Critical Commons took part in the inaugural meeting of the Open Video Alliance at Yale University Law School, in what promises to be a productive collaboration among technologists, legal experts and maker communities. The day-long session was organized by the Participatory Culture Foundation (creators of Miro, an online videosharing tool) together with Kaltura, the open source video platform.
Hosted by Yale Law's Information Society Project, the OVA meeting markede the launch of an ambitious agenda of cultural, legal and technological transformation around online video. With nearly 30 international organizations represented, the OVA set an agenda for action beginning with a declaration of principles composed by stakeholder communities, articulating goals for how video can and should be created, circulated, remixed, preserved and accessed, all using open source tools, standards and formats.
The list of contributors read like a who's who in participatory culture, including organizations such as the Center for Social Media, Creative Commons, Mozilla, Wikimedia, Electronic Frontier Foundation, EngageMedia and the Open Society Institute. Throughout the day, spirited discussions and working groups focused on issues ranging from intellectual property and fair use to the technological and cultural challenges of shifting everyday practices away from commercial software to a still-emerging array of open source alternatives. As difficult as some of the challenges are, the need for such a transformation and the centrality of video as an expressive form in today's culture was echoed throughout the day. With its focus on video as a tool for learning and the importance of a robust conception of fair use for educators, Critical Commons hopes the alliance will contribute to a much needed shift toward greater openness, access and media-enriched learning both in and out of academia.
The Open Video Conference will take place at NYU Law School June 19-20, 2009. For more details, please visit the conference website.