This exciting and engaging form of merging physical and digital worlds is by no means new, but is becoming increasingly popular thanks to technological advances ‘ making locative media devices, such as mobile phones and GPS-devices, cheaper and more pervasive ‘ and the emergence of a range of new Web 2.0 services. In this article we will explore a few interesting location-based digital storytelling projects, and then look at tools that you can use to create your own mapped stories.

Imagine walking through a few city blocks that seem quite drab, the very ordinary sight of warehouses converted into offices and artist studios, no doubt colorful on the inside but not much to look at from the street. By just walking around you have no sense of the history of the place, the stories that lie beneath the surface. Scape the Hood is a location-based digital storytelling project that changes that: with a GPS-enabled HP iPAQ Pocket PC running location-based software developed by HP Labs, you can walk around the neighborhood and learn about its history and culture. As you move around, the pocket PC loads appropriate images and audio pieces. Now, knowing that a mural was inspired by the memories of the death of the artist’s mother or that the one converted warehouse was actually a canning plant transformed by artists into one of America’s first live/work spaces, suddenly gives new meaning to the few blocks of SOMA, San Francisco, that surround KQEDs Digital Storytelling Initiative, a partner of this project. You can hear the gurgle of a creek that ran where a street now lies, listen to the sound of trains that once carried corn oil to a mayonnaise factory that has since become a Starbucks coffee shop and also see images from this bygone era. What’s more, you can select sounds and descriptions from different eras to experience what life was like on a particular corner at a particular time. Abbe Donne, executive producer of the project describes this as ‘narrative archeology’ because it ‘peels back the layers of the neighbourhood’ which aren’t obvious from the streets.

Scape the Hood is a textbook example of location-based digital storytelling. The Mobile Bristol Centre, collaborators on the project, imagine a ‘digital canvas’ painted over a physical environment where your presence and actions trigger the digital media experiences that augment the ambiance of the space. But not all location-based projects are context-aware in terms of a person’s physical movement through a space. Many cases allow virtual armchair travel. Third Ward, Houston, is a place and a collection of stories. The residents of this historically black community, which is now being gentrified and redeveloped, are trying to deal with the concomitant threat to their identity. The stories, mapped to specific locations in the area, are told by residents as they remember life in the neighborhood. America’s Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66 is the result of a university assignment to capture the history of one of America’s great, but now decommissioned, highways. In the summer of 2002, students Jay Crim and Shekar Davarya drove across the country on Route 66, interviewing people who lived, worked or traveled on the road. The result of that summer is part history lesson, part travel guide for those exploring Route 66 today. Both of these sites use text, audio and video to present their digital stories.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has teamed up with Google Earth to raise awareness about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. In the Google Earth application, users see the Darfur region covered with flame-shaped icons donating burned villages, with links to images of burnt-out huts, tented camps that house displaced refugees, and photographic diaries of people who have lost family members and homes to the violence. The effort aims to create a ‘community of conscience’ among Internet users.

Two great examples of projects that allow both context-aware discovery and virtual travel are [murmur] and Organic City. [murmur] is an ‘archival audio project that collects and curates stories set in specific locations,’ that started in Toronto in 2003 and now includes Vancouver, Montréal, Edinburgh and San Jose. Walking around these locations, armed with a mobile phone, you come across [murmur] signs (of a green ear) that display a telephone number and location code to call in order to listen to stories submitted by regular citizens of the neighborhood. Currently the [murmur] team will interview storytellers to capture the content, but they are exploring the option of anyone submitting their story for a particular place. You can also take walking audio tours from your web-enabled PC, For example, explore Spadina Avenue in Toronto. But says Shawn Micallef, co-creator of [murmur], ‘you’ll be missing out on half the fun.’

Organic City is a community storytelling project that allows users to author and access stories related to the city of Oakland, California. The website is the hub for anyone to tell and find stories in text, audio and video formats. By creating a platform that can be populated by anyone, creators Seamus Byrne and Sarah Mattern have enabled the organic growth of the Oakland community’s collective memory. An interesting result of this type of platform, where information from various sources is layered over common, public spaces, is that the resulting stories are not the usual linear narratives, but rather non-linear threads that can be joined together in many different ways, collectively making up the whole story about, for example, a street corner.

That’s cool, but how can I do this too?

Thanks to Web 2.0 mash-ups that facilitate user-generated content, a number of mapping services make it easy to create your own place-based digital story. Google Maps recently launched My Maps, which lets you create and share personalized, annotated maps. All you need to do is create a Google account and you can begin mapping. By using different colored and shaped pins, you can communicate the aspect of time over the space, like the World of Hello World. Microsoft’s Live Search is a similar service.

In Flickr, the super cool image hosting site, it’s possible to add geographic information or ‘geotags’ to photos, in other words to tell Flickr exactly where they were taken using latitudinal and longitudinal co-ordinates. The good news is that you don’t need a GPS or know-how to tell your location by looking at the sun to join in the fun. See the Flickr tutorial on how to geotag your photos and then use Trippermap to put a flash-based world map on your own website with those geotagged images pinned to it too. Trippermap’s Geotagger also allows you to easily add geotags to your Flickr photos using Google Earth. One other cool thing to do with Flickr is to add notes to a photo, for example Toronto, 1970s to 1990s.

MapBuilder is similar to Google’s My Maps. Community Walk and Wayfaring are similar services to MapBuilder, but they also allow paths to be drawn between locations. The downside of Community Walk is lots of Google Ads, while the upside of Wayfaring is that it lets you track who is interested in your maps and paths.

