YIRN!

This weeks lecture was on the digital divide, and how providing infrastructure and services to rural areas can allow people access to creative media which they didnt have before. The specific program in question was the Youth Internet Radio Network, which allowed students from around Queensland to create audio and visual content, and tell unique stories from their points of view, which can be very different to people from urban areas. One of the assumptions with these sorts of programs is that urban and suburban people already have access to this infrastructure, which is often not the case, however this is neither here nor there. Obviously the concept of the network is not to get access to EVERYONE :>

This is an interesting concept, and one which we are going to look into for our community presentation, for which we have decided to create a short film based community, where people can look at short films and rate them and discuss them. One of the aspects of this community will be to push the community to all corners of Queensland, and attempt to, similarly, give people access to services they didnt have before.

I have added links to YIRN, as well as to the journals of some of my team members...

Creative Commons

This weeks lecture was about Creative Commons, and the idea of the walled garden.

As a creative content producer myself, both in terms of my university material, and also my hobby of being a short film producer, I find the concept intriguing. The idea that any content which is created (and, in particular, uploaded to the Creative Commons and sticky.net website) is free material, and any other person can then take it and use it to create different kinds of content, is very interesting, although it also implies a certain level of trust which is not always present on the Internet. If i upload an idea or concept, and someone takes that idea and makes a commercial product with it, I have to be able to prove that I "came up with it first" so to speak, and that they stole it from me, before I would have any redress against them. This is a similar quandry which faces people doing Open Source programming, which consists of programs and applications where the source code is directly available, and free to download, so that if I wish to take a piece of code and include it in a program which I am writing, I can.

I suppose it all comes down to a mindset when it comes down to creative concepts. Is a concept, or piece of creative content, ownable? I believe yes it is, that if I create something it is mine, and, assuming certain circumstances and quality of work, I should be able to charge in order for people to access it, especially if it is a fruit of quite hard labour. Some people do not believe that creative content works in that way, that anything created should be shared openly with everyone in society for the betterment (is that even a word?) of society, but I'm afraid I dont feel that way. This is one of the reasons I am against music downloading in general, and do not download any music myself, unless the band or record company specifically makes it available.

Added links to Creative Commons.org and also sticky.net, two such creative sites where people publish and make available free creative content for download. Sticky.net is not yet fully launched, but will be completed soon, and focusses on Australian content.