Cool ideas

The emergent remix culture

The Creative Commons just unveiled their sampling license that allows artists to use samples from works released under the sampling license. The CC hopes to spur the development of a remix culture that encourages re-use of other artist's work. Boing boing points out that the remix culture is subject to the network law -- the more content in the remix library, the more valuable it becomes.

The open source software revolution is founded on those principles and the media world is ready for the same shake-up. We have learned the basic rules of this game and organizations like the CC are taking it from the software realm and brigning it into a much larger general audience arena. It's about it time this happens, and I can't wait to see it happen.

To the same effect, the University of Maine has created the pool, as mentioned in this Wired News article:

To prove that open sourcing any and all information can help students swim instead of sink, the University of Maine's Still Water new media lab has produced the Pool, a collaborative online environment for creating and sharing images, music, videos, programming code and texts.

. . .

"We are training revolutionaries -- not by indoctrinating them with dogma but by exposing them to a process in which sharing culture rather than hoarding it is the norm," said Joline Blais, a professor of new media at the University of Maine and Still Water co-director.

Cool stuff, for sure. I just wonder when the RIAA/MPAA will come knocking on their doors.

Posted by Mayhem at December 17, 2003 01:03 PM