From: Jim Kytola (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Mar 16 2004 - 11:00:27 PST
I hope this thread is not being overly-combined with
the discussion going on about copyright and online
publications (and therefore overlooked by those who
might be interested).
Both topics are interesting (to me anyway) talking
points in regard to ownership and its relation to art
and the artist. My interest in an open-sourced
film/video co-op comes from both positive experiences
in the computer programming world and negative
experiences in the film/video world. It seems to me
that all spectrums of film/video have been co-opted by
this idea of ownership and sometimes, ego. I think
this is evident from corporate media all the way to
the a-g (obviously in different measure). And I think
a more free, more open-sourced, environment could
serve its purpose in the art world, much the same way
open-sourced software serves its purpose in a
proprietary-driven world. I think this is especially
true in regard to education, marketing and production.
But the idea may be much more difficult to get behind
in a visual media-based environment. On one side you
have the dominance of capital with the corporate
driven creation of film/video and on the other you
have an ego barrier that must be overcome to get
people used to the idea (open-sourced software, while
given a huge boost in popularity during the dot-com
days, still suffers in support - although things are
getting better). What I'm suggesting is not only
starting the process by releasing a project in the
already established places (thank you Jim Flannery for
your links - I will be checking them out), but
creating a community to push the development of the
idea and supply resources for like-minded artists.
Now for some other questions to Ana - I will post this
one to the list. If anyone else is interested in
further discussing this, please feel free to email me
off-list. I'm assuming the conversation will be better
served off-list (I really wish more list subscribers
(including some here) would learn to do the same and
keep the content of their posts on-topic)
Ana - what license are you using? I have seen a few
more art-related open licenses, but I like the GPL and
their document-related license because of the idea of
"open-source". Are you planning on releasing any of
the so-called source? This is another sub-topic, in
which, I am interested - what is the "source" - is it
the final project, the source footage, EDL's, etc.
Also, why did you choose the open divx codec? I'm
pretty new to thinking about free codecs, but there
are others, correct - has anyone had any luck with
other open codecs? I'm not a big fan of divx, but
perhaps that's due to the material I have seen. I will
be interested in how your project turns out.
I think systems like Gnutella, eMule, Kazaa, etc will
be obvious, and hopefully successful, methods for
distributing the projects. But I brought up the idea
of building a website as a location, not only for the
distribution of the projects, but also for a links,
FAQ, forum of developers and many other things. I will
gladly take links and ideas and work on putting
something together. Does anyone have any experience
working with internet companies in their work? I'm
specifically asking about ideas in regard to hosting
sites.
And I have to come back (since I'm already posting) to
the other copyright discussion. I think the problem
behind the whole discussion is this ridiculous idea of
paid content on the internet. I for one, think the
internet should be a place of information and open
discussion, not a place of commerce - especially in
regard to information. Of course for material goods it
serves as a great market, and of course my ideas are a
bit naive, but I think our culture of ownership and
capital is really getting in our collective way. I
think preservation of a free flow of ideas and
information, applied to all things, is essential.
Should companies and people be able to make a living?
Sure, but there's a fine line between making a living
and exploitation, and I fear our culture (especially
in the States) is getting close to forgetting the line
even existed.
Jim
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam
http://mail.yahoo.com
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.