an online comics on the rights situation for documentary film-makers. .
Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
from the center for social media:
Documentary filmmakers have created, through their professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use. Fair Use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. It is a crucial feature of copyright law. In fact, it is what keeps copyright from being censorship. You can invoke fair use when the value to the public of what you are saying outweighs the cost to the private owner of the copyright.
Download this useful handbook, written by veteran filmmakers to help other filmmakers understand some instances where using copyrighted material without clearance is considered fair use.
Statement Authors
- Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers
- Independent Feature Project
- International Documentary Association
- National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
- Women in Film & Video (Washington, D.C., chapter)
Statement Endorsers
Initiation of the Freeculture UK constitution
On the 8th of April the FC UK constitution passed unanimously at the FC UK general assembly at the Limehouse in London. As Deptford.TV is publishing the content under the Creative Commons License and the Art Libre License the discussion around the rights issue on digital media is a main focus of the research into new forms of film-making.
the creative commons license should also be looked at critically. creative commons looks at culture as rough material whereas the artlibre license, see http://artlibre.org or the general public license see http://gplv3.fsf.org/draft where a new version is just writen are looking at culture as work of art - i prefer the phrasing of the artlibre people. but, on the other side cc is much more a "standart" worth going for... if talking cc, it should be made clear about which license your talking, because clearly not all of them are as open as they assume to be (with taking a parallel approach to the free software movement) - my prefered licence is by-sa as it is similar to the general public license or artlibre license. regarding the discussion about non-commercial - i think it is not a good idea to say that documentaries are non commercial. in my eyes they shurely are - what makes it interesting for doc filmmaker to use by-sa, which allows commercial use, is that a pool of material is generated out of which doc filmmakers can bennefit - and at the same time taking away the power of the big media players over their archives - similar to the free/open software movement sharing their source code, benefiting the community and givin microsoft a hard time... please see also some thoughts in the next two hidden posts on why not nc from the free culture network see http://freeculture.org.uk also look at: http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html
an email exchange regarding the non-commercial issue with rufus pollock from the open knowledge foundation:
First, a by-sa license is clearly 'freer' than a by-sa-nc in that it places fewer restrictions on the use of the work. In general this is a good thing since it means fewer occassions on which people have to /ask permission/. In fact I would go as far as to argue that a nc license is not really an open license (as defined in the open knowledge definition: http://www.okfn.org/okd/) Second is all commercial usage bad? I have a friend who made a very alternative documentary about Chavez and distributes it for free. At the same time he has received payments when it has aired by commercial tv stations (they often pay even when they don't need to). This would make his work 'commercial' but it seems a far cry from, say, use in a coca-cola advert. Do you really want to prevent that kind of usage? If you do you've just cut out most of the main avenues for 'serious' reuse of your work -- ultimately most documentary makers would like to see their stuff get out to a wide an audience as possible and that means broadcast on a commercial network. Third for the types commercial usage that I imagine you would most object to (e.g. adverts) the makers would probably not want to have 'sa' their work. Therefore they would need to come and relicense from you and at that point you are in the same position as with an nc license. Thus overall I think there are significant gains in terms of greater freedom for reuse, the benefits of being truly 'open' and its consequent benefits for making the content commons, while the downsideis minimal.
