Mayer and Bettle are back!
Anyone who has ever tried to explain the importance of Creative Commons licenses to a new audience has probably played them the wonderful CC Mayer and Bettle Animation which was created back in 2005 by Pete Foley and others gathered together by CC Australia. The video features two animated characters whose adventures in downloading, copyright and content creation lead them to explore the utility of CC licenses for creators and for audiences. It’s also quite funny (featuring “the best song in the world!!”).
The great news is that the two central characters, Mayer and Bettle are back, joined this time by a new player in the game – Flick – in a new animated tale. This one looks at CC licenses in more depth, with a focus on making money off content creation while still using CC licensing. You really need to watch the original animation first for this sequel to make sense, but it’s another fine effort from CCau, making CC licenses understandable and accessible to a general (non-lawyerish) audience!
Update: For more info and a higher quality download, check out the official CCau blog. [Via Elliot’s CC Blog]
Neon Dreaming…
Did I mention I’ve been teaching in Blade Runner’s Los Angeles William Gibson’s Night City Hong Kong this week? The first time I came to Hong Kong, it was like stepping into a city I’d already met – it was total immersion in the world of cyberpunk, where unashamed capitalism suffers neither restraint nor irony. This visit is no different: at times I love and admire the city, and at times it gives me nightmares, but I’m sure I’ll never ever be able to say that I’m ambivalent! (And the cityscape lends itself rather well to a few photos here and there, too!)
Links for April 14th 2008
Interesting links for April 14th 2008:
- The new digital paparazzi [On Line Opinion – 14/4/2008] – Peter Black discusses “the new digital paparazzi” which are more likely friends, family, or even ourselves, posting photos online with little concern for personal privacy. Black argues that this is evident of a shift in the way privacy is thought about.
- Civil liberties expert slams email spying plans [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “The head of the Australian Council of Civil Liberties, Terry O’Gorman, says tighter laws to protect Australia against cyber terrorism threats are not needed.” (In the wake of proposed laws which would let certain employers read their employee’s email.)
- Study: Pirated Web Video Peaks 12-18 Hours After Broadcast [WatchingTV Online] – “Unauthorized viewing of popular TV shows on video-sharing Web sites like YouTube peaks between 12 and 18 hours after an episode is broadcast, according to a study conducted by Akamai Technologies and content-identification service provider Vobile.”
Marshine on Phobos!
Following on from my previous post about Mars and the wonderful work of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) project, I just had to post the image above which is of “Marshine” (sunlight reflected off of the surface of Mars) on Phobos, one of Mars’ moons. You can see more of Phobos at it’s HiRISE page, but just take a minute to look at that amazing image. For me, at least, it really captures the imagination and a sense of wonder about our wider universe! [Via]
Web 3.0: A Locked Down, “Secured” Web 2.0?
While a lot of different people have attempted to deploy the term Web 3.0 to mean pretty much anything they like, I’ve read more and more reports in the last couple of weeks that seem to be positioning Web 3.0 as the locking down of all of the socially shared information that has been the core of Web 2.0. Here’s an example from Australia’s The Age:
WEB 2.0 is well established, and sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Digg have turned the internet from a static source of information into a huge, interactive digital playground. But where to next? What will the next stage of web culture – which some people call Web 3.0 – be like? The expectation seems to be that profound changes are on the way. If Web 2.0 is about generating and sharing your own content, Web 3.0 will make information less free.Privacy fears, new forms of advertising, and restrictions imposed by media companies will mean more digital walls, leading to a web that’s safer but without its freewheeling edge. […]This openness is one of the defining features of Web 2.0. But software specialist Nat Torkington, of high-tech publishing house O’Reilly Media, predicts a backlash. He argues that one serious leak or theft of private data could change opinions overnight.”It could be a Three Mile Island of the net,” he says, referring to the 1979 accident that turned the US public against nuclear power.
While this story is more about a more locked-down web being forthcoming rather than present, it’s been noteworthy that the same paper has since run stories about the ease of hacking computers via browsers thanks to Web 2.0 technologies, the fact that stolen identities are being sold cheap by criminals since they’re so easy to obtain thanks to poor web security, and one more nasty tale about 6 teenage girls who lured another girl to one of their homes and then beat her viciously before posting a video of the beating online (or, as The Age called it “an ‘animalistic’ YouTube attack”).
So, the two broad possibilities you’d garner from reading The Age this week are either that Web 2.0 is the root of great evil and needs to be secured immediately, or that someone editing the technology sections of The Age is trying to push for a dramatic change in online culture. (Or, possibly, some middle ground between the two.) What do you think: are the freedoms of Web 2.0 going to be curtailed due to rampant misuse?
Photo by Darwin Bell (CC BY NC)
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