Kathlyn Clore

cc logo from Flickr user qthomasbower

Me: Law-abiding journalist who takes blurry photos. Looking for illustrative photograph to run alongside article or blog post. Editor at a not-for-profit by day, sometimes producing video for established media brands.

You: A talented photographer who reads Lawrence Lessig on the weekends. Have posted your telling, creative photograph on Flickr. Like to put your work under Creative Commons licensing. Mainly looking for Attribution-Noncommercial, but Attribution-Share Alike is OK.

Our collaboration will hopefully go viral.

My attribution gets your picture, free and clear.

What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons licences are an evolution in copyright.

Copyright law has so far developed mainly within nation-states; copyright law in the UK developed differently than copyright law in Italy or Germany.

The Internet enables more collaboration between people and businesses in these countries, though, necessitating a harmonized way to share.

Creative Commons licences allow creators of original works – be they photographs, articles or videos – to easily label their works with copyright permissions.

There are six versions of the licences, ranging from restrictive “Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives” permissions to an “Attribution” licence that allows the work to be used for commercial and not-for-profit work as long as its attributed.

Permission granted
Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons, the not-for-profit that helps write and distribute the licences wrote:

“Imagine an amateur filmmaker creating content to upload to their website as they try to clear the rights of music that they’ve gathered from across the Internet.

In most cases, the legal fees would exceed the value of the transaction and the sharing would fail, either because the parties would ignore the law, or opt not to share because the legal cost of doing so was prohibitive.”

Creative Commons allow for a reversal of permission paradigms.

Editors or filmmakers previously had to find and ask authors or studios for legal permission to use a particular original work.

Creative Commons allows authors and studios to label their original work with legal permissions. Anyone who sees the work is then aware of how they may or may not legally use the work. They don’t have to ask permission.

What’s happening in Europe?
Creative Commons licences have been written for 25 of the 27 member states of the European Union. Legal experts in each country have written the licences to comply with the basis of local legal codes.

Proliferation of Creative Commons seems to be in line with current thinking in Brussels. Fostering a climate that enables Internet users to easily share their creative work is a priority within the EU.

In late January, 2010, the COMMUNIA Thematic Network On The Digital Public Domain, co-funded by the Commission to generate policy guidelines related to open access, released a dossier called The Public Domain Manifesto.

Its first principle states, “The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception.”

The Manifesto is available in 11 languages; a Facebook group dedicated to it has about 1,300 fans.
D2#07 Europe, The Borderless State? - Panel WCS 2009

Original signatories to the manifesto include Knowledgeland, a Dutch thinktank working toward a knowledge-based economy; iCommons, a UK charity promoting open-source software; and Digitale Allmend, a Swiss association dedicated to securing public access to digital assets. Other original signatories include like-minded Italian, Slovinian, Croatian, Brazillian and American groups.

The COMMUNIA is mainly concerned with open access and making analogue versions of cultural heritage available to the public in digital form. The Commission-funded digital museum project, Europeana, is a reflection of this effort.

The COMMUNIA defines open access as:

“a movement away from an ‘all rights reserved’ approach, by which rightsholders reserve every single use possible, towards a “some rights reserved” approach, by which rightsholders voluntarily renounce to some of the exclusive rights granted by copyright law.”

Future of EU copyright law
Addressing the future of copyright law online in Europe was from 2006-2010 the job of commissioner Viviane Reading, who for the second Barroso Commission has shifted to work on another portfolio.

Before Reading took this role in the second Barroso Commission, she
spoke in favour of reforming European copyright law to better enable protection of orphan works as well as the digitalisation of cultural heritage.

Dutchwoman Neelie Kroes now presides over the task of online copyrights. Like Reading, Kroes has said that allowing for the development of a single market for online content is the best way to fight Internet piracy. (Other commissioners may disagree with this approach.)

Kroes, who worked on international competition issues during the first Barroso Commission, is most famous for imposing fines on Microsoft related to an antitrust case with the American software maker.

Kroes’ stated priorities in her new job include creation of a single clearinghouse for music rights in the EU.

She could be supportive of initiatives like Creative Commons, according to Reuters reporting from 21 January, 2010:

“Kroes, however, has shown little appetite for extending crackdowns on piracy — France, for example, has legislated to disconnect consumers from the Internet for illegal downloading — before a properly functioning market is in place.

‘Copyright is important for economy and culture, people deserve its protection, but no proper action is possible while there is no single market,’ she told the European Parliament last week in a final “interview” for the Digital Agenda post.”