answer from saul albert from the living archives project on the open knowledge foundation mailinglist:
Robert Altman calls the GPL a union - I don't think it's a union. I think it's a guild. High value labourers can form guilds within which they share their labour and knowledge and guard it from uninitiates and potential exploiters. They can do this because the high value of their labour and knowledge is capable of generating a surplus that is of most use to the guild as a community if it's shared. Unions came into their own as organised groups of low-value labourers whose only real leverage with bosses was/is the refusal of their low-value labour. There's no surplus to go round, no 'regulation' of labour, just the start-stop button of a strike. Information proles don't own anything - and we are all information proles. Even the CC-using musicians are information proles when they go to the supermarket and get their clubcard scanned, or their information is shuttled around and cross-referenced by various semi-privatised government services. But we're not organised in a union of information proles with this understanding of the relationship between the information we create and the information we excrete - all of which has value. Were we're sold the idea that we can have a 'piece of the action', but I think it's misdirection. With CC-BA-NC-SA or whatever other combination of CC licenses, I think they do little more than gentrify the debate over the iniquities of global copyright law, and have nothing *whatsoever* to do with 'commons'. about 'freedom' in CC/NC discussions that I think are best dealt with by leaving the detail out and focusing on material movement of value through systems of ownership. That is a class issue, and it's really not very difficult to explain or understand. In the interest of moving the discussion somewhere more useful, I think the best argument for dropping NC in most contexts is the packaging issue. Debian works *really really well* because it deals with packaging exquisitely - formally and legally. If you're running debian or a derivative, try 'sudo apt-get install anarchism' for a great practical demonstration of knowledge packaging. Anyway, I don't need to start on that old chestnut. It's pretty clearly argued here: http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html
Area 10 on the 1st of April
The closing event of Nodel.org was unfortunately not that busy as one could have hoped. Area 10 is great place for doing a party though – and we danced with our greek friends into the morning hours…
a short scenix of the area 10 node.london closing party on the 1st of april 2006.
Media Artist & Social Housing Forum
At the 31st of March Deptford.TV’s outcome of the March workshops was presented at the Media Artist & Social Housing Forum:
Inspired by Vital Regeneration’s recent collaboration with the City Of Westminster and CityWest Homes to create FreqOUT! (www.freqout.blogspot.com), this will be an opportunity for media artists to find out more about the expanding employment and commissioning opportunities in the Regeneration and Housing sector.
Invited speakers from housing and regeneration agencies, and media artists who have experience of the field, will explore housing associations’ objectives when commissioning arts projects. The forum will also explore barriers that artists experience to working in this arena.
Artists attending will leave with an understanding of the skills and capabilities needed to work in this context, and the challenges of working with young people, who are often the main beneficiaries of creative regeneration schemes. This will be an opportunity for both perspectives – arts and housing – to share their experiences and increase their likelihood of participating in successful arts and regeneration partnerships in the near future. For more information please contact Amy Robins at arobins@cwh.org.uk
Takeaway Festival 29th – 31st March
After having finished the Deptford.TV workshop some of the participants gathered together at the Takeaway Festival which was held at the Dana Center to take part in two workshops. Dynebolic & Hivenetworks. Dynebolic is the media plattform used for producing content for Deptford.TV. . Hivenetworks is linked to the Boundless.coop network in Deptford which is the distribution channel of Deptford.TV. Xavier made a small film for Canal + in France.
quoted from Takeaway:
Jaromil: dyne:bolic
dyne:bolic – Held by Jaromil
29th March 2006
The new 2.0 release of the free multimedia operating system dyne:bolic GNU/Linux will be presented and introduced with its functionalities for streaming and producing audio/video materials employing only open source software, for the freedom of speech.
In the panorama of existing operating systems we see that there are a great number of possibilities to listen: all kinds of “free to download” players for audio and video, but no easy way for everybody to speak out loud and spread their words.
The way communication is structured follows a hierarchy of well established powers and, worst than ever, money is the main requirement for making a voice spread and possible to be heard by others.
About the lecturer:
Jaromil the Rasta Coder is a Mediterranean GNU/Linux programmer, author and maintainer of three free software programs and operating systems: MuSE (for running a web radio), FreeJ (for veejay and realtime video manipulation), HasciiCam (ascii video streaming) and dyne:bolic the bootable CD running directly without requiring installation, a popular swiss army knife in the fields of production and broadcasting of information. All his creations are freely available online under the GNU General Public License (Free Software Foundation).
He is a featured artist in major new media art exhibitions and publications, from CODeDOC II (Whitney Museum Artport), to Read_Me 2.3 (runme.org software art) and Data Browser 02 (engineering culture). Jaromil has been artist in residence at makrolab (Venice Biennale), medien.kunstlabor and the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst / Montevideo Time Based Arts where he is now in charge of several open source research and development projects.
Alexei Blinov: Hive Networks
Hive Networks – Held by Alexei Blinov
31th March 2006
HIVE Networks – wireless networks of things, built and owned by users, using open source software and cheap disposable appliances.