Joe Lambert, storyteller extraordinaire and Executive Director of the Center for Digital Storytelling, which has created StoryMapping, describes this work as a call to action. ‘We can now create maps that share stories about the places that matter to us, and place our life stories in countless geographic contexts.’ Exactly where this is all headed, and for what, we have yet to find out. All we know is that the tools are there for us to create new experiences by blending the digital with the physical, be it for personal, educational, commercial, social change or other purposes. So, what are you waiting for?

Further links

• StoryMapping. Interviews with the creators of [murmur], Organic City and Scape the Hood can be downloaded from the StoryMapping podcasts page.
• The Mobile Art and Locative Media page provides an extensive list of mobile and locative art projects, including place-based storytelling.
• Geobloggers: a blog about “maps for people, locations, stories and stuff … and sometimes flickr gossip.”

Pictures: What are the stories that lie beneath such city scenes? by Joe Lemonade, CC BY-NC 2.0
Screenshot example of a map with a digital story, www.storymapping.org/thirdward.html, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Check out this video, courtesy of Missinglink, of the successful Bring n Braai ccSalon that was held in Cape Town featuring guest speakers, Creative Commons CEO, Prof Lawrence Lessig and Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales.

Music by the winners of the ccMixter SafroBrazil Remix Competition Whispa (SA) and Lucio K (Brazil).

Then tell your friends to tell their friends to tell their friends and lets see how quickly we can reach the Summit using the power of iCommons communities around the world.

The first company to donate $3,000 is the South African company, Old Mutual. Thank you so much - you are our official Base Camp 1, first ‘visionary patron’ in what we hope will be an awesome success story.

Wikitravel is a free collaborative travel guide, powered by the 14 948 ‘wikitravellers’ who contribute to the site’s 14 730-strong destination guides and articles. And on 1 May this year, Wikitravel was awarded a Webby award for ‘Best Travel Website’ ‘ a testament to its success and usability.

As I am planning an overseas holiday soon, I thought I’d put Wikitravel to the test. I looked up the country of my destination to find a comprehensive breakdown on how to get around, describing in detail how the train systems worked, which passes to buy and how to find the cheapest tickets - definitely a topic which my guidebook didn’t elaborate on enough. I was impressed with the way that WIkitravel provided a ‘bigger picture’ type of overview on what to expect from cities, something that a guidebook might skim over, while also providing information which is more up-to-date.

Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project, but uses Mediawiki software. It is available in 16 languages, all of which have been developed independently. All content on Wikitravel is available under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike licence.

Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a project of Wikimedia, and uses wiki software to collect and share freely licensed music, photographs, spoken text, video clips and many more types of media that can be used for other Wikimedia projects. The media is released under a GNU Free Documentation licence, which means that ‘everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their copies/improvements under the same freedom to others.’

Wikimedia Commons is one of the most popular Wikimedia sites, with one of the highest number of users at 149 126, and at a recent count has had 1 438 321 files uploaded. A fantastic resource.

CosmeticsWiki
This one’s for the ladies! While not necessarily the biggest and best wiki ‘ this independent site has 34 800 product reviews and entries, and a small user base ‘ CosmeticsWiki is a good example of how wikis provide a home for all types of collaborative undertakings - even for sharing information and reviews on skin care, hair and cosmetics products.

CosmeticsWiki features product information, user testimonials and ingredient lists, and provides useful price comparisons for each. Submit a beauty tip of the week, or if you simply want to know more about your ‘Brilliant Moisture Lip Gloss, Number 127, Luscious Red’, Cosmeticswiki is the site for you.

Wikibooks
Another project of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikibooks has two subprojects called Wikijunior and Wikiversity.

Wikibooks was established in July 2003 as a way to create and collaborate on free content textbooks, especially useful for those who face barriers to learning due to the high cost of educational material. So far 25 219 modules have been collaboratively written in a variety of textbooks, and the books which have been deemed to have substantial content are available online in print or PDF versions.

Wikijunior is a print and online project to develop textbooks for 8-11 years old learners. So far three prototype books have been created: Wikijunior Solar System, Big Cats and South America, with more in development.

Wikiversity is a beta project, established in August last year. The aim of the project is to create and host learning materials for all age groups and languages, as well as to foster a community around these materials. Wikiversity’s emphasis is on ‘learning by doing’ models of e-learning, where students learn through collaboration on projects by editing Wikiversity pages. Other resources such as reading lists and lesson plans are available here too.

Wikibooks, Wikiversity and Wikijunior textbooks and content are available under a GNU Free Documentation licence.

Wikimapia
Wikimapia is a mash-up of a Google Earth-type satellite imaging system, and a wiki. It allows users to add information to a world map by marking out a ‘Hotspot’ and then uploading text in the form of a note with wiki-like features, to describe and provide more information about a place. You can also view the history for each note, and edit in another language.

After almost a year of existence, Wikimapia has had 3 million localities identified by its users. The site is unrelated to the WIkimedia Foundation, though it was inspired by Wikipedia.

Wikimapia has not specified it’s terms of use, and one cannot download users’ contributions. On the bright side, one can incorporate a Wikiamapia into another website, and it can be linked to a GPS receiver. This site is, however, a good example of how wiki software can enhance alternative online technologies, such as maps, by enabling collaboration for better information.

Muppetwiki
Established on 5 December 2005, Muppet wiki is a collaborative site about the Muppets and their creator, Jim Henson. With just over 14 000 articles collected to date, the Muppets seem to have a host of loyal supporters who are ready to contribute information about the ‘world according to the Muppets’.

For example, I was interested in the Muppet take on ‘the president of the United States’. The entry outlines the involvement of Muppets in the race for the presidency and other politicking, and lists the presidents, presidential candidates and first ladies who have worked closely with the Muppets. According to the entry, ‘At least one Muppet has apparently succeeded in reaching the office, [however]. A Whatnot appeared as President in Muppets Tonight episode 202, undergoing therapy with Meepzorp in the Independence Day spoof “Co-dependents Day: CD4.”

