Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Joseph Gordon-Levitt Asks Public to Submit Videos for Project on Tech and Democracy

[Aaron Wolf]

On 02/08/2016 12:34 AM, Fabio Pesari wrote:
> https://www.aclu.org/news/joseph-gordon-levitt-asks-public-submit-videos-project-tech-and-democracy
> 
>> Actor and filmmaker Joseph Gordon-Levitt launched a new 
>> community-sourced video project today with his production 
>> company hitRECord and the American Civil Liberties Union, 
>> putting out a call for people to submit videos with their 
>> takes on the connections between technology and democracy. 
>> The submissions will be used for a series of collaborative 
>> short films about the subject.
> 
> https://hitrecord.org/AreYouThereDemocracy
> 
> The site requires nonfree JavaScript already and accepts only Chrome and
> Safari as user agents, so that's not a good start, however JGL is a huge
> Hollywood star and I think this is can be an extremely good chance to
> promote free software to the general public.
> 

The "however…" is valid regardless, but besides the nonfree software,
hitrecord is an entire platform dedicated to locking cultural creativity
into a proprietary silo. Instead of using Creative Commons licensing or
something of that ilk, it's an attempt to get tons of creative
collaboration to happen under terms where JGL & co are the only ones
with rights to use the material that all the people are putting together.

Hitrecord does not claim exclusive rights over each contributors
copyrighted work, but since few of the contributors are using free
licensing, you won't be able to use your own work outside the system
when your work depends on material from others. So, all-in-all it's
tragic for all this community creativity to get limited to this walled
garden.