Alexei Blinov of Raylab and a group of collaborators have set out to create an exciting project, HIVE Networks, which promises to change the perception of ubiquitous or pervasive computing.
HIVE combines the virtues of free software, free networks and open hardware to generate a framework for virtually any type of networked media application on small and cheap consumer devices. In this workshop he will show how HIVE devices can be customised to a range of applications.
About the lecturer:
Alexei Blinov is a Russian born artist/engineer living and working in London. He was and is strongly involved with wireless community networking. His areas of expertise include sensors, lasers, hardware design and programming. He has created his own projects as well as working with many artists and groups such as Take2030, audiorom, Tanaka, Hobijn and others.
Jamie King: Copyright and the new technological environment
Two recent technological developments – the digital format and the network – are starting to make the old model of distributing and paying for cultural content based on copyright protection seem antiquated.
Copyright – the right of a creator to exert control over the reproduction of a work and to sell others this control – is a legal device which was designed for an earlier social/technological moment.
Digital copies – whether of text or anything else – can now be produced almost infinitely at next to zero cost.
We need to examine new models for funding creative works – to address the central question of how cultural producers will survive under the new paradigm. Where many in what is loosely referred to as ‘industry’ regard the challenge to copyright as essentially hostile, others see it as positive, and potentially socially transformative – seeking first and foremost to explore positive models for creativity in the new technological context.
Jamie King is a writer and activist. He is involved with projects such as Open Business (www.openbusiness.cc), Pretext ( www.pretext.org) and Creative Commons UK. He lectures contemporary studies at Ravensbourne College Postgraduate Programme.
and Rama was chilling on our couch…
Rama/Platoniq.net: Burn Station
Burn Station – Held by Rama/Platoniq.net
30th March 2006
Burn Station is a mobile copying station which – as it travels through suburban spaces – supports the free distribution of music and audio. Above all it is a social event which congregates people together for listening, selecting and copying net label and net radio audio files with a Copyleft Licence. Burn Station is an open-source, non-commercial project involving the new means of free networked distribution. It is based on the Burn Station software which was developed by Platoniq and Rama as a 100% free software. Burn Station aims to establish links between the media space and the physical space of the city.
About the lecturer:
Rama (Ramiro Cosentino) is an internet and PureData developer exiled from Buenos Aires (Argentina) during the last economic crash. Previously based in Barcelona as main headquarter, he moved to Graz (Austria) for a residency at the Medien.KUNSTLABOR; currently based in Vienna, he is further developing media/art distribution platforms. (i.e. Burn Station and R23.cc)
Rama is member of several mediahacktivist collectives: hackitectura.net, riereta.net, platoniq.net bcn, straddle3.net bcn, developing open source systems for global communication, developer and administrator of media streaming servers/applications; user-friendly PD works for video (based on PiDiP) and audio mixing, processing and streaming.
Plenum Event 25th of March
Mindsweeper Boat: Symphony of Deptford (25th of March)
All the PD patches can be downloaded here. The PD patches are written by Emanuel Andel (aka nrsz) and are licensed under the GPL3. Emanuel’s patches use the cyclone library, make sure that you have it installed on your system.
This was the closing event of the Deptford.TV launch. www.ampersand.tv made a live music performance to the PD mix of www.nrsz.net – the whole session was recorded and will be re-edited & published on the site www.remixdeptford.tv – a site which will have the approach of using vj/dj technologies to remix the original deptford.tv database with programms such as pure data and available under https://puredyne.goto10.org/
the pirate boat was our base, a minesweeper…
on the minesweeper you will see and hear a sinphony remix of the http://deptford.tv database done by nsrz to the live soundz of ampersand.
On a forgotten side creek of the River Thames sits a derelict former minesweeper.
The Art Organisation, in association with its owners, have began the arduous task of regenerating this 158 feet long sea worthy vessel to a floating gallery, theatre and rehearsal space.
Members Gregory Scott-Gurner and Camden McDonald have recently been granted funding via UnLtd – the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs – to restore the timber hull and decking, and introduce a program of theatre workshops involving the local community. .
