Unlocking the potential of creative commons for Hong Kong's education and creative sectors

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation founded by Professor Lawrence Lessig in the United States. The organisation seeks to replace the default rule of "All Rights Reserved" under copyright law with a fl exible "Some Rights Reserved" approach in order to promote the wider dissemination of knowledge and innovation in society. It achieves its aims by offering user-friendly copyright licences which authors and creators can attach to their works so as to encourage free use and remix by others within the prescribed limits. Creative Commons licences have been adapted to Hong Kong copyright law since 2008. This article contends that the current copyright system fails to promote the education and creativity of the young generation and examines how Creative Commons could assume a pivotal role in advancing the education and creative sectors in Hong Kong. Case studies are drawn from the local community and overseas where appropriate.published_or_final_versio

Generation Mixtape: A User\u27s Guide to Online Copyright

In conjunction with the Program in Law and Journalism at New York Law School, Tribeca Square Press publishes a monograph series, Legal Backgrounders, to provide those who regularly report on law and the legal profession, including print and broadcast reporters, editorial writers, bloggers, and editors, with concise, objective, timely, and readable information on legal topics currently in the news. Monographs in this series are not intended to advocate legal or policy positions but to describe and summarize the state of the law. An electronic version of each Legal Backgrounder, including links to sources, will be available on the Tribeca Square Press website shortly after publication of the print edition. For more information, sec http://www.tribccasquarepress. com.https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/tribeca_square_press/1004/thumbnail.jp

Supporting an Online community of amateur creators

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-176).This work describes a framework for the design and study of an online community of amateur creators. I focus on remixing as the lens to understand the contexts and processes of creative expression as it is fostered within social media environments. I am motivated by three broad questions: 1) Process: how do people remix and what is the role of remixing in cultural production and social learning? 2) Conditions: what kind of attributes influence people's remixing practices? 3) Attitudes: what are people's attitudes toward remixing? As part of this work, I conceived, developed and studied the Scratch Online Community: a website where young people share and remix their own video games and animations, as well as those of their peers. In five years, the community has grown to more than one million registered members and two million community-contributed projects. In the spirit of the theme of this work, this dissertation remixes several articles and blog posts written by myself or in collaboration with others. Wherever possible, the sources of the material are noted.by Andrés Monroy-Hernández.Ph.D

The art of video MashUp: supporting creative users with an innovative and smart application

In this paper, we describe the development of a new and innovative tool of video mashup. This application is an easy to use tool of video editing integrated in a cross-media platform; it works taking the information from a repository of videos and puts into action a process of semi-automatic editing supporting users in the production of video mashup. Doing so it gives vent to their creative side without them being forced to learn how to use a complicated and unlikely new technology. The users will be further helped in building their own editing by the intelligent system working behind the tool: it combines semantic annotation (tags and comments by users), low level features (gradient of color, texture and movements) and high level features (general data distinguishing a movie: actors, director, year of production, etc.) to furnish a pre-elaborated editing users can modify in a very simple way

A Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis of Music-related Practices Discussed within Chipmusic.org

abstract: This study examined discussion forum posts within a website dedicated to a medium and genre of music (chiptunes) with potential for music-centered making, a phrase I use to describe maker culture practices that revolve around music-related purposes. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What chiptune-related practices did members of chipmusic.org discuss between December 30th, 2009 and November 13th, 2017? (2) What do chipmusic.org discussion forum posts reveal about the multidisciplinary aspects of chiptunes? (3) What import might music-centered making evident within chipmusic.org discussion forum posts hold for music education? To address these research questions, I engaged in corpus-assisted discourse analysis tools and techniques to reveal and analyze patterns of discourse within 245,098 discussion forum posts within chipmusic.org. The analysis cycle consisted of (a) using corpus analysis techniques to reveal patterns of discourse across and within data consisting of 10,892,645 words, and (b) using discourse analysis techniques for a close reading of revealed patterns. Findings revealed seven interconnected themes of chiptune-related practices: (a) composition practices, (b) performance practices, (c) maker practices, (d) coding practices, (e) entrepreneurial practices, (f), visual art practices, and (g) community practices. Members of chipmusic.org primarily discussed composing and performing chiptunes on a variety of instruments, as well as through retro computer and video game hardware. Members also discussed modifying and creating hardware and software for a multitude of electronic devices. Some members engaged in entrepreneurial practices to promote, sell, buy, and trade with other members. Throughout each of the revealed themes, members engaged in visual art practices, as well as community practices such as collective learning, collaborating, constructive criticism, competitive events, and collective efficacy. Findings suggest the revealed themes incorporated practices from a multitude of academic disciplines or fields of study for music-related purposes. However, I argue that many of the music-related practices people discussed within chipmusic.org are not apparent within music education discourse, curricula, or standards. I call for an expansion of music education discourse and practices to include additional ways of being musical through practices that might borrow from multiple academic disciplines or fields of study for music-related purposes.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Music Education 201