Whether you’re of the Muppet generation or not, this site can be poured over for hours, so set some time aside. Content is available under a GNU Free Documentation licence.

Conservapedia
“Free culture knows no bounds,” is what Jimmy Wales said in his March 2007 interview with The Guardian about this site, and Conservapedia proves this statement true.

Conservapedia is a wiki-based encyclopedia, established as a response to Wikipedia’s apparent anti-American, anti-Christian, liberal views. For example, one of Conservapedia’s criticisms of Wikipedia is that it ‘often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English speaking users are American.”

Surf through Conservapedia’s 9 200 entries for a, well, unique worldview. Content can be used freely, though carefully ‘ as the ‘license is revocable only in very rare instances of self-defense, such as protecting continued use by Conservapedia editors or other licensees.”

LyricWiki
Ever been singing along to your favourite tune, only to have someone point out you’ve misheard the words - ‘Didn’t you know it goes like this: ‘Bwoy out a road fi wi name dem a call, Bout dem want fi dis Basement Jaxx after all’?’

Enough to make your cheeks glow, but Lyricwiki has the solution. You guessed right ‘ this is a wiki for finding the lyrics of your favourite song, or even better, for sharing lyrics with others.

This wiki is near the top of the ‘List of largest wiki‘, with around 217 000 pages, though a large proportion of the lyrics (particularly those in the public domain) were acquired and formatted through automated scripts. This is another wiki with unclear terms of use for the content uploaded, they says it is free and refer to the GNU Free Documentation licence on their disclaimer page, but no actual licence is clearly stated on the site. Let’s hope they iron out this information, but in the meantime, this is an interesting site for music lovers to go out and play.

Wookieepedia
From April 2007, Wookiepedia was the most viewed site hosted by Wikia, and is one of the most populated Wikia sites, with over 47 000 articles.

The name might give it away - this site is the Star Wars wiki, Wookiee refers to the ‘furry bipedal humanoids’ from the planet Kashyyyk.

Collecting all things ‘Star Wars’, from descriptions of characters in the films, information on the Extended Universe and more on the games, books and special effects methods ‘ thanks to the ‘Wookieepedians’ who ‘wookify’ the entries in this wiki, the site has received much acclaim as documenting the ‘Star Wars pop culture phenomenon.’

Wookieepedia has been created in seven other languages, and content is available under a GNU Free Documentation licence.

MemoryArchive
MemoryArchive uses Mediawiki software as a tool for collecting shared memories of historically notable events, people and places; creating an archive of firsthand accounts of ‘history in the making’, for future generations.

The concept behind the project is that we are all part of, and participants in a shared history. In some way, we have all experienced a significant event of our age, which could be of interest to others now, or in the future. By recording our memories we not only document them, but we make them available to share with others.

There are memories recorded here of the devastating Hurricane Katrina and the London Bombings of 2005, and it even has an entry describing ‘life as a gas station attendant’. This wiki could be a valuable education resource for history teachers, though I was a little disappointed with the site’s Eurocentric focus. For example, I tried to find entries on the 1976 Soweto Riots in South Africa, with no luck. These are important events in world history that need to be recorded, though I suppose that it’s up to all of us to start contributing to MemoryArchive to make it a more inclusive history databank. All content is licensed under a CC Attribution licence.

Picture: Sharing information, by leighblackall, CC BY 2.0

Well, this month we singled out one of ‘them’ ‘ Ian Gilfillan, a Cape Town local who, amongst many other things, developed the first South African online grocery store, runs an organic product delivery business called ‘Ethical Co-op’, and practices transcendental meditation. Not only is he a keen contributor to Wikipedia, he also has a very clever translation tool up his sleeve, which he has used with great success for the development of Afrikaans Wikipedia.

1. From looking at the work you’ve been doing, I can tell that your involvement with Wikipedia has been a true act of love - how was your passion for Wikipedia ignited?
I read a book once by Ursula Le Guin called Always Coming Home. It’s a utopian fiction set in a future where all the communities are small and rural, but not disconnected, they have access to all the world’s body of knowledge - so the best of both worlds in many ways. I loved the idea then, and when I came across Wikipedia, years later, it reminded me of that dream. So let’s say, it was love at first sight.

The multilingual aspect of Wikipedia also excites me - the potential is there, not just for a single dominant cultural view, but also for multiple views. I like the story I heard once of the difference between the Japanese and English Wikipedias - very different practices. Apparently, the English Wikipedia is much more cut throat with an ‘edit first, talk later’ attitude, while the reverse is more prevalent in the Japanese ‘ first there is discuss, and only once consensus has been reached, is the change made.

I can’t say how true the story is, but I like it as an example of different cultural takes on the same concept. The Wikipedias in each language should ideally be all as valuable as each other, not subservient to the English version.

2. So how do you think South African Wikipedia users interact?
There’s quite a small community. The Afrikaans Wikipedia is quite polite and friendly; it’s been great to be involved in it in a small way.

The other South African language Wikipedias are too small, really just the work of one contributor at a time, a community doesn’t exist yet.

The good news is that Afrikaans Wikipedia has shown a growth spurt in the last few weeks ‘ shooting to over 7 000 articles now.

3. Is that thanks to Jimmy Wales’ visit to South Africa for the SA Free Culture tour?
Well, it all seemed to all be coming together at the same time. The day after the conference, I was contacted by Apertium, a translation project. This was completely separate from the conference; they were testing their translation software and have also created a few Afrikaans articles. I’m hoping to work with them, and with translate.org.za, to prevent duplication as much as possible - translating is quite complicated!