Remix Conference 25th of March
the original flyer & the evaluation
quoted from souteastlondon.org:
The conference in Goldsmiths College marked the launch of the ambitious video project Deptford TV. The local online video database, initiated by Adnan Hadzi (Goldsmiths College), aims to document the regeneration of the area Deptford/New Cross, accessible on the internet and under a Creative Commons Licence. This means, the internet user can download local videos and use them for noncommercial purpose (more license details on the deptford.tv website).
The database for the local Deptford TV clips itself has been set up in the last weeks and months by Bitnik (picture above) from Zurich/Switzerland. Bitnik is an internationally experienced media collective with a proven record in regeneration and arts projects. Deptford TV uses only Open Source software. This is uncommercial software, which is developed by volunteers. This software can be downloaded from the web without charge, like eg Linux software.
In the last weeks, the database has been consistently filled up with content from local volunteers. All material is stored in h-264 format, an open source format, equivalent to the commercial IPod format. All material added to the database is stored with an Edit Decision List. This way all material can be re-assembled and re-edited at a later point easily.
The project will be ongoing for some 3 years at least and is still at an early stage. Though now basically functioning, more technical features and content will be added. Technical hickups at this stage should not surprise. Deptford TV has now uploaded first edited videos.
On Friday Deptford TV had invited to a local 5 hour walk to locations with public screens, like the Laban Centre, where the results of the ongoing video project were shown (distributed through the wireless network of Boundless Coop).
At the conference evening a video remix screening with industrial sound performance on the Boat in Deptford Creek marked the end of this local media weekend in New Cross and Deptford.
see also posts boundless.coop & deptford.tv
transcript from the bitnik.org presentation
MK2 CO-OP CITY – PRESENTATION IN LONDON (NODE)
Hello we are Bitnik Media Collective from Zurich. This is Doma,
Silvan, Carmen. We have been collaborating with Adnan and James for
the Deptford.TV.
We would like to give you a brief summary of COOP-CITY, a conference
held in Barcelona in 2004 on regeneration, oppositional architecture
and social conflict. COOP-CITY was organized and initiated by
Platoniq, a barcelona-based media activists group.
CO-OP CITY was the second part of a series of conferences and
workshops called MEDIA SPACE INVADERS (Invasores al Medio espacio)
organized by Platoniq throughout 2003 and 2004 on topics of public
space, urban environment, social media practices and architecture. The
MEDIA SPACE INVADERS conferences and workshops centred around the
topic of the repolitisation of public space through use of community
software and technology. The conference was intended not only as a
series of presentations where researchers would give an insight on
their work, but as an open community workshop where people involved in
different social struggles connected to the city of Barcelona would be
able to exchange experiences and find ways of collaborating.
The aim of CO-OP CITY, the second part of the MEDIA SPACE INVADERS
SERIES was to analize how the process of renewal in Barcelona had
drifted further and further away from citizens needs. In 2004
regeneration in Barcelona had reached a new climax with the FORUM
BARCELONA 2004 (http://www.barcelona2004.org/), an international Forum
on Cultural exchange initiated by UNESCO, which took place from Mai to
September 2004 and lead to the regeneration of a big portion of the
city (poble nou). Citizens had little say in this process and even
though there had been quite an amount of protests, the plans were not
changed or even discussed.
During the conferences these processes and struggles were also
compared to similar struggles in Berlin, Sao Paulo, Bogota and Buenos
Aires.
CO-OP CITY tried to give an answer to the question: what is a
cooperational City, how could community practices and decision-making
be combined and how can public space be repolitisized and used to
support social movements.
The answer was a public city tour, a militant investigation project
visiting all the social hot-spots in the different parts of the city,
bringing the local groups involved in social struggle a mobile
audio-streaming-station and retransmitting the talks and discussions
directly to the Platoniq Netradio.
The idea and especially the set-up of CO-OP CITY with panels,
screenings and a City Tour were intended as a form of guerilla
tactical research and were derived from the idea of „militant
investigation” (investigacion militante). Militant investigation is a
research method that was initiated during the autonomos movements in
th 80ies.
The understanding of „research” for CO-OP City was taken from a
research collectiv called Situaciones (www.situaciones.org) which uses
„militant investigacion” to discribe its form of social research.
