Creative Commons Moving Images Winners

ArcRiley writes "The winners have been announced for the contest that Creative Commons launched last fall to deliver their ``some rights reserved'' message with a short video. Congratulations to Justin Cone, Sheryl Seibert, and Kuba & Alek Tarkowski for their winning videos!"

oscars

Not to be confused with those other awards being handed out right now... By the way, I just love how the techies get their own little Oscar ceremony, complete with Jennifer Garner. It's almost as if they're teasing us nerds with women of such calibre.

Now to get this kind of stuff out in the public

Too bad it's impossible considering how television is financed and broadcast. It'd be such an irony to see these videos (they're pretty good) broadcast over HDTV, with the no-copy flag on.

Marketing

It seems to me that this will only matter when one of two things happens.
1. Heavy promotion of creative commons-licensed material happens somehow.
2. There is a severe crackdown on copyrighted file-sharing to the point that few or none feel comfortable doing it.

I can't see 1 happening ever. 2, on the other hand, may be beginning. Personally, though, I think the better way to address this is just to allow copyrighted file-sharing.

Are they actually playable?

Before I download the files (over a 56k dialup), does anyone know if the .mov files are actually playable with a Free Software player?

I'd expect Lessig to mandate that this commons content be in a non-proprietary format - or at the very least, a proprietary format that has been widely reverse engineered. Playing .mov files is hit and miss for me. sometimes no sound, or the picture appears in the top right corner of the viewer, or... Anyway: can someone confirm/deny that these are viewable? thanks.

*Confirmed*

They work fine for me (Red Hat Fedora kernel with all critical updates installed, ATI video card, Altec-Lansing sound card, etc.).

Too bad you don't have broadband though 'cause they're fairly large.

The 2nd and 3rd Ones

worked for me. Unfortunately the 1st place entry crashed both Mplayer and Totem.

Re:The 2nd and 3rd Ones

You'll need to use '-vc qtsvq3'

Re:Thanks for the Help

Fuck, man, I just double click the file and it opens.

No you dont. First you download QuickTime and make sure you got up to date codecs. Then you go clicking on things. The poster above, on the other hand, had all he needed but didnt know how to turn it on. That does not make your environment in any way superior. Just different.

The mplayer is one of the most sophisticated and powerful media players, capable of playing so many formats on so many devices that it makes Windows based playback tools look silly by comparison. But it does require a bit of know-how.

Re:Are they actually playable?

Got one better for you. The second place video, "Mixtape", is available in Ogg Theora format here [xiph.org] courtesy her brother (who's involved with Xiph). If anyone can get the first video to play please publish how. I've been unable to get it to play with either MPlayer or Xine.

Re:Are they actually playable?

Note that these are transcoded. That means that you get the loss of the original plus the loss of Theora. A few of us put them together last minute because so many people were having trouble viewing the ones on creative common's website..

Ogg Theora is actually very close to beta release. It's still VP3.2 with no improvements beyond adding flexibility for future improvements. The goal of this is that files made with Beta-1 will be viewable by any future player, making it suitable for archival use, but as beta's progress more optimisations will be made making it both faster and higher quality.

Once again, the URL to download the Ogg Theora versions of these videos, for those using Free Software media players, is http://xiph.org/~arc/CreativeCommons-OggTheora.tor rent [xiph.org]

Free Software playable versions of videos avail.

We just put together a set of videos (transcoded, so lower quality than origs) for those who don't want to use non-free software to view them. You'll need a BitTorrent client and a fairly recent (post-November) copy of libtheora, as they're encoded with Ogg Theora [theora.org].

This one .torrent [xiph.org] will download all three videos and a README explaining how to view them.

(CC)

Wow, I hadn't heard of Creative Commons before. What do they get their authority from?

Re:(CC)

Authority? Well, I guess you could say they get it from the people, and the copyright system. Similar the the GPL and LGPL, these are just licensed drawn up by people with knowledge of the law and an interest in promoting freedom. If you're interested in distributing a copyrighted creation and allowing other people certain freedoms in using your work, these are well-crafted licenses that aim to meet your intentions, so you don't have to learn the legalese to make your own license.

Re:(CC)

Wow, I hadn't heard of Creative Commons before. What do they get their authority from?

They're a self-appointed authority. But when you think about it, all of the GPL advocates are too.