4. So tell us more about your involvement in Afrikaans Wikipedia.
My focus has been very specific, in order to make my goals achievable. I never planned to machine translate entire articles, which would be more Apertium’s focus. My interest is more on translating specific templates to assist in the translation process.

To take a step back - I don’t believe translation is the answer, or even ideal, for Wikipedia, as it just imposes the dominant language on a smaller language. But in order for small languages to build community, it helps to have some sort of content in the page already. And translation is one way to do that, especially with entries on countries, where each country has a template listing things such as ‘president’, ‘population’, etc. These can easily be translated, as the context is always the same

Other contributors have used my tool in the Afrikaans Wikipedia on my website. It basically helps me whip up a very basic country article at high speed. Other contributors can then work on fine-tuning it and adding extra content - but at least it’s a start.

A good thing about it is that it can be used with any language, given that the strings are translated. So what I’m really looking for in terms of the South African context is help from Zulu, Xhosa and other South African language speakers in translating a few strings.

As Wikipedia says, “be bold” - so even if my Afrikaans is terrible I’m still having fun.

5. So are there any other tools like the one you’ve developed?
I looked into it quite extensively before I started, as I was trying to avoid duplication. There isn’t really anything like it. The software though is trivial, really basic. But that’s an advantage.

I’m not trying to conjugate verbs properly, or use the correct gender - it’s really just a simple 1:1 translation (for example, ‘population’ to ‘bevolking’), and so on. Then you cut and paste the original template, stick it through the online tool, and get a 90% accurate result out the other side. So it’s a huge time-saver!

6. So now that you have your translation tool - do you still have your dictionary by your side when you are working on translations?
Yes, I still need it! The complication comes is that WIkipedia is so unstructured - a template can change without notice. For example, ‘leader’ as translated to ‘leier’ was a nice mapping, but now there’s ‘leader1′, ‘leader2′, so the mapping breaks. It needs constant tweaking like this all the time. And things like footnotes don’t get translated, they need to be done manually.

If you’re translating from English, you need to keep that side of the mapping updated for it to work. Templates too don’t really need to differ between languages as the data they display is quite generic such as ‘population’, ‘area’, ‘GDP’, etc.

But there’s also the issue of fragmentation. When I first started, I created a new country template in Afrikaans, without knowing there was already an existing one, then we had to merge them, which was a bit of work. Now there’s another new country template, used in quite a few countries. But that’s just the nature of wikis - they’re convenient and easy to use, but not very structured.

7. I’m interested in the community aspect of Wikipedia - as one of the early contributors to Afrikaans Wikipedia you must have seen the community grow around it - so how have you seen people being motivated to contribute?
People get motivated for all sorts of reasons. A big one I think is knowing that one’s contribution is worthwhile, which is why it helps to have content on a page already, as the contributor knows the project has a foundation and is not taking a chance. In this case, the Afrikaans Wikipedia is already viable, but Xhosa Wikipedia, with 33 ‘articles’ is not viable yet.

So the early contributors are real pioneers, theirs is a labour of love, then later contributors build upon that work. I’m very keen to hook up with people who can help translate the initial articles in Xhosa, then later users can build the community more organically.

I’m not sure it’s only due to the translation tool as my contribution has been quite small overall. Afrikaans probably has more of its speakers online, so it has that advantage. And there’s another motivating factor - it’s fun!

8. So have you had any people showing interest in Xhosa Wikipedia yet?
No, unfortunately not. I contacted various language departments a year or so ago but didn’t get much response. Academics can sometimes be too engrossed in that particular world, there’s the cliché that “they just don’t get it”.

Many contributors (to all Wikipedias) have been students. It’s easier to work with people who immediately see the potential of the idea and project, rather than having to ’sell’ it, which is not my skill.

9. How are South African language Wikipedias going to change the way people learn in South Africa?
Wikipedia is a great resource. At school level, in English, it pretty much has everything that’s needed in most fields - a learner can look up the Boer War, or world history, and much more, to find enough information for a school-level essay. That’s a huge advantage, if used properly by learners and teachers.

But for someone learning in Xhosa, there’s not much in the way of resources in general - books are being printed, slowly and access to knowledge is that much smaller.

I strongly believe in the advantages of learning in a mother tongue language. Of course, learning English is an advantage, and a good choice for everyone, but being able to first learn in mother tongue gives learners an equal chance.

10. What was the most tedious and time consuming article you have had to edit?
The Herero and Namaqua genocide article on the English Wikipedia was probably my lowest moment on Wikipedia, and I had to take a ‘wikibreak’. There was a revisionist historian, to put it mildly, involved in reverting any changes that reflected badly on Germany. I got very frustrated and stupidly involved in an edit war.

Then s/he got banned and the article progressed normally, but when they were un-banned again, the same thing happened. Except this time I actually followed the process, contacted administrators and showed the history. Tedious, but the user was banned permanently, and all is peaceful with the article again.

As for Afrikaans Wikipedia, none really stand out. Most of my contributions have been on countries and using the translation tool, no one was really more tedious than the other. They all were quite slow initially, which is why I developed the tool.

Ian’s Favourites:
“They’ll probably change from day to day, being a good Gemini character!”

Favourite organic vegetable: Probably green pepper
Favourite place to chill in Cape Town: The Indie Armchair Theatre, but I don’t go there nearly often enough, or a secret spot in the forest above Kirstenbosch, where I go to do tai chi and meditate.
Favourite online shopping store: Probably Loot
Favourite wiki: Wikipedia. Although there are some good examples in projects I follow, the Gregarius wiki is great one of the best examples of documentation I’ve seen.