Their research method implies an attitude of collaboration with the
groups or communities they study and exposes the role of the
scientific „impartial espectator” as a bourgeois notion of doing
social research.
The CO-OP CITY TOUR, organized by Platoniq and Sitesize.net, was part
of the community workshop.
The idea of the tour was to give the participants an in-depth insight
into the physical and social geography of regeneration and renewal in
Barcelona.
The seven stops of the tour were chosen for the urgency of the social
struggles connected with them and at the same time for the differences
in the types of struggles they stood for: The aim of the tour in this
sense was to give participants a broad insight into the various
struggles and their different natures by visiting each of the
communities personally. This very direct approach to the different
communities, to their concerns and their long-term engagements in
struggles to enforce their rights a network of struggles became
manifest as a sort of second layer to the city map. For the people
involved directly in the struggles the specific problems they were
facing began to form pieces of a much larger picture: The picture of
communities being marginalized and excluded from the city governments
vision of a Future Barcelona and of how these communities are driven
out of the city’s center towards the city limits by regeneration
processes.
The current and ongoing tranformation of the City of Barcelona is put
into practice by the city council through incoherent strategies that
are influenced by image or marketing considerations and speculation.
Instead of involving local communities into the renewal processes, the
government is more concerned with an outward image than with the needs
of the citizens. As a reaction to this, civil organisations, ngos and
community groups have spent a lot of energy in devising propositions,
initiatives and projects for a understanding of „city” or „urban
space” that is more focussed on the people than on marketing / tourism
and money.
Links
http://www.coordinadoraraval.org
http://www.poblenou.org/c22
http://www.forumperjudicats.com
http://www.bcn.es/22@bcn/
http://www.sitesize.net/poble9
http://www.asfes.org
http://www.compromis.org/Videos/video%20ecoparc1.mpg
http://www.compromis.org/Videos/video%20ecoparc2.mpg
http://www.compromis.org/Videos/video%20ecoparc3.mpg
http://www.compromis.org/comunicats/Dossier%20texto%20ecoparc2.pdf
http://www.compromis.org/comunicats/Dossier%20ecoparc.pdf
www.iespana.es/noalcalaix
PARC CENTRAL
BIOGRAPHIES:
Spanish urban planning acts on the placing of gaps in urban spaces and
define exactly what these gaps should be like: measurements,
materials, positions – but they do not define purpose because a gap is
for disposing rubble and rubbish, isn’t it? The design works in
different ways because people pay the local government for their
permit, and then do what they want, or need to, with it: an urban
reserve, breathing space, a meeting point, a children’s playground, a
tree plantation…
In the case of regulations on scaffolding , you can
obtain a permit to install one because you “need” to paint the facade
of the building you wish to contaminate. You can always produce this
need by scribbling some eye-catching graffiti on it. You then install
your scaffolding and build your new space, your own private refuge,
your architecture of silence, with whatever materials, style and
rneasurements you decide. The duration is up to you, because the
architecture of silence ought to be provisional and variable, because
these are the conditions which the other architecture (the regular
sort) does not have. In the same way, there are other loopholes or
“URBAN DESCRIPTIONS” we can employ to remind the institution of its
inabiltity to deal with plural realities, and to point out people’s
ability-and their need- to take part in urban drift.
URBAN PRESCRIPTIONS
Strategies for subversive occupation
All realities manifest themselves with a gradient of variable factors.
If I want to talk about urban phenomena, I have to do so in terms of
complexity and difference. The paths we have to pursue to understand
them cannot reproduce the paths of conventional urban planning, as the
invisible, mutant structures which interact in the urban space create
a complex fabric. We get the impression that the various levels of
complexity grow and die. The production system, and the political and
economic variables and mechanisms which predominate in architecture
make the idea of global, closed planning inconceivable.
The speed at which changes take place in urban space suggests specific
places and given epochs, so the design and construction of this space
constantly require regenerating mechanisms which address the
particular factors of the various places and their interaction with
global changes and systems. For institutions, the idea of a global
process is an attempt to simplify and control all possible forms of
behaviour and action. My proposal consists of perpetually redefining
global systems (urban planning and legislation), looking for possible
loopholes and uncertainties which allow the various human groups
freedom of action.