They're basically a non-profit that has the main idea that there can be many licenses that exist between full-on copyright protection and public domain, and the GPL is only one of them. Their main licenses are comprised of letting the author make four binary choices and giving them a fully written-out license that matches those decisions, and they have a few offshoot licenses as well such as one called "Founder's Copyright" which is an agreement to release your work under the public domain after 14 or 28 years of full protection instead of the 95 years that the law otherwise grants, and the CC-GPL which is the based on the official GPL with the addition of the metadata and translation features they offer with their other licenses. They also do the same with the LGPL to create the CC-LGPL

They also advocate a metadata standard for license conditions that in the future will hopefully lead to a contrent-creator-aimed search engine that allows people to search for available works that can be dropped into their own works.

It's really a group that understands that the GPL isn't perfect, and allows for anybody who wants to splinter from it from any good reason to create a new license that doesn't have that attribute.

Re:(CC)

Wow, I hadn't heard of Creative Commons before. What do they get their authority from?

GOD

obligatory /. joke

And congratulations to slashdot for giving the winners huge, unexpected bills for bandwidth!

Re:obligatory /. joke

Actually Ibiblio is hosting the files on behalf of CC on behalf of the winners. The files are also uploaded to the Internet Archive here [archive.org] here [archive.org] and here [archive.org]. IA has offered to host any CC-licensed content free of charge.

Use the source, luke, use the source.

A number of the clips use clips from (or at least available in the) Prelinger Archives [archive.org].

All of these videos require you to attribute their work should you build on it. It would be nice if they would provide credit to their sources as well (although, as public domain, they are not required to).

Why did they have to pick share-alike?

I'm a bit disappointed that two out of the three winners chose the "share-alike" attribute on their Creative Commons license.

One of the strongest selling points the CC system has is that they're not the GPL... they offer variants that don't have the "viral clause" that requires those who use CC pieces to require that the whole work be licensed the same way. Since the strongest selling point of the CC system is that there are really sixteen CC licenses that are formed by mixing and matching four binary attributes. It's possible to insert a CC work into something that's under full copyright, and that's something the GPL just can't do. Flexablity is the whole point of CC.

But maybe they took the flexability too far here. I'm a little surprised the contest organizers left the free selection of CC licenses open to the entrants. I would have suggested that all entries be under a CC license with Attribution and No Derivative Works... therefore allowing anybody who wants to spread the word of Creative Commons to republish the essentially PSA ad works without dictating what the publisher has to do with theirs.

Afterall, the winners got some pretty cool stuff. They've been well paid for their work...

Re:Why did they have to pick share-alike?

In our case (Mix Tape), we selected the Share-Alike license because that was the license selected by Jim's Big Ego for the "Mix Tape" song we used. That made our choice pretty straightforward.

Field order

It looks like all of the clips have the wrong field order in their interlacing leading to jaggies around moving objects.

Anyway, I really liked the third place entry more than the second. It had a lot more information, if a bit fast paced. I found the second place entry confusing with loud lyrics and text on the screen simultaniously.

MIRROR

Here's a (hopefully) fast mirror for your enjoyment:
One [onlinehome.us]
Two [onlinehome.us]
Three [onlinehome.us]

(Should finish uploading in a sec, be patient)

Bring on the artists

Spend 10 minutes talking to an artist about OSS ideas and you have a OSS supporter. Art wants to be free. Software wants to be free. What a happy combination.

Now, we need to get those converted artists and get them making linux a little easier on the eyes! Although, you'd want to be careful about which artists [1111111111...111111.com] helped out....

Re:Bring on the artists

The way to explain the Creative Commons system to a music artist is this: There are other artists out there who need source material to use in their works, but don't have the money to pay you right now. If you release your song under a CC Attribution and No Commercial Use license, fans can listen to you and movie makers might be able to include you in their early films. However, if that movie maker finally gets a hit and wants to make money with their early film that used you, they've got to come back to you and buy the rights then. If a radio station wants to play your song, they have to at least contact you to get your permission. It's giving other artists at the same level a way to audition for partners so that a collective work.

Record labels angle to get their artists into movies not for the royalty money, but because being used in a hit movie can bring attention to an otherwise unknown artist. Artists perform for free on talk shows to promote themselves. If you're not bundled in with something somebody's already paying attention to, how's anybody going to notice you?

Of course, the closed label-system presently shuns anybody who has already distributed their work by bypassing them because they fear the first recording star who launches into the "big time" without a label contract...

Runs on Zope

The egovos.org site is powered by [egovos.org] Zope [zope.org]. Let's see how she stands up to a Slashdotting. Any bets?

Mix Tape

Congratulations, to the winners! Congratulations to Sheryl Seibert for her Mix Tape movie!

