Are people in the media starting to “get it”?
If you’re even remotely interested in such matters, you’ve probably already heard about Al Jazeera’s Creative Commons-licensed repository of footage from Gaza.
Of course, this is important even in a pure newsgathering sense: Al Jazeera is perhaps the only international broadcaster with cameras in Gaza (because, as the International Herald-Tribune puts it: “In a conflict where the Western news media have been largely prevented from reporting from Gaza because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli military, Al Jazeera has had a distinct advantage. It was already there.”) By making their footage available for free to anyone who wants it, Al Jazeera is enabling the rest of the world to, in effect, share their cameras. This of course has important implications for newsgathering and reporting on the war in Gaza.
But the network also quite explicitly expresses an interest in Creative Commons and open licensing as a concept:
As a pioneer in news and media Al Jazeera is always looking for ways to make its unique content accessible to audiences across the world and the launch of Al Jazeera’s Creative Commons Repository is another concrete step in this direction.
Through doing this we intend to make a practical contribution to the debate on one of the biggest issues facing content producers today – copyright in the internet age.
Is this a sign that broadcasters are starting to “get it” when it comes to the future of digital media? Note that I’m leaving “get it” undefined here, in order to make this post no longer than it needs to be.
Certainly, there are other signs in the right direction. The public broadcaster in Norway, NRK, has experimented (successfully) with BitTorrent distribution, with putting photos online for free noncommercial reuse, and (not so successfully) with making The Beatles’ songs available for free online.
The BBC is releasing some of its old footage for free noncommercial reuse, though only for people in the UK. And they are also funding development of a patent- and licence-free video codec called Dirac.
My former employer, Democracy Now! has for a couple of years now released the “original content” of its shows under a creative commons license.
Some very popular music groups are starting to release some of their music under Creative Commons licenses.
Business of all sizes and types are embracing Free Software (even if a lot of them call it “open source,” which is effectively a depoliticized synonym for the same class of software). A lot are even contributing back to the Free Software commons.
And even the recording industry has at least had the decency to stop their tactic of suing individuals. While their new plan isn’t exactly awesome, it’s certainly a step up.
And so on.
A lot of this news is recent. The question: is this a trend? Will our cultural heritage someday be accessible to future generations with jumping through hoops? Or will the entities doing this sort of thing continue to remain outliers, with most cultural output remaining proprietary into the future?