Mr. Ito Goes to Disney
In one of the more unexpected turns that my week could have taken, I spent the morning at the Disney Channel’s headquarters in Burbank watching Creative Commons chair Joi Ito suggest ways that Disney-ABC could embrace a progressive attitude toward copyright and its alternatives. The room was packed with a full spectrum of Disney employees, including lawyers, managers, technologists, marketers and creatives, with others conferenced in from Disney offices as far away as Seattle. The concept of Creative Commons was entirely new to some, while others confessed to having downloaded CC licensed music for personal use. When Eric Faden’s all-Disney mashup A Fair(y) Use Tale was mentioned, heads nodded all around the room (even though it was mis-identified as “that Lawrence Lessig video”). Overall, the reception was positive and welcoming, as Joi explained why Disney should view Creative Commons as neither communism nor anarchy, but a sound business model for engaging fan communities and the potentials of user generated content. He also offered to send lawyers and technologists from CC to meet with their counterparts at Disney to see what kind of partnership might be possible. An all-Creative Commons channel as part of the Disney-ABC network? Disney content released under CC licenses to encourage fan remixes? I’m sure stranger things have happened, but I can’t think of any right now.
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Steve Anderson is an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media and Director of the Ph.D. program in Media Arts & Practice in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is the author of Technologies of History: Visual Media and the Eccentricity of the Past (Dartmouth 2011), co-Editor of the interdisciplinary online journal Vectors and creator of the fair use advocacy site Critical Commons. A scholar-practitioner working at the intersection of media, culture and technology, his research interests include historiography, the theory and history of emerging technologies, documentary and experimental film and video, and interactive media design.
Wow! What an incredible morning. Fight on!
can’t really say anything more than to confirm Kellee’s thoughts… the mind almost hurts conceiving of possibilities, alterations and departures… so, so interesting and great!