You can download the music for her video, for free, from Jim's Big E-Shop. [bigego.com]

Creative Commons and common media

Since 2 of the 3 winning images are provided as an Apple QuickTime movie file, does that mean there is now an unencumbered open source QuickTime player?

Did I miss something?

very cool

I watched both of the movies on their website and I thought they were really cool, and explained things very well. I finally "got it" on a lot of points, as far as the effects of a standard copyright, and the flexibility that a Creative Commons License offers.

Best of all, now when I explain this stuff to someone else, their eyes won't have to glaze over as I try to extol the merits of free (as in freedom) -- instead I can just say "Here, watch these cool three-minute videos" and that does all the work. :)

Wow... that's a PR move worth of Robertson...

(you know, the dude behind Lindows)

What better way to try to make yourself look important than by holding your little tiny inconsequential awards ceremony right before the Academy Awards.

I'll give you points for chutzpah though.

Movie Summaries?

I'm having difficulties getting a fast connection from the site (surprise surprise). Can somebody please give in depth summaries of all three so that we can have some idea whats worth downloading? Thanks.

Good to see...

...that commercial outfits [magnatunes.com] are starting to crop up that take advantage of the CC licence's flexibility.

I only hope we'll start seeing more places like this, and they'll rise in popularity.

Wow

The winner easily deserved to win, the other 2 were way below the level of quality. I did not not like the third one at all and didn't quite understand the second one.

'Fall'

Seasons describe weather conditions, and differ around the world. Time is described using words like 'Monday' or 'January', and are constant (at least in secular english-speaking contexts). I shouldn't need to know what continent you're on...

Open Media for Linux PDAs?

The CreativeCommons GetContent [creativecommons.org] page contains a huge list of media. But what I am looking for is content, which fits to a Linux PDA [tuxmobil.org] like the SHARP Zaurus series. Are there eBooks, AudioBooks [tuxmobil.org] and movies [tuxmobil.org], especially designed for small computers? BTW: Though there are many sites, which offer free mobile cell phone logos and ringtones, are there any logos [tuxmobil.org] and ringtones [tuxmobil.org] available under the Creative Common Licenses [creativecommons.org] or the GPL [fsf.org]?

Suggestion for "Mix Tape"

Catchy song, but I must confess I didn't get the video at all at first. I had to watch it two or three times before I realized the common element in the various scenes was thepair of jeans). So I'm guessing the "message" of the video was something along the lines of "What if music/media was as easy to buy/sell/rip/mix/reuse as old denim"??

Anyway, I think the message would be much more clear if the video was done in black-and-white with the denim the only thing in color. Then it would be easier to follow it through its various lifecycle...worn by girl in the beginning, sold at garage sale, turned into outfit, thrown away, made into paper. (In Schindler's List, few people would have recognized the dead body was the same little girl if Spielburg hadn't used the red color)

If I had any sort of talent with video editing, the temptation would be to do this myself, and well I guess the CC license that it is under would allow me to, wouldn't it?

-JoeShmoe
.

I hate to say it but...

Anyone else get the feeling that there weren't many people who entered? I love creative commons, but I do not think that these videos are very impressive.

-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]

Proofread?

Hmm - are these going to be aired as ads or anything? If so, they should probably fix the fact that they meant "lets", not "let's" in the first one...

Re:Cut Spending

Make a contest and have somebody ELSE come up with your campaign...

Reminds me of something....what was it...oh yeah - a t-shirt contest.

Re:Ha Ha (nelson style)

I don't think so. Return of the King made a clean sweep at the Oscars, taking eleven honors, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Visual Effects, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, and Best Sound Mixing.

Um, actually...

Yes, the Mov came from moving. But, like talkies, the ie is just a familiar kinda thing. Like, Moving Picture needed to be abbreviated, and "moov" was already taken by move, so someone was like "movie", and everyone was like "dude".

Um yeah...

Wow.

I didn't think it was possible to miss the point by that much. Please go to creativecommons.org and read. And don't just say you did.

you're all wrong

> if you don't believe in copyrights

People can choose to believe in easter bunnies, santa, and god, but copyrights exist - like it or not.

> you can just put it out there with no license at all

All works of an author give the author exclusive rights - if you recieve something without a license, you have no legal right to make a copy for your friend (etc.)

The CC people *do* believe in copyright - they just believe that it's been stretched out of proporation (either in term/years - or in scope/what you can or cannot do with a work).

Re:The right to copy.

But patents at least expire. Copyrights these days are perpertual, thanks to Sonny Bono. Thank goodness for that tree, or who knows what worse intellectual "property" laws he would have sold to his buddies in Hollywood.