CBC Opens ZeD.cbc.ca Code

ivar writes "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has open sourced (Apache License 2.0) the code used to build ZeD.cbc.ca. The corresponding TV show (typically consisting of content uploaded by the community) aired the announcement last night (Jan 6_, along with the Canadian broadcast premiere of Revolution OS. It's always heartening to see cool things come from a state run corporation..."

Comments

Re:CBC -- BBC

[Anonymous Coward]

To the person who says the CBC is biased towards the left. It's called balanced reporting. Some of the only truly balanced reporting in Canada. The simple fact of the matter is that most people are left in Canada. It's just that the right yells a lot more.

Please give a solid example of CBC being biased towards the left. And looking for a TV show or radio piece, not just the normal "the cbc is left"

Geez, look at Don Cherry. He's about as left wing as Bush. And he's still on, even though lots of people calling for him to be removed from the CBC. Granted he has lots of supporters, like myself, but if CBC was really that biased towards the left he would have been gone a lot time ago.

Grabby ToS

[tony_ratboy]

It's too bad ZeD still has "grabby" Terms and Conditions. Basically when you submit work to the ZeD, you're giving the CBC the work to use forever, in any medium, without restriction, for profit, and you're giving CBC the right to license your material to third parties. Canadian submitters even waive their moral rights, which means that the CBC can bastardize the contributor's work with impunity. It's all in the fine print. And we all know how many people read that.

Contibutors don't get paid. The CBC is a for-profit corporation. So if you're submitting, for example, a song to CBC's ZeD TV, just be aware that the CBC can use it as the title track for a new TV show, and never pay a cent in royalties. You're not even guaranteed credit for the work--credit is displayed "where applicable."

Basically for the cost of producing the low-budget ZeD TV, the CBC has built themselves a huge library of content which they can repackage and resell without restriction until the end of time.

Excerpt from ZeD Terms below

===Content may be used by CBC===
By voluntarily submitting or uploading content or material to the website (the "Submission"), you expressly consent to the use by CBC of such Submission on any CBC website, CBC television/radio program, CBC recording, and CBC marketing material or other paraphernalia related to CBC programming. You grant CBC a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, unrestricted, worldwide license to: (i) use, reproduce, store, modify, make derivative works from, transmit, distribute, publicly perform or display such Submission for any purpose, and (ii) to sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the foregoing rights. In addition. you agree to: (i) waive all moral rights in any Submission in favour of CBC, (ii) consent to your name, address and e-mail appearing as the contributor of any Submission, where applicable, and to the disclosure and/or display of such information and any other information which appears in or is associated with a Submission, (iii) acknowledge and agree that CBC is not responsible for any loss, damage, or corruption that may occur to your Submission, and (iv) acknowledge and agree that any Submission you provide for display on the Website will be considered non-confidential.

Re:Grabby ToS

[grozzie2]

You have to take a step back and look at the big picture. First off, cbc and profit, two diametrically opposed concepts, do not belong in the same sentence without a negative modifier :)

CBC is a corporation, even if it's owned by the crown, it still operates as a corporation, one that's been around for a VERY long time. That means they have all the trappings of a large corp, nasty little things like a legal department, accounting department, etc etc. CBC has been around since 1936, that makes them a rather old corporation, with 68 years of baggage and tradition when it comes to policies and operations. It's not going to change overnite, but change it will, and has over the years.

Zed is a step toward a more open system, a recognition of a new concept. But, in particular in the case of broadcast content, when the cbc broadcasts content, they take more than credit for it, they also accept liability for that content. For the legal department, this is easy to deal with when the production is 'in house', they know all the issues, and know how to deal with them. Then along comes this new upstart program, who is going to broadcast 'not invented here' kind of stuff, and the legal department has a bit of a problem, they dont know how to deal with it initially, and it's going to take them years to figure it out. How to deal with the liability involved for broadcasting independantly created media, particularily when its coming from sources that are not in a position to handle any liability should the process end up in those stupid litigations about 'somebody hurt my feelings with what they said'. Ultimatley, liability will stop at the CBC because they broadcast it.

So, compromises were made, and a manner of allowing this new experiment was created, to 'test the waters' so to speak. The legal folks determined that if the producers of Zed assumed all rights and liabilities for the content, then it could all be treated as 'in house' stuff, all the old rules apply, and the show can go on. If the experiment works, the concept can be re-visited by legal, and then they'll invest the time/effort/money in better ways of dealing with the situation.

Zed has been a success, and more baby steps are being taken. A content management system has been 'opened' now. Sure, it's easy for folks here on /. to criticize it, maybe it's not really that good, I dont know. the important thing is the concept, the next step toward a truely open system has been taken. Remember, we are talking about a large corporation, rooted in 60 years of 'media' tradition. CBC execs play in the same business circles as RIAA and MPAA execs, yet they are hosting a show that is rattling the tree in a different direction. that in itself is a big step.

Yesterday /. had a link to a great article about bittorent and the concept of 'peercasting'. That's huge fear for the traditional media outlets, thier investment is in a distribution infrastructure. CBC is different, they have a huge and expensive distribution infrastructure due to thier mandate to bring broadcast media to ALL canadians, even those in the remote areas. They recieve government funding to cover the costs of bringing thier content to isolated communities all over. With CBC the infrastructure to do the broadcast is NOT thier primary business investment, it's a sink hole for money.

