Engage Media

EngageMedia is a video sharing site focusing on social justice and environmental issues in South East Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It is a space for critical documentary, fiction, artistic and experimental works that challenge the dominance of the mainstream media.

The growth of digital distribution tools mean distributing video online has become a viable option for artists and activists looking for ways to get their work out there. Huge potential exists within these new technologies to bypass the control of big media conglomerates and create our own distribution channels.

EngageMedia aims to demystify and provide access to these new technologies, create an online archive of independent video productions using open content licenses and form a peer network of video makers, educators and screening organisations.

I’ve checked out a few of these videos and some are fun, some are amazing and some are horrible. In cases like Engage Media, though it’s a valiant effort at attempting to bring the democratization of web 2.0 to a political end. I’m not so sure how effective the current web-site structure is or the navigation but it’s an interesting concept.

They’ve also been interviewed by Creative Commons Australia here.

Another free book!

I’m going to keep with the giving tradition of this morning when I linked to Yochai Benkler’s work, The Wealth of Networks:how social production transforms markets and freedom, released under a Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license.

I just found out that

Lawrence Lessig’s seminal work The Future of Ideas has now been released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence and can be freely downloaded off the Internet. Read more on Lessig’s blog here or download the book here.

   

Soz Lessig

I went on a rant yesterday. Most of what I said I still stand by, even if it’s poorly worded and I’m still trying to work out what I meant by it all. I guess it’s basically a rail against scorched earth writing on the death of creativity which thrives on hyperbole rather than reasoned argument. 

However I want to exonerate Lawrence Lessig. I’ve been reading a lot of his work through secondary sources and other quotes and considering I read his books at the start of my research, it’s easy for his work to get distorted and twisted by others.   

I still don’t agree with everything he says or his Creative Commons love-ins but his arguments are still awesome. His final talk on the issue of Intellectual Property given in January 2008 is a great summary of what he’s on about.