Creative Responses

The next session unites some representatives of the creative industries. We begin with Richard Neville, billed here as a futurist and social commentator. He notes that there is a resurgence of creativity in our society today, and that there also needs to be an incentive to create and disseminate - but this incentive must be more than a financial one; it is also based in collaboration and the ability to build on the work on others. In creative eras throughout human history this opportunity for mutual collaboration and inspiration was always present.

Today the large IP holders are stifling such collaboration between creators and reuse of their content - even though many of the creators themselves are actually happy to participate in the sharing of content. There is a significant bifurcation, then, between the creators themselves and the corporations which presume to manage their interests. However, overall, the issue is abut sharing, not stealing content.

Richard Jones is next - while he has worked extensively with QUT and the VCA, and has been involved in important multimedia projects, his main background is as a filmmaker, and so he will speak of the relation of creative commons ideas to the film industry. Filmmakers, he suggests, are generally cautious about the CC project, even though they have been involved in sharing intellectual property for a long time (by sharing their ideas and footage with others). For them, however, the issue is moral rights, as they are very concerned about how their content may be used in contexts which they cannot control.

Richard also notes the importance of documentary filmmaking, which in Australia is largely publicly funded - which means that the standard cliches of being beholden to the Rupert Murdochs of this world do not apply: the 'us and them' dichotomy which CC advocates sometimes use does not exist in this area. Rather, the future uses of that content are of concern - so, for example, a film on racism could be remixed in a sense which promotes racism, etc. In their standard practice, filmmakers therefore tend not to grant blanket licences for use, but grant it only once they have seen the final context in which their material is used. This is something, Richard suggests, which CC licences do not yet address - they ignore the politics of context.

Richard also raises some more technical issues - the question of how good the search engines for the Creative Commons archives are, that is, how easily filmic content may be able to be discovered in searches, and what the quality of moving image material in the CC archives will be. (But does this misread the CC's intentions, expecting it to be a worldwide archive of creative content? This might be a benefit of the CC project, and supported by its licencing scheme, but is it a core aim - or any aim - here? Perhaps it's something which would rather be taken up by external contributors like the Internet Archive?)

Barry Conyngham, composer and former Vice-Chancellor of Southern Cross University, is up next. He notes both the opportunities and potential pitfalls involved in the CC project. There has been a paradigm shift towards digital content driven by technology, and before this through the overall electrification of creative content delivery (how often do we still hear live as opposed to recorded music, for example?). He also points out that there is a significant difference between signed and unsigned artists (or between pros and amateurs) - there may be a far greater interest in the free sharing of content by those who have no revenue to lose, but much creative inspiration to gain.

I'm afraid my battery ran out for my colleague Greg Hearn's presentation - an overview of the changing economics of the network economy. I hope the Powerpoint will be online...