Scenario C - Bill:
Bill buys a ticket to a public screening of some short movies. Casey and Rudy made one of those short movies. Their short is licensed under a Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share Alike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/). The screening is in a commercial venue, but Casey and Rudy have authorized the screening, thus waiving the "non-commercial" part of their license.

Bill goes to the screening, and videotapes Casey and Rudy's short while it plays in the theater. He then posts his taping of that screening online, in a manner from which he clearly has not profited. From their own website, Casey and Rudy themselves even link to the tape Bill recorded in the theater.

Has Bill violated the law in question? Yes, it seems, he has. In the parlance of the law, Bill has used a Recording Device, within a Place of Public Performance, in an Unauthorized Operation (as he did not receive any explicit authorization from the theater owners and managers, who only found out about his taping after the fact).

Should this be a criminal act? In my opinion, no. Why should it be? For starters, no copyright law has been broken. But, according to the law that went into effect, Bill has broken a law.

I doubt the people who crafted this law had any such scenario in mind as they were moved by the spirit of the law and as they wrote the letter of the law. However, the letter of that law would indeed make what Bill did a criminal act.

In fact, exactly this scenario has already played out, as you will see if you click here


Now, I don't think the law affects exactly the scenario as documented in that link, because everything happened before the new law passed.

But if something similar took place again, it seems the law would be violated.

Why? Aren't we inappropriately constraining the definition of what a movie theater is, and of what can be shown there? Doesn't it constrain the definition of a movie theater as a place that only shows "all rights reserved" movies? How does the law affect the ability to remix and reuse "some rights reserved" and public domain works?

If you come to the meeting, let's chat about this. Again, this is an informal meeting. To some, the context might seem trivial. But I think the kernel of the issue is important.

Future of Nonprofits may be in Minnesota

Just back from a great conference in Minneapolis, hosted by IFP Minnesota called REFOCUS: The Future of Production in Minnesota. Minnesota, like the rest of us, has been feeling the crunch lately when it comes to all things media. Unlike most place, however, they've gotten together to do something about it. With grants from the Jerome Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Bush Foundation, IFP Minnesota pulled together a full day of panels focused on saving the media arts scene in the state and making Minneapolis/St Paul a leader in the field. As the conference program described it:
Join other top leaders in the film and new media community to begin a conversation about transforming the future of the industry in Minnesota. The goal of this summit is to strengthen Minnesota’s economic infrastructure and create a vibrant film and new media industry through all of its relevant sectors, including: education, non-profit organizations, production (including commercial and feature), exhibition and the digital revolution.

It was great to join people like Richard Seitz of ITVS, Mike Maggiore of Film Forum, Janet and John Pierson of the Austin Film Society and Grainy Pictures, and Bruce Sheridan of Columbia College, Chicago (among others) to work with the folks in MSP to explore ways to revitalize and sustain their media arts community. I spoke about recent changes affecting nonprofit media centers, looming trends - threats and opportunities, and how we are trying to revitalize what we do at my organization. Others spoke about transforming education, or improving exhibition possibilities, and even how to emulate what Austin has in terms of community.

They have a lot going for them - great producers, a good crew base, exciting emerging and established media artists, supportive city leaders (two mayors showed up), and some of the most forward-thinking foundations in the arts. Add to that a great school - MCTC, and some great leaders of local nonprofits - and they might just have the recipe to create real change.

It was exciting to see a group come together in this fashion to really think of all the aspects needed to sustain the media arts in a community. I'm not sure we could pull together such a group in a meaningful dialogue in NYC, but maybe we'll try soon. I thought the best quote of the day came from the leader of a small nonprofit that helps women and girls in MN to make media:

"It would be great if there could be an organization that promotes real advocacy, research on the front edge of media arts, training on that front edge and help with distribution. If such a place existed, its what I'd want to join."

She's right, and hopefully IFP Minnesota can start to build that home, they're thinking about it already.

Miranda July knows Websites

Miranda July has a new book coming out, so she made a website for it. Proof, finally, that there is still creativity on the web.
Read more, buy more.

Open Education, Media and Electracy

Just back from a great conference at Rice University, in Houston, sponsored by Connexions and the Hewlett Foundation. The conference was on Open Educational Resources – which I must admit gets my vote for worst name for an important concept since Net Neutrality. Open Educational Resources (OER) essentially means what it says, even though it doesn’t say it memorably - to make resources available for free for educational purposes. It’s more than that. In fact, it’s a movement with global participants, and it’s something which filmmakers and those working with them (foundations, organizations, etc) should know and think more about.

A recent analysis of the OER Movement (pdf) defines OER as:

…teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

The best way to think about OER is to imagine a hypothetical “student.” Imagine, for example, a college-aged teen in Guatemala (or Kansas, it doesn’t matter) who can’t afford to attend MIT, but who could go online to the MIT Open Courseware site (perhaps via cellphone) and have access to the same materials on engineering that an MIT student has access to – the syllabus, the readings, the videos shown in class, a videotape and/or podcast of the entire semester’s lectures, the notes of students in the class and even the emails or online comments back and forth between students and faculty. Imagine still further that the Guatemalan student could also easily link to works referenced in the course, and have access to those for free as well. For example, the student could be watching a video of a lecture given by MIT faculty on the mathematical principles behind bridge construction practices. When the professor shows a clip from a PBS documentary on the subject, the student could watch not just that clip, but could opt to watch the entire film. When someone in the film references a study done by scholars in London, the student could hyperlink to that study, and access it online, for free, immediately and in a format that allowed the student to easily reference the study in her future scholarship.