If anyone is interested in helping out with translating strings, or would like to find out more about the software, please feel free to contact Ian: ian ‘AT’ greenman ‘DOT’ co ‘DOT’ za.

Photograph: Ian Gilfillan, by Gregor Rohrig, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Creative Commons provides licences that take a “some rights reserved” policy towards the use of knowledge and creative works, and thus may better serve the needs of documentary filmmaker who have a tough time gaining audiences and revenues.

The project lead of Creative Commons Australia, Elliott Bledsoe, is promoting the idea of how digital technologies and copyright management could be merged as tools for filmmakers. So why would filmmakers want to veer away from a strict copyright regime, and try out Creative Commons instead?

Bledsoe argues: “It encourages collaboration. It increases reach and reputation. Such an approach offers access to new business models. It gives new value to ‘back catalogue’, the BBC has itself been experimenting with its Creative Archive.”

In addition, he points out that the use of Creative Commons licences can be seen “as a distribution model”, and offers the chance of strong community engagement or feedback ‘ as a type of peer review mechanism, similar to those used in the world of free and open source software.

It reduces costs for certain users, such as schools, libraries, non-profits and charities. It provides legal clarity and also reduces administrative costs. Likewise, for those keen in giving an altruistic edge to their work, this approach increases the sum of human knowledge and also encourages innovation.

Creative Commons, a distribution model too

Anna Helme of Engagemedia.org, an Australian network that allows filmmakers to upload their work on the Internet for distribution argues: “Many of these videos address concerns… largely ignored by other… distribution outlets.”

Cafuné, a feature film funded by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, is a good example of a movie with an alternative, ‘open’ distribution model. Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence, the director aimed to overcome the bottlenecked cinema distribution in Brazil, to acknowledge its public funding, and to add value to the film. Read more about Cafune Cafuné.

Some filmmakers are also known for releasing a short trailer of their film on Revver under a Creative Commons licence, as undertaken by the award-winning educational film, A Laughing Matter.

Creative Commons licences could also enable the success of a ‘collaborative production’ for a film, such as A Swarm of Angels. This film is bringing together a community of people involved in every aspect of the filmmaking ‘ through fundraising, contributing to, and voting on the two scripts in development, or as a crew member. The film will be peer-to-peer friendly, remix ready, and not encumbered by digital rights management technology.

Creative Commons is seen by some as a way of managing raw material, such as the film Outfoxed. As Bledsoe says, “Creative Commons-licensed material is a pool of material legally available for reuse, without additional permissions, and generally without the need for payment either, though under certain conditions.’

Creative Commons, argues Bledsoe, offers special opportunities for documentary makers. It allows for viral distribution and promotion (both online and offline). It is a model that facilitates collaboration, and the management of raw content, and it provides useful resources for providing content for your documentary film too.

Picture: A Swarm of Angels, a good example of how CC enables collaboration for filmmaking, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This article was first published on APC.org, under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 licence.

At a recent conference in the Caribbean, I was given the opportunity to express some of my views on copyright-related matters. Naturally, a lively discussion took place and subsequently a number of people approached me to share their ideas and opinions with me. It was during one of these talks that an Asian delegate told me that his country was about to replace the present set of specific copyright limitations and exceptions with a so-called fair use provision.

In a nutshell, fair use is a copyright exception in the US Copyright Act which allows the reproduction of an otherwise copyrighted work without the copyright-holder’s consent in certain circumstances. The exception is fundamentally based on the belief that not all copying should be banned in order to facilitate socially important endeavours. In this way, fair use safeguards (among other things) the fundamental right to free speech and freedom of expression, which is widely recognized as one of the most fundamental principles in a civil society.

The utilisation of a fair use provision instead of specific exceptions is a popular demand from user rights activists and campaigners for the public domain these days - and the Asian delegate had clearly assumed that I was part of this category after what I had said at the conference. Consequently, he was astonished and terrified when I told him that I would not necessarily recommend such a move for reasons which I am going to explain below.

In the days following our discussion, I often recalled the conversation and eventually spent a good deal of the remaining conference time discussing this issue with a variety of people. In the course of these conversations, I learned two things. Firstly, the fair use doctrine is often confused with the concept of fair dealing ‘ a related set of copyright exceptions contained in the Copyright Acts of numerous Commonwealth legislations. Secondly, a general tendency exists to glorify the concept of fair use ‘ regardless of its considerable disadvantages.

So, first of all, the concepts of fair dealing and fair use are not synonymous, they are, actually, analogous! Both concepts share, without a doubt, the same fundamental idea of permitting uses of copyrighted works which are considered fair. However, the concept of fair use is, in general, much broader since it is not confined to specific purposes ‘ for example research, (private) study, criticism, review and news reporting. Furthermore, some of the uses permitted under the concept of fair dealing only pertain to certain kinds of protected works. By contrast, the fair use doctrine applies to all kinds of protected works.

In a way, both concepts could be described as converse due to the fact that under the fair dealing concept, the types of permitted uses are regulated by law and the courts are required to derive certain principles from these kinds of uses. Yet, under the fair use doctrine the principles for permitted uses are specified and it is left to the courts to determine certain kinds of uses. More precisely, four non-exclusive factors are to be considered under section 107 of the US Copyright Act to determine whether or not a particular action qualifies as fair use: the purpose and character of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use upon the potential market.

The fact that fair use is phrased in such an open-ended manner is often called the doctrine’s biggest advantage since it allows an extremely flexible application of the provision, especially when it comes to new kinds of uses (such as the Internet) which lawmakers could not anticipate. However, in my opinion this advantage is, at the same time, the doctrine’s crucial downside: the flexibility comes with the price of considerable uncertainty.

