The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s En Masse Campaign has three main aims. To Rethink Copyright in our digital age; to Reclaim culture by encouraging people to step outside the current intellectual property regime; and to provide the tools to Redo cultural outputs, remixing them into something new.
To help Launch the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice launch its latest campaign: En Masse, we are screening the exciting new documentary on remix culture: RiP: A remix manifesto.
In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film features mash-up musician Girl Talk, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Brazil's Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow.
The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s En Masse Campaign has three main aims. To Rethink Copyright in our digital age; to Reclaim culture by encouraging people to step outside the current intellectual property regime; and to provide the tools to Redo cultural outputs, remixing them into something new.
I’ve been banging on to the board of the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice (ACDJ) for some time that we need to stop this copyright menace, that record companies were stifling creativity and culture itself was suffering.
This is not unrelated to my growing nerd status. I love communications technology – the nuts and bolts of it – so have always been really excited about open source software. Eventually I had even made the full time transition to Linux after 3 failed attempts.
More importantly, I was excited by the intersection of these technologies with democracy. A community of programmers, coming together to build software for free, it’s an exciting idea. This, then coupled with the user driven content that gained a real sophistication with the emergence of “Web 2.0”, had me bursting at the seams to run a campaign like En Masse.
But for some reason, I just couldn’t pitch it to the ACDJ board in a way that they would agree to take the issue on.
The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s En Masse Campaign has three main aims. To Rethink Copyright in our digital age; to Reclaim culture by encouraging people to step outside the current intellectual property regime; and to provide the tools to Redo that culture.
All culture is derivative. In other words, culture doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it builds on the past. If it weren’t for Steamboat Willy, we would never have had Mickey Mouse. If the fairy tails of the Brothers Grimm were restricted by copyright, we would never have had all the wonderful Disney cartoons that we grew up with.
However, these days, those that have built empires on exploiting the work of others that exist in the public domain (like Disney) are trying to lock down the past so that we can’t build on it as they did. This also turns out to be a rather profitable business model.
This podcast is taken from a forum run by the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice in 2007. Our guest speaker is Alex Burns. It looks at the future of community media in the digital communication environment. The internet and its various technologies have ushered in an age of a global access and participation. Newer technologies such as blogging and social networking has made it much easier for us to have a voice. What then of community media? Does it have a place in the future mediascape? What is the role of community media in the era of the personalised push technology based media experiences?
This podcast is form a forum run by the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice in 2007 with Peter Lane form Chanel 31 as our guest speaker. It looks at the current state of community media in Australia, the challenges it faces and the place it needs to have in the mediascape. This especially relevant given the recent changes to media ownership laws as well as the coming of the digital spectrum.
Community Media is the space where a huge diversity of voices can be heard. The arena where community represents itself and has a genuine impact. For a just and democratic society, communities must control their own destiny. Community media can play an active role in this empowering of communities through engagement, interaction, exposure to new ideas and by providing a space for discussion and debates about local issues. Community media provides a space for the grassroots to speak and contribute in the increasingly economically rationalised media.
This podcast is a recording from a 2007 forum that the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice hosted with Ellie Rennie.
Globally, media industries are conglomerating and rationalising operations for economic efficiency much to the detriment of the consumer and citizen, creating an oligopoly and reducing the number of voices herd. But the fight is not over. All over the world, community media is experiencing resurgence. Driven by Information and Communication Technologies that ease difficulty of use and cost are making it easier to make media leading to a boom in citizen-generated media. The question is “can it last?”
