I would be grateful for any hints leading to the original creator(s) of this work. I think it makes a fascinating study in photographic mash-ups, copyright, creative commons and remix culture in general.

UPDATE:

Thanks to some great detective work by Graham and Leo we now know that the photo was taken by Mark Khademi from Milson’s Point and that it was featured in online galleries by both the BBC and the Australian (which could well account for all the un-attributed e/mail that followed).  So Mark, if you are reading this, I would love to know if you are cool with the re-use of your image and if you can shed any light on the first person to re-mix it by adding the large lizard.

I am trying to track down an attribution chain to the person who took this photo and the first person to photoshop it (adding ye olde lizard). I first saw “Godzilla – Sydney Dust Storm – by Julia” on Flickr

It kinda freaked me out because it reminds me of a print of the image below I have behind my desk (which has a story of its own).

- this one (Uploaded on September 23, 2009 by avlxyz) [cc:by,=] (1600 x 1071)

The comments on this one indicate it was received by e/mail and point to two other versions:
- Grrrrr! Sydney Red Dust vs Godzilla
- Godzilla in Sydney
A further clue is given by – rahsoft, ah, thanks for the tip. i got the original in the same email… taken with a Nikon D60 at 07:40 GMT+10!

Grrrrr! Sydney Red Dust vs Godzilla
Was Uploaded on September 23, 2009 by glossy_mirrorplanet [C] (1600 x 1071)
Who is not the original author but points out it has been circulating round the net.

Godzilla in Sydney
Was Uploaded on September 23, 2009 by The Gee Spot [C] (1024 x 685)

So, if you can help track down the originators leave a comment.
Ta.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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godzilla sydney mashup reddust

Since my earliest tinkerings with the social web, I have thought the digital trails we write to the internet would make ideal data for anthropologists to study. My instincts regularly ‘give me feelings’ that the things I experience through my online networks are profound and perhaps mirror the inner workings of my brain or maybe even an ant colony. I have often wondered what a scientific study of the digital tracks left by my blog posts, comments, flickr images, video mashups and most recently twitter tweets might do to re-enforce or de-bunk my intuition.

Having had the privilege of hanging out with Microsoft’s chief anthropologist Anne Kirah after a presentation I gave a few years back got me thinking about what people in her field of research would make of this data.

Then, just before the US Election I discovered ‘cursebird‘ through a very *serendipitous tweet exchange with JP (the 5th beatle of the Cluetrain Manifesto and oracle of all things online and social):

I tried to go back and collect some cursebird screenshots as evidence but alas, I’m too late. At least one punter out there shares some of my enthusiam for cursebird’s window into the global brain.

billmerrill :

Watching fucking cursebird instead of dumbass teevee, better election coverage.

2008-11-04 18:54:22

*serendipity

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang
</cuss-warning>

Here is a slide-deck closely related to the one Elliott used today.
creative commons through the looking glass

Thanks to Dush from Higher Ground for access to the sound – desk!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang

And that’s fine because I decide to ‘give away’ most of my rights to my digital content in the hope that someone will find it useful and re-use it to tell their story. No need to ask, just be polite and give me attribution (which Richard did by linking to my ‘mikeblogs‘ flickr account). That’s what:

cc:by or ‘Creative Commons – Attribution’ means.

• Sure, Richard could have made me look stupid – but I do a pretty good job of that myself.
• Sure, he could make money off that post – good luck to him, he did the hard work.
• Either way I gain more than I lose by having my work re-mixed into a new context. Had I licensed my work in a more restrictive way (say cc:by-nc-sa which means reuse must be non commercial and licensed in exactly the same way) it is unlikely that anyone would have found it, let alone re-used it.

I’m guessing here, but I suspect that Richard used the advanced search in flickr and decided only to look for images about ‘readwriteweb’ that he is free to use for commercial work, with modifications. Images licensed with more restrictions would simply not be displayed in the search results.

This is why only work that is freely licensed with continue to be relevant in future culture (but that is a rant too long for the short amount of time I have before sleep time).