A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching

Automatic Mobile Video Remixing and Collaborative Watching Systems

In the thesis, the implications of combining collaboration with automation for remix creation are analyzed. We first present a sensor-enhanced Automatic Video Remixing System (AVRS), which intelligently processes mobile videos in combination with mobile device sensor information. The sensor-enhanced AVRS system involves certain architectural choices, which meet the key system requirements (leverage user generated content, use sensor information, reduce end user burden), and user experience requirements. Architecture adaptations are required to improve certain key performance parameters. In addition, certain operating parameters need to be constrained, for real world deployment feasibility. Subsequently, sensor-less cloud based AVRS and low footprint sensorless AVRS approaches are presented. The three approaches exemplify the importance of operating parameter tradeoffs for system design. The approaches cover a wide spectrum, ranging from a multimodal multi-user client-server system (sensor-enhanced AVRS) to a mobile application which can automatically generate a multi-camera remix experience from a single video. Next, we present the findings from the four user studies involving 77 users related to automatic mobile video remixing. The goal was to validate selected system design goals, provide insights for additional features and identify the challenges and bottlenecks. Topics studied include the role of automation, the value of a video remix as an event memorabilia, the requirements for different types of events and the perceived user value from creating multi-camera remix from a single video. System design implications derived from the user studies are presented. Subsequently, sport summarization, which is a specific form of remix creation is analyzed. In particular, the role of content capture method is analyzed with two complementary approaches. The first approach performs saliency detection in casually captured mobile videos; in contrast, the second one creates multi-camera summaries from role based captured content. Furthermore, a method for interactive customization of summary is presented. Next, the discussion is extended to include the role of users’ situational context and the consumed content in facilitating collaborative watching experience. Mobile based collaborative watching architectures are described, which facilitate a common shared context between the participants. The concept of movable multimedia is introduced to highlight the multidevice environment of current day users. The thesis presents results which have been derived from end-to-end system prototypes tested in real world conditions and corroborated with extensive user impact evaluation

Remix

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Lawrence Lessig, the reigning authority on intellectual property in the Internet age, spotlights the newest and possibly the most harmful culture war-a war waged against our children and others who create and consume art. Copyright laws have ceased to perform their original, beneficial role: protecting artists' creations while allowing them to build on previous creative works. In fact, our system now criminalises those very actions. By embracing "read-write culture," which allows its users to create art as readily as they consume it, we can ensure that creators get the support-artistic, commercial, and ethical-that they deserve and need. Indeed, we can already see glimmers of a new hybrid economy that combines the profit motives of traditional business with the "sharing economy" evident in such websites as Wikipedia and YouTube. The hybrid economy will become ever more prominent in every creative realm-from news to music-and Lessig shows how we can and should use it to benefit those who make and consume culture. Remix is an urgent, eloquent plea to end a war that harms our children and other intrepid creative users of new technologies. It also offers an inspiring vision of the post-war world where enormous opportunities await those who view art as a resource to be shared openly rather than a commodity to be hoarded

Legitimating the Remix: Exploring Electronic Dance Music’s Hybrid Economy

Thesis advisor: Judith SchwartzIncreased access to media and production tools has given the civilized masses the means not only to consume an increasingly comprehensive wealth of content, but also the means to interact with that content in ways never before imagined. This has allowed the digital generation to grow ever more comfortable creating and editing content outside of the professional environment. Much of the creative output of our day comes in the form of the “remix,” a piece of content which is constructed, in full or in part, from bits (most often in the form of bytes) of other media artifacts. However, because of American law and international copyright agreements that prohibit the copying (reproduction or derivation) of creative works, a generation of amateur producers has been criminalized. Despite the message sent by recent prosecutions in light of the letter of copyright law, the original spirit of copyright law was to encourage creative production, not restrict it. Within the music industry, the international electronic dance music community demonstrates how new forms of content and copyright management within a hybrid economy could benefit artists, fans, and industry alike.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: College Honors Program.Discipline: Communication