I could go on with this example, but I think it’s easy to imagine the possibilities – which, by the way, aren’t new, but have been inherent in the nature of the internet and hypertextuality for years, but are now called web 2 or 3.0. The possibilities for further study by this student are immense. The possibilities for education outside the system, the possibility that this student may never attend a university but could be educated and perhaps make change in her society are immense and real. The underlying idea – that anyone anywhere could (should) have access to the same educational resources as anyone else, that education should be open to all – is powerful. In fact, I believe it is more than powerful, I think it’s a natural belief – i.e., one that resonates as “correct and incontrovertible” by all but the most hard-hearted. The possibilities for our world are staggering – that anyone, anywhere, even the poorest among us, could have access to the same knowledge that anyone else, even the richest, have access to and use it to become educated. I don’t think I need to elaborate much, but the same study on OER that I mentioned references astounding figures given by Sir John Daniels, currently President and CEO of the Commonwealth of Learning in Canada, and formerly Vice-chancellor of the Open University, UK.

• Half of the world’s population is under twenty years old.

• Today, there are over thirty million people who are fully qualified to enter a university, but there is no place available.

• This number will grow to over 100 million during the next decade.

• To meet the staggering global demand for advanced education, a major university needs to be created every week.

• In most of the world, higher education is mired in a crisis of access, cost, and flexibility. The dominant forms of higher education in developed nations—campus based, high cost, limited use of technology—seem ill-suited to address global education needs of the billions of young people who will require it in the decades ahead.

The possibilities of OER to address this situation are limitless, except by the bounds of our imagination. Unfortunately, our legal systems, our educational practices and our societal norms are more confining than our imaginations.

Imagine again the hypothetical student above. While the MIT Open Courseware site exists, not all that is put forth could probably be done now. There are potential copyright concerns, privacy concerns, financial concerns – policy concerns that are real, and which undermine a truly open system. Further, there are the concerns of academic journal publishers, professors, not to mention university presidents about how to get paid for this stuff. Further still, are the concerns of parents wondering why they should pay Harvard prices if all the info is available free online (of course, that’s not the same as a Harvard education). There are economic, political and even technical problems, but it doesn’t take much imagination to envision a world where these could be addressed and worked out. But, the concerns are real, and at times just as staggering as the possibilities.

All of these concerns, and more, are being thought about and addressed by many people around the globe, people who share the belief that OER is a good goal, but who know it won’t be easy. Copyright concerns, for example, can be partially addressed by Creative Commons licenses and the new Creative Commons Learn project. They can also be addressed, at times, by Fair Use. But, that won’t solve everything. They can be addressed in conferences like the one I attended, in academic circles, in governing bodies like WIPO, in federal, state and local governments, and - more practically – by those of us producing knowledge for others, by thinking about how our cultural production meshes with the concepts of OER.

How could OER affect a filmmaker, for example? It means at least that we need new economic models so that filmmakers could be compensated for their work, yet the work could be accessible under OER frameworks. It means that educational distribution will change dramatically. It means that filmmakers will have to think quite differently about their films – perhaps people only need parts of your film for their education, and you may have to think not just about different versions, but also about people literally snipping clips that are relevant to their class, and then a student perhaps “visually quoting” a clip of that clip from your film in their thesis - which will no longer be a paper, but instead a hyper-linked website that might compare your film clip with someone else’s, and perhaps not in the context you intended.

This may all seem a bit much – something that can be ignored until you have to think about it, or perhaps irrelevant to you – you don’t make educational films. But, I would argue that these changes affect all visual media, and that as our world becomes more visually based, so will our education. In fact, Greg Ulmer argues that we are moving from orality to literacy to electracy. Ulmer describes electracy as electronic enabled thought, processes, writing, storytelling, business practices - all based on electronic, visual, motion media communication. The media arts then are not just the visual heritage of our society, but are also crucial to our future development as a culture. If he’s right, which I think he is, then your fiction, non-educational film, may become perfect material for someone else’s educational use, and these concerns will affect you. If he’s right, then we need to think about a system that enables electracy, but also enables media artists to make a living while contributing to our culture.

I’m not advocating that any filmmaker get too ensconced in OER theory and practice, but if you make films because you think that art can contribute to the world, and possibly change it, then perhaps you should think a little about the concepts behind OER. As I said, this is a global movement, and while you haven’t heard much about it yet, you will hear more soon. I do think that organizations like the one I run, and many others, should be part of this conversation – there’s a lot of work to be done, and lots to think about. When people are debating new models, we should be advocating for systems that take into account the needs and concerns of media artists. When visual media is so central to these new developments, we should be making sure that our best practices remain central to the debate. Too, we have much to contribute – we can tell stories, make visual representations of these concepts and arguably create the most important potential OER materials – visual, motion-based media.

OER, like its unwieldy name (an even worse one is being proposed - Open Participatory Learning Infrastructure or OPLI), is a little concept that gets bigger the more you think about its implications. I’ll be thinking about what it means for the field of media arts for more than a little while, and will probably have more on this topic soon.