The Media Studio team is just back from Sapporo where we joined people from over 60 countries in the iSummit’08. The yearly event is organized by iCommons, an organization at the forefront of an international movement that seeks to develop a united global commons by collaborating in open education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world.

The event was extremely inspiring for us. For a long time UNU Media Studio has been committed to the ideals of collaborative production and open sharing of content over the Internet. The iSummit’08 gave us the opportunity to get in touch with talented people from all over the world who share these ideals and who are finding creative ways to implement them in practical terms in a wide range of disciplines such as video production, education, publishing, business, law, photography, government, and fashion amongst others. [ read more ]

No this post is not about protecting the environment. Instead, I would like to point you to a recent report from the American University Center for Social Media entitled “Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User Generated Video.” Authored by Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jasz, the report shows that many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration.

Fair use is very important for the educational sector and is the part of copyright law that permits new creators, in some situations, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying the owners. The report is focused on experience in the United States and recommends that a special committee be established to develop best-practices principles, similar to those found in the documentary film-makers statement of best practice in fair use.

A 2007 report from the Singapore based Participatory Media Lab indicates that Japan was one of the early adopters of Creative Commons licenses. Within Asia, Japan stands out as having the highest volume of works covered by CC and the most liberal approach to licensing.
The report argues that this trend will gain even greater momentum with support from Japanese Corporations such as Sony (particularly through the new video sharing platform, eyeVio, which has adopted CC) and with the 2008 iCommons Summit planned to take place in Sapporo, Japan from 29 July to 1 August.
The report also indicates that the total size of CC content on the Internet was 60 million by 2007. That is absolutely amazing and a clear indicator that CC is fast becoming the “de facto alternative for any author wishing to license his/her output under more liberal terms.”
The Participatory Media Lab is hosted by the School of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. They “produce original analyses of media production, distribution and reuse practices, using well-known and new methodological frameworks, borrowing elements from information management, microeconomics, network theory, law and new media theory and practice.”

Lawrence Lessig spoke at the March 2007 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference and explained how creativity is being strangled by the law. This is a very thought provoking presentation and although the focus is on the impact on younger generations and business, there are obvious messages for the global development community. To solve the world’s problems, we need to get creative and we need to be able to share knowledge.