It is for this reason that the doctrine has been described as the most troublesome doctrine in American copyright law by courts in the United States itself. Respected scholars have complained that nobody really knows what fair use is and the doctrine has been repeatedly derided as among the most hopelessly vague of legal standards. On closer examination, fair use turns out to be exceptionally user-unfriendly rather than user-friendly - what kind of help does a provision offer with such a blurred area of application? The bottom line is that the concept of fair use relies on the willingness and financial ability of users to test the boundaries of the doctrine through costly court battles.

In addition, doubts have been raised as to the compliance of the fair use provision with the most important international instrument to validate the legitimacy of national copyright exceptions and limitations ‘ known as the three-step test. This test can be found in most of the relevant copyright treaties such as the 1886 Berne Convention, the TRIPs Agreement, the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. The test’s first step is of particular importance here as it stipulates that national copyright exceptions and limitations must be confined to ‘certain special cases’. Quite obviously, both the indeterminacy and breadth of the fair use provision are potentially in conflict with the requirement of (legal) certainty laid down in the first step of the three-step test.

Having said all this, the fairly long history of the fair use doctrine in US copyright law has, of course, produced a considerable amount of case law in this regard. These cases have helped somewhat to clarify what fair use means in the United States. Moreover, several fair use guidelines have been issued in order to achieve additional certainty. For this reason the international requirement of legal certainty might, after all, be met by the United States’ fair use provision. Yet, such interpretation tools simply do not exist in any country currently considering the introduction of a fair use provision.

So what is the conclusion based on my remarks? Well, numerous countries have opted for the inclusion of long lists of specific copyright exceptions and limitations instead of the utilisation of a general fair use provision. Clearly, this approach better elucidates users about what is permitted and what is not, and is therefore more in line with the requirements of the three-step test. At the same time, however, it lacks flexibility as it is left to the lawmakers to introduce new specific exceptions if, for instance, technological progress necessitates an adjustment in this regard. Legislative responses can be stunningly slow at times and the result is that common practices such as copying a piece of music from a legally purchased CD onto an iPod remain illegal in many countries to this day. In addition, it stands to reason that a closed list approach tends to eventually result in fewer exceptions than the open-ended concept of fair use. After all, it becomes obvious that neither approach is without drawbacks. Consequently, a strict adherence to only one approach is not going to produce satisfactory results.

For this reason I suggest a combination of both the closed-list approach and the fair use approach. In my opinion it is crucial to include as many specific copyright exceptions and limitations as possible and necessary, into national copyright laws for the sake of legal certainty and in order to protect users from costly legal battles. In this context it is advisable to utilise fair dealing provisions for certain specific uses.

Yet, in addition to these provisions a subsidiary fair use provision could prove useful, especially as a means to bridge a time gap between de facto changes and the legislative response in this regard ‘ but only as long as the compatibility of the concept of fair use with the three-step test has not been answered in the negative by a relevant authority, for example a WTO Dispute Resolution panel. Australia substantially amended its Copyright Act at the beginning of this year; and while the Act remains (with respect) a rather tedious read with a dubious structure when it comes to exceptions and limitations, it is now arguably one of the most progressive pieces of copyright legislation in the world. The introduction of a fair use provision was vigorously demanded during the consultation progress but, interestingly, the lawmaker eventually refrained from replacing the previous system of fair dealing provisions and numerous other exceptions and limitations with a fair use provision. Instead, the lawmaker did what I am suggesting here and simply added a more open-ended subsidiary provision to the Act that is somewhat akin to a fair use provision ‘ albeit confined to uses by libraries, archives, educational institutions and persons with disabilities.

iCommons Ltd. is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. Legal information and comment provided by contributors is solely the opinion of the contributor. Since iCommons is not providing legal advice through this website, you should not rely upon any information contained herein for any purpose without seeking legal advice from a duly licensed attorney competent to practice law in your jurisdiction.

T.Whid: So we’re making this new graphic illustration or diagram and my first inclination was that I don’t really need to collaborate with the people running the Summit. It’s like, I’m giving them this thing, and they can do with it what they will. But at the same time, I want it used there, so I guess I have to be proactive in asking for certain things.

AFC: Right, but just to be clear on collaboration at the Summit, when you get there you’re doing some sort of collaborative project are you not?

T.Whid: I guess. But we’re not sure what that is yet! So then this other piece we’re thinking about doing is this thing called On Kawara Update, which we had done a few years ago, and it lived on Rhizome’s site for a while and then it broke when they reconfigured their web server so we decided we would have to remake it at some point’¦ The way that piece works is that it updates [the conceptual artist] On Kawara’s dating process, so you go to a web page and it displays the date for that day. If you click on the date, you’ll see news stories from that day, and then there’s an archive where you can go back and see other days. Because the way On Kawara’s paintings work is that he’d paint a painting that day and then he’d package it in a box with news clippings from where he was that day.

AFC: Are you using the same sort of On Kawara font and everything? Sans Serif right?

M.River: It looks physically similar. The way it worked, was a black square with the date, and when you scroll over it news articles came up.

T.Whid: So in V2, in the rebirth, we felt that it would be cool for the Summit to have only news associated with it that was Creative Commons licensed. And then, that would be cool because then we could reconfigure it for different venues where it might be shown.

M.River: So this is the opposite of the first [project] that Tim would be doing where he proposes something and gives it away, the second [project] is that he’s taking material to create a work or to finalize a work. So one’s a producer and one’s a user, so that’s both aspects of how the license works.

T.Whid: But with a piece like that I don’t know if it would even fall under a Creative Commons license because it’s not really a visual piece, it’s more software, so we might have to make it GPL or something.

