Community Media Center 2.0 and Why Creative Commons Matters

The image above is (two pages pieced together) from the Spring 2007 Issue of the Community Media Review. Because this image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike 3.0 license, I can post it here on this blog. I can do that because I am giving the image attribution, I’m using it for noncommercial purposes and I’m using the same license for this blog. As a result, I can share it with my online networks. This is why Creative Commons matters for PEG access TV.

But, Creative Commons licenses matter even more when we talk about PEG access broadband video.

Access centers that post videos on their website (or through other web video platforms, see earlier post) and license these videos under CC licenses allow people, like me, to not only share them with my online networks, but (depending on the license) it would allow me to remix them for my own creative purposes.

For example:

Let’s say there was a recent cable franchising hearing in Massachusetts that happened to have something to do with, say, Verizon’s interest in entering the cable marketplace (hypothetically speaking, of course). And let’s just say there were 20 video cameras in the hearing room taping the public proceedings.

So then, if there were 20 different versions of 1 cable franchising hearing at the MA State House (let’s say this happened in June, hypothetically again) and all of these videos were published on the web, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial Share Alike 3.0 licenses, then I could remix my own version of the hearing to share with my online networks.

While it is important for an access center to get paid for the resources it uses, I think it’s even more important that videos produced by access centers (and producers) get found, watched and shared. Creative Commons helps to make this possible. The more PEG access TV shares video online, the more relevant it becomes - particularly in a “Web 2.0″ world.

So if you work at a PEG access TV center or happen to be a PEG access producer who is creating video for your community and sharing it on the web, please consider licensing your content under a Creative Commons license. By doing so, I believe it could lead to three possible outcomes:

1. Increase viewership
2. Increase community engagement
3. Increase support for PEG access TV in a “web 2.0″ world

By the way, I’d love to know who created this image above and wrote the copy that goes along with it (pages 24-25 PDF)? It’s fantastic. I’m looking forward to diving into the rest of the issue.