Biography
Santiago Cirugeda, born 1971, has produced architectural projects,
written articles and participated in different educational and
cultural contexts (master classes, seminars, conferences, workshops,
exhibitions, debates, etc.). He is currently preparing an
architectonic project in Seville, for a cultural and visual arts
centre, and is immersed in investigations regarding emergency
dwellings, developed in distinct forums such as the Barraca BCN – a
winter factory for the ETSA in Alicante. He occasionally acts as
professor in Bogota’s Javeriana School.
Since 9 years, Santiago Cirugeda has developed subversive projects
with distinct ambitions in urban reality which has allowed him to
endure a complicated social life. From systematic occupation of public
spaces in containers to the construction of prostheses in facades,
patios, covers and lots, he negociates legal and illegal zones, as a
reminder of the pervasive control to which we are all subject.
He was invited to the Venice Biennale where he critically demonstrated
socio-cultural differences which nourish interventionist projects in
distant urban surroundings, and which move through issues of
self-administration and precarity to stupid frivolty.
Architectos Sin Fronteras – Architects without Borders
ASF is an NGO funded in 1992 with the objective of using social or
opositional architecture for the development of community projects
such as housing, schools, health care centers, educational and
community centers.
Deptford Walk 24th of March
this post is quoted from andrew’s blog:
Creative Commons edgital culture
On Friday as part of the deptford.tv series of launch events (which created a local context to explore the Creative Commons) there was a walk all over Deptford guided by Pete Pope and Ben Gidley. Starting at The Albany we went via Fordham park, past The Rubbish Fairy and Prangsta on New Cross Road and onto the Ben Pimlott building, the new purpose built facility for Goldsmiths. We were allowed to go onto the balcony and see the scribble sculpture close up. There was a terrific view of London, I especially relished the view of Olympia warehouse, a Victorian cast iron building at Convoys Wharf, which is mostly unknown to people in Deptford as the large site is enclosed by a 10ft wall. The beautiful shape of the twin roofs which covered the slipways is the hidden crown of Deptfords invisible history. Next we went to Bearspace cafe on Deptford high street, which is a calm oasis. At each stop we watched a short documentary built using the clips from the Deptford.tv video database. Participants were able to discuss architecture, film theory and technology in situ. Next we went to the Laban via the Thomas Archer masterpiece St.Pauls Church. Inside the Laban, we had a quick guided tour by a well meaning staff member who was blissfully unaware of the irony when she pointed out ‘a feature’ through the window saying “and you’ve got Deptford over there, which is an up and coming area.”
After a visit to a participants home in Stowage, where the very personal story of how legacy film and video footage has been digitized into a legacy for local-social historians and The Creative Commons, we went to Deckspace inside the old Greenwich Borough Hall building for our last tea and cake, a nice sit down and a chat. In summary the walk was very much a clarion call for how culture at the edge (which I term edgital) is actually at the centre of whats really happening now. It was like looking into a crystal ball to see how digital technologies in combination with Free Software and Copyleft are transforming the social and historical landscape.
2 Comments:
- At 8:13 AM, Archeology of the Future said…
- Terrific stuff! You managed to put together a walk that took in almost all of my favourite landmarks! How do I get on the waiting list?One question, though: What’s Deckspace? I really want to go inside the Greenwich Borough Hall, as it’s certainly one of the buildings within walking distance of which I’m most fond.
As one Deptford blogger to another I salute you!
- At 11:08 PM, andreworford ªº said…
- Deptford.tv (which is a collaboration of several parties) put together the walk – which was a one off. I cant see why such a similar walk cant be put together again. I will continue to publish my research on the ‘hidden’ architectures of Deptford, here at the blog. I will be paying attention to using new technologies, such as GPS, mobile, podcasting and Google Earth / Google Maps, etc.Deckspace (run by James Stevens)inside Greenwich Borough Hall is the successor to Backspace in Clink Street (1996-99) whose old website gives more of an idea of the genesis of the current Deckspace in Greenwich. The basic idea is to provide a flexible media lab which functions as a social nexus for people who want to ‘do anything’ digital or otherwise. James is a very approachable person with a sense of humour and a ‘can do’ attitude, he has helped many projects become enabled.