AFC: GPL?

T.Whid: General Public License software, or MIT, there are different kinds of licenses, the MIT licence is the easiest one to read, it gives whoever wants to use it the most freedom. The only reason I wouldn’t want to do that is because - it’s funny I read this somewhere that there would be a lot more open source software if people weren’t ashamed of the code that they write. So you don’t want anyone to see it really because it’s hacked together crap, and it’s like ‘hey, it works!’ but it’s not like good code, it’s crap code. I think part of the deal with the show is that it has to have a Creative Common’s licence applied though, and we don’t have any problem doing that, it’s just the nature of the piece lends itself more to one of these software licences rather than a licence you apply to a piece of music.

M.River: Just to clarify what I was talking about, part of the project is to use these things that have Creative Common’s licences, Tim’s also talking about the engine that runs the piece as a cultural object that Tim’s using.

T.Whid: It has to do with the nature of the material.

M.River: But the heart of the GPL licence is the same kind [as the Creative Commons licence].

T.Whid: It might even be required because in the software I used there’s RSS parsing software that I think is GPL, which would require the code that I write to also be GPL, so I don’t know what we’re going to do.

AFC: Getting back to collaboration, are there works in your 10-year history that you think fall into the collaboration category?

M.River: We did a piece that was a performance at Postmasters gallery where we got a pirated copy of the Pirates of the Caribbean when it first came out, someone bootlegged the image.

T.Whid: We just bought it from the subway or whatever.

M.River: We showed it at Postmasters, where we screened it in black and white, and we asked a group of sound artists to do a live sound track to it.

AFC: I mean do you consider, the Karaoke Death Match or 10 Pre-Rejected Pre-Approved Performances collaboration, pieces where you ask the net audience to vote on your performance or from a list of ten rejected pieces to determine which work you complete or not really because you’ve defined the perimeters of the piece and you’re simply telling someone what to do?

M.River: Well, when we talk about online art practices and someone asks, ‘What is your art about in one sentence?’ the answer is that our art is about communication. So there’s always a dialogue or a conversation, whether it’s just between Tim and I, or online, the conversation goes back and forth, the 10 Pre-Rejected Pre-Approved one is a conversation, where we’re asking people to participate in the conversation about the production of a piece.

T.Whid: Yeah, but at the same time, I don’t know, we’ve done a lot of projects where we want audience participation, and I guess that’s a sort of collaboration but there are all sorts of performances that we’ve made dealing with, you know, authorship, and what an artwork is, conceptually’¦

M.River: For me, Tim and I are collaborating and it’s a correct use of the term because the authorship of what we produce is shared. We are the authors. And I’m not saying that collaboration can’t have hierarchy, some of the things we do is our project and we ask people to participate, but I don’t think there’s a misunderstanding that everyone becomes the author. I do consider the pirate piece as a collaboration, each artist involved in that piece is the author of the piece. We’re in a system we built. It’s all our work together.

T.Whid: With some of the other [videos] we’ve done too, we have other people working with us and they don’t get billing on the piece, they get credits. And this piece we’re doing now with Alex Galloway, which hasn’t seen the light of day yet - that’s a true collaboration, it’s MTAA and Alex Galloway’s art RSG.

M.River: I think collaboration is an interesting foil to a lot of things in art, to be in collaboration, and to be in a net art background, when we started there was a lot of collaboration because it was a group production of these objects’¦

T.Whid: I would add that some of the pieces we did online early on in our collaboration were audience participation so they were systems that we’d set up. It just seemed really natural when Creative Commons came along that we would start embracing it because it’s basically the same sort of thing. It allows you to allow people to participate in the work in a different sort of way without actually having to collaborate.

Art Intercom is a six part series conducted by Art Fag City blogger Paddy Johnson, who will be interviewing the iCommons Summit Artists in Residence. In the weeks leading up to the conference, interviews will be posted once weekly, profiling the artists’ work and describing their approach to Creative Commons licensing. Artists who are still to be interviewed include Ana Husman, Jaka Železnikar, Joy Garnett, Kathryn Smith, Nathaniel Stern.

MTAA (M.River & T.Whid Art Associates) is simply described on their website as ‘a Brooklyn, New York-based conceptual and net art collaboration founded in 1996.’ I like them because they give me wine when I visit their studio. I like their work, because it is characterized by economy of expression without being generalized or simplistic. What’s more, they frequently extend this aptitude to create feedback systems that require the same streamlined response from their audience. The result is very clean and eloquent communication mediated by or in the form of websites, installations, sculptures and photographic prints. Creative Commons licensing plays a critical role in their work, because it provides a set of pre-established rules for use of their work so that they don’t have to. In short, it simplifies the conversation, and facilitates the elegance that defines their art.

In the two part interview that follows I discuss specific works and what the collective has planned for the iCommons Summit.

AFC: So you guys are a team - how will you be working with one of you in Croatia (Tim Whidden) and the other one (Mike Sarff) in New York?

M.River: I’ve defaulted to Tim!

T.Whid: Well, I guess there’s’¦ sort of an online discussion happening, so we’re both taking part in that and then in Dubrovnik I’ll just be there as the representative of MTAA so I’ll have to email Mike before I do anything and ask ‘Mike should I do this?’

M.River: ‘Get lunch first!’ (laughter)

T.Whid: We had two ideas and we wanted to do both of them, so the first idea was that we have this illustration called the ‘Simple Net Art Diagram’ that has had a Creative Commons licence applied to it for a few years now, like one of the most liberal licences beyond just going in the public domain.

AFC: What does a ‘very liberal’ licence mean?