Some other places you will find derivatives of my image:

http://fang.blip.tv/file/633462/ – a presentation that helped my create an excellent job
http://fang.blip.tv/file/105776/ – a mashup of Lessig and Downes that they have both seen
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/323586161/ – my entry in a creative commons competition
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/306021623/in/pool-ccswagcontest06 – an entry by the winner of that creative commons competition
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/300492293/in/pool-ccswagcontest06 – the original image from which I borrowed the cc:frisbee
http://flickr.com/photos/31477768@N00/227948364 – my original hand drawn diagram
seyfang, mikeseyfang

If you have a go, you will in return get my undying respect, affection and gratitude not to mention professional regard at being a venturesome person. I have made a little invitation example here, http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=3698243344429972742&amp;hl=en-AU that on reflection, is too long and tedious, but you will see, sets the bar for technical standards nice and low. You will see a couple of other efforts I have put on Google Video.

Here is my response.



Enjoy

Fang – Mike Seyfang

• Collaborate, Hierarchy, Top Down
• Cooperate, Mesh, Bottom Up

Slide 43 from this excellent talk made me think it so:

Hoping someone will jump in and correct me if I am being too concrete.

Listen to the whole talk and note the subtle difference between cooperation and collaboration (my notes are ambiguous – but I was sitting on public transport at the time). Think about the top-down nature of hierarchical organisations/institutions and the bottom-up nature of mesh networks. (dare I say ’stigmergy’ ?). See if you can find clues about the explosion of the read/write web and the angst this seems to be causing institutions/corporations.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

YEP – THAT John Cleese is to extend his ‘chance to sound off in my old age’ online video distribution through thepodcastnetwork.com, of which he says:

‘is “rather good, run by Australians, and none the worse for that.” ‘

Congratulations to Cam our fearless leader, and the other team members who worked to make this happen. Even more kudos for doing so in a tough week for TPN while still seeing value in less mainstream more ‘longtail’ podcasts like extraordinary.thepodcastnetwork.com.

Good times.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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But today, I am heartened to see that my tax dollars have been well spent by the ABC on a project called DustEchos that attempts to preserve ancient stories from a very fragile culture by speaking them in a fresh, digital voice and encouraging remix.

I am even more encouraged that one of the animators on two of the stories (mermaid, whirlpool) is young Josh Bowman – a determined young man from the bush who is making his living through digital animation. I have watch Josh develop his interests, talents and now career in animation over the years. From the very start, Josh has been hindered by outdated laws that were designed to protect a creative industry that grew in a very much analog and read only world.

Projects like DustEchos are a very cautious ‘toe in the water’ toward read/write culture. The rather controlled ‘Mash it up’ feature of each story is even more restrictive than YouTube’s server side ‘REMIX’ feature but is a start. Just imagine a world in which all the digital versions of films, songs and images we grew up with were licensed in such a way that anyone could mash them up in any way they like. Think of the powerful new stories that would be told. Imagine how much longer some of the great creative work would survive in future culture.

Go aunty (ABC) and go Josh!

So, do yourself a favour, read the ‘original story’ (top right tab of viewing page) first then watch mermaid. Then tell me you don’t learn something about your own life. Being an old bloke who is somewhat disenfranchised with some of the most important relationships in my life, I was quite moved by the premise of the story. I suspect next time I hear a magpie warble I will think of returning to the things that will sustain me. I would very much like to mash up scenes from mermaid with scenes and songs from my life – re-telling the story as it applies to me. But, alas, the ABC copyright won’t allow it.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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p.s. If you think mermaid or whirlpool are good you can vote for them HERE.

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I really enjoyed the conversation with JP, several things stuck in my mind.

The first is JP’s questioning of why our industrialised education system groups kids into same-age classrooms. It certainly isn’t about optimum learning conditions!

The second is what I have dubbed the ‘JP Triangle’ in which a pattern emerges from Dave’s ramble about creativity and life near the ‘edge’. I scribbled the following visual representation of what formed in my mind during the Skype call:

jptriangle.JPG

I’m hoping that JP and Dave can continue this conversation by elaborating on the sides of the triangle and the meanings of the labels I have affixed. The triangle rests on its tip to represent an inverted hierarchy (inspired by Merv’s talk at the Living Laboratories workshop the day before).

