Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary

Save the Internet | Rock the Vote

I "met" Arin Crumley of Four-Eyed Monsters when he commented on a video of on mine over at YouTube.  When I visited his site, I noticed that he had some widgets, including a message comment line.  We got into some back and forth email about widgets and he was kind of enough to give me a really useful critique of one of my videos.   He's a talented filmmaker (as is Susan and the other folks at Four-Eyed Monsters).  So, I've been looking for a good reason to link over to them and now I found it!

He created the above "open source documentary" on Net Neutrality called Humanity Lobotomy.  He is encouraging people to download and remix it or spread it.   And, as you can see below, Mike Ambs, of Caliblog already has.   All of the video clips came from searching “net neutrality” on YouTube, Google Video, Podzinger and delicious.  The project wiki is here and he has a del.icio.us feed where he is tagging resources here.  (And note how he has incorporated the use of his mail comment line into his content)

I'm seeing more and more examples of participatory media --  take for example WGBH's Video Sandbox.  Reminds of the exquisite corpse like games we used to play on Arts Wire ten years ago with images.

Click To Play

"Spread the word by copy this code and paste to a blog, bulletin, your profile or comment. All are welcome to do anything they would like with the above edit or any future edits you make. Put it on you web page, burn a DVD to show at a gathering, show it in a theater before another movie, play it at a cafe, show it to friends on a portable player, or even put it on television. We?ve (Four Eyed Monsters + Caliblog) put a creative commons license on the video so that you don?t have to ask permission, but it is cool to hear where it?s showing and that knowledge is part of the feedback loop, so let us know in a comment. If people start showing it all over the place on their own accord, then we?ll know the edit is really concise, if that happens on a smaller scale, it?s possible the edit might be something only certain people have the backround to understand. Net Neutrality needs all the publicity it can get because major media companies, surprise, don?t want to make it a big story. So blog about it, call your local newspaper, if you work in media get your editor to let you do something huge about it and feel free to contact us at anytime for our input or to get quote on why net neutrality is important to us as independent filmmakers who use the internet to distribute our work."

Mike Meiser from Meedfeedia has set up a collection of these videos here.

Additional Resources:

Save the Internet
Neutraility Now!
Britt Bravo, Netsquared Post
Article in TechSoup by Henry Kumagai "What Will Tiered Internet Access Mean for NPOs
TechSoup's Network Neutrality ToolKit

Update:

My colleague Matthew Saunders from Westaff reminded me about his excellent pieces on this topic. I highly recommend them.  Here's a link to all of them.

Comments

[Taran Rampersad (aka Nobody Fugazi)]

*Sigh*. It's Open CONTENT, not Open SOURCE. I wish people would stop screwing that up...

[Beth]

Hey Tarran:

Nice to hear from you. Why don't you drop a comment in Arin's post?

[mike]

Hmm... I don't know if that's the reaction I was hoping for :)

No: "I'm gonna' contact my senator", or "thanks for this video"? Just a beef with semantics, eh :) oh well...

Thanks again Beth! You rock!

[MatthewS]

I have written extensively on this issue and it is near and dear to my heart.

http://imagespace.blogspot.com&sub=searchlet" target="new">Net Neutrality

[HandsOff]

We at the Hands Off the Internet coalition appreciate the innovation and spirit of open content video, yet we believe that any attempt by Congress to regulate the Internet will inhibit such innovation and encumber the development of Internet-related technologies. For more information on our coalition and what we believe, please visit us at www.handsoff.org.

[mike]

Yeah.. somehow 'handsoff' I don't think you're fooling anyone for a second with your "let big money decide what's best for the internet" bullshit.