T.Whid: I guess it’s called the attribution licence meaning that any one can use it for any purpose as long as we get attribution. So that means someone could make t-shirts and sell them and that’s fine with us’¦.

AFC: As long as your name is on it.

T.Whid: As long as our name is on it, someone could use it for an ad for Cadillac for example, and that’s fine for us.

M.River: And people have used it. A group of artist made art work off of it; we’ve had it published in different books as examples’¦

AFC: Of course it showed up in the dolls (pictured on the left)

M.River: We like to refer to them as action figures!

T.Whid: Yeah! Screw dolls!

M.River: Do dolls have guns?

T.Whid: So the first idea was why don’t we get this printed on different kinds of stuff. You know t-shirts, posters, buttons whatever kind of scarab they might be handing out at the Summit. Um, but then we thought it’s sort of specific to net art so maybe we should do something similar but more specific to the idea of the commons. So we’re going to do something new, but we don’t know what we’re going to do with it yet.

M.River: But going back to your original question which is what am I doing for [the Artists in Residence project in Croatia], the answer is very little because that moment in the simple art diagram was really Tim’s part in the collaboration, and I trust him to nurture and do things with it. Occasionally I would say something like, ‘why don’t we make a print of it?’ which we did, but mostly that’s kind of his thing’¦ But the other thing we were talking about before you got here is the strange moment when you have a licence and this project about allowing people to use your work. It’s a gift you give to the general public. What’s implied a lot of times is that you’re collaborating with everyone, but really it’s just the act of saying ‘here, you’re welcome to it.’ So what we’re running into in Croatia then is that our usual mode of operation is, ‘here’s something, you’re free to do with it what you want’ but in this case, we also have to play the other part, which is to then make the exhibition or event and let people understand, ‘you can do with it what you want, here are some ways that you might do that.’

T.Whid: Right, yeah, I think Mike makes a really good point so I’m just going to repeat it. It’s not a collaboration. I don’t really want to have any sort of back and forth with anyone. That’s why I have this licence, so people can go do whatever they want within the constraints of this licence, and I don’t need to communicate with them at all. It’s like, if I give you a sandwich to eat, we’re not collaborating on that sandwich, I made the sandwich, you eat the sandwich, and it’s as simple as that. And so, I think that’s an extremely important distinction and I think people are unclear about that a lot of times.

M.River: So following that through, you have to look at it on the other side which is we use something we’re appropriating. We’ll take an image and manipulate it, or take a document. There is also a relationship a user has to these cultural items. And a lot of times that’s part of why Creative Commons licences work’¦

Part two to follow soon!

Pictures:
Simple Net Art Diagram by MTAA, CC BY 2.5
MTAA Action Figures by Bill Hallinan

A new hot fad service called Twitter could now enable Newton’s Laws to be sent to an unlimited number of mobile phones, at no cost for the service. The laws could be sent by SMS - the limit of characters in a single Twitter message is 140. In the image of Newton’s Laws of Motion shown here, the laws have 138 characters.

When mobile phones are suggested as tools for learning, it is a common reaction to think that it is too soon to get started. But why? The need for teaching and learning is enormous and there is a young generation who need to get educated - now. The strongest argument for using the features that every mobile phone contains, for exchanging and interfacing information, is that students already have phones, or can find one to use. Currently there are three choices:

1. Wait for desktop computers ‘ that may never happen in many places around the world.
2. Wait for mobile phones to get more features. That is happening, and it seems certain more and more mobiles will browse the Internet and do much more. But this is a work in progress.
3. Use the mobile phones that nearly half the world’s population already have. That can begin now and begin where you are, if you do it.

Twitter is becoming a craze because it is fun. Twitter is also popular because anyone with a mobile phone can participate. In a Twitter guide online, its broad bottom line for access is stated:

As all mobile phones have SMS capabilities, there are no limitations on which phone you can use. As such Twitter is very accessible, and profoundly mobile. By being able to access it in a variety of ways, you can truly manage which information you receive and at what point.

It is a stunning new truth of our time that the laws of motion have changed for knowledge. What is known by humankind can move from person-to-person across the planet at the speed of light. Knowledge can move in showers of messages from a single person to myriad more. And those who receive it can answer back and comment to each other. The new laws of motion will let us spread the exchange of knowledge into a twittering global commons.

Teachers and policy makers responsible for bringing education to our younger generations should not wait to begin to reach those youngsters whose only device for receiving knowledge so far, is a mobile phone. Knowledge may have to be delivered in 140 characters or less for a little longer ‘ but as the image with Newton’s Laws demonstrates, some pretty hefty knowledge can ride in even one Twitter message.

Twitter is not the only way to put the new laws of knowledge motion to work for learning. But Twitter is a good place to begin and to learn what these new laws can do. What follows are Twitter’s answers to some frequently asked questions:

What is Twitter?
Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends you might want instant mobile updates’for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.

How does Twitter work?
When you send in a mobile text (SMS), Twitter sends it out to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page. Your friends might not have phone alerts turned on so they may check your web page instead. Likewise, you receive your friends mobile updates on your phone.

What’s with the 40404?
When you send a text normally, you might send it to a phone or an email address. With Twitter, you use what is called a ’short code.’ That’s what 40404 is ‘ a special phone number you use to interact with Twitter on your mobile phone.

How much does it cost?
Twitter is a free service. At some point we may introduce optional, for-pay features or services but basic usage will remain free. Note: with phone alerts turned on, Twitter makes use of texting or SMS so check with your mobile provider to find out if this will cost you extra.

Now read these again, and in your mind change the goals from chatting with friends, to delivering learning. What ways can you devise to use Twitter to deliver knowledge to students following the new laws of motion in our connective age?