So, lets have at it:

ABUNDANCE: speaks to the post scarcity world of the internet – where the cost of storage and distribution approach zero, some very different rules kick in. Kinda crucial to the longtail and the jewels therein.

HETEROGENEOUS: at the edge things get a little crazy and that’s where the magic happens. Unlike the shallow end of the gene pool, there is lots of diversity which makes for good re-combination – fuelled by the laws of weak attraction.

CREATIVITY: coming up with new ways of doing stuff – sometimes just for the pure fun of it. Whether solving a problem or scratching an itch. Either way, leave your past solutions and old habits at the door. You are not a mindless, replaceable unit of production here!

As it happens, I am re-reading Dave’s copy of the ClueTrain Manifesto and my thoughts are falling into three columns of a table:

Mass Production | Mass Marketing | Mass Media

more on that later…

Fang – Mike Seyfang

p.s. Shout out to Pete Cogle for his help with the space telephone!!

technorati tags:cluetrain, innovation

It’s hard going but well worth a listen and ongoing conversation. I have run into the same pain points that Leigh describes in my work with LearnDog. Having done a few rounds of this conversation myself, I thought I would try to summarise some key points:

• cc:by (attribution) is a good starting place for open content in the Creative Commons world
• cc:nc, sa (non-commercial and share-alike) seem to ‘add open-ness’ but actually bring surprising restrictions in a number of circumstances
• things get really messy when learners and educators try to re-use (remix) content, especially when hosted on commercial platforms with intrinsic license constraints
• the whole debate could go away – if the default position were non-commercial sharing: as Stephen Downes has said about Creative Commons:

it shouldn’t be necessary; the default should be non-commercialsharing, while commercial ownership and use constitute exceptions)

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Steve Jobs Asks Record Labels To Abolish DRM
Apple CEO Steve Jobs has posted his Thoughts on Music in the ‘Hot
News’ section of the Apple website. He starts off by explaining the background to Apple’s
DRM on iTunes:

UPDATE:

Prof Lessig (who inspired my little chart below) has posted his response.

If you have been following my work on ‘Read/Write Culture’ you will know that I think DRM is just plain wrong (like any form of business model that treats bits like atoms). If you look at my diagram below you will notice how DRM (and old analog mixtapes) just don’t follow the unstopable flow toward Digital and Read/Write.

My teenage kids are musos and will most likely make a living through their contributions to culture that will be made by publishing digital work via the web. So, when Steve himself says:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world
where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open
licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music
purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is
playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for
consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

The optimist in me gets kinda encouraged. Sure, Apple and the iTunes music store have been the ‘poster child’ for DRM, but Steve’s ‘Thoughts on Music’ explain why. You gotta wonder what kind of ‘tipping’ point can Steve see to go so public on this issue? Could the MSFT Zune be part of the picture? Or is it all about legalese with the ‘Big Four’? I would love to think the tipping point has something to do with music created by people like my kids – who have nothing to do with the ‘establishment’ who won’t control most of the world’s music for much longer. I’m guessing that Steve can see the writing on the wall for his statement:

the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI.
These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the
world’s music.

Lets hope so.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:apple, drm, ccdrm

Interesting little myspace for adelaidebands – worth a look.  I particularly like this bit from the review:

“With Sonic Bliss, The Milton Experiance have said
goodbye to their former melodic musings and creative soundscapes and are
now saying “Welcome to our nightmare….we love it and so will you!””

Fang – Mike Seyfang

Instead, I have been inspired to create a whole bunch of pictures, audio, video – even machinima mashups as I try to work through the ramifications of Read Write Culture.  I am not sure how I can (or even if I should) share this work with you.  I will start by uploading what I can to ‘official’ Creative Commons sites like CCmixter and this Wiki.

The whole process has caused me to almost blow a fuse, and is really challenging my views on what is legal / ethical in the remix / mashup world, and how difficult it is to effectively adhere to the ‘Some Rights Reserved’ idea.

SupplyDemandTriangle

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:lessig, mashup, machinima