The economics of distribution are what have american entertainment industry in total fear of bitorrent and the concept of the 'peercast'. It makes the outcome inevitable, the current distribution model is doomed, its no longer economically viable. CBC on the other hand is economically doomed to become a peercast content producer, ultimately it is inevitable. They have a government sponsored mandate to produce and distribute content Canadians. The old boys network caught up in the traditional media model within the corporation will fight this till the day they retire, but, that day is on the near horizon. In the long ru

Re:CBC -- BBC

[Cplus]

Thing with Don Cherry, love him as most Canadians do, he's just a crotchety old man, a colour commentator on a sports show. It's a sign of how seriously we take our hockey that we look at him in the same light as we do news reporters.

*looks glum

Don't talk about hockey.

Re:CBC - state run? yeah right

[smidget2k4]

CNN all of a sudden has the stones to criticize the government? Now THATS news to me. All CNN does it snuff the current administration's butt (since Ted Turner left, anyway).

Ditch the super model anchors, ditch the massive filters what stories you bring to America (NOT ONE story on the genocides), and then I'll start watching again.

Re:CBC - state run? yeah right

[MKalus]

Global is the worst kind of example (especially in Toronto) they try to be an american network in Canada, they take their cues from there.... They're just a bit softer.

It's almost frightening if you compare "The National" with Global News. You could sometimes swear that they are not reporting on the same story.

The media concentration though I agree is a problem. Especially with Canwest / Globe Media who pretty much control the majority of the newspapers in the country (Globe and Mail for Bell together with CTV and the National Post and Global for CanWest. Not to forget all the smaller local papers that especally CanWest has bought over the last couple of years).

Re:Reminds me of Brave New Waves...

[ivar]

thanks for the love.. zed is a commercial free (!!!) showcase of independent talent.. the thrust is on hilighting canadian film makers through short films, but much of our content is international.

personally, I adore CBC radio 3's programming and wicked web presense.. there are definitely cool things happening there.

Re:Reminds me of Brave New Waves...

[clawDATA]

Ahhh memories...

Late night hacking in a ratty townhouse near downtown Kingston. Debugging 8086 assembly on a blazing 286-12 (envy of my classmates).*

Flipping through radio stations and finding CBC alternatic classical with thrash or Industrial. Somehow it fit, and I was turned onto an entire new type of music when they started playing Ministry's "Thieves" (which had just come out).

**wipes away tear**

*I ran SCO XENIX 286, which powered two dumb-terminals and a way-too-fast (and big) DEC lineprinter/teletypewriter I scavenged out of garbage bins. Nerd heaven in those days...

NewMusicCanada - CBC

[katsiris]

CBC is getting progressively better and I'm proud to have it in our country. Zed is a great program, but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned sites like New Music Canada or CBC Radio 3, which both feature independant music and host their songs free.

Another great site is Just Concerts, which features professionally recorded bands from all over the world (though principally Canada) performing live in Canadian venues and studios.

Admittedly, it's not open source, and so a little off topic, but think of it as the equivalent in the music world.

Re:CBC -- BBC

[rainman_bc]

lol true that - what ever happended to middle of the road?

As bush said "If you aren't with us, you're against us". So if you aren't on the right, you must be on the left.

Re:CBC bias

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you could say that the CBC is centre-left, but not in the same part of the curve as the NDP. The NDP barely factor into discussions and typically the At Issue panel is dismissive of the relevance of that party. Layton is an idiot posturing as most politicians do and that's clear from the CBC reporting.

Have you listened to how much bashing there is of Paul Martin and his group? Didn't Mark Kelly or someone do an investigative piece on Martin's shipping company before the election? -- I didn't hear about the Alberta Liberal candidate but did hear much negative criticism Jean LaPierre.

Though I can't be certain of the source I was fully aware of the Indian couple from BC before election day. I primarily watch CTV and the National for my news - no cable. I must admit that personally I also found the coverage of Layton and his wife annoying, but that might be because they are annoying (and I'm from Toronto).

At least in the past three or so years I've heard Neil MacDonald be blunt with respect to both the Palestinians and Isralis. Her name slips my mind but there is a female correspondent who has often reported from Israel (currently reporting from Sri Lanka).

Don Cherry repeatedly offended the near 30% of Canadians who live in Quebec. That was probably a financial decision and as such should not be linked to the potential bias in a reporter. MacDonald does in fact provide a great deal of detail in his reports.

The Greatest Canadian was a flawed process from the beginning. It cannot be used to make an arbitrary point. Consider that individuals such as Wayne Gretzky (sp) and Don Cherry had to be defended as the greatest Canadian. It was a game on debating skills and the political leanings of the viewership - same with all media. The voting process is flawed, but it's clear that *anyone* could have won.

I ask you to tally the popular vote for all the centre and centre-left candidates (these include conservatives). You'll find that perhaps greater than 70% of Canadians will vote for the Liberals, Block, NDP, and the centrist Conservatives. If a national referendum was held on the greatest Canadian what do you suspect the outcome will be...

22 Minutes is not the National.

Re:CBC -- BBC

[felis_panthera]

it doesn't have a 'better' sense of humour... it has a british sense of humour... the CBC has a Canadian sense of humour which is usually an even split between making fun of ourselves and making fun of everyone else... the yankee sense of humor involves making fun of (primarily) everyone else and the british sense of humour almost exclusively make fun of themselves...