Oh Creative Commons...Ourmedia and native land...

The cc's are small in stature but big in meaning.
I have been learning about them, and their ideas, for a couple of years now. It was in a MADT200 class called Remix where it all began. I can’t find the old blog but this popped up: http://remixtheory.net/ these pages look incredibly interesting.

Ourmedia is a great way to share your work and still protect your rights. (http://www.ourmedia.org/) I have an image and a number of audio files “archived” with them. There they sit in the digital universe I suppose…forever? I kind of forgot about this stuff. So how it works is that anyone can use my files for whatever they want but if they make money off of them then they must contact me and then we deal.

I’ve used Open Source audio before. I believe in creating my own audio so it is rare for me to do this…but it followed my concept of the assignment. You can see the video here:
ReRemix

It’s pretty long (2 songs) and not my greatest…but it is what it is.

Side note: I should try to build my own video player that would use .flv files which are used by podcasts and are far more efficient then the old (codec) system. I heard somewhere that the encoding procedures on web-video today are the same as they were in the 90’s? Meaning, that possibly, like gasoline, the industry failed to evolve for some reason? (You know the old…why would petro companies, and their governing buddies, want vehicles to find more friendly fuels…a small conflict of interest which screws over everybody.) Check out the discussion tab on this page http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeyesunday/feature_100208.html.
Nowadays we hear about disputes over bandwidth restrictions like it’s a valuable resource. Could it be in someone’s best interest to keep video transfers big and fat? I’ll find out more about this and get back to you.

The Creative Commons idea encourages people to contact the source of their borrowed media, but it’s not a requirement. Connections between artists are morphing and the possibilities are endless. I heard a director, of an animation work I think, getting interviewed at the Oscars. He said that he’s never actually met the sound guy who he worked with on the project. I guess they live on separate sides of the globe and found each other on the net. They passed sample works, digitally, back and forth and only spoke on the telephone once. And I suppose if he’s at the Oscars than it must’ve been a pretty successful collaboration. To be a business partner with a complete stranger…I guess PayPal can make people credible wherever they are.

One last thing about Open Source…as I mentioned in class…I’m seeing the benefits directly (PD fixes). Another one is Audacity, a free digital audio editor that works great. Open Source programs get allot of attention and are constantly improving themselves. Mozilla Firefox and Pure Data (PD) are other Open Source applications which I use a lot because they destroy the competition. I use Phidgets but will soon be using Arduino. Another open-source project.