Open Source... Television?

jarit0z writes: "In Robert Cringely's latest column he toys with the idea of creating a TV show to go along with his rants. The show would be freely (as in beer) distributable, to hopefully keep bandwidth costs down. And it would also be freely (as in speech) modifiable, since he would also be releasing the "source" or raw footage of the show. Very interesting ideas if you ask me."

Comments

pbs

[sulli]

Since taxpayers cover at least part of the cost of these shows via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, shouldn't ALL these shows be free-as-in-everything? We paid for them, after all!

Re:pbs

[foobar104]

I don't believe it works exactly like that. The stuff that ends up going out over the various PBS stations is finished programming. Somebody had to produce that programming. I live in Dallas, and the local PBS station, KERA, has been doing a lot of production lately, shooting and finishing various shows.

When a production company or station makes a program, they turn over only the finished piece to the distributor or broadcaster. The production company or station keeps ownership of and rights to the stuff that went into making the program. Sometimes there are agreements between the distributor and the production company, like the production company promising not to turn around and use the same footage to make a different cut of the same program and sell it to somebody else for instance.

So what PBS gets is actually just the finished programs, not the raw footage or anything like that. It's not theirs to release.

would this be interesting

[pdice]

Would this really be all that interesting? Personally, have access to raw footage isn't all that appealing. It's not like open source software where i can change the code and actually change the functionality. Just seems rather pointless to me.

Just think of all the forks

[suso]

"Yet another Friends"
"Yet another Star Trek"
"GNU-ER" (ok, I'm a bit ashamed of that one)

Re:'Open Source' television already exists

[Luminous]

Dude, you aren't watching the right shows. Chicago CAN-19 has some great shows, like the guy who interviews local bands and his first question is always 'so do you guys like to get baked?'

Zed on CBC TV

[InterruptDescriptorT]

Zed bills itself as 'open source TV, v1.1'. (Was v1.0 mothballed?) Anyway, Canadians send in music, film clips, little productions, etc., and they are shown on the show. The Web site has clips of some of the entries.

Definitely a step in the right direction. I think you could only see this on public or semi-public (like the CBC) television. Networks out to make money would never dare put anything like this on the air--the airtime is only for the big stars that pull in ratings. Kudos to my home and native land!

Too bad movies weren't like that

[dark_panda]

Maybe then we wouldn't have to put up with Jar Jar for another two episodes.

J

A Lot of You Really Don't Get Free Media

[FreeUser]

From many of the comments here I can see that almost no one understands what Free Media is about. Not surprising, as numerous people posting the other threads don't understand what Free Software is about, and the two philosophies share a lot in common.

First, Free Media is not a new concept. Many of us have been kicking around the idea for some time. My own work, Autonomy is going to be licensed under a free license (you can see a draft of one possible license here), and there are numerous other projects as well (OpenContent and Copyright's Commons to name just two).

Free Media is about creating a public commons of content that others can use, modify, copy, redistribute, and incorporate into their own projects freely. There are caveates (like you have to make clear the end product is different from what the original creator may have intended), but the idea is that you could, for example, take an old Gilligan's Island rerun, colorize it, do some digital overlays, change the soundtrack, and add some more creative editing to create Alien Island ... and let everyone watch the Skipper and Gilligan get hunted by Sigorny Weaver's Nemesis.

adamy writes "A ditital Camera, and A Website [is all you need]", adding "I don't think anyone would want the Raw footage, just the edited stuff." Again, this completely misses the point. Maybe you'd like to redo the special effects of an old movie and the original green-screen (or blue screen) footage is exactly what you want. Maybe you want to do a documentary on how documentaries slant information ... in which case the raw footage, particularly that which isn't part of the final cut, is what interests you.

Free Media is about empowering artists to build upon the works of others, and to stop having to reinvent the wheel for every project (which really only the big studios can afford to do ... and they can cross-license copyrighted works anyway). The idea that consumers get the product for little or no cost is completely irrelevant ... a nice side effect of the Freedom being offered perhaps, but by no means the point of it.

As for 'Open Source' television already existing ... not in any reasonable or analogous sense that we mean when we say 'open source' software. Shows on local access are copyrighted ... you can't take them and incorporate them into your work, or rebroadcast them, or copy them, without express permission of the author. The are not free. The same goes for Zed by all accounts ... they're happy to take your content (and pay you a nominal fee), then subject it to the same onerous copyright restrictions that plague the rest of the mass media offerings. Aside from a novel way of trolling for content it, too, is neither free nor open in the sense that slashdotters understand the word. That is not to say it isn't innovative (it is), but so long as others cannot take and build upon the work freely it is not free (as in freedom), and has nothing to do with Free Media and Cringley's flirtation with it.