So what?
Whether you’re working on a non-profit media site like this one, a private media startup, a government or a blog, Creative Commons makes it possible for you to share or use writings, photography or videos.

Even established newspapers, like La Stampa in Italy, are utilising Creative Commons.

In January, 2009, Al Jazeera began hosting a repository of Creative Commons-licensed footage from Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza.

With seven reporters based in Gaza, Al Jazeera had access to exclusive footage while the Israeli Defence Forces would not allow more journalists into Gaza. Al Jazeera could have charged other broadcastors by the second for its exclusive content.

Moeed Ahmad, the head of new media for Al Jazeera, said his company benefitted from incoming links from sites like Wikipedia, which used still images from Al Jazeera videos.

In the summer of 2009, Al Jazeera opened its blog section for re-use with a Creative Commons license.

What for photographers?
Many photojournalists worry that the proliferation of free photography will lead to the devolution of photojournalism as a profession.

Others have used Creative Commons to search for new ways to profit from photography.

In autumn, 2009, professional photographer Jonathan Worth circulated Creative Commons licensed photographs of science fiction writer Cory Doctorow. The images were licensed for commercial and non-commercial use.

Alongside these, Worth began selling series of limited-edition prints of his work alongside Doctorow’s book, For the Win. He wanted to see if the free photos generated publicity for the paid-for versions of his work.

They did, and Worth made 760 GBP, or 867 euro. He also earned many of what he calls perceivable non-material benefits.

A Foto8 blogger wrote about the experiment,

“What’s at stake here is the possibility of identifying practices that enable community-building and audience-building on the fly, around an idea, something we’re seeing more and more of.”

Think legacy media brands are not reinventing and repackaging themselves?

Check out some video and print ads I’ve found online promoting news products from Russia Today to O Globo (Brazil) and TV3 (Estonia).

A slick Simpsons parody advertises Estonian news (Thanks for the tip, RFE). I was told via Twitter that the ad was very believable in its portrayal of Estonian life (kidding!).

In Belgium, this quirky ad showcases an artist frying a steak to promote cobra.be, a culture site with content from Belgium’s state broadcaster. The theme in this campaign seems to be that whenever someone famous in Belgium - like actress Marie Vinck - Cobra.be will be there to cover it.

These nice videos (with subtitles, helpfully!) come from Brazil, where they promote O Globo. It is the biggest newspaper in Brazil.

This one is my favorite. I love the action of the “mouse” picking up trash or helping students. The ad shows the paper as a partner for motivated citizens.

This one promotes O Globo as being more than “just the paper” in a newspaper

This cheeky ad comes from France, where it advertises Le Monde Magazine. The tagline is “Bring the world into focus.” It seems to be a big hit online; the two YouTube versions of it that I’ve found each have more than 50,000 views.

Finally for now, these ads promoting the international TV channel Russia Today are causing a stir in the United Kingdom. The theme here is promoting Russia Today as a channel whose journalists ask tough questions and challenge commonly held beliefs.

Is the threat of climate change what legacy media brands needed to finally implement innovative new media strategies?

Starting with a syndicated editorial that ran in 56 newspapers, the international press have demonstrated far more collaborative spirit in coverage of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen than the politicians who have been sent to Denmark to take action.

The editorial, penned at The Guardian, notes:

“If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.”

In addition to 16 newspapers from Asia, 20 European countries ran the editorial. The 1,113 words - in English - of the editorial were translated into 20 languages.

Indeed, COP15 has been a boon for syndication, distributed coverage, interactivity and aggregation.

On Facebook, a group called The Climate Pool has become a second home for the content of 11 different news publishers, including: Agence France-Press, ANP (the Netherlands), APCom (Italy), RIA (Russia), dpa (Germany), Lusa (Portugal) and The Associated Press (United States).

The group accumulated more than 5,000 fans as of the start of COP15. Participating agencies have posted articles relating to Copenhagen coverage, opening these up for comments. The group also includes discussion forums, on which - impressively - journalists from The Climate Pool have engaged with other Facebook users.

According to its own press release, The Climate Pool was initiated by a global media network called MINDS International. Based in Germany, MINDS began its life as European Commission-funded project in 2004; it now operates with funding from its members.

The group represents a departure from the isolated positions of news agencies like the AP, which distribute content to paying members but act as vertical silos online, unwilling to share content. An executive from the AP told Journalism.co.uk that participating in The Climate Pool is an experimental project “to help the agency better understand what tools are best used for covering certain events and answer questions about social media newsgathering and distribution.”

For netizens who want to comment on COP15 proceedings as they happen, enter the OneClimate Channel.

Thanks to the free video-sharing platform Justin.TV, the is running an interactive livestream of the meetings in Denmark. Viewers are able to watch live meetings, in English, while discussing with other viewers in real time alongside the video.

Live broadcasts are available on the COP15 site itself, but the UN site does not offer viewers a chance to comment.

In between official briefings, interviewers from the OneClimate initiative host discussions on various climate change themes with other activists. These too are open for real-time reader comments.

The Channel, which is live during business hours, can be embedded across the Internet.

“OneClimate.net has always been in the business of producing free digital spaces and tools for amplifying the voices of thousands of climate action groups around the world,” a press release from the initiative said. “Its new interactive TV channel is based on the same philosophy.”

OneClimate is part a UK nonprofit called OneWorld Network, which began in 1995 and is now a distributed network of activist sites.

Finally, thematic blogging platforms like the EJC’s ThinkAboutIt campaign and Global Voices Online have been active for months.

Both offer netizens a portal to blogs of citizens from all over the world; they’re reliable sources for authentic voices speaking from countries like Brazil, India, the US and the EU27.

The question is: Will the politicians at Copenhagen listen?

New media strategies like syndication, distribution, aggregation, social networking, curated lists, real-time discussion and search do provide entry points for more voices. But is it all one big echo chamber?

Communications staff in charge of compiling media briefings for their respective politicians each day of the COP15 have no excuse not to have their hands full of material.

I think most Europeans will cringe as they watch this.

Why? The citizens of Europe who I know just can’t - for whatever reason - ever seem to just surrender to the tacky but warm embrace of sweet, tinkling music playing beneath images showing patriotic moments. This is in stark contrast to their star-spangled, American friends who tend to get teary anytime they hear Ray Charles croon America the Beautiful.

One Greek tweeter I am following referred to this video as “touching but contrived.”

In my opinion this is a very well-done video montage. It might be a little tacky, but the images and theme don’t seem to me at all contrived. It shows the life of a young family living alongside defining moments in recent history about which Europeans should be proud, especially those working toward a pan-European identity.

The interactive timeline here is also nice (and less cheesy).

I think some of the reluctance on the part of EU citizens to embrace moments like this as positive developments toward a pan-European identity stems from a generational gap. But from what I can tell, the Erasmus movement and the emergence of English-language publications around Europe - many of them cooperative efforts - indicate a growing EU identity.

Some media products conveying a pan-European mentality (and of which I’m aware) include:

Th!nk About It (Europe-wide blog platform on sociopolitical issues)
Cafe Babel
PressEurop
Spiegel Online
The NRC Handelsblad (Dutch) partnership with Spiegel and PolitikenDK (Danish)

One facet of American journalism I wish was different was the way we look at bias and objectivity.

I see a lot of benefits to the British newspaper approach, which sees papers like the Independent and the Telegraph exhibiting clear - but documented, explained, transparent - biases. I know what perspective I’m getting when I read one of those papers. And that’s a good thing. News events and stakeholders don’t exist in a vacuum; sometimes its helpful to read an article that has a (transparent) point of view rather than lose some color in favor of a more bland perspective.

Taking a further (and slightly sideways) step back, don’t most American media have the bias of being American anyway?

I really am glad Internet media have ushered in an era where transparency is perhaps going to be more important that objectivity.

Some Fox News viewers feel that way about their television news.

Last week at the Online News Association I became convinced the mobile web is the most exciting platform for the future of journalism. More on that later.

And I don’t think the generation of people who will come to rely on their smart phones for like, everything, is the crappiest generation - as this guest on the late-night chat show Conan O’Brien says.

However, I like everything else he’s saying on this funny four-minute viral video. It basically amounts to: Rapid-fire technology is cool, but… Let’s just all keep breathing, kay?

“It’s going to space!!! Will you give it a second to get back from space?!”

“You’re sitting in a chair, in the sky!!!”

Journalists, especially those of us who have yet to publish our best-selling book or start that chat show, don’t often have a particularly interesting financial portfolio.

And those of us who don’t work the business beat often know little about the stock market. To our (readers’ ?) detriment, likely. But there’s always time to learn…

Enter the bull and bear cartoons! Thanks to my boyfriend, who perhaps knows (read: obsesses) a little too much about the stock market, I have been introduced to the Emmy-winning team of Hoof and Boo. They’re easily the most fun way to warm up to a perusal of market news.

Have a look:

If I could make liner notes to accompany the surprisingly delicious eggplant parmigiana I baked this week, they would include a shout-out to Internet how-to videos.

This was my first time preparing the dish, which I decided would be a natural progression of cooking lasagna-esque dishes. Baby steps, my kitchen skills take. Many times, it’s thanks to online video. This time I wanted to make exactly sure I understood what was meant by the instructions “peel the eggplant” - Yeah, yeah. I’m a beginner! - so I hopped online and found a video of a guy peeling an eggplant. Turned out I’d had the right idea all along, but I love the affirmation Internet how-to videos can give when it comes to preparing food.

I’ve been watching a lot of video online lately, and actually, a lot of them are indeed getting longer - just as I read about in the NYT last week.

More recently, I very much enjoyed reading about HowCast, an website dedicated to professional how-to videos. It’s nice to know about a searchable site like that stocked with credible videos. Plus I dig the founders’ entrepreneurial spirit, so I’m keen to support their project.

Some other videos I’ve watched lately:

My boyfriend brought this hilarious 2008 viral marketing campaign to my attention this week. We have watched it three times to be able to hear the background comments made to the men in the Dog House, catchphrases we’re now teasing each other with:

The advertising message here seems OK to me because it is obvious. Plus, it is presented in a humorous, entertaining way. But the warm-fuzzy vibe this Israeli advertising agency went for was clearly missed. I read about this video on Advertising Age and after watching it agreed that the video is quite insensitive.

I found this one via News Videographer, a longer feature about a Fairy Festival. I thought it was a well-told story perfect for local papers and shared it with my mom. When I was a little girl my mom used to trick my younger sister and I into thinking we saw fairies. This would usually happen while driving over a “Ferry bridge” near our home in Minnesota. My sister and I would hear her tell my dad that we were on the “Ferry bridge” and get excited - which my mom totally exploited.

And now for a bad example of video created for a newspaper. I watched this Fourth of July montage on my local newspaper’s website. I was initially excited by the sounds of the drummers, thinking it was an extended introduction shot. But the lack of voice-over or story was disappointing. It was just a bunch of random moving pictures.

This video is a recent snarky Slate production called Buy One Anyway. Evidence of what happens to journalists who don’t learn to move beyond videos like the one above, apparently. It spoofs late-night infomercials from the 1990s.

Another related snarky journalism culture video I can’t help but add here, even though I first watched it months ago, is this NYT subscription ad spoof. My favorite line: “I like the politics and socks page! I love the Garden and War section!”

Yesterday I edited the above video together with Bernd, the video producer at the EJC. It’s a follow-up to this video:

Today my colleagues received some positive news about funding a second round of this Th!nk About It project, which features bloggers from each of the 27 Member States writing about one topic. The next topic will be climate change and lead up to the Copenhagen summit in December.

I think this is one of the most worthwhile projects my organization is doing, because it involves a hands-on new media platform on which people from so many countries are contributing and discussing ideas. Plus, the leaders of the EJC have been wise enough to spend some funds on off-line meetups, which really adds a whole new dimension to the community aspect of this blogging platform.

One thing: Bernd and I really struggled with how to end the latest video, the Portrait of a Blogger video. Any suggestions on how we could have done this better?

This gorgeous video took 14 years to produce.

That’s because it depicts a story about suburbanization. Two farmers talk about leaving their land while a homeowner talks about life with her family in their new house. This story is unfolding all over the American Midwest.

As Mindy McAdams points out, the juxtaposition in the photos is effective in evoking a response in the viewer. This is a story that makes you happy some photographers stay in the same place for a while. It’s also a story with photos that make you realize people will do the same activities all around the world no matter what the circumstances.

And, it is a story that makes me happy some farmers hold out. For example, some landowners on Book Road in Naperville, Illinois, have been holding on to their land while other farmers have sold land that is now a WalMart. I am so much happier when I drive past open land than when I cruise past the ubiquitous and repetitive strip malls which characterize so much of the American landscape.

My adolescence transpired during a transition phase in Naperville. Land had been sold to developers but had not yet been developed. That meant lots of good places for soccer practice.

I also truly felt like I grew up “on the plains” of the Midwest, because I could go outside and see large swaths of undeveloped land. To this day I find wide open spaces “fit my eye”. I hate obscured landscapes such as Interstate 95 in South Carolina, which is buttressed on either side by pine trees. It’s impossible to look out over the landscape.

My boyfriend points out to me, though, that I should not have felt like I grew up on the plains. Apparently the authentic Illinois landscape included a lot of forest. I’m not sure about that, though, because I grew up going on so many “prairie” themed